This Angel flagship drove slowly out from its own Angel fleet, and sailed to meet that vast interstellar warship opposite.
The woman Angel commander had arranged it so.
On the one hand, in observance of the courtesy proper to an interstellar meeting between interstellar warships.
On the other, for her own fleet's safety — for though she had accepted the meeting, she had by no means let down her guard against that man.
To let a suspected T5-grade interstellar warship come in among her own fleet would be far too dangerous.
Whereas as matters now stood, she could both display her courtesy and guard against trouble before it came.
Should anything truly happen, the Angel fleet lying to the rear could furnish armed support at any moment.
But to return to the point.
Through the ports, the Angel officers gazed at this interstellar warship, a very colossus.
"Just how large is this interstellar warship? Set our T4 Seraph-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship against theirs and it is simply… simply like a grown man beside an infant," the male Angel staff officer said in a mutter.
"The hull length reaches 100 kilometers at the least; and this Seraph of ours is a bare 9 kilometers — a difference of ten times over at the very least. And that without reckoning this interstellar warship's other figures. By mass alone, at a rough estimate it may run to some twenty times this Seraph of ours," the woman Angel commander said coldly.
She understood a great deal about the business of interstellar warship design.
And everyone knew besides that this commander of theirs had come to the calling by a side road: she had been a starship-technology researcher to begin with, and then somehow or other had gone off to be a ship's captain.
At the outset they had supposed she was merely amusing herself; but who could have thought the woman was simply a genius, and had climbed by her own ability to the post of fleet commander in no long time.
Behind which, of course, this commander's background had a little to do with it as well.
But it was not to be denied that her own ability was a talent of the highest order.
"And how does it compare with those two models of T5 interstellar warship our Angel Race possess?" the male Angel staff officer inquired.
The woman Angel commander thought a moment, and shook her head. "That is hard to judge. Down to this moment I cannot yet determine this interstellar warship's ship type. By its outward form it resembles somewhat an interstellar battleship, or else an interstellar battlecruiser. But I seem to have noticed just now that it has dock bay doors, and hatches for interstellar drones to pass in and out. So its particular combat power can only be judged in an actual engagement."
"It is assuredly not so formidable as our Angel Race's T5 interstellar warships." The male Angel staff officer folded his arms and said it with some pride.
Thereafter the two interstellar warships got in contact, and settled upon the procedure of the meeting.
The two interstellar warships lay parallel within one region of space.
Then the two interstellar warships each sent out a shuttle at the same moment.
These two shuttles very soon docked with one another midway between the two interstellar warships.
The docking done, the isolation hatch between them opened.
The woman Angel commander saw, opposite her, that man she had just now seen in the video picture.
Set against the man in the video picture.
The woman Angel commander could feel at this moment an air about this man, now hidden and now showing.
"How do you do. Allow me to introduce myself once more. I am the lord of the Owl Dragon Star System, Zhao Chen." Zhao Chen smiled and gave a military salute.
The woman Angel commander returned him a courtesy of her own. "I am the Angel Race's Blazing Angel Legion, Third Fleet commander — High Angel Tilia."
Their words falling, the two of them lapsed into a brief silence.
"I—"
"I—"
The two of them spoke almost at once.
Zhao Chen smiled slightly. "Commander Tilia, speak you first."
"This interstellar warship of yours is a T5-grade interstellar warship?" Commander Tilia asked it outright, coming straight to the point.
"A T5 Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought," Zhao Chen answered directly.
"An interstellar dreadnought?" The cold look upon Tilia's face altered somewhat.
"It is a special ship type of our own developing. Hence the name." Having said it, Zhao Chen looked to Tilia with a smile. "Now, you should believe the matter of our having the power to destroy tens of thousands of Demon Race interstellar warships."
"I wonder — when was it that you fought the Demon Race?" Tilia asked.
Zhao Chen made no concealment of the matter either, but told Tilia of the fighting with the Demon Race upon the Warhammer's border.
And by the time Zhao Chen had given the names of those Demon Race interstellar warships, and their outward forms and combat characteristics besides, Tilia had in fact already believed the words of this man before her.
"As I said before. Since we are both the Demon Race's enemies, then the enemy of one's enemy is a friend. I hope that in this matter of dealing with the Demon Race, we may fight shoulder to shoulder." Zhao Chen said out his thought directly.
But Tilia shook her head, and fixed her cold eyes upon Zhao Chen. "Cooperation is not brought about so simply as that. We know very little of you, and you know just as little of us. I do not know how many interstellar fleets you have, nor how many interstellar warships of this grade. In such a case, I cannot conclude an alliance with you."
Zhao Chen nodded, to show he understood. "In all this that you say, I agree with you. Since it is so, then let us for the present settle upon a verbal alliance — at the least we are not enemies. Thereafter we may send representatives to one another, to go into the other's country and carry out a survey upon the ground. And at the last we may draw our conclusion as to whether we can work together, and in what fields."
By this proposal of Zhao Chen's Tilia was indeed moved.
The chief reason for it lay still in the pressure from the Demon Race.
The Angel Race's reason for exploring unknown star regions upon their own motion and finding the Holy Radiance Empire.
Lay likewise in several defeats in the fighting with the Demon Race upon the front line, which had brought about all manner of bad conditions within the Angel Race's own country.
One of them being a want of raw-material resources and skilled workers.
They urgently needed to build more interstellar warships, and in these respects the shortfall was enormous.
Only, to their misfortune, having found this place, the Holy Radiance Empire, with such difficulty, they discovered that here of all places the interstellar hive-race threat was upon them.
The interstellar hive-race had appeared among their Angel Race as well.
But what had appeared here was a permanent Grade-5 cosmic bug-nest!
Which for their Angel Race too counted as a very great threat.
"Ah yes. Has a permanent Grade-5 cosmic bug-nest not appeared within this Empire's borders? Can it be that you have already settled this crisis?" Tilia, the thing occurring to her, asked it in doubt.
Zhao Chen shook his head. "This trouble we have not yet settled. But of that you need have no anxiety; the interstellar hive-race threat will very soon be brought under our control. It will not affect the cooperation to follow between us."
These words of Zhao Chen's Tilia did not wholly believe, nor did she raise any doubt of them.
The two sides were, after all, in no relation of allies as yet.
"May I look over this interstellar warship of yours?" Tilia asked of a sudden.
Which gave the Angel officers behind her a fright.