She walked behind her husband and straightened his clothes for him.
The man looked at his wife and said, moved, "You… won't try to talk me out of it?"
"Don't I know what you're like? If I tried, could I talk you out of it? And in this, I support you. That fellow lording it over our heads: if we let him go on existing, then the ones put into the containers may be our parents, our children."
The wife hugged her husband from behind and breathed in deeply, as if she wanted to remember her husband's smell.
"Remember to come back early. I'll make you your favorite stew."
"Mm." The husband nodded.
He walked toward the door, and as he pushed the door open to go out,
he told her, "Don't go out during this time; go easy on the food in the house, and it should last you about a week."
"Mm."
The man shut the door.
And just then, from next door, came the sound of a door shutting too.
The man looked over without thinking.
Their eyes met.
The neighbor next door, he remembered, was a driver, who was always carrying a thermos.
And now he wore a uniform.
That uniform was very familiar.
It was not the same as his own, but this uniform, on the battlefields of ten years ago, had been worn by the country that was his enemy.
The two men's eyes swept over each other, and they smiled at each other.
Like old friends, they walked down the stairs together.
As they walked, they did not forget to talk over those years either:
at the battle of such-and-such, I ambushed you lot on my side, took you by surprise, and so on.
Though the two wore different uniforms, they seemed like comrades in arms.
When they reached the ground floor,
a man in his sixties came out, gesturing at his cap.
The three men's eyes met.
This sixty-year-old man was a homeowner in their compound, and its security guard too.
"Uncle, you…"
"Don't try to talk Uncle out of it. Half a month ago I was found to have a fatal illness, with only three months to live. I'd thought I'd just see out this life like that. But I never imagined that at the very end I'd come upon such a chance. My son was a soldier; he died on the battlefield back then. If I too could have the luck to die in battle, it would be my honor," the old man said with a grin.
The three men, in the uniforms of different former countries, walked toward the gate.
And at this point, from every part of the compound, a good many soldiers gathered.
Though they had once served different countries, they now had only one aim:
to fight for their families, for their fellow people on this planet!
On this planet,
fighting began breaking out everywhere,
around every blood-sacrifice site.
Some blood-sacrifice sites were taken by these forces, and the starships whose blood sacrifice was not yet complete just lay there, still.
The Frey responsible for the blood sacrifice knelt on the ground, looking at the natives before them with guns aimed at them.
"You ants, how dare you…"
Before this Frey could finish, gunfire broke out all around.
This Frey's body was shot full of holes.
Some failed.
Naturally there were cases of success too.
Some warships completed the blood-sacrifice ritual, became interstellar warships, and flew up into the sky.
And at this point, the fighters who had stood up to resist still did not give up.
They used every kind of weapon that could reach those interstellar warships and attacked those starships.
And those starships, without mercy, used their guns to carpet-bomb the ground.
And at this point,
in a military base in the distance,
a bloodbath of a battle had taken place.
Soldiers in the Frey civilization's uniform, but with blood-red strips of cloth tied round their arms:
"Frey Missile Base No. 09 is under our control."
"Lock onto those starships that have taken off and bring them down, quick!"
"Understood!"
Using the Frey civilization's own radar they locked onto its own starships, and fired at them with its own missiles.
Missile after missile left the missile silos and flew toward those starships.
The Frey starships spotted the incoming missiles, and their close-in guns opened full fire, intercepting those missiles.
A great part of the missiles were intercepted halfway.
But some missiles still landed on the starships' hulls.
Boom, boom, boom!
Explosions all over the hull left the starship tottering.
It was under resistance like this, at any cost,
that of the move the Frey civilization had kept in reserve, all the blood-sacrifice sites, by later investigation,
fewer than 10% succeeded in summoning starships, and of those over two thirds were destroyed within ten minutes of taking off.
Those that truly flew off and left this planet were only a scant few.
And these few were, for the Frey civilization's fleet now, a drop in the bucket.
For on the space battlefield beyond the planet,
the Fierce Dragon fleet already had the Frey civilization's fleet utterly pinned down.
By the charge of the ten T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruisers, the Frey civilization's lines had been torn open outright.
The missiles fired had even hit the Frey civilization's temple directly.
The Lord of Frey listened to the explosions from outside the temple; he sat on his throne, his face very ugly.
He had never imagined it would come to this.
He had never imagined that after going through one war, the Fierce Dragon civilization could launch an attack in so short a time.
It should be understood that many of their starships were still being repaired in the docks.
But the Fierce Dragon's interstellar warships had come straight to their very eyes.
And above all, of course, those ten T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruisers were the last straw that broke him.
"The Fierce Dragon civilization… very good. Zhao Chen… very good." The Lord of Frey closed his eyes.
At this very moment,
elsewhere,
at the agreed site of the three-way talks,
only the Lanners civilization's starships and the Fierce Dragon fleet had arrived.
The Fierce Dragon fleet opened communications with the Lanners civilization directly.
In the video window, Zhao Chen looked at the Lanners civilization's representative opposite.
He said with a faint smile, "The meeting can begin."
"But the Frey civilization's representative hasn't arrived yet," the Lanners civilization's representative said, puzzled.
Zhao Chen shook his head calmly and said, "No need to wait. The Frey civilization no longer exists. In this star system there is only one civilization. That's the Fierce Dragon civilization."
On hearing this, the Lanners civilization's representative plainly looked surprised.
He had already caught something from Zhao Chen's words.
But he still could not quite believe it.
"Your Fierce Dragon Majesty, could the meeting be put back an hour? I still need to prepare a little on my side," the Lanners civilization's representative said politely.
"No problem." Zhao Chen waved his hand with a smile.
Communication was suspended for the moment.
The Lanners civilization's representative at once had his people look into just what was going on.
And the news that soon came back shocked this representative greatly.
The Frey civilization's home planet had been attacked by the Fierce Dragon fleet; their temple was burning now.
In this attack the Fierce Dragon fleet had not only caught them completely off guard, but brought out ten T3 interstellar warships too.
"This Fierce Dragon civilization…" The Lanners civilization's representative could not digest this for a long while.
What the Fierce Dragon civilization had done had shattered their Lanners civilization's original plans outright.
An hour later,
in the holographic video conference room,
Zhao Chen gazed at the Lanners civilization's representative opposite.
"I think now we can sit down and talk," Zhao Chen said with a faint smile.
"You've truly given me a great surprise." The Lanners civilization's representative sat down and gazed at Zhao Chen before him.
"Tell me, then: how do we cooperate from here, to face the Dax Empire civilization together?" In Zhao Chen's words, it was as if he did not take the Frey civilization into account at all.
The Lanners civilization's representative did not press about the Fierce Dragon civilization's attack on the Frey civilization either.
After all, the thing was done; saying more was no use.
The Lanners civilization's representative said earnestly, "The Dax Empire civilization's nature is warlike in itself, aimed at rapid expansion. It expands its territory at any cost, making war feed war. Most of its civilization is the arms industry and industries tied to the arms industry. Once their wars stop, or more precisely once their wars stop bringing victory, the problems in their industries will ferment. By then, even if no outside crisis appears, the Dax Empire civilization will fall into a crisis of its own. So war is something they're bound to launch. And at present their battlefields are chiefly in our Lanners System and your Fierce Dragon System."
The Lanners civilization's representative, by naming the whole star system the Fierce Dragon System, had already acknowledged the present reality.
"I can guess that next they'll take nothing but one of two courses. First, give up attacking your Fierce Dragon System further and choose to attack our Lanners civilization in force. After digesting our Lanners civilization, step fully into the T3 stage of technological civilization. Then attack you. Second, keep the war with our Lanners civilization as it is now. And launch a third wave of attack on your Fierce Dragon System. And this third wave will be bigger than anything before. No longer fifteen hundred interstellar warships; it may be five thousand, or even more! We can't even rule out the possibility that they'll temporarily pull interstellar fleets from the battlefield in our system and blitz your Fierce Dragon System. The aim being to take your Fierce Dragon System quickly, feed the Dax Empire civilization with the Fierce Dragon System's resources, and then attack us. These two choices are basically a question of order: hit you first, or hit us first. Our general staff has calculated the probabilities: over ninety percent that it's you first. Of course, if you don't believe this figure, you can have your own people calculate it."
Zhao Chen said nothing.
This figure, he believed too.
For one picks the softest persimmon to squeeze; though the Dax Empire civilization had come to grief twice in their Fierce Dragon System, for now, by comparison, the Fierce Dragon civilization was still the easier one to deal with.
And there was another reason as well:
the Fierce Dragon civilization had now brought out interstellar warships of T3 technology.
That meant the Fierce Dragon civilization already had the industrial capacity to build T3 interstellar warships.
If the Fierce Dragon civilization were left to keep developing, its pace of development from here on might pass imagining.
So, most likely, the Dax Empire civilization would attack the Fierce Dragon civilization first.
"Go on; tell me your plan," Zhao Chen said with a smile,
waiting for what the other would say next.
The Lanners civilization's representative went on, "As far as the Trial of the Gods goes, we're rivals. But now we have a still more powerful rival, and that's the Dax Empire civilization. With the Dax Empire's present size and fighting strength, neither of us is a match for it. Only by working together do we have a chance of victory!"
"Then tell me in detail how we work together," Zhao Chen asked.
The Lanners civilization's representative said, "First, build a star-gate linking our two places, and set up an exchange of resources between us. You can already build T3 interstellar warships now, which shows your industrial foundation has reached the T3 grade. Our Lanners civilization's starship output is large, but technological breakthroughs have always been a problem. You help us break through to T3 technology, and that way we too can have more T3 interstellar warships on our side to face the Dax Empire civilization's fleets!"
Hearing this, Zhao Chen could not help laughing inwardly.
But he did not stop the other from going on.
"If the Dax Empire's fleets attack your star system then, we can send fleets over to garrison it and help you. …"
After that this representative of the Lanners civilization said some more things, some of which truly sounded as though they could bring the Fierce Dragon civilization help.
But listened to carefully, it could be found that in fact they helped the Lanners civilization more,
above all building the star-gate and letting the Lanners civilization's fleets garrison here.
Zhao Chen could not help clapping his hands, and said with a laugh, "You Lanners civilization people really do know how to do your sums. Never mind the rest for now. Build a star-gate. Then would the star-gate be controlled by you?"
"Of course; since we'd be responsible for building the star-gate, the responsibility for managing it would naturally be ours," the Lanners civilization's representative said with a matter-of-course look.
Zhao Chen went on, "Then for sending fleets to be stationed here with us, I'm to thank you warmly, am I? And then, am I to send you some strategic supplies as well? Your starships fight for us, and I bear your battlefield costs and so on as well?"
"If that's possible, then naturally there's no problem…"
Before the other had finished,
Zhao Chen stood straight up and said with a cold laugh, "If you take me for a fool, and this is your attitude to negotiating, then I don't think there's any need for us to talk further. You build a star-gate, and I allow you to station troops. Then once the Dax Empire civilization is defeated, couldn't you go on to finish off our Fierce Dragon civilization in the same stroke? You'd have me let the wolf into the house. Do you really think I'm that stupid?"
This fellow had no sincerity at all in negotiating.
With that, Zhao Chen left the conference room outright.
The Lanners civilization's representative had never imagined the other would be so decisive; he hurriedly began trying to make contact.
But the answer he got was that they should go back and think it over properly.
The talks were moved to tomorrow.