In the end, two-thirds of the main tribes within the revolutionary army chose to follow Charlotte.
The remaining third chose to follow the Deer King leader.
"Go back and make ready; by my earlier instruction, what can be carried off, carry off; what can't, deal with on the spot. That includes any interstellar warships too severely damaged to repair — above all any that would drag down our sailing speed. If your interstellar warships come up short on space to house your people, I have some spare interstellar transport ships here that can take in your kinsfolk. Make ready; within a day we set out and leave this place," Charlotte said to the company of revolutionary-army leaders willing to leave with her.
"A day? There's so much we can't possibly carry off!" some said, unable to bear it — this was, after all, the whole store of their families' wealth.
Charlotte said coldly: "If I've not guessed wrong, the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth's side has by now already begun mustering its legion fleets. What appears here next won't be so simple a matter as a few tens of thousands of interstellar warships. It'll be 100,000 and more. If we don't seize the time and leave here, the consequence — you should know it well enough yourselves!"
At these words of Charlotte's, everyone understood too.
Unwilling as they still were to part with it, set against the lives and fortunes of their own clans, they could tell well enough which weighed the more.
Her instructions given, the company boarded their shuttle-craft to make ready to leave.
The Deer King leader, though, was in no hurry to go; he leaned against the outer shell of his own shuttle-craft, and took from his pocket a thing rather like a pipe.
He looked at Charlotte, come up before him, and said with a smile: "You don't mind my having a smoke of this here?"
Charlotte said nothing; practiced, she took the lighter from the Deer King leader's hand, and lit for him the thing in his hand.
The Deer King leader drew a deep pull, and breathed out a white mist from his mouth.
"Back then you followed me half a year and more. In those days you were a wild, unbroken thing; even your father couldn't hold you in hand, and in the end could only send you off to me," the Deer King leader said in recollection.
Charlotte nodded; Grandpa Deer King counted as half a teacher to her.
Much of her knowledge of battlefield command she'd learned from Grandpa Deer King.
"Will you truly not come with me?" Charlotte asked again.
"In truth I'd like to go with you," the Deer King leader said.
"Then why…" No sooner had Charlotte asked than she thought of the answer herself.
She looked toward that remaining third of the revolutionary army who'd not chosen to join her.
"You're doing it for them?"
The Deer King leader nodded, and said with a smile: "In truth, by your present strength, to force us along with you outright would be no problem at all. I know why you let them choose for themselves: it's so that, in the military actions to come, you won't have people who submit to your face but who, in their hearts, are unwilling to follow you. Rather than that, better to let them go. You can leave them be — but I cannot. The revolutionary army is this old man's life's work; the people of the revolutionary army's various clans are, the great majority of them, bound up with me. So, rather than let them each scatter to the winds in the future, better that I stand on their side; at the least they're still willing to follow this old thing."
Charlotte looked, unable to bear it, at the old man before her — an old man who'd given the greater part of his life to this cause.
Even now, he'd never once thought of himself.
"Charlotte — in truth I believe in you. I believe in your tactics; I believe in the one you're willing to follow, though you'll not yet tell me who he is. This remaining third of our revolutionary-army kin won't yet believe in you — but I believe that, once you've made something of yourself, they'll understand clearly how they ought to choose. And when that time comes, I'll bring them back myself, and have them follow you of their own glad will. I only hope that, when that time comes, you'll still be willing to take us in." The Deer King leader looked at Charlotte, and in his tone there seemed to be, even, a thread of pleading.
Charlotte nodded quietly: "I will! Here with me, there will always be a place for you!"
"There's one more thing besides. I'll be thick-skinned enough to hope you can agree to it," the Deer King leader said.
"Speak!"
The Deer King leader took from the pocket at his breast a pocket-watch; opened, within it was a photograph — one could see, in the photograph, a sweet, endearing girl, half-human, half-deer.
"You know her too — my granddaughter, Little Deer. Her parents fell in a revolutionary-army battle some years back. Set against following me, following you would be the safer for her. So I hope you can take her with you." The Deer King leader looked with tender love upon the granddaughter in the pocket-watch.
"I'll take good care of her." Charlotte took the charge upon herself.
"Thank you. Then this old man will wait for you, great white cat, to punch a great hole clean through this rotten Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth. Wherever we may be, I'll be proud of you!" The Deer King leader, laughing, stepped up into his own shuttle-craft.
The shuttle-craft started slowly, and sailed off out of the hangar.
Charlotte stood there a long while; at the last, she made a military salute toward that shuttle-craft.
A day later, Charlotte, with the whole company of the revolutionary army, began a life of 'wandering.'
…
Owl Dragon Star System · T4 Vermilion Bird-class Medium Interstellar Cruiser, ship No. 1 · bridge
"Report — all the Owl Dragon Legion's interstellar warships are fully readied and can set out at any time," Secretary Lilith reported to the Zhao Chen in the captain's chair.
"Charlotte, lay out the next…" Zhao Chen began, reflexively — then, looking at his empty right side, came back to himself.
This great white cat was now a thousand li away.
"Lilith, you take charge of plotting the flight-route. We'll go straight to the place where the region controlled by the Holy Radiance Empire borders on ours; we'll 'take over' those systems from the outside inward," Zhao Chen said.
"Yes!" Lilith began the deployment.
Though this work had always been Charlotte's charge before, as the Owl Dragon Legion's full-time nursemaid, there was nothing she couldn't do.
And this time, the Owl Dragon Legion set forth on campaign.
It was to hand over to Zhao Chen, whole and entire, all those systems outside the Starlight Empire's borders that had been controlled before by the Starlight nobles — making ready for the interstellar mining ships and interstellar industrial ships that would move in afterward.
Very soon, all the preparatory work was done.
A T4 Lucent-class Interstellar Jump Ship, too, carried out its order and unfolded a star gate.
The 3,000-odd interstellar warships of the Owl Dragon Legion filed in, and vanished from this stretch of the star-universe; at the last, even that glowing star gate vanished from sight.
All round about returned to quiet.
But in a star system very, very far away, 3,000 Owl Dragon Legion interstellar warships suddenly appeared — startling, straightaway, this system's developer.
"Warning! Warning! The system's sentry-post has detected the energy signals of 3,000-odd suddenly appeared interstellar warships. They're sailing toward us." a soldier came running, in a great hurry, up before a noble personage.
That noble personage wiped the beads of sweat from his brow, tension in his eyes: "What's bound to come, comes in the end…"