Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
And at this, broken sounds of footsteps came from all about them.
Some from the compartments around, and some from beyond that hole overhead.
"This way!" Zhao Chen and Song Chen pointed the same way at the same moment.
The two of them met each other's eyes with some surprise.
And thereupon ran at once for a door of this compartment that lay in that direction.
Zhao Chen checked a moment at the doorway, and Song Chen checked hard upon him.
"I have a star shield. I go in front." Song Chen pointed at a bracelet worn upon his wrist.
It was a single-person star shield of special make.
Zhao Chen did not hinder him.
Song Chen, laser pistol in hand, went in at a rush in a fighting posture wholly professional.
And thereupon the light could be seen rippling upon Song Chen's star shield.
These were the attacks it turned.
Song Chen at once began to answer them.
And Zhao Chen, taking the while that Song Chen was under attack, rushed in as well.
And found the place of every enemy exactly.
For while Song Chen was under attack, the sound of the enemy's guns and the lines their fire took let him reckon their places out roughly.
After a few seconds of shooting,
there were left in this compartment only a few of the enemy's soldiers lying upon the floor, and dark red blood.
And several watching devices overhead, already shot to ruin.
Which is a thing that must be done in breaking into an interstellar warship, or else every stir in every compartment is seen by the captain upon the enemy's bridge.
"Remember to scavenge…" Zhao Chen crouched down, going through the dead man's kit, and was about to remind Song Chen.
Instead he found Song Chen feeling over those corpses for usable weapons, and with an air of long practice about it.
Chiefly some grenades, smoke grenades, flash grenades and the like, small things easily carried.
And though they came out of two different worlds, these weapons differ little in their design.
And to one such as Zhao Chen, an engineer of technological weapons, a glance is near enough all it takes to know how a thing is used.
"Do you know how to use it? This grenade, you press this first, and then…" Song Chen had come up behind Zhao Chen at some point.
And seeing Zhao Chen holding a grenade, he put in a word of his own accord.
Zhao Chen looked at Song Chen with some surprise. "How do you come to know the way this grenade is used?"
Song Chen checked, and then answered calmly: "We have fought the other universe's fleets a long while; naturally we have some knowledge of the enemy's weapons."
Song Chen's answer might be counted reasonable.
Zhao Chen looked at the corpse before him.
A creature of human shape, with four limbs, but without hair, brows, or any body hair in the places where such may be seen.
The skin a sickly white, and the cheeks of the face plainly sunken; but the eyes at least twice the size of those of their own human kind.
And though it was of human shape, a creature of this sort still looked somewhat strange.
Come to that.
The human kind of the Star Alliance were, of all things, exactly the same as the human kind of the Owl Dragon's universe.
Which made Zhao Chen rather glad that the place he had crossed into was the Alliance, and not the universe of some strange creature or other.
"Let us go," Song Chen said at this.
Zhao Chen looked at Song Chen, who had chosen his direction already, and knit his brows slightly.
Not because Song Chen had chosen wrongly, but because Song Chen had chosen rightly.
For the way he took was the way toward this ship's bridge.
Did he know this ship so well?
Could that too be from files upon the enemy's ships, gathered on the battlefield?
But being the Star Alliance's Leader, would he remember a matter so small?
The more so as this was a warship of T3 grade,
which upon a battlefield is a thing of the cannon-fodder order.
Who would take such care over the inner structure of a cannon-fodder warship?
Carrying his doubt with him, Zhao Chen followed Song Chen.
And in what followed, Zhao Chen and Song Chen worked together with a very fine understanding.
Song Chen opening the road in front behind his star shield, and Zhao Chen hard after him, always destroying the enemy in the shortest time there was.
And after they had butchered a dozen and more crewmen who tried to resist in yet another compartment.
Song Chen threw away the laser pistol in his hand and brought out a sidearm taken from the enemy, odd enough in its shape, but at least it would serve,
while the laser pistol in Zhao Chen's hand had only its last energy magazine left in it.
"Ahead of us is the last stretch of road to the bridge. It is a gallery five hundred meters long. In the ordinary way one may go straight across by the lift, but once we boarded, that module of the hovering lifts was shut down," Song Chen said as he walked on.
Zhao Chen walked at Song Chen's side. "The enemy's numbers do not answer. An interstellar destroyer of this class carries at least a thousand crew within her. Among whom are a hundred interstellar marines besides. And we have passed thirteen compartments just now, in which at least three hundred crew should by rights have had charge. But to this moment we have killed a hundred and fifty in all, of whom the marine sort number thirty only. And those numbers do not yet count the crew this ship's captain has drawn over from other departments."
Song Chen's keen gaze went through the closed door of the compartment ahead.
As though he saw, on the far side of it, upon that gallery, the ranks of soldiers already drawn up.
Making a position of the single-person star shields they held ready, with the muzzles of gun upon gun behind, laid upon the two of them.
So that the moment they went out, they went into a storm of shot.
"And behind us, the enemy coming up in support should be near upon us soon. And with the time our fighting on the road has cost us besides. In one minute only. We shall be facing a squeeze from both sides." Zhao Chen tossed the laser pistol in his hand to Song Chen.
And drew out for himself the two light-blades at his waist.
One his own, and one the blade Song Chen had given him.
Song Chen took Zhao Chen's laser pistol without questioning it.
For in this brief fighting the two of them had come to an understanding as fine as that of comrades who have fought side by side for years.
"How many minutes?" Song Chen asked.
Zhao Chen shut his eyes and drew a deep breath.
"Three minutes."
The corner of Song Chen's mouth lifted slightly; and that Leader who stands so high above all in the Star Alliance's universe wore at this moment a look of eagerness upon his face.
"I will give you five."
Zhao Chen gave a cold snort. "Three minutes. One minute more, and I am a son of your raising."
"I have no son so big as that."
……
Upon the one gallery that joins this compartment to the bridge.
A body of soldiers, a hundred and more of them, was gathered at this moment, drawn up in a fighting order neat and of a piece.
They knew that the enemy who had broken into their own ship were two men only.
But they dared not slacken their watchfulness for that.
The deputy captain who had the directing of them swallowed, and his forehead was all beads of sweat.
For he knew how terrible those two were.
Two men only, and going through the ship unhindered, like ghosts out of a slaughter.
And though there was no knowing how, with their mecha ruined, they had broken the hull armor and come in.
Some of the marines who had come in support from outside said it seemed to have been pulled apart by something.
But that mattered nothing now.
Behind him was the bridge, and come what might, he would not let those two devils get into the bridge.
As for that Star Alliance Leader, to take him alive would be best; and if that could not be done.
Then there was nothing for it but to kill him.
And at that very moment, the door of that compartment opened.
And just as the deputy captain was about to give the order to fire.
"Wait. I surrender."
A figure came out with both hands raised high.