This was a very simple question of choice.
These nobles upon the plaza went, one after another, to stand at Saint Cana's left hand.
"Did you hear that? The Empire is now what our Sacred Angel family says it is. You had best show some sense to me…" The second uncle, his attitude wholly altered from before, stood upon the steps with both hands on his hips, pointing at those nobles who stood on the left.
But before he had finished, his body went flying.
Picking himself up from a dog's-dinner sprawl, the second uncle cursed as he rose. "Who the devil dares kick your grandfather? Don't you know what I am in this Empire now—"
The second uncle looked at the one who had kicked him, and it was actually his elder brother, Chieftain Saint George.
"Brother…" The second uncle looked at Chieftain Saint George with great care.
"You wretched creature, get you off into a corner and stay there. Dare to leap out and talk nonsense again and see whether I do not thrash you dead!" Chieftain Saint George looked at this brother of his in that fury one feels at iron that will not become steel.
A moment ago, seeing how the case stood, he had been ready to stab them in the back.
Now, seeing that his own daughter held the sovereign power, and held a vast advantage besides, he was styling himself the Sacred Angel family on the instant.
Even he, the elder brother, could not stomach the sight.
Were this creature not his own blood brother, he would have had murder in his heart.
"Yes… yes… yes." The second uncle smiled ingratiatingly, and looked toward the cold-faced Saint Cana besides, nodding and smiling without cease; then he shrank away honestly into a corner of the plaza.
But he had already begun to dream of his own fine future.
Hahaha, this niece of mine has made something of herself.
The Sacred Angel family will hereafter become another Disciple family; and I am at least the chieftain's own brother — my standing within the family already ranked within the first five.
And hereafter, standing within the first five in the whole Empire… that would truly…
At the thought of it, the corners of the second uncle's mouth very nearly floated up to his ears.
Saint Cana saw this ugly figure her second uncle cut as well; and she had long since made her arrangements for this uncle in her own mind.
Out of regard for her father, she would not put him to death.
But she would post him to an out-of-the-way planet as an idle official, and set people to watch him, and at the same time have him quietly sterilized in the gene; he would have no descendants whatever, and would live out his life there in his retirement.
The second uncle, dreaming at this hour of his fine future, had no notion that the latter half of his life would not match even a servant's within the Sacred Angel family.
Saint Cana's gaze moved to those nobles standing on the left, and swept over them one by one.
The standing of these people Saint Cana had made a study of.
And she had a list besides.
Upon that list their names were written in three colors.
Standing respectively for usable, to be watched, and the names in black.
A name in black signified that this name's owner was a man who must die.
Only that Saint Cana would wring the last value out of them before their deaths — let it count as one way of repaying the Empire.
As for this so-called choice now, it was wholly and entirely Saint Cana's way of establishing her authority.
As for the right-hand side — it was of course empty.
"Saint Cana, I will kill you!" Consul Stanford, in his fury, drew out a miniature laser pistol and took aim at Saint Cana's back.
Here at the Imperial Senate there is a fixed rule: no one entering may carry a weapon.
Though some people may have means of their own.
Such as this miniature laser pistol Consul Stanford now produced — no bigger than a finger-joint, but perfectly sufficient to kill a Saint Cana within arm's reach.
But in the next second Consul Stanford's headless body fell; and upon the cross-section of his neck were the scorched black traces of burning.
This sight left the nobles staring, aghast.
An interstellar drone, which none knew when had broken in, hung above their heads; it was this drone, from an Owl Dragon Legion carrier starship, that had killed Consul Stanford a moment ago.
By any estimate Consul Stanford had never thought that he, a Consul no less, should in the end be buried beneath the laser autocannon of a single interstellar drone.
"Strange — where is this place's shield field? Does the Imperial Senate not have a shield field!" Consul Ernest came to himself at this point.
The Imperial Senate, as the symbol of the Holy Radiance Empire's highest power, naturally wanted no shield field, and an exceedingly advanced one at that.
"My apologies. This year the one charged with the Imperial Senate's security would seem to be your humble servant." Consul Gilbert said it with a smile.
And with that, this answer stood revealed as well.
More and more interstellar drones hung above the heads of the crowd.
So that not one man there dared move rashly, for fear of becoming the second Stanford.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
And just at this moment several interstellar fighters came through the cloud layer, screaming straight down upon the Imperial Senate.
Amid the terrified eyes and the screams of the crowd, these five interstellar fighters, upon the point of striking the Imperial Senate, transformed in mid-air.
Into the form of combat mechas, one after another, and came down heavily upon the ground.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Throwing up great swathes of dust besides.
Looking at these combat mechas, vast and fitted with mighty mecha weapons, those imperial nobles grew more honest still.
Saint Cana looked at the combat mecha before her.
A few days ago she would not have known it; but after settling the relevant operational plan with that man.
He had given her a set of materials besides.
His words being: since we are allies now, we can hardly fail to know even our own ally's arms and equipment.
For should we meet upon the field, would that not be awkward?
And this combat mecha was precisely the Owl Dragon Legion's highest and mightiest in service: the T4 Thunder-Warrior-class Medium Mecha.
This T4 Thunder-Warrior has two forms — one an interstellar fighter, one a combat mecha.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
One T4 Thunder-Warrior walked to the middle of the plaza, and a video window projected before its frame — within it, its pilot.
"Supreme Commander Saint Cana, the medium and large military installations upon this planet have all been destroyed or brought under our control. There remain only some small installations, or underground ones; these installations and their armed forces can pose us no great threat at present. But to clear them away while keeping the effect upon this planet's inhabitants small may take a very long time," the pilot reported.
"Very well, I understand. These matters I shall find means to handle hereafter. Thank you." Saint Cana thanked these reinforcements from far away with all sincerity.
"Then as for these, here…" The pilot looked toward the crowd upon the plaza, and the Thunder-Warrior's 63-barrel Gatling-type medium beam autocannon swung about with him.
Watching that black muzzle come round upon them, those nobles broke down in their feeling all at once; no few of them even fell to weeping.
Were they to take a burst from that autocannon, they would not be so lucky as Stanford and leave a headless corpse behind; there would by any estimate be not so much as a scrap left of them.
"These people have already surrendered." Saint Cana's words were, to these people, like the music of heaven.
Too beautiful!
"All of you — board the shuttles. My people will take you where you are to go." Saint Cana pointed at these men, Andrew and Ernest among them.
Thereafter Saint Cana looked toward the Thunder-Warrior mecha. "Trouble your squad to escort them. And besides…" Saint Cana looked back at the Imperial Senate. "This place, too, has no need to exist any longer."
Some ten-odd minutes later.
Saint Cana rode her shuttle out beyond the cloud layer; and behind her.
Were the five collapsed giant stone statues, and that Imperial Senate.