Boom, boom, boom, boom.
And now, from where Saint Cana's car stood alongside, came the sound of blasts and of fighting.
The smoke and dust about Zhao Chen thinned away, and he looked over.
Several dozen black-clad figures with laser guns in hand were attacking the position of Saint Cana's car, while Saint Cana's subordinates had made a cover of the car itself and, with energy shields to work with, thrown up a defensive stand.
If it came to no more than an exchange of fire like this, that pack of attackers had no hope of taking Saint Cana in any short span.
Boom, boom, boom.
Then, of a sudden, came three great reports.
Three shipping containers fell, dead on their mark, square about the position of Saint Cana's car.
The containers, being of the transforming kind, were torn open from within.
And three enormous black shapes stepped out!
Three combat mecha, each of them.
"T3 Stalker-class small combat mecha." Zhao Chen knew the class of them at the first instant.
Not large in bulk — but T3-grade!
It seemed these three Stalker mecha were the key to the strike upon Saint Cana.
The three T3 Stalkers set upon Saint Cana's position at once!
Over on Panther-Girl's side there was rather a breath let out; she had grasped it too, that this attack was not aimed at their own Commander-in-Chief, but at that commander of the Sacred Angel Legion next door.
But the next second, a figure shot away from them.
"The rest of you stay where you are. Protect Chu Xuan and Xue Xiaoxiao."
And under the astonished eyes of Panther-Girl and the rest, all that was left in the place where the Commander-in-Chief had been standing was the mask he had been wearing.
The three Stalker mecha closed about Saint Cana and her people from three points at once.
Two of them started up their autocannons and laid down suppressing fire on the energy shield of that broken car's defensive stand!
Saint Cana's guards did each carry weapons of a sort, but what could the firepower of an infantry weapon come to against two T3-grade mecha?
Happily the energy shield held; without it, the Saint Cana inside the cover would have been blasted outright to a smear of pulp.
"This is bad! One of the Stalkers is closing on us — it means to attack us directly! Our energy shield can't ward off a physical attack of that kind!" one of the guards said, watching a Stalker come step by step toward where they were.
Let it once get close, and one stamp of its foot could grind them to nothing.
Saint Cana knit her brows tight. The situation as it stood was very bad indeed.
The enemy had plainly made their preparations in full: two T3 Stalkers for covering fire, and one T3 Stalker to close in for the kill.
To stay here now was to wait for death — and yet the firepower of those two T3 Stalkers left them unable to stir a step.
She had not thought that pack of them would be driven to such a corner as to do a thing like assassination.
"My lady, in a moment we'll find a way to cover your withdrawal!" one of her subordinates said through gritted teeth.
"Withdraw? Withdraw where? There is nothing for us now but to fight to the end, and hold until the rescue squad here arrives." Saint Cana held her weapon, and in her eyes there was no fear of death whatever.
She did not fear dying. She was the Sacred Angel Legion's commander, and had long since come to look on life and death alike.
But what she feared more was this: that if she failed to get to the bottom of the matter she was looking into, the tumor within the Holy Radiance Empire would go on existing, and might in the end do the Holy Radiance Empire real harm.
And the Sacred Light would not forgive her that!
Krrk. Krrk.
And just then a mechanical sound came.
Saint Cana looked at that Stalker mecha, which had come up now to where they stood; out of its right arm had extended a weapon after the fashion of an iron hammer, and it was swinging that up to bring it down upon their sheltered position.
"Attack! Attack!" Saint Cana cried out sharply, and the weapon in her hands sighted upon this Stalker mecha.
And several small rockets were loosed along with it.
Boom, boom, boom.
Every one of these attacks struck that Stalker mecha, and its hammer weapon with it.
Great clouds of dust went up.
But… within the dust an enormous black shape came plunging down as fast as ever.
It was the hammer!
The attacks of Saint Cana and her people had, of all things, left it without a scratch.
And it stood to reason — this was a T3-grade combat mecha, after all!
That vast hammer came through the energy shield, and looked to be an instant from falling.
Saint Cana shut her eyes in despair.
Sacred Light forgive me. I have not been able to finish my charge.
The pain she had braced for never came.
Saint Cana opened her eyes in bewilderment, and her pupils shook with astonishment.
For she saw, of all things, a figure standing before her, blocking the way.
Clad head to foot in black portable single-soldier armor of the fitted kind.
Krrk… krrk…
Several black fragments fell to the ground.
They were splinters of the shattered armor on this black-armored warrior's right fist.
He… of all things, he had blocked the Stalker mecha's hammer with his own fist!
And most of all: the armor over his hand had shattered — but his fist itself was whole and unhurt!
This… how was this possible?
However strong a living creature — even one of the Dragon-folk over in the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth — there was no bearing up a T3-grade combat mecha's blow by bodily strength alone.
This man… he couldn't be some engine of war, could he?
And then came a sight more astonishing still: she saw that the mecha's iron hammer, there above the man's fist, had cracks running through it at a speed the eye could follow.
Pieces of its material fell away to the ground.
And in the end the greater part of that hammer had, of all things, broken to bits!
This… how was this possible!
Saint Cana felt her own mind had short-circuited altogether.
The next second, the black-armored man before her bent his legs, and then sprang.
At an astonishing speed he drove straight for the Stalker mecha's chest.
"What in the world is this thing? Bearing up my hammer on flesh alone?" The Stalker mecha's pilot had not yet come back to himself, and his mind was full of nothing but shock.
For what had happened here turned every ordinary notion he had clean on its head.
And the next second, he saw a human figure dart up before his very eyes.
And after that, he heard one great report.
The cockpit, dark as pitch till then, had a breach blasted bodily open in it, and a hand had closed about his head.
The mecha pilot's pupils dilated as he felt the pain of his own skull being crushed.
This… this… surely this was no man but a monster.
And the next second, a far greater pain came.
Because the owner of that hand meant, of all things, to drag him bodily out of the mecha's cockpit.
"Aaaaagh—"
A shrill and dreadful scream came, and then a mecha pilot, his flesh a torn and bloody ruin, was flung down upon the ground.
The crushing against the outside of the breach as he was hauled through it had left every one of his limbs fractured and out of true, and there was scarcely a patch of skin anywhere about him left whole.
And that Stalker mecha, its control lost, dropped straight to its knees on the ground.
Saint Cana looked in astonishment at that black-armored man standing atop the Stalker mecha's head; the broken part of the black armor on his right arm was covered over with blood.
But by the look of it… that would be the mecha pilot's blood.
This… this… surely this man was no man but a monster.
Tearing a mecha open by hand?
"Two left." The black-armored warrior worked his own neck about, and looked toward the Stalker mecha on the other two sides.