"Commander-in-Chief, we have entered the Snow-Swallow second system." Secretary-Officer Lilith looked to Commander-in-Chief Zhao Chen.
"Take a tally of how each legion fleet stands. By Charlotte's disposition, we halt here and refit where we are. Have the interstellar supply ships make what haste they can in resupplying our warships — Baixue's interstellar missile special fleet above all. In the fighting to come we shall need her interstellar missiles for fire support upon the field. And don't forget: we have some hundreds of millions of dear little things at our backs. Let us wait for them." Zhao Chen laughed.
"You can still laugh at a time like this. Were anyone else's fleet being chased by several hundred million bugs, they'd have no leisure even to weep." Chu Xuan threw Zhao Chen a look.
Zhao Chen shrugged, and laid a hand on the shoulder of the great white tiger beside him. "What have I to worry about? Have we not our own White-Tiger Valkyrie here?"
Charlotte kept her eyes fixed on the interstellar holo-table before her, feeding in combat data of every kind without cease, and did not lift her head.
But her tail knocked Zhao Chen's hand straight off her shoulder.
Chu Xuan threw Zhao Chen another look, and her gaze came to rest upon Charlotte.
She had known before this how much Charlotte mattered to the Owl Dragon Legion — had even felt a kind of jealousy over it.
But having witnessed Charlotte's art of command with her own eyes, she admired this white-tiger beast-folk from the bottom of her heart.
To her mind, the only one who could cross swords with Charlotte in tactical command was, at a guess, her own grandfather.
Which made Chu Xuan understand, too, why Zhao Chen could always laze about as a hands-off proprietor.
For household management there was Lilith.
For military disposition there was Charlotte.
There was no telling where this fellow got such luck.
"There's fresh intelligence! This is the enemy's situation, newly sent through by our interstellar stealth scouts. The strength of the fleets Qin Longcheng holds garrisoned in this system has been fully established." Secretary-Officer Lilith came up to the interstellar holo-table.
Setting out the intelligence as she went, and marking upon the interstellar holo-table the positions of those imperial fleets and hive-race fleets.
For until now, much of what they had on this base of Qin Xiaotian's had been intelligence at second hand.
Only now, having truly entered the place, and having used the interstellar stealth scouts to break into its comm network, had they got intelligence of any greater detail.
"Qin Longcheng has 30,000 imperial warships under his hand! These imperial fleets are Qin Xiaotian's own trump card, and before this they were never set down among the Starlight Empire's serving legion fleets at all. And among them there is one legion fleet built, to the last hull, out of the T3 series of interstellar warships." Secretary-Officer Lilith said it in astonishment.
Chu Xuan, beside her, was greatly astonished too. "3,000 T3 warships? Good grief — how did Qin Xiaotian, in his time as Prince Yan, pile up money enough for this? And rear so vast a legion fleet besides, without a whisper of it getting out."
"Just so — everyone has a trump card in hand. In ordinary times it's nothing but bitter complaint to the royal house, this one and that: military funds are short, equipment is aging. And when it truly comes to fighting, the hardware every one of them brings out is no small matter." Zhao Chen laughed lightly and shook his head.
Warships T3-grade to the last hull — in the Starlight Empire, apart from Zhao Chen, only two others possessed a force of that kind.
There was the royal-house legion fleet of former days; only, more's the pity, Zhao Chen had crippled it, and after Prince Qin Ming's death the warships remaining to that legion fleet — once the strongest in the Starlight Empire by open reckoning — had been broken up by Qin Xiaotian and parceled out among other imperial fleets, so that it existed in name alone.
The other was Chu Changhe's Chu family legion fleet!
But in the course of several battles it had replaced no few of its warships, so that above two-thirds of it now was that T3 Flame Dragon-class Medium Interstellar Destroyer Zhao Chen had sold to Chu Changhe.
"Beyond that, there are 30,000 hive-race craft here as well; and by what the intelligence records, two Leviathan-Monarch-class Hive Motherships besides! One of them may be the very one that fled after we crippled it." Secretary-Officer Lilith finished setting out the last of the intelligence.
Then she pointed at the freshly updated data upon the interstellar holo-table. "And this is the place Qin Xiaotian named the Snow-Swallow First Research Institute — Qin Xiaotian's true base. And at present Qin Longcheng has laid out defensive formations here, here, and here; by the look of it he means to fight us to the death."
"30,000 imperial warships, 3,000 of them T3; and 30,000 hive-race craft, and two Leviathan-Monarch-class Hive Motherships. Qin Longcheng holds no few trump cards indeed." Zhao Chen's eyes narrowed.
So Zhao Chen said with his mouth; but the will to kill in his eyes had not lessened in the least. If anything it burned the stronger.
"Charlotte — have you settled how we are to fight this?" Zhao Chen looked to his white-tiger general.
Charlotte pointed at the interstellar holo-table and set it out step by step. "First we go on waiting where we are, until the mutated hive-race have entered this place too. Then we bring the mutated hive-race with us to Qin Longcheng's field, and give Qin Longcheng a surprise."
The corner of Zhao Chen's mouth rose a little. "That is a surprise I like."
Madness… was the word that rose in Chu Xuan's mind at this plan of battle.
In truth she had guessed at Charlotte's combat disposition beforehand; but with the thing actually about to be done, Chu Xuan felt still that it was madness.
Though this madness seemed somehow familiar.
Oh — of course.
Back when this boy Zhao Chen ran a single warship into a bug-swarm out of the Northstar Starship Military Academy to save people, that had been mad enough as well.
Chu Xuan saw it all at once; looking at Zhao Chen and Charlotte — as the commander is, so, it seemed, are those under him.
"Until then, our interstellar fleets refit where they stand, and resupply what combat resources they can. The instant the mutated hive-race arrive, we set out." Having said this, Charlotte added, "And then, once we have broken the Snow-Swallow First Research Institute, we must find the right moment to clear a stretch of starry space and use the Lucent-class Interstellar Jump Ships to withdraw from here at once. So we may not have a great deal of time here to gather anything on the research Qin Xiaotian has been doing."
Zhao Chen said with distaste, "I don't care in the least what research Qin Xiaotian has been doing. Those sickening things — best of all if Qin Xiaotian takes them into his coffin with him."
Zhao Chen's tone changed, and he said coldly, "What I want is that beast Qin Longcheng dead, without so much as a grave to lie in! He must pay the price for what he has done."
Zhao Chen granted himself no character as a good man. But swine of this sort, who acknowledge no limit at all—
these Zhao Chen could not abide either.
Had it nothing to do with him, well and good.
But this affair did have to do with him: to hold him off, that creature Qin Longcheng had made the homes of above 1 trillion living souls into a hell.
This Zhao Chen could not bear!
Leave a beast of that kind alive, and who knew what other work, void of all conscience, he might yet set his hand to.
"Lilith, send an all-system broadcast for me across this system. Say this: Qin Longcheng, I have come to take your dog's life!"