Song Chen paid no heed to this behavior of Zhao Chen's.
But opened his own communications gear and reached the squad still in the communications tower, who had the sending of the call for aid.
"The starship is under our control. How stands the call for aid?"
"Report, we want ten minutes yet at our end."
"Good. In ten minutes make ready to come aboard. I shall arrange a transport for you," said Song Chen.
"Yes."
Hearing that the enemy's interstellar warship had been taken,
near enough every man of them was astonished.
Was the Leader so formidable as that?
He had taken one of the enemy's interstellar warships by the strength of two men only.
Worthy indeed of their Star Alliance Leader!
"Then next, we must first clear away…" Song Chen turned his head.
And saw Zhao Chen with a faint smile upon him, and the laser pistol in his hand leveled at him.
Song Chen's countenance did not change; he shrugged and said: "Are we to fall out among ourselves already? You must understand that half the enemy's crew are still within this warship. Let alone the enemy's shuttles and drones outside her. And beyond the planet, the enemy's fleet is on its way."
"There is no need to tell me these things; I am sure of settling them. But at present I want from you an answer that you are no threat to me. My lord Leader." Zhao Chen looked at him opposite, narrowing his eyes.
There was no wish to kill to be seen anywhere in Zhao Chen's face.
But Song Chen knew well that if what he said next could not satisfy this man.
Then it might be that this man would truly fire and be rid of him.
"You may trust me. Because there is one thing that we are alike in." Song Chen looked at Zhao Chen with a smile.
Zhao Chen made no sound.
"A crosser-over."
Zhao Chen seemed to have guessed at this answer.
"You crossed into this world as well?"
Song Chen did not answer him to his face, but began going back and forth among the several stations upon the bridge, entering certain things into the ship's systems.
Zhao Chen glanced at it, and did not hinder him.
He was writing a system of artificial intelligence.
"To come suddenly by ability and gifts past believing, altogether contrary to what the body was before. It is the one possibility I could think of," Song Chen said calmly.
"Then why are you certain I am no threat to you, that you dare tell me these things outright? You must understand that we are both of us crossers-over. But that does not mean we are not rivals."
"Because of that special ability of mine." Song Chen threw Zhao Chen a glance. "In any place whatever, I can see the wish to kill me in another. From first to last, the wish to kill me in you has been slight. And even now, with your muzzle laid upon me, I can feel no wish to kill in you. But I am certain that if my answer could not satisfy you. Then in the next instant your wish to kill would swell up."
Zhao Chen narrowed his eyes a little.
How was it that this ability bore some likeness to his own?
All of a sudden,
the bridge shook violently.
Song Chen was thrown clean off his feet, and fell toward Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen did not know whether Song Chen's fall was real or feigned.
And having caught Song Chen, he took him at once in a grappling hold, and pressed him face down upon the captain's chair.
Crack.
There was one crisp sound of it.
And the upper part of Song Chen's black close-fitting combat suit came open all of a sudden, laying bare a great stretch of skin.
And in that moment the whole space seemed to grow a good deal quieter.
"A woman?" Zhao Chen looked at Song Chen in astonishment.
And Song Chen's face went cold at this.
He… or rather she, suddenly turned herself like a loach, broke out of Zhao Chen's hold, and then drove a foot into Zhao Chen's belly.
Zhao Chen took the hurt of it.
And the next instant Song Chen turned guest into host, and pressed Zhao Chen down beneath her outright; and there was a dagger at Zhao Chen's neck besides.
"Wait. Wait. That just now was an accident." Zhao Chen had confidence enough that he could take this dagger from her.
But to this moment the other had shown good faith, and Zhao Chen had no wish to kill her.
Chiefly because the other was a crosser-over as well; and in what the two of them were, and in his own coming to this universe, there must assuredly be some secret.
Zhao Chen looked in all sincerity into Song Chen's eyes before him, which held something of shame and anger.
【Ding.
Docking successful.
Beginning to unlock system information.
System information unlocking; some 1000 minutes estimated…】
And in that moment, it sounded in the ears of Zhao Chen and of Song Chen alike.
And to Zhao Chen it was that voice of the System he had not heard for so long.
Docking successful?
What was the meaning of that?
The one thing that was other than it had been these many days… was only…
Song Chen, sitting upon him and in bodily contact with him, and at the same time the two of them at a very close distance, their eyes meeting.
"You have a System!" Zhao Chen and Song Chen asked it in the same breath.
Zhao Chen and Song Chen knit their brows, and an uneasy foreboding rose in the hearts of both.
They seemed to have some tie between them.
But come what might, they must wait until the information in their minds had finished unriddling itself,
which would want more than sixteen hours' waiting.
"Wait. Whatever the two of us may be. At the least, as the case stands now, we are allies still. I would propose that we first settle the trouble before our eyes. And whatever else there is, we can talk of afterward," Zhao Chen said of his own accord.
"I agree." Song Chen rose to her feet, and looked at the burst breast of her close-fitting suit.
It was likely that the fighting of this while past, and that last fighting aboard this warship besides, with no little close grappling in it, had brought the upper part of this combat suit to its limit.
And that at the last, under that grappling hold of Zhao Chen's, it had simply declared itself out of service.
Whoosh.
Suddenly a garment was tossed across.
A military coat, and comparatively clean.
Song Chen glanced at Zhao Chen beside her, and put this military coat on.
Zhao Chen at this point set about looking into the cause of the shaking just now, and soon had found it.
"It may be that in our fighting just now we did some hurt to certain of the ship's modules, and there was an explosion. And the place of it lay just below the bridge. By good fortune the harm is not great. It has only touched some part of the ship's efficiency," said Zhao Chen.
Song Chen went on with what she had been at. "We have not people enough to work this interstellar warship. We shall want a program of artificial intelligence written to help us. And by it, at the same time, to take this warship over at every point, and destroy every enemy crewman within her."
"I will help you." Zhao Chen came over to Song Chen's side.
The two of them met each other's eyes, and without a word wasted began writing the data of this artificial intelligence program.
The two of them were for all the world like partners of many years' working together, and their understanding very fine.
And soon a holographic projection like a little girl appeared upon the bridge.
"Papa. Mama. Yaya is here!" This little girl waved at Zhao Chen and Song Chen.
Zhao Chen stared, and Song Chen's face went stiff.
"You are not to call me Mama. Call me Big Sister!" Song Chen glared at the little girl.
Yaya blinked her eyes, aggrieved.
"I thought we could write no more than a middling artificial intelligence, and never supposed we should write out a high one," Zhao Chen said with some surprise.
This Yaya was an artificial intelligence program built by Zhao Chen and Song Chen working together.
In certain of her performances she was in truth not yet complete, and met only what Zhao Chen and Song Chen wanted of her now.
But in the matter of intelligence, she had come out at the very top!