Zhao Chen looked at the haggard man before him, his head a tangle of black and white hair, declaring plainly the weathering he had come to.
Thinking back on the figure he had seen in this man's personal intelligence file—
it was very hard to believe that this was the Five-Star Marshal Qin Longcheng of before.
Lurking at Prince Qin Ming's side for years, serving as Qin Xiaotian's hidden sentry, and in the end helping Qin Xiaotian to his place.
The two men watched one another for a full half-minute; neither spoke first, and the eyes of each took the measure of his opponent.
"Just where did those ship technologies of yours come from?" Qin Longcheng asked out of curiosity.
"Do you suppose I would tell you?" Zhao Chen asked in return.
Qin Longcheng shook his head with a self-mocking smile. "Satisfy this curiosity of mine, and I shall tell you a secret."
"Sorry — I have no interest in your secret. If there is nothing else, I shall hang up." Zhao Chen said it mildly.
Qin Longcheng watched Zhao Chen, and said, "Never mind; I shall not ask after your secret either. But I think you will be very greatly interested in the secret I mean to tell. Because it has to do with the bugs."
Zhao Chen looked at Qin Longcheng and waited for what Qin Longcheng would say next.
Qin Longcheng raised a hand and adjusted the angle of the video-comm window, so that a window of red figures appeared before Zhao Chen's eyes.
831 seconds
830 seconds
829 seconds
"That is the countdown on a certain thing; and when that figure reaches zero, that thing will start up, tear the space here open, and create a passage. A passage leading through to the world of the interstellar hive-race!"
"A cosmic bug-nest?" The word came out of Zhao Chen at once.
At which he was not astonished, for he had suspected before that behind the hive-race disasters that had appeared in the Azure Star Region and the North Wind Star Region there might, in both cases, have been a human hand.
"You might put it so by way of comparison, but it is not quite the same as the cosmic bug-nests you know. Because…" There was a thread of fear in the depths of Qin Longcheng's eyes. "Because it will exist permanently!"
The look in Zhao Chen's eyes changed.
"Are you not curious where these vast hive-race fleets of ours came from? Under His Majesty's hand there is a man we call the Doctor. The Doctor's origins are unknown; one day he simply appeared before His Majesty, and gained His Majesty's trust, and thereafter secretly opened his research upon the interstellar hive-race. And afterward, in a certain stretch of interstellar edge-space, he founded the first permanent cosmic bug-nest — about the equivalent of a tier-2 cosmic bug-nest, able to admit only the passage of T2 Hive Motherships, and limited in the numbers that could pass. That was because at that time, only a tier-2 cosmic bug-nest lay within His Majesty's power to control. By way of that permanent cosmic bug-nest, that Doctor went on unfolding his mad plan…" Qin Longcheng began to set it out without cease.
A doctor researching hive-race technology.
Zhao Chen knit his brows slightly. Of such a figure he had heard something, but to this hour he had no accurate intelligence.
"Is this Doctor you speak of not here?" Zhao Chen asked.
He had supposed this Doctor would be either at Qin Xiaotian's side or within this important research institute.
"He was here originally; the hive-race spore-virus I loosed in the systems about us was a product of his recent research. I know he is a time bomb — that His Majesty's cooperating with him is bargaining with the tiger for its hide. So I had meant, since I am to die, to take him with me; whatever happened, he could not be allowed to fall into your hands. Only, more's the pity, I underestimated the fellow. He must have known long since that we would fail in this campaign. He vanished without a whisper of it; and though I do not know how he fled — how he got out through these vast mutated hive-race— if it is he… perhaps he could manage it," Qin Longcheng answered.
"So you mean to destroy yourselves? To create a tier-2 cosmic bug-nest here? Is this what you meant to tell me?" Zhao Chen looked at Qin Longcheng in bewilderment, not knowing why Qin Longcheng was telling him any of this.
Qin Longcheng's clouded gaze rested on Zhao Chen. "I know that in your eyes I am a wretch beyond all pardon; I loosed the hive-race spore-virus in a dozen-odd systems about us, and killed several trillion living souls. But that was because I am a commander-in-chief, and for His Majesty's victory I had to do it. Yet activating this permanent cosmic bug-nest does me no good. You mean to leave, after all, and I cannot stop you. Beyond making this star system worse still, I get nothing from it. This is a background program that damned Doctor started, and I cannot shut it down at my end. Damn it — I count as having been played by him too. The reason I tell you this is that I want you to be wary of this Doctor's existence. You and His Majesty are enemies, true, but at the least the aim of both of you is only to possess all that the Starlight Empire is. While that Doctor… from him I feel only the air of destruction. I do not know what his purpose is, but for this world it is absolutely no good thing."
"So this is you wanting me to deal with this Doctor in the future, and so buy time for that master of yours? Worthy of a dog Qin Xiaotian reared — loyal as this even at the hour of death." Zhao Chen heard out the other's intent.
At Zhao Chen's seeing through his purpose, Qin Longcheng showed no surprise, and only smiled it off.
"And what is to open here is no tier-2 cosmic bug-nest. It is… a tier-4 cosmic bug-nest. A permanent one!"
Zhao Chen's brows knit once more.
"Tier-4?"
Qin Longcheng explained, "All along, that Doctor has been researching how to create permanent cosmic bug-nests of a higher grade and greater stability. Under His Majesty's funding, he can at present create a permanent tier-4 cosmic bug-nest — only the cost is very high, and it wants certain exceedingly rare raw materials. To this hour he has created only 10 such activation devices; we call them 'hive-eggs.'"
10…
Which was to say, 10 permanent tier-4 cosmic bug-nests.
The interstellar hive-race were defined by every race in this world as an existence out of nightmare; even the Holy Radiance Empire had never dared take them lightly.
But the important reason the interstellar hive-race disasters had not grown greater was that a cosmic bug-nest's span of existence is limited; after being maintained a stretch of time, a cosmic bug-nest vanishes.
So long as the interstellar hive-race that have appeared in this world are destroyed, the crisis can be lifted.
And now… there was to appear, of all things, a cosmic bug-nest permanently open — and a tier-4 one at that!
And Zhao Chen had heard out one further matter of importance besides: that this Doctor had been researching all along, and it was tier-4 now — so next time it might well be a tier-5 cosmic bug-nest!
And within a tier-5 cosmic bug-nest there would, as a matter of course, appear T5 Hive Motherships — not those quasi-T5 Leviathan-Monarchs under Qin Xiaotian's control.
But true Leviathan-Monarch-class Hive Motherships.
"I have one more question. You have certain secret dealings with the Holy Radiance Empire. What is the content of those secret dealings?" Zhao Chen asked.