Qin Ming, clad in a military uniform, sat in the captain's chair, his expression somewhat grave and tense.
"Report — we're five minutes from the battlefield position!" the adjutant reported at his side.
Qin Ming drew a deep breath, and clenched his fist somewhat tensely.
Though the Royal Legion's 3,000 interstellar warships escorted his flagship, for some reason his heart was still greatly uneasy.
It's fine… nothing will go wrong…
I'll soon succeed to the throne, I'll soon be the Grand Emperor of the Starlight Empire; so long as I kill those two men, no one within the Starlight Empire will dare stop me.
Qin Ming kept building himself up inwardly.
He'd run the Prince Faction, risen and sunk through the years — for what?
For precisely these things, was it not?
Suddenly, Qin Ming saw a point of light within the holographic image — it was at a position ahead of the Royal Legion fleet, precisely the direction they were hurrying toward.
The next second, Qin Ming felt a halo of light seem to flash past before his eyes.
"What was that just now?" Qin Ming looked in astonishment at the subordinates round about.
The subordinates, too, hadn't grasped what had just happened.
Until a crew member in charge of data monitoring cried out in a fluster: "We've detected an instability in the space ahead."
"Instability in the space? What's going on? Could a stellar catastrophe have appeared ahead?" The adjutant went at once to check.
But on seeing that string of fluctuating data, the adjutant paused a moment, and muttered: "This… how does this so resemble… the spatial fluctuation when a star gate is activated…"
Hearing the adjutant say so, several other crew members took a careful look, and chimed in: "It really does resemble the spatial-fluctuation data of a star gate!"
"But this is interstellar edge-space — how could there possibly be the spatial fluctuation of a star gate."
Qin Ming, brows knit, looked at this pack of people.
"Now — who can tell me just what has happened."
The adjutant and the crew looked at the Prince His Highness in awkwardness; they too were, right now, uncertain of what had happened ahead.
Just at this moment, an intermittent video-comm message was sent through, the picture flickering on and off.
"Report… …… Your Highness… the Owl Dragon… used… suddenly… vanished from sight…"
From a few of the words, Qin Ming grasped roughly what had happened — but this left him all the more at a loss to fathom it.
The Owl Dragon Legion had vanished from sight?
3,000 interstellar warships — how could they possibly vanish from sight all at once.
Even if it were warp-travel — he'd long since ordered the people of the surrounding star systems to keep close watch here; even if they truly had entered the warp-travel phase, the wake of warp-travel could be detected, and then all manner of interception measures taken.
Yet there'd been no word whatever.
This could not but bring to Qin Ming's mind the affair that had happened before in the Grey Moon Star Region, when his younger brother had been hunting the little Princess's fleet.
At that time, a mysterious fleet suspected to be the Owl Dragon Legion had rescued the little Princess away — and had, likewise, suddenly gone without a trace, its whereabouts unknown.
"Get in touch with the imperial fleet engaged with the Owl Dragon Legion!" Qin Ming said urgently.
"Your Highness, all the imperial fleets engaged with the Owl Dragon Legion lost contact just now — at the very moment that halo of light appeared." the crew member reported.
Qin Ming's body swayed; he was hemmed round at heart by an unknown terror.
"Your Highness… quick, look ahead!" the adjutant cried out in alarm at this point, pointing ahead.
Qin Ming lifted his head, and saw a most shocking scene.
It was interstellar warship upon interstellar warship — wreckage.
Some had only fragments left; on some one could still make out the interstellar warship's outline; on some the engines still faintly gave off a glow of particles, though this too, with the passing of time, was dimming without cease.
Suddenly, the wreck of a giant interstellar ship appeared before his eyes.
It was a T4 Boreas-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship… the giant bow cannon at its bow position had already vanished; that whole area was caved in, a great gaping maw.
At the same time there were, on the hull, traces of dense interstellar-missile bombardment.
At several positions were the puncture-marks of powerful weapon attacks.
In this moment there was no longer any sign of life aboard this T4 Boreas; but the giant hull, for all the world like a corpse, lay arrayed there, giving one a shiver of dread.
"This is… this is the flagship of the imperial military's 13th Legion… the T4 Boreas-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship, ship D03." The adjutant very soon looked up this interstellar warship's data, and said, agape and tongue-tied.
Qin Ming said nothing.
As the Royal Legion continued to sail on, scenes of this sort grew more and more.
And this interstellar-warship wreckage was, the overwhelming majority of it, the interstellar warships of the imperial legions.
Stretch upon stretch of the 'carcasses' of T3-grade interstellar warships.
It wasn't that there were only T3-grade interstellar warships here — rather that, of the T2-grade interstellar warships, it was very hard to find wreckage from which the hull model could be told apart; they'd basically all become exceedingly tiny fragments.
Two more large hull-wrecks of T4-grade interstellar warships appeared.
"That's the flagship of the imperial military's 15th Legion, the T4 Starlight Emperor-class Medium Carrier Starship, ship S11… the one beside it is that legion's deputy flagship, the T4 Boreas, D19…" The adjutant gulped.
The Royal Legion fleet continued forward.
At this point, they discovered ahead the sparse, scattered glow of interstellar-warship engines.
"All fleets, combat-ready!" the adjutant at once ordered tensely.
But very soon, they made out that those ahead were friendly interstellar warships.
And the comms, at this point, gradually recovered too.
"This lowly general Zhao Ziying, greets Your Highness." Zhao Ziying, wearing an expression of not-yet-settled fright, saluted the Second Prince Qin Ming.
"Tell me — what happened here!" Qin Ming pressed, his expression anxious.
A trace of terror flashed through Zhao Ziying's eyes; but the powerful inner heart of a soldier let him steady himself all the same, and slowly he recounted by mouth what had just happened.
Zhao Ziying, under orders to intercept the Owl Dragon Legion, had engaged it in fierce combat for close to an hour.
In that one hour, Zhao Ziying had come to know what a terrifying interstellar warship was, and the terror of being bombarded by interstellar missiles.
In that brief hour, the imperial legions' side had lost very nearly 10,000 interstellar warships; happily, the imperial legions' side had had, one after another, interstellar warships coming to reinforce.
Otherwise, there'd have been simply no holding this pack of fellows back.
And just a few minutes before, the Owl Dragon Legion had made an unusual move: first a round of interstellar-missile bombardment, followed by — of all things — an interstellar-torpedo interception from the interstellar stealth bombers.
This let the Owl Dragon Legion shake off, for the moment, the imperial legions' pursuit and encirclement.
Zhao Ziying had at once ordered the pursuit continued; but just as he was on the point of catching up, an unmanned scout craft dispatched forth filmed a most horrifying scene.
In the direction of the Owl Dragon Legion fleet's 'flight,' a peculiar interstellar warship had, of all things, directly opened a star gate; thereupon the Owl Dragon Legion fleet crossed through the star gate, and in an instant vanished from sight.
In the moment the star gate closed, a white-hot halo of light surged out.
Thereafter the surrounding comm signals were, in turn, subjected to interference — right up until now, when they'd recovered.
"A mysterious starship? A star gate? Vanished in an instant?" Qin Ming's eyes went wide; for a good while he was unable to digest this affair.