With the turncoat moles identified, Zhao Chen and Chitong made ready to take the T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser to the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company's home base.
Chitong followed Zhao Chen onto the T3 Blizzard's bridge. Looking at the sumptuous bridge before her, Chitong was rather taken aback. It wasn't that she'd never seen the bridge of a T3 warship — but a bridge as sumptuous and beautiful as that of this T3 warship before her, that she was seeing for the very first time. And she'd witnessed this warship's terrifying combat power with her own eyes not long before. There came to her mind a saying she'd once heard: a beautiful warship is not necessarily a strong one. But a warship of genuinely great strength — it is certain to be very "beautiful"!
"These are the coordinates for our Bloody Mary home base." Chitong handed a set of coordinates to Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen looked to Secretary Lilith beside him. Lilith at once went to arrange the flight route.
"This location… is in the interstellar fringe space between the North Wind Star Region and the Reef Star Region." Zhao Chen recognized the coordinates.
"Yes. From this position, it's rather convenient to operate within the Starlight Empire," Chitong said.
"If we head for this position now, it'll take about a day." Zhao Chen saw the worry in Chitong's eyes.
Chitong nodded faintly. Whatever was said now was of no use; she could only pray in silence in her heart.
"Do you know which power it was that carried out this attack?" Zhao Chen asked.
"I can roughly guess." Seeing Zhao Chen's curious gaze, Chitong hid nothing. "It's the Starlight Empire's Prince Faction."
"The Prince Faction?" Zhao Chen was taken aback a moment.
Chitong went on, "The Starlight Empire has three princes in all — you know that, I take it?"
Zhao Chen nodded; this much he did know. The First Prince among them was the elder brother of that little princess his own elder sister now served, and was, moreover, the Crown Prince of the Starlight Empire — the emperor to come. The other two princes were born of two other princess-consorts.
"The Prince Faction I speak of is a noble party formed by the Second Prince and the Third Prince — on the surface a noble party. But in secret, the doings are all of the filthy sort, and one of them is the plundering of all manner of slaves from every quarter. More than 70% of the Starlight Empire's slave trade is bound up with the Prince Faction. And the Prince Faction, at times, to keep up their web of connections, will go specially hunting some interstellar races of high quality — succubi, and the like." As she said this, Chitong plainly cast a glance at Lilith; by the look of it, she'd sensed that Lilith was a succubus.
"The ordinary slaves are put out on the market to be sold. Though the profit of the slave trade falls short of the ship-arms trade and the grain trade, it's a trade of the lowest cost of all." As she spoke of this, a look of loathing showed in Chitong's eyes. "My younger brother was carried off by those slavers — and died in transit, suffocated to death in a cargo hold whose life-support had failed! So ever since, whenever I lay eyes on the slave trade, I stop it and wreck it as far as I'm able. Over the past several years, I've wrecked a good few dozen of the Prince Faction's slave deals; and the Prince Faction, naturally, vents its anger on its underlings — that pack of running dogs and fanged lackeys of theirs long wanted to be rid of me. Only, because my Bloody Mary Mercenary Company comes without a shadow and goes without a trace, they never had their chance. Who'd have thought the one to defeat our Bloody Mary Mercenary Company in the end would turn out to be a partner who fought at our very side!"
The Prince Faction…
He'd never have imagined this was actually bound up with the royal house of the Starlight Empire.
Before long, the T3 Blizzard set off along the route Secretary Lilith had plotted, hurrying toward the coordinate point.
A day later.
Once again in a stretch of pitch-black interstellar fringe space. After a day of winding voyage, the T3 Blizzard at last arrived near the destination coordinates.
"All hands, combat-readiness status!" Zhao Chen gave the combat order. Because the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company's home base had in all likelihood already been exposed, an encounter with the enemy here couldn't be ruled out. Just now the T3 Blizzard was not in its full and peak condition; should it meet a great many enemy fleets, then retreat would be the only choice. Happily, with the T3 Blizzard's speed of maneuver, there was not a single T3-grade warship anywhere that could intercept it.
The ship radar had shown not the faintest energy fluctuation all this while — a stillness that put a fright into one!
"Over there!" Chitong pointed Zhao Chen to a direction on the interstellar radar. Though this was interstellar fringe space, with next to nothing by way of reference points, Chitong yet knew every region of it intimately — as though this were her very own home.
It wasn't long before Zhao Chen and the others at last made out, in the pitch-black cosmos, a thread of light. But the scene that met them once the T3 Blizzard drew near made the faces of both Zhao Chen and Chitong change on the instant. Chitong most of all — in her blood-red eyes was a fury she could scarcely hold in check. Beside her, Zhao Chen could even feel that the hand with which Chitong gripped the hilt of the sword at her waist was trembling without cease; the sword itself seemed to give off a kind of quaking, resonant cry!
There in the distance stood an interstellar space station that had been bombarded and attacked; and around the station one could still see the plain traces of warship combat, and some wreckage of interstellar warships besides. This space station was not very large — its volume amounting to no more than 10 T3 Blizzards jammed together. And a great many of its structural parts were, in fact, made up of some old, worn-out ship hulls!
Zhao Chen looked at this ravaged interstellar space station and could roughly make out its former appearance. This was an exceedingly makeshift sort of station; at the outset it had perhaps had only a single main body, and then, along with the joining-on of various other parts, had gone on expanding and growing ever larger. After all, the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company was itself no more than a landless interstellar mercenary company, with no capacity whatsoever to truly build an interstellar space station. There were a great many wandering interstellar powers of this sort, and all of them built their bases in just this way.
And now, this homeland that had once belonged to the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company had been laid to ruin. Upon the station's wreckage one could still see the shell-marks left after the bombardment, and — on account of the internal oxygen leaks — explosions still going off now and again even now, and the flames flaring up from them. One could even make out a number of corpses!
Zhao Chen looked at Chitong beside him; it seemed that in the end they'd still come too late. By the look of things before them, the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company and the home base must have come under attack at one and the same time. The likeliest thing was that there'd been traitors present within the home base as well. With collusion from within meeting the assault from without, the attack and destruction had been loosed upon the Bloody Mary Mercenary Company outright.
Chitong closed her eyes, her jaw clenched tight, holding down the fury within her; and from the corner of her mouth, too, there trickled fresh blood.
"No — that's wrong!" All at once, Chitong's eyes snapped open.