"Alarm! The hull armor is gravely damaged."
"Alarm! The outer shell of compartment B421 is broken open, and life from outside has entered."
"Alarm! The crew of compartment B421 call for aid."
"Alarm! Compartment B201 is under attack."
"Alarm! Compartment B166 is under attack."
"Alarm! The thirteenth interstellar marine squad is in contact with the enemy… lost… lost from contact."
Word came to the bridge, one hard upon another.
And there was nothing in the captain's face but disbelief.
He could do nothing but watch with his own eyes as, upon the cutaway drawing of this flagship of his, one compartment after another turned red and gave out its alarm.
And at the same time, at a speed the eye could follow, that 'red line' came driving straight for the bridge.
"Is this… is this truly one man only?" The captain could not believe it.
One man with two light-blades in his hands, who had broken the hull armor outright, come inside the ship, and killed his way the whole road to the bridge.
Was this truly one man?
The captain felt himself to be dreaming.
Boom, boom, boom.
Suddenly the bridge shook several times over.
"Report, there have been explosions in several compartments," a bridge petty officer reported.
"Make ready to fight. And should any man whatever appear at the bridge's great door, shoot him down at once!" the captain ordered in haste.
And in an instant the whole bridge was in motion.
A hundred men and more made up their squads, and with light weapons and heavy in their hands laid them upon the bridge's great door, their fingers upon the firing studs.
And let that figure but appear, and they would fire.
"Report! The intruder is gone from compartment A18!" the deputy captain said in haste at his side.
"Gone?" The captain was startled.
"He is."
"How can he be gone? A living man, a living man who has charged through some tens of compartments at a stretch and killed a hundred men, how can he be gone!" The captain's feeling was near out of his own governing now, for his anxiety.
"He is… he is truly gone. I have given word to the crew of the compartments about to go and look." The deputy captain said it helplessly. "This intruder is very clever. In every compartment section he enters, he destroys the watching circuits. So that we cannot see the pictures of those sections here upon the bridge."
The captain was silent.
And the palms of his hands were all sweat.
Not long after,
the deputy captain called up a picture.
And this picture was somewhat blurred and unclear,
and shook without ceasing.
It should have been taken by the recording gear worn upon some soldier of the crew, and sent back from him.
Which let them see for the first time with their own eyes what had happened in those compartment sections under attack.
Upon the compartment walls and upon the deck alike, the marks of a blade could be seen, and blood flung out everywhere, and bodies.
For all the world as though a devil had been at them.
"Did they then not resist?" The captain could not believe it.
"They should have resisted… but…" The deputy captain marked that upon no few of the walls the strike-points of laser shot could be seen.
Only… that they had done that intruder no hurt at all.
"Curse it. Where in the world has that man gone?" The captain beat his fist upon the table before him in his rage.
And the more he came to feel how terrible this walking tyrant-lizard of a man was, the more he felt the chill up his own back.
And at this, in the pictures sent back, there came a break in the matter.
For in a corner of one place they saw a great hole.
"Report, a hole is found here; and below the hole there seems to be a duct. The intruder is suspected to have got away from this place by this duct," the soldier reported.
A duct?
"What duct is that?" the captain asked at once.
For he was the captain; but that he could direct this warship in her fighting did not mean he knew every region and every part of her.
The deputy captain at once called up the data of the ship's structure.
And soon had found out what duct it was.
"That is a ventilation duct. And these are the duct's lines…" So saying, the deputy captain called up a drawing; and upon seeing that drawing, he fell silent.
And the captain fell silent as well.
For the duct lines, marked out heavily in red, ran crossing one another through the ship's several sections.
But it could be seen very plainly that one red duct ran straight to the bridge.
The bridge…
And thinking back to how this intruder had before shown a very plain intent of attacking the bridge,
and putting that together with this,
the whereabouts of this intruder, that no man could find, seemed suddenly to be plain.
Boom.
Suddenly one heavy roar carried to them.
And in one place upon the bridge's ceiling a great hole was blasted open outright.
And a man bathed in blood from head to foot, with two light-blades in his hands, and upon his head the figuring of a skull, came down among the crowd upon the bridge.
And in the moment this man appeared.
The very air of the whole bridge seemed to go half of it solid.
"Little darlings. Surprised?"
Half a minute later,
the two light-blades went out.
Zhao Chen put the light-blades away at his waist, and looked at the captain before him, who clutched at a throat that would not stop bleeding, and pointed at Zhao Chen in terror. "…a… a… a monster…"
And at the last, fell.
Zhao Chen ran his eye over the whole bridge; there was no life left in it anywhere.
Zhao Chen found the master command panel before the captain's chair, took out a thing like a memory stick, and set it into the panel.
And a Yaya in miniature rose up before Zhao Chen's eyes.
"The rest is yours."
Yaya stood up straight and set her hand to her brow. "Very good, sir!"
And thereupon Yaya put out the tip of her tongue and pushed up her own sleeve. "Self-destructing starship, coming right up!"
Zhao Chen left the bridge without turning his head.
And then came to a hangar within the ship where there were interstellar fighters, and found the most advanced fighter of them.
And was flung off into flight,
and drove for another warship in the distance.
And at this Zhao Chen turned his head and glanced at how the two warships had struck together.
The bow of the T3 Fox-Hunter-class Medium Interstellar Destroyer was caved inward already, where she had struck the flank of the other's T4 interstellar destroyer.
And by reason of the impact at so great a speed, some twisting could be seen with the naked eye in the keel of that destroyer.
And above all at the middle of her, where faintly she was upon the point of breaking.
And at this the T4 interstellar destroyer, which had gone quiet, suddenly drove at full power for the nearest 'friendly ship'.
Which left the T3 Fox-Hunter-class Medium Interstellar Destroyer, that had struck this T4, snapped clean across at the waist by that outward force, and parted in two.
And she might be counted finished entirely.
And this 'friendly ship' at once began hailing her.
For it must be understood that this T4 interstellar destroyer was the flagship of their squad.
And only at the last, when there was truly no reaching her, did this friendly ship open fire upon the T4 destroyer; but the distance was too close by then, and the star shield had come up again besides.
And gunfire alone could not keep the ramming from happening.
And another vast blossom of flame appeared.
Zhao Chen went on with this plan of his, of a tyrant-lizard in human form,
one man, and two blades, cutting his way into warship after warship,
and by help of Yaya's abilities, remaking these enemy warships one by one into 'self-destructing starships'.
And in a little while the state of this battlefield had grown very confused indeed!