Very soon a dozen-odd people had been marched under guard onto the bridge of Qin Xiaolei's flagship.
They knelt on the bridge with their hands bound behind them.
"The Fang family, the Chen family. You have done splendidly. And I thought so highly of you before. The families behind you had even become two of the Starlight Kingdom's ten great houses. And that was still not enough for you. You dared to betray the Empire!" Qin Xiaolei looked at the two eldest among them.
These were the heads of the Fang and Chen families.
In the Starlight Kingdom as it stood now, both were men of real standing.
"I do not consider myself a rebel. I wished only to restore the Starlight Kingdom!" Kneeling though he was, Family Head Chen held himself bolt upright.
Qin Xiaolei frowned as she studied him.
"Restore it? With that puppet you meant to set up? My father's bastard from outside the palace?" Qin Xiaolei looked with contempt at a man kneeling among the rest.
The man was richly got up, to be sure, in costly clothes.
But the air about him was a long way from Qin Xiaolei's, or from any royal's.
Qin Xiaolei already had the file on him.
He was her half-brother by her father, a bastard, as near as made no difference.
"I'm innocent. Sister, I don't even know what this is about. It was them! They forced me to step forward. I… I never wanted to do any of this!" The man knelt there looking at Qin Xiaolei in terror, a sob in his voice.
Qin Xiaolei looked at him coldly.
She snapped her fingers.
A video appeared before them all.
It showed a dim private room and a scene of wanton luxury.
There sat this royal bastard with his arms around a crowd of women without a stitch on, drinking and carousing.
And every so often words came out of his mouth.
"That fellow Zhao Chen is dead! Did you know that?"
"The Owl Dragon Empire is finished, and that stupid sister of mine is still stubbornly swearing loyalty to it!"
"Plenty of families in our Starlight Empire are willing to back me now. Once we've overthrown that stupid sister of mine, I'll be emperor."
"Owl Dragon Empire, Owl Dragon fleets, I'll have them all under my heel."
"And I hear those wives of Zhao Chen's are real beauties. When the time comes I'll take the lot of them, heh heh heh."
"Your Majesty, but they say Zhao Chen's wives are all with child."
"With child? So much the better; all the juicier."
At the filth pouring out of that video, many on the bridge looked on in open disgust; even the henchmen of the Chen and Fang families, prisoners now themselves, wore the look of men ashamed of what they had backed.
"Of all the things you might have said, you should never have said these." Coldly, Qin Xiaolei drew the laser pistol at her waist.
In her heart, Zhao Chen was someone who must never be defiled.
This brother of hers had crossed the line!
"I was wrong, I was wrong. Don't kill me…"
Bang.
Blood spattered the members of the Chen and Fang families kneeling on the deck.
"Uncle Chen, this is the man you chose?" Qin Xiaolei's gaze turned coldly on Family Head Chen.
Family Head Chen looked at Qin Xiaolei. "Your Majesty, in truth it was you I meant to back from the first. But… you… would not see sense. You have long since forgotten the glory of the Qin royal house; I truly do not know what that man called Zhao Chen dosed you with, that he could make you so loyal to him. Well, so be it. This time I was wrong. I bet and I lost; do with me as you will."
"I gave you your chance as well. Before, you sounded out my thoughts again and again, and I told you plainly what they were. So long as I live, the Starlight Kingdom is part of the Owl Dragon Empire. Without Zhao Chen, and without his Owl Dragon Legion, there would be no Starlight Kingdom today. Uncle Chen, and I respected you. Could you not even see that much?"
"It is the law of the universe that the strong shall rule. While Zhao Chen was here, I would not have done these things. But now Zhao Chen is gone, and naturally we must keep to the law of the universe," Family Head Chen said icily.
Qin Xiaolei knew she could never talk these stubborn 'royalists' round.
They had always wanted to restore the Starlight Empire.
But with Zhao Chen there, they had not dared to be too bold.
And so it had come to this.
"The strong shall rule?" Qin Xiaolei gave a cold laugh, then turned away. "In that case, Uncle Chen, please go to your death together with your rebels."
As she spoke, gunfire sounded behind her.
Qin Xiaolei went slowly back to her captain's chair.
She looked at the bodies lying in their blood.
And said silently in her heart: Big Brother Zhao Chen, I promised you. And I will keep it. For as long as I live, I will guard everything here. And wait for you to come back.
……
For bloodshed, though, the Starlight Kingdom came nowhere near the demon lands or the Warhammer Interstellar Federal Kingdom.
In the demon lands, the Blizzard ace fleet group under Chitong's command was a slaughter.
No surrender was accepted from any rebel warship.
All were destroyed.
Any rebel leader who was taken was hung on the hull of a starship as a warning to the world!
And so the rebel fleets would see a sight to make their flesh crawl.
On the hulls of the imperial warships coming to hunt them down stood lance after lance, and on the lances were impaled their own rebel generals.
Their blood even stained those warships red.
Seeing it, there was no telling who were the true demons come up out of hell.
In the Warhammer Interstellar Federal Kingdom things were not one bit gentler.
For the rebellion here was the worst after the demon lands and the Angel Race.
"Reporting: another rebel leader has been executed!" the secretary officer reported to Charlotte.
"Has the video gone out?" Charlotte said icily.
"It has, on every channel," the secretary officer answered.
Charlotte nodded, satisfied.
"Um…" The secretary officer looked at Charlotte, hesitating.
"What is it?" Charlotte looked at her.
The secretary officer hesitated a moment, then said it anyway: "Your father… wishes to speak with you by video link."
Charlotte's face did not change. "Put him through."
"Yes."
A video window opened.
On the other side was the chieftain of the White Tiger tribe, Charlotte's father.
At this moment her father looked somewhat flustered, his eyes shifting uneasily.
"Father, I am dealing with the rebels at the moment. If there is nothing particular, let me finish with that first."
"Wait, Charlotte… that is… that is…" Her father hesitated.
Seeing it, Charlotte said straight out: "What you want to say is about that son of yours who joined the rebels, isn't it?"
Her father nodded; he opened his mouth to say something.
But Charlotte cut in first, icily: "Father, at a time like this I hope you will not make a foolish choice. You are not short of sons that you need this one."
Her father was lost for words.
Being beast-folk, this father in fact had a great many children; not counting those born outside his marriage, there were dozens.
And he understood what his daughter meant.
He let out a long sigh.
"Also, Father, you are getting on in years. It is time you rested," Charlotte said icily.
The chieftain of the White Tiger tribe was taken aback; he had never thought his daughter could be so unbending.
But when he thought about it, had that man not always come first in her heart?
It was he who had touched the one thing she would not let be touched.
Had it been anyone else coming to her with this, the outcome would likely not have been so mild.
"I was wrong. Those matters, deal with them however you see fit."
The storm sweeping the whole of the Owl Dragon Empire raged ever fiercer.
It looked to be still under the Owl Dragon Empire's control.
But under this panic, the Owl Dragon Empire would lie beneath a pall of fear for a long while to come.
And next, on the Angel Race's border, the Owl Dragon Empire's ace fleet groups had already arrived.
The strongest clash of this whole storm of rebellion was about to begin.
And at this moment, within the Owl Dragon Star System, in the culture vessel of a certain class of interstellar warship, an indicator suddenly lit up.
A figure was slowly taking shape.