Several T3 Silver-Rat-class Light Interstellar Stealth Scout Ships lay hidden within one system of the Snow-Swallow Star Region.
"Silver-Rat 077, all normal on my side."
"Silver-Rat 091, secure."
"Silver-Rat…"
Every three minutes these several Silver-Rats would report their state, to be sure this region was safe.
Which mattered a great deal.
And at the same moment, every one of these Silver-Rats detected an anomaly in the spatial fluctuation of the region.
"Here they come!" Delight showed in the faces of the several captains.
And then five pure-white globes of light appeared out of nothing, with five bursts of a white-hot radiance blooming from them.
And warship after warship appeared here, as though space itself had been torn open.
"Report — all 3,492 warships of the Owl Dragon First Legion have completed the interstellar jump without trouble!" Secretary-Officer Chu Xuan reported.
"Wartime Interstellar Jump Plan No.1 has been executed automatically," Secretary-Officer Lilith said beside her.
The Owl Dragon First Legion, its jump only just completed, had already begun of its own accord forming combat array, and had entered first-grade combat readiness.
Which was 'Wartime Interstellar Jump Plan No.1', laid down long before.
Even with the region already secured by their own stealth scouts—
anything at all may happen upon a battlefield, so where care was due Zhao Chen still required these things done without fail.
Hsss, hsss, hsss.
A video window appeared before Zhao Chen, and on the far side of it a woman captain.
The captain laid a hand at her breast, and made her courtesy and reported in one motion. "The leader of Silver-Rat 107's scout squad reports an urgent matter to the Commander-in-Chief!"
"Speak." Zhao Chen's eyelid twitched, and he looked at her.
The captain raised a hand, and a star chart appeared before them.
"The Snow-Swallow Star Region has one core area, taking in near 20 star systems — the place we call the Snow-Swallow home base. Within this core area the degree of watchfulness is exceedingly high; we tried several times to enter and patrol, and were detected each time by the enemy's anti-stealth equipment. On one of those occasions one of our T3 Silver-Rats was even attacked and took hull damage; happily, on the strength of the ship's high speed it withdrew in time, and there were no losses among the personnel. Considering that warships cannot be steered inside, we sent some shuttles in under false identities, and a portion of them got in successfully. But by that method contact with us is very difficult, and our comms with the infiltrated personnel come and go. And only a moment ago, we received a report of importance. The garrison of Qin Xiaotian's home base in the Snow-Swallow Star Region has, upon the various planets of those systems, released some unidentified matter; and upon those planets… certain… changes are taking place. This is a video that was sent out."
And so saying, the captain put out a blurred fragment of video.
The setting of it seemed to be a city upon some planet.
One could see the whole city in disorder; and in the streets there were creatures neither man nor bug slaughtering other living things at will, and after the kill devouring the whole of what they had killed.
And having devoured it, these creatures neither man nor anything else changed on the instant, their bodies beginning to swell and grow, becoming more monstrous still.
And at the video's end, Zhao Chen even saw one creature, tall as a spire, spit some kind of beam at a T1 warship in the sky.
Destroying that T1 warship outright.
Having watched this through—
the color of Zhao Chen's face was very bad, and Lilith and Chu Xuan beside him both wore looks of astonishment.
"This… can Qin Xiaotian have carried out some experiment upon these planets?" Lilith cried out and covered her mouth.
Chu Xuan clenched her fists in fury. "I thought Qin Ming's killing his own father to seize the throne mad enough before. But if… if what we guess is true, then this Qin Xiaotian is madder than Qin Ming. He… he… he dared do a thing like this! One planet holds billions of lives, and one system…"
Chu Xuan would not go on with it; if a thing of this kind had happened upon all of those systems, the scene of it passed belief.
Charlotte saw that Zhao Chen's fists were already clenched, and that the look in his eyes was very flat.
But Charlotte knew that when Zhao Chen was as flat as this, it meant the fury within him had filled him up.
"Commander-in-Chief, let us go and see how matters actually stand first." Charlotte stood beside him and soothed him gently.
Zhao Chen drew a deep breath, and held down the savagery in his own breast. "Do as Charlotte says."
Zhao Chen could hold his savagery down at this hour; but very soon what he saw would leave him wanting nothing so much as to drag Qin Xiaotian out and grind his bones to powder.
The Snow-Swallow Star Region · the Drifting-Snow system.
This was a system holding 15 planets, of which eight were habitable; and besides those there were habitable cities built upon other habitable dwarf planets and asteroids.
The Drifting-Snow system stood among the top 10 of the Snow-Swallow Star Region's systems by population; the result of the most recent census had it at near 150 billion people.
And at this hour… whether this system held 150 billion people was not clear.
Chu Xuan, her eyes gone bloodshot, looked at the scenes several dozen unmanned scout craft had taken.
Those being different planets, and different cities.
And in the pictures one saw wrecked cities wherever the eye fell, and upon the ground a great mass of hive-race… no… of some mutated hive-race, rather.
Some of the individuals very small, about the size of a tank; and some as great as a building of several hundred stories.
It was very hard to believe that not long ago these cities had been scenes of flourishing life.
Zhao Chen rose and looked out beyond the bridge's viewport at the nearest planet.
He called up a photograph — an image of this planet as it had been.
A pale blue world with a ring about it besides; a very beautiful place.
But now… gazing at that planet, it had turned a stretch of black, and Zhao Chen knew that black was the hive-race creatures holding its surface.
Which meant that the great majority of the life upon this planet had been—
"Warning! Warning! Warning! A great body of hive-race units detected coming at our fleet from the planet!" a crewwoman warned.
Zhao Chen saw, off that black planet, a black mass of bug-swarm sweeping out like a swarm of black bees.
"A great number of them are T1-grade hive-race units, with a small number of T2 and T3 units. And we have scanned the planet: this planet… held 8,800 million people… and now… we scan fewer than 50,000… life-signals." Secretary-Officer Chu Xuan said it with her eyes red.
This planet had become, wholly and utterly, a bug-world.
Zhao Chen sat back in the captain's chair, his fists clenched hard.
"Qin Xiaotian, you deserve to die!"