This action, coming so suddenly,
struck everyone dumbfounded, and the captain aboard the warship opposite among them.
"Warning! The enemy mecha… is closing upon our ship. Are we to destroy it?" the petty officer asked in his tension.
The captain asked heavily: "Is it certain that the man standing upon that mecha is the Leader of the Star Alliance universe?"
"It is certain."
"Do not use the ship's guns. This Star Alliance Leader is to be taken alive, at all costs. A living enemy leader is worth more to us than a dead one!"
"Yes!"
And though those ship's guns were laid upon the mecha already, in the end they did not fire.
The rocket thrusters at the Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha's feet and upon its back began by degrees to dwindle.
And at the moment they had carried this Lancer above the warship, those thrusters died away entirely.
"By the look of it that face of yours is very useful indeed. It comes near to being as good as a star shield." Zhao Chen laughed lightly.
Song Chen did not speak, and not because he did not wish to.
But because, at so great a speed, to hold his own footing upon the mecha's shoulder was doing well enough already.
And to spare strength for speaking besides would have been laborious indeed.
"And next…" Zhao Chen stared down at the warship below, wrapped about in her star shield.
The enemy's drones and shuttles about them had closed in as ordered, but still they did not attack.
"And next, leave it to me."
The mecha's speed slackened, and Song Chen had leisure to speak at last.
But that one sentence startled Zhao Chen.
What did this fellow mean to do?
"The limelight is not for you alone, boy. Mind you do not lose it." Song Chen drew his light-blade, and thereupon sprang with a will.
And leaped down from the Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha.
And the light-blade in his hand changed as well.
From the color it had borne, to a blood red.
And with terrible ripples running in it besides; this was no ordinary light-blade at all!
Zhao Chen saw what Song Chen was about.
He used the last of the rocket thrusters' energy to set the mecha's position, and dived down after Song Chen.
Song Chen alone in front, the light-blade in his hand leveled at the warship's star shield.
And in the moment the two met,
that region of the star shield broke apart, of all things, like so much glass.
And thereupon Song Chen, and the Lancer following hard behind him, fell together inside the star shield.
Boom.
With one great roar of it,
this Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha smashed a small crater in the surface of that warship's armor.
"Your nerve is no small one," Zhao Chen said, working the mecha up onto its feet, and looking at Song Chen standing firmly beside it.
Song Chen gave a cold snort; and with the light-blade in his hand he was for all the world like a swordsman.
"Waste no time. Go on and do what you came to do." Song Chen raised his head and looked at the star shield, closed again, and at those shuttles and drones outside that came with it.
Crack, crack, crack.
And they were firing upon the place where the two stood already; though the places they fired upon were very exact, laying their weight upon the mecha and not upon Song Chen.
"Have a care for yourself." Zhao Chen brought the mecha down to a crouch, and drove its fist again and again against the surface of the ship's armor.
And soon cracks showed in it.
But the mecha shook without ceasing, and Zhao Chen could hear the sound of rounds striking the frame.
By good fortune it may be the enemy, wary of Song Chen standing beside, dared not use weapons of any great fire.
But with several great roars behind him,
the lights of the whole cockpit dimmed away.
And the Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha went still.
"What is the matter?" Song Chen looked in puzzlement at this Lancer, giving off black smoke and stirring no more.
The shuttles about them were already putting interstellar marines down upon the warship's surface.
By the look of it they did truly mean to take the two of them alive.
"The mecha's circuits are shot through." Zhao Chen kicked the cockpit's outer shell open and sprang down.
For this Lancer-class Medium Combat Mecha was no very excellent thing to begin with, being a combat mecha of quasi-T4 grade merely.
And through all this road of fighting, under handling from Zhao Chen that pushed it to its very limit.
Its several circuit modules had long since come to the end of what they could bear.
And with that leap from the roof besides, and now the fire of the shuttles and the drones to bear, it simply went out of service where it stood.
"Then what are we to do now?" Song Chen knit his brows and looked at the ship's armor, no more than cracked open.
For the armor of an interstellar destroyer of this T3 grade would take him a long while to break through, though he used his own light-blade upon it.
"Wait." Zhao Chen took hold of the edges of that crack in the armor with both hands.
And thereupon the veins stood out upon Zhao Chen's forehead, and both his arms began to engorge with blood.
"Aaaah!" Zhao Chen set his teeth, and out of his throat came a roar like a wild beast's.
Song Chen stared dumbfounded.
Before this, he had admired Zhao Chen's skill in every line of it.
But now?
To pull open the armored shell of an interstellar warship bare-handed?
Though the mecha's few blows had cracked it open already, that does not mean the thing can be torn apart by a man's strength.
Crunch. Crunch.
But the next instant there was a greater horror in Song Chen's face.
For he saw that sunken crack in the ship's armor begin by degrees to widen, and the steel at the crack begin to be dragged apart.
Dragged apart, little by little.
This… could this fellow truly pull a starship's armor open with his bare hands?
Was this not a monster?
Whoosh.
With one great shattering roar, a thing shot out like a cannon shell.
And though it passed some meters from Song Chen, the wind of it set his cheeks smarting.
And behind, that thing flying off struck, as ill luck would have it for them, a shuttle that was trying to put marines down.
Boom.
One great roar, and this shuttle was destroyed without rhyme or reason.
And Song Chen saw clearly now what it was that had flown off just then; it was a plate of the warship's armor,
broken bodily off by Zhao Chen,
and laying bare the compartment within the ship.
"Get in, and quickly!" Zhao Chen said, breathing in great gasps, and glared at Song Chen standing dazed beside him.
"Oh… very well." Song Chen might be counted a man who had seen great winds and waves in his day, but never in the world had he seen a monster who could pull the hull armor off a T3 interstellar warship bare-handed.
And in the midst of his astonishment he went in through that broken hole, into the compartment.
He had at some point drawn his laser pistol already, and on entering made certain first that the ground about him was safe.
Astonished he might be, but he remembered his own charge all the same; it was an instinct gone deep into the body.
And thereupon Zhao Chen sprang in after him.
"How did you do that?" Once he was certain the place was safe, Song Chen could not keep from asking Zhao Chen.
"What?" Zhao Chen seemed not to understand him.
"I am asking you how you did it. How you pulled the hull armor of an interstellar warship open with your bare hands!" Song Chen fixed his eyes hard upon Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen made the gesture of pulling apart with both hands again, and said calmly: "Like this… and then like this… and then like this."
Song Chen's whole face was past speech.