This wedding ground stood at the very top of the Qian family's City in the Sky, and overhead was a dome of glass.
And at this moment, that glass dome shattered.
An enormous suction drew a great deal of what stood in the feast hall out through it in an instant; happily the guests' own bodyguards had made ready well beforehand, and put up defensive fields one after another.
So that beyond the hall's being thrown into utter disorder, there were no casualties among the people.
And with that one great report, an enormous pure-white machine came down in the middle of the feast hall.
Like a giant out of a tale.
20 meters in height; and were this feast hall not large enough, there is no saying it could have held this uninvited guest at all.
A T3 Templar-class Medium Interstellar Combat Mecha!
"Warning! Warning! Warning! A breach in the barrier is detected. Emergency measures for this district are engaged."
Red warning messages appeared overhead, and at the same time that breach in the dome with its enormous suction was covered over by a thin film of energy, and the whirlwind of a scene came to its end.
"Commander-in-Chief? How is it you've come yourself!" Panther-Girl, being Zhao Chen's captain of the guard, naturally knew from the voice at the first instant that the one at the T3 Templar's controls just now was their own Commander-in-Chief.
But by the plan as it stood, the one to pilot the T3 Templar ought to have been another mecha pilot altogether.
Panther-Girl at once used the internal comm channel to ask the Commander-in-Chief, with a trace of worry in it.
"I have reasons of my own, and now isn't the hour to explain them. Carry on with your battle plan." Zhao Chen turned the subject aside.
As for why Zhao Chen had come in person—
it was that with the System task in view, and against anything unlooked-for, Zhao Chen had chosen to descend himself after all.
Not, of course, to indulge a craving to pilot a combat mecha!
"Attack! Destroy this wretched thing for me!" Family Head Qian Feng commanded loudly from behind the guards protecting him.
The armed forces round about, and those combat mecha with them, at once brought every weapon they had to bear on this vast white mecha.
"Mind yourselves." Zhao Chen spoke, and this voice could be heard throughout the whole wedding feast hall.
This was one stone of Zhao Chen's bringing down two birds: on the one hand a warning to Panther-Girl and the rest beneath him.
On the other, a warning to those guests present.
The performance is about to begin. Do take care not to be caught in the overflow — for if anything should truly happen, that's no responsibility of mine.
At those words of Zhao Chen's, the guests' bodyguards naturally brought out every skill they had at their command, to shield their own masters' safety so far as they could.
President Guiji stood at a distance, an energy defense field set about her in advance by her subordinates, able to ward off the gunfire of a T3-grade combat mecha to a certain degree.
She watched how matters stood in the middle of the feast hall, and knit her brows slightly.
This lord was surely a little too mad by half; a rescue plan of this kind was mere child's play.
They stood plainly at a disadvantage as things were — and how were they to withdraw afterward?
Mind you, this was the Qian family's main planet.
It was not the Starlight Empire!
The others, for their part, were curious what interstellar power this crew who dared slap the Qian family's face could possibly come from.
And at the same time, the Qian family's T3 Stalker-class combat mecha and T2 Bald-Crow-class combat mecha about them set upon the attack as well.
Autocannons, laser cannons, even small missiles of some kinds — all of it was loosed.
To their eyes, with so many combat mecha on their side, settling one T3 mecha was surely nothing much to speak of.
Only a pity: they had reckoned the enemy's strength wrongly.
At this hour, the leading player of this performance — Zhao Chen, at the T3 Templar's controls — brought up its 56-barrelled Gatling-type small beam autocannons.
When everyone present saw those four terrifying autocannons, they grasped that something was wrong.
But by then it was already too late to do anything about it.
"Open fire!" Zhao Chen ran the attack sequence.
The 56-barrelled Gatling-type small beam autocannons began to turn, and blue beams went out from them without a break.
Crack, crack, crack, crack.
Panther-Girl led her own squad flat to the ground — right at the T3 Templar's feet, at that — and started up the energy fields upon themselves at the same time.
Panther-Girl held Gu Xiaoxiao's head down with her own hand, and shielded the upper half of Gu Xiaoxiao's body with her own.
Gu Xiaoxiao came of the Star-Shark Guild, after all, and was no ordinary woman; she raised her head to watch the magnificent scene before her, and her eyes were full of astonishment.
She saw the white mecha in front of her, standing at this hour like a god of war.
Those terrifying blue beams went out in a dense mass upon the enemies all about.
And in the face of the enemy's raking autocannon fire, it did not dodge in the least, and feared nothing.
Part of the enemy's autocannon fire was spent in the exchange of shots; and though the rest of it struck the white mecha's frame outright, it did no visible harm whatever — no more, at most, than dishing a few small dents into it.
And the only thing that carried any threat was, perhaps, the small number of small missiles loosed.
Against those small missiles, the white mecha loosed small missiles of its own, and cut the enemy's missiles down precisely, mid-flight.
And at the same time, with the missiles it had to spare, it struck those attackers precisely.
One minute!
A bare minute, and no more.
The smoke of the powder within the whole feast hall went from covering everything to thinning away, and that ear-splitting noise of gunfire thinned away with it.
It has to be said, the ventilation system of this feast hall was really rather good.
That white mecha stood where it had stood, without having moved at all; there were dents here and there upon its frame, but no damage of any weight.
The four slaughtering autocannons were slowly coming to a stop, and the muzzles had even gone somewhat red with the heat they were shedding.
And looking round about — the place was a wreck from end to end!
The positions of the Qian family's armed forces above all might be described as rubble.
Every one of the T2 Bald-Crow-class combat mecha had been destroyed, and no recognizable wreckage of them was to be seen — only fragments one could make nothing of, with no telling what part of a mecha any of it had been.
The T3 Stalker-class combat mecha had come off rather better.
By which better is meant… that their remains were of a somewhat higher degree of recognizability.
One minute!
A bare minute, and all of this had been the work of that white god of slaughter.
"Do you mean to go on?" Zhao Chen looked toward where Family Head Qian Feng stood; Qian Feng and the Qian family's people had by this hour drawn back inside a transparent shelter, with thick transparent blast panels to protect them.
And the other guests had protection each of their own; though through the fighting just past they had discovered too that these attackers' target was not themselves — that in the fighting, indeed, their positions had been deliberately avoided.
Or else, with that terrifying firepower just now, these guests could never have come away without a casualty, protection or no protection!
And this white mecha was surely too strong by half.
They had guessed it for a T3-grade combat mecha, granted — but let no one forget that the Stalkers present were T3-grade as well!
And the gap between the two was too wide to be measured!
At Zhao Chen's provocation, Family Head Qian Feng within the shelter clenched his fists and glared in fury at that white mecha. "And what of it, that this mecha of yours is strong. This is the Qian family's main planet! The Qian family's own holding! Don't dream that you and your people will get out of here!"
"By the look of it there's nobody left. Then I'm taking the bride with me. And before I go, a few gifts for you." Zhao Chen started up the interstellar missiles he had left, and sighted every one of them upon that shelter.