Zhao Chen looked with a smile upon the lively scene here in the underground conduit, his three female-soldier guards warily keeping him ringed in their midst.
"Who are you?" The man with his foot on Lilith fixed his eyes on Zhao Chen, one hand behind his back making a few signals.
At that, the companions who'd been seizing the succubi began closing in, one after another.
"Who am I?" Zhao Chen rubbed at his chin with a thoughtful air, then answered with a smile, "Who I am is none of your damn business."
The man felt himself insulted, and jabbed a furious finger at Zhao Chen. "Boy, I'm warning you. Behind me stands Arctic Fox Starport's Black Fox Society! Clear off now, and I can pretend none of this happened. Otherwise… I'll see to it you never leave Arctic Fox Starport!"
The Black Fox Society?
By the name, it sounded like some criminal outfit.
But Zhao Chen didn't care. He gave a light laugh and shook his head, spreading his hands. "This Black Fox Society of yours may well have some pull. But — do you really think any of you are leaving here alive?"
The man caught the meaning in the words. He whipped out a dagger at once, his companions likewise drawing their weapons, the whole lot of them gathering together — a dozen-odd men.
The three beast-folk female-soldier guards promptly settled into combat stances.
"Don't be hasty, the three of you — let me try my hand first." Zhao Chen held the three guards back, then walked out alone to the front and crooked a finger at the men. "Quit dawdling — let's make this quick."
"I see you're begging to die! Get him — kill this fellow for me!" the man ordered.
His companions swarmed forward at once — but the underground conduit itself wasn't wide, admitting at most five abreast, so in a brawl only three could press to the very front.
Seeing this, the three female-soldier guards each gripped the short blade at their waist.
General Charlotte had said: whatever happened, protecting the captain's life was the first priority.
But now the captain had ordered them not to intervene.
It left them torn; all they could do was watch and wait, ready to move the instant the captain was in danger.
But the sight that unfolded took them by surprise.
Zhao Chen went in first. He dodged the dagger of the man who lunged foremost, then drove a fist into the man's chest.
Crack.
That was the sound of a breastbone snapping.
Then Zhao Chen loosed two flying kicks, sending the other two men straight off their feet.
The speed of it, the flow of the movements, and that terrifying force behind them—
—left the three beast-folk female-soldier guards struck with admiration. This was in no way beneath the elite warriors of their own beast-folk!
"More." A light of battle-lust flashed in Zhao Chen's eyes.
After injecting the T1 Super-Soldier Serum, Zhao Chen had run simulated combat aboard the ship, and the data showed his present physique surpassed the great majority of interstellar soldiers.
But with no real combat to go on, Zhao Chen still had no way to know just how strong he was.
Set the beast-folk crewwomen as his sparring partners, and they, mindful of their captain's standing, would never go hard on him — and he could hardly bring himself to be rough with his crewwomen either.
So he'd been waiting for a chance to truly cut loose.
And here it was.
Three minutes later.
Save for that one man, all his companions lay sprawled on the ground — a third of them gone dead outright.
Their hearts smashed by a direct blow, or their necks severed clean by a knife-hand.
Zhao Chen's strength was simply too great; an ordinary body couldn't withstand it at all.
"You… you… don't you come near me." The man watched Zhao Chen in terror, backing away without cease, until at last, scared witless, he turned and bolted.
Zhao Chen picked up a dagger from the ground and flung it straight out.
The dagger buried itself hard in the man's backside.
"Aaah—" A shrill scream, and the man toppled straight down beside Lilith, in a most peculiar posture.
Zhao Chen said, displeased, "My aim's still no good. I was clearly going for the head."
Lilith looked at the man fallen before her, and thought back on the years of their flight — it was people of exactly this kind who'd chased them without end, and no few of her sisters had paid with their lives for it.
Hatred rushed up in her; she snatched up a small knife beside her and drove it into the man's neck, blood spraying across her face.
Only after several seconds of stunned stillness did Lilith come back to herself, and eye that peculiar grouping — one man and three women — warily.
"You're of the succubus race, aren't you." As Zhao Chen spoke to Lilith, he signaled the three female-soldier guards behind him to clean up the battlefield — to finish off any of the men not yet dead.
For the beast-folk crewwomen this was an everyday thing; a stroke of the blade, and a life was ended.
"Have you come to catch us too?" As Lilith said it, she laid that dagger across her own fair throat. "I'll die before I let the likes of you shame me."
Zhao Chen shrugged, and said with a laugh, "Die if you want to die — but I have no intention of shaming you. I only saw the succubus race and came, on a whim, to have a look."
Lilith was taken aback; she couldn't fathom just what this man meant.
"It isn't safe here any longer. If you don't mind, you can come aboard my ship. I can guarantee your safety," Zhao Chen said.
Lilith stared at Zhao Chen and said warily, "How am I to know your aim isn't the same as theirs?"
"If my aim were the same as theirs, I could simply have taken you by force — why waste breath jawing with you here? If you won't take my goodwill, then suit yourself. Let's go, then. Someone will come along to catch you soon enough anyway; you can die and be done with it — a pity, though, about those people of yours. There seem to be children among them." Zhao Chen turned as if to leave.
Lilith's soft spot had been struck; she looked at her people huddled together in terror behind her.
She bit lightly at her lip, and in the end couldn't help but call out, "Wait! I'm willing to go with you — so long… so long as you can guarantee my people's safety, and won't harm them. I… I… I'll agree to any condition you name."
Coming from the mouth of an alluring succubus, words like these carried no small killing power for a man.
"The three of you, find a way to get them back to our ship. That won't be a problem?" Zhao Chen looked at his female-soldier guards.
The guards ran an eye over the succubi and nodded. "Captain, we can rent a few flycars, park them at the conduit's exit, hide the women aboard, and take them back to the ship. It's no great difficulty."
"Then that's how we'll do it." So saying, Zhao Chen walked off toward the conduit's exit without a backward glance, for all the world as though he cared nothing at all for the band of succubi behind him.
Lilith held her people close, unsure whether her choice was right or wrong — but rather than sit here and wait for death, she'd gamble on it!
She watched the man's retreating back, her expression tangled.
What she didn't see was that the corners of that man's mouth were curling faintly upward.