At this hour Gu Xiaoxiao was walking forward under the eyes of a great many guests, her spirit gone out of her — when suddenly one of the maids the Qian family had assigned to attend her the whole while came quietly to Gu Xiaoxiao's side.
"Miss Gu, Captain Xue Xiaoxiao has sent us to take you away. From here on, please fall in with what we do. We will get you out of this place safely." The maid said it with her head lowered.
The color of Gu Xiaoxiao's face changed enormously, and she looked at that maid out of the corner of her eye.
Xue Xiaoxiao?
Xiaoxiao had come back?
And meant to save her, no less?
But what came of saving her? The Star-Shark Guild's crisis stood where it was, and the Qian family's momentum ran very strong just now; conduct of this kind was beyond doubt the digging of one's own grave!
And just as Gu Xiaoxiao was about to talk her out of going through with it—
the Qian matron beside her caught the strangeness of it too, and looked with knitted brows at that maid walking so close against Gu Xiaoxiao.
In a setting of this kind, conduct of that sort was very ill-mannered indeed — and the face lost by it would be the Qian family's.
"What do you think you're about! Have you no notion of manners at all? And what are you muttering at the bride there!"
The Qian matron rebuked the maid in a low voice.
"Forgive me… forgive me… forgive me…" The maid kept her head down and apologized without pause; and perhaps out of her fluster her step went awry, so that she even bumped against Gu Xiaoxiao.
"You witless creature!" The Qian matron flew into a temper, rushed up in front of the maid and raised her hand to strike her.
But in that moment the maid's one hand seized the Qian matron's arm outright, while from the cuff of the other a short blade sprang, and came to rest directly against the Qian matron's throat.
"Nobody move! Let one of you stir and I kill her!" the maid cried out sharply.
Before the operation she had looked into this matron's standing.
A Qian family woman entrusted with bringing Gu Xiaoxiao to the wedding hall would certainly be no ordinary person.
She was a concubine of the present Qian family head.
This sudden turn was a thing nobody in the whole wedding hall had foreseen.
Even the ceremonial guards standing nearest were brought up short a good while before they came to themselves; and though there were weapons in their hands, with the Qian matron held hostage they had no notion for the moment of what to do.
They could only look toward Family Head Qian Feng in the distance.
"Who are you, to ruin my Qian family's wedding — have you no wish to live!" Family Head Qian Feng's face went black, and he came striding this way at a quick step.
"I shall walk out of here alive and well, and take this lovely bride with me besides. My master says that a beauty as fine as this can hardly be left for the Qian family's beasts to spoil. And what my master likes best of all is the rescuing of a beauty by a hero. So today, this Miss Gu Xiaoxiao we mean to take away." The maid said it coldly, the Qian matron held fast before her.
"Heh, heh, heh." Family Head Qian Feng gave a cold laugh, and looked at her with contempt. "You mean to take one of our Qian family's people out of this place. Without so much as weighing what you amount to! Someone — take this thief for me."
At that one order, more guards appeared all about, and every laser gun in their hands sighted on where the maid stood.
"Do you no longer care for your concubine's life?" The short blade in the maid's hand pressed against the concubine's throat.
"Family head! Save me… save me…" The Qian concubine looked at Family Head Qian Feng in entreaty.
Only to find, past all expectation, that Family Head Qian Feng gave a cold snort. "One woman, no more. I, Qian Feng, am not short of those. Someone — get on with it!"
At Family Head Qian Feng's order, with never a thought for the life or safety of his own concubine in the other's hands.
But the scene that maid had braced for, of being cut down in a hail of fire, never came about.
Instead, several figures came rushing out from among the guests, the weapons in their hands sighting on those guards, and with a swiftness that gave no time to cover one's ears they shot the whole lot of the guards dead.
And at that same moment, every one of the ceremonial guards near the maid was finished by the maid herself.
At the same time, several energy shields rose with Gu Xiaoxiao at their center, closing her and that maid within their protection.
The maid now pressed something at her neck, and her face went so far as to shed its skin outright, and a wholly new countenance appeared before them all.
Which was plainly Zhao Chen's captain of the guard — Panther-Girl.
At the same moment as Panther-Girl ordered her own people into action, Family Head Qian Feng's bodyguards caught the wrongness of it too, and at once closed about their master to shield him.
Those guests about them had naturally taken themselves off to safe positions well beforehand; they had no wish to be fish caught in a drained pond.
"Pass my order — bring the nearest armed forces over at once! Take every one of these fellows for me!" Family Head Qian Feng said in fury.
However the situation as it stood came out — even if he had them under control in the end, the thing would surely make him a laughingstock throughout the Stellar Alliance.
Never in the world had he thought that on a day of such weight, somebody would slap his Qian family's face with no regard for anything whatever.
The order went out at very great speed.
Several of the nearest armed detachments came hurrying over at the utmost pace they could make.
Family Head Qian Feng looked at that 'maid' once more, and said coldly, "My armed forces will be here inside a minute. And then, able as you may be, there'll be no escaping though you sprouted wings. I can still give you one chance now: surrender, and tell me who it is behind you that set you on. And I can let go what you have done here!"
"Do you take us for three-year-old children, to believe talk of that sort?" Panther-Girl laughed at him.
"Then wait for your deaths… no — you had better pray that you do die. For once you fall into my hands, you'll find living worse than dying!" Family Head Qian Feng looked at Panther-Girl, cold and grim.
"You people are out of your minds! What do we do now?" Gu Xiaoxiao looked at this squad before her in her urgency.
"Wait," Panther-Girl said in a low voice.
"Wait for what?" Gu Xiaoxiao was at a loss.
"For someone," said Panther-Girl.
Hearing which, Gu Xiaoxiao felt it more past understanding than before.
And that minute soon came to its end.
The floor of the feast hall began to shake; a drink glass set near the edge of one table shifted with the tremor and fell to the ground, and shattered.
And it was at this moment that black figures by the several came into the hall from the entryways on every side.
"Three T3 Stalker-class light combat mecha; 18 T2 Bald-Crow-class medium combat mecha. And near 100 armed guards besides." Panther-Girl ran an eye about her and had the size of the enemy settled.
Which came near enough to the intelligence she had gathered beforehand, and the plans she had drawn against it.
"Hmph. Now let me see what you are capable of! Take them for me!" Family Head Qian Feng said with a cold laugh.
The bridegroom Qian Dafu, who had shrunk timidly behind till now, stepped out at this point to shout along with him. "Alive! Take them alive for me! That beast-folk woman above all — I mean to torture her properly!"
With those combat mecha for cover, these armed squads began to close by degrees.
Gu Xiaoxiao's heart at this hour had come up into her throat.
But the woman in front of her was not troubled in the least.
There was rather a trace of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
"Here he comes."
And then, of a sudden, one great report overhead!
An enormous black shape came down out of the sky!
A T3 Templar-class Medium Interstellar Combat Mecha!
"I'll take this bride." A man's voice, with a resonance to it, came out of the mecha.