That was why she went first for the gun positions on the Drought-Fiend Ghost-King-class Heavy Strategic Interstellar Multirole Destroyer: like pulling the fangs of a fierce tiger first, and then dealing with it at leisure.
That way she could give some help to the attacking units that followed, so they would not come under the enemy's fire.
At the same time,
on one side of the Golden-Scarab-class Heavy Interstellar Dreadnought's hull, hatch after hatch could be seen opening, and inside were squad after squad of heavy interstellar marines, long since ready!
What were heavy interstellar marines?
They were in fact interstellar marines equipped with great numbers of interstellar combat mecha, forming a fighting system that joined infantry and mecha together.
Interstellar marines had always been standard in the Owl Dragon legion fleets.
Whatever the grade of interstellar warship, it carried interstellar marines, and the Owl Dragon legion fleets gave interstellar marines a great deal of weight.
Other interstellar civilizations did not value interstellar marines nearly so highly; at most they might use them as logistics squads.
But these interstellar marines on Owl Dragon interstellar warships were equipped with nothing but advanced weapons.
Where others might equip the interstellar marines on a T6-grade interstellar warship with only T4- or even T3-grade personal weapons,
on the Owl Dragon legion fleets' side, whatever the grade of interstellar warship,
so long as you could carry it and it would fit, it was the most advanced there was.
At present, for example, over eighty percent of the interstellar marines in the Owl Dragon legion fleets had already been equipped with T6-grade personal weapons.
Only in a very few cases did the remaining twenty percent still carry some T5-grade personal weapons.
For as Zhao Chen and Charlotte saw it, in battle every fighting unit mattered a great deal,
and interstellar marines most of all.
But to return to the matter: in the combat compartment for one heavy interstellar marine boarding action, a squad of heavy interstellar marines stood ready.
"Golden Two, Hammerstone Squad ready for battle; awaiting instructions," said a young woman seated in an interstellar combat mecha, on the command channel.
"Golden Two, Hammerstone Squad, your squad launches in ninety seconds. Your combat task has been sent to your squad channel. We wish you a triumphant return," came the voice of the bridge's control petty officer on the command channel.
"Golden Two, Hammerstone Squad, understood." The woman mecha pilot took a deep breath and glanced at her own reflection in the screen beside her.
She looked twenty or a little over,
not even 1.5 meters tall, slight of build.
Had she not been sitting right here, probably no one would have believed she was a mecha pilot.
All along the way, many people had doubted her.
"Song Keke, not even a meter and a half tall? And you want to pilot an interstellar combat mecha? Stop dreaming."
"Little sister, piloting an interstellar combat mecha takes a very strong body. It's not such a simple thing."
"Are you sure you want to choose the interstellar mecha program? Your grades in the academic subjects look good to me; I'd suggest you choose a bridge-side academic specialty. And… you're of the interstellar dwarf race? Isn't your race's gift for industry? Like those two chief engineers of yours."
Remembering all this, remembering everything she had been through along the way,
Song Keke could not help the corners of her mouth turning up.
She, Song Keke, was of the interstellar dwarf race, but she had not, like the great majority of interstellar dwarves, used her race's gift to become an interstellar craftsman or an interstellar engineer or the like.
Countless times she had heard people say, Why don't you be like your Chief Engineer Annie and Chief Engineer Nana?
Why?
Why?
Why, being an interstellar dwarf, did she have to walk the same road as the other interstellar dwarves!
Couldn't she do something else?
To outsiders, an interstellar dwarf working in some other trade seemed a kind of freak.
And all the more so a 1.5-meter interstellar dwarf going off to be an interstellar combat mecha pilot.
Wasn't that just a joke?
Who knew how many people had called her that behind her back?
But she did not care.
Piloting an interstellar combat mecha took a strong body? Fine, then she would train.
The same training time as others was not enough? Then she would do double! Triple!
When others rested, she was still training.
At 1.5 meters tall, she had once knocked down an opponent over two meters tall in unarmed combat.
True, who knew how many beatings she had taken for it, how many times she had been beaten.
But so long as she could beat an opponent once, there would be a second time, and a third.
At last she passed her examinations and became a full interstellar mecha pilot. She still remembered, when she received her interstellar combat mecha pilot's license,
how the person who presented it to her said in great surprise that she was the first interstellar dwarf ever to become an interstellar combat mecha pilot.
After that came her real course in the Owl Dragon interstellar legion fleets.
She started out piloting the lowest-grade mecha in the Owl Dragon legion fleets, the T2 Black-Knight-class Light Interstellar Combat Mecha.
Perhaps because she was an interstellar dwarf, her race's gift was still there.
And with her fine showing in battle besides, whenever a new batch of interstellar combat mecha entered service, she was always brought into the first round of training on them.
For as an interstellar dwarf, she could find problems faster than others, and from them draw up a whole series of training plans,
then pass that experience on.
But Song Keke knew there was another reason in it too: some people higher up still could not bring themselves to believe that an interstellar dwarf could pilot an interstellar combat mecha and fight on the battlefield.
Perhaps they were worried, perhaps they were looking out for her.
So they had put Song Keke in a post that looked safe and still let her use her abilities.
Song Keke had never once complained of this unfairness, from first to last.
When no one was around, she would curl her 1.5-meter body up under the covers and keep comforting herself:
Song Keke, you can do it; you can surely do it.
So long as you keep showing what you can do, so long as you wait patiently, one day you'll get onto a real battlefield.
That was how Song Keke had come along, by comforting herself again and again.
As for pouring her heart out to someone else?
Sorry: she had no one at all to pour her heart out to,
not even her family.
The interstellar dwarf family Song Keke came from in fact held no mean standing among the interstellar dwarves; she had even heard that her family was related by blood in some way to the legendary Chief Engineer Annie and Chief Engineer Nana.
When she was small, she had indeed shown some ability in industry.
And her parents and family naturally hoped she would use her gifts in interstellar industry too.
They did not ask her to become a genius like Chief Engineer Annie, but with her own hard work, the family's backing and her race's gift, becoming a senior engineer would have been no problem at all.
But Song Keke did not walk the road her family asked of her; she chose to be an interstellar mecha pilot.
When her parents learned of this idea of hers, it was like the end of the world.
Everything in the house that could be smashed was smashed.
The home that had been full of laughter lost all its old warmth at once.
It was because of that time, too, that her parents "drove" her out, or rather she walked out herself.
For her father had pointed at her head and said that his household had no need of a pilot who knew nothing but piloting interstellar mecha.
If she wanted to study interstellar mecha, she could get out.
And Song Keke, then and there, chose to leave.
She moved into the school dormitory, and from then on began to live on her own.
Her father never got in touch with her again after that.
But her mother and older brother still cared for her very much; they often came to see her in private, asking whether she needed anything in her daily life.
She refused many times, but her mother and brother still quietly sent her a great deal of living money.
In that time her mother and brother tried to talk her round many times too, but the result can be imagined.
Had she given in, Song Keke would not be in the place she was now.
And from that time on, Song Keke had no way back, and no one left on this road to pour her heart out to.
She could only walk it on her own.
Very soon, by hard work and her own ability, she at last got a chance to go onto the battlefield in a battle.
That first battle, she still remembered clearly.
She was piloting the T2 Black-Knight-class Light Interstellar Combat Mecha then, but that mecha was too outdated; after she had fought only two sorties in it, it was wrecked and could fight no more.
And her result that time was that in the T2 Black-Knight-class Light Interstellar Combat Mecha she had destroyed ten enemy interstellar fighters in battle.
Those interstellar fighters had tried to attack the interstellar warship she was posted to at the time, and she had fought them on the surface of the interstellar warship's hull.
It was after that battle, too, that her superiors began truly to believe this interstellar dwarf might really be a fine interstellar mecha pilot.
From then on she got more chances to fight on the battlefield in a combat mecha.
The interstellar combat mecha she piloted soon moved up from the T2 Black-Knight-class Light Interstellar Combat Mecha to the T3 Templar-class Medium Interstellar Combat Mecha, and after that to the T4 Thunder-Warrior-class Medium Interstellar Combat Mecha.
In battle she could pilot an interstellar combat mecha in any combat setting and carry out any combat task,
whether making a forced landing on a planet's surface and putting down the fighting forces on the ground,
or boarding an enemy interstellar warship and destroying it,
or standing on the surface of her own interstellar warship's hull as one more point of fire, taking part in the fighting.