Just then the tavern's artificial intelligence over on the other side came back with an answer as well.
"The intelligence you require calls for a further search. We will reckon the funds this intelligence may want, and will need to verify the funds standing in your account. Do you agree?"
It seemed the intelligence Zhao Chen had thought of was out of the common way — or there would have been no need for this step of verifying funds.
Zhao Chen nodded.
Chu Xuan clicked to agree, and entered the account details that had been prepared well beforehand.
"Verification of funds complete. The intelligence concerned will be sent to your room's mailbox within three days. At that time an intelligence fee of somewhere between 110 million star coins will be deducted."
Efficient enough — though the price of this intelligence ran high as the sky, too.
But it stood to reason.
Because the intelligence Zhao Chen wanted was no small quantity of it.
And it touched upon the Holy Radiance Empire.
The money would not come to little.
"Very well. Everyone rest here these three days." Zhao Chen stretched himself and walked off toward his own room.
And just as he had gone in through the door, he turned his head and looked at Panther-Girl, who was following behind him.
"What are you following me for?"
Panther-Girl said, "By the security regulations, in any area outside an Owl Dragon-line interstellar warship, I am to keep at the Commander-in-Chief's side without stirring a step from it."
"So when I go to the toilet and take a bath, you'll be following too?"
"Yes."
Slam.
The next second, the door was shut.
Panther-Girl was brought up short, and for a moment had no idea what to do with herself.
She looked at the tight-shut door, and then looked at Xue Xiaoxiao and Chu Xuan sitting on the sofa.
Xue Xiaoxiao, holding her laughter down with an effort, laid a hand on Chu Xuan's shoulder. "Sister Panther, the Commander-in-Chief's own betrothed is sitting right here, and even she hasn't followed him in. And you'd play the dove that seizes the magpie's nest?"
Chu Xuan rolled her eyes and slapped Xue Xiaoxiao's hand away.
She looked at Panther-Girl, whose face was a picture of awkwardness, and said, smoothing the thing over, "We're all of us in one suite, and you've made a thorough search of it. There'll be no danger."
Since Chu Xuan, being the secretary-officer, said so, Panther-Girl could only give up the notion of going into the Commander-in-Chief's room.
But she found a cushion from somewhere all the same, set it down at the door of the Commander-in-Chief's room, and then sat herself upon it, one hand kept always where it could have a laser pistol out at the first instant.
The other guards had long since taken up 'positions of advantage' too, so that whatever came about, a tactical answer could be made to it at once.
The posture of the whole arrangement was for all the world that of Zhao Chen's own watchdogs.
And Zhao Chen inside the room, naturally, knew nothing of any of it.
Safety?
He could see to his own safety himself. Panther-Girl and the rest were very professional, but if the whole lot of them came at him together they would still be no match for Zhao Chen.
Bringing them along was, more than anything, a matter of seeing to the wants of Zhao Chen's travels.
Zhao Chen lay down on the bed and opened the tavern's intelligence page again.
And this time he entered a piece of intelligence he wanted to know of.
The Qian family's young house-head.
This intelligence was on hand; he need only pay a certain fee to look it over.
The figure was nothing whatever to a Zhao Chen of such deep pockets; he paid and read it straight off.
The substance of it was all material concerning this young house-head of the Qian family.
Qian Dafu, 35 years of age.
Young house-head of the Qian family, at present chiefly charged with the affairs of several of the Qian family's planetary works.
…………
After which came matter on this man's character and his tastes: an exceedingly bloodthirsty man, of whom it was said that every day, in those works of his, he would torture several of the slave laborers to death.
In this intelligence, Zhao Chen did not find the word betrothed.
Zhao Chen searched once more for 'Qian Dafu's betrothed'.
Soon another piece of intelligence came up, and required, naturally, another payment.
Pay.
The substance of the intelligence.
A year ago the Qian family had made a marriage alliance with the Star-Shark Interstellar Adventurers' Guild; the Qian family's young house-head Qian Dafu was to be married to Gu Xiaoxiao, daughter of the Star-Shark Guild's president.
The date of the match was fixed at half a month from now.
And at the end of it were photographs of the two.
Qian Dafu was grinning wide, but half the teeth in that mouth were gold, and even his hair was gold — plainly dyed so after the fact; at the same time there was no little inlaid armor about his person, and with that great fat bulk of a body, at first glance he looked for all the world like some warrior wrought out of iron.
As for Gu Xiaoxiao, she was a woman who looked full of spirit, somewhere around 20 years of age, and her looks might be scored an eight.
"Get the business of the Holy Radiance Empire and Qin Xiaotian looked into clearly first, and then go and carry off this Gu Xiaoxiao." Zhao Chen muttered it to himself.
To this hour Zhao Chen still could not work out why the System should have it in for this Qian family.
Nor what this Gu Xiaoxiao's background could possibly be, that the System should hand down a task setting Zhao Chen to carry off a man's betrothed.
Mind you, in the eyes of outsiders as things stood, Chu Xuan was his own betrothed — though to those on the inside this might be no more than a piece of theater.
But the standing was there all the same.
And if Chu Xuan and Xue Xiaoxiao came to know that he was taking his own betrothed along with him to carry off somebody else's betrothed—
how was it that felt quite so absurd?
"I'll not think about it. It's a task the System handed down in any case; if blame must fall somewhere, let it fall on the System. Nothing to do with me." Zhao Chen shifted the blame clean off himself.
Now it was only to sit and wait on that intelligence.
He hoped this Stellar Tavern would not let him down.
…………
While Zhao Chen was over here inquiring after intelligence of every sort, in the room next door Saint Cana was likewise seeking out intelligence of her own.
She had put in her requirement for the intelligence she wanted, and had been given a term of three days as well.
Saint Cana sat on the sofa, working at her own temples with her fingers.
"My lady, you've worn yourself out too far this while; you need a proper rest," the subordinate beside her urged.
And there was, in truth, a great deal of weariness in Saint Cana's eyes.
Set against that commander of the Sacred Angel Legion at the time of the earlier Sacred-War Duel with Zhao Chen, this was another bearing altogether.
"Because of the loss in the Sacred-War Duel, that pack of them has been hunting up every sort of reason to strike at me, and I've been before the Holy Radiance Empire's military tribunal several times over it. Happily my own standing is what it is, and the family has put out its strength for me, so that pack daren't do much to me. But they've cut the military funding for our Sacred Angel Legion back sharply. They mean to hold our Sacred Angel Legion down; and those interstellar warships we lost will, by my reckoning, be very hard to make good in any short span. Leaning purely on our own family's funds to make up the difference, it is hard to bear up the Sacred Angel Legion's procurement."
Saint Cana had only to think of these vexations to grow thoroughly out of temper.
And once out of temper, she thought of the 'chief author' of it all — that man of the Owl Dragon Legion.
"It's all the fault of that cursed Owl Dragon Legion! If not for the Owl Dragon Legion, our Sacred Angel Legion would never have come down to such a pass as this!" the subordinate said, hot with indignation. "Once the three-year term is up, our Sacred Angel Legion must settle accounts with this fellow!"
Saint Cana, for her part, was not angry. She waved a hand and said, "The Sacred-War Duel was an open and aboveboard business, and they beat us on the strength of their own ability. We lost because we were too weak. Enough. Let's not speak of that. Our coming here this time is to get clear what dealings that new emperor of the Starlight Empire has in private, besides the traffic of interstellar trade he has with us. I have looked over some of the material — and some of those fellows within our own Holy Radiance Empire are absolutely not merely furnishing military aid to the Starlight Empire and nothing further! Mind you, by the latest word, that new emperor holds the black-tech for controlling hive-race motherships! I have a premonition that if this matter is not looked into and got clear, it may come to threaten our Holy Radiance Empire itself! There are those who, to build up their own power, pay not the least heed to any consequence whatever!"