"Let us speak of the business. You did not break into my starship network from so far off merely to quarrel, I take it." Zhao Chen asked it levelly.
At Zhao Chen's sign, Little Dragon Girl stuck her tongue out at the little girl across from her and withdrew to one side.
The little girl gave a tinkling laugh. "My trying an attack or two upon your starship network was purely out of curiosity. There now, let us begin upon the business."
The little girl paused and put on a grave expression.
But with that princess dress of hers and that small-girl look, gravity was truly beyond her.
"It is about certain intelligence upon the interstellar hive-race you are dealing with now. I believe you will be exceedingly interested," said the little girl.
Zhao Chen narrowed his eyes at her and did not speak outright, but waited upon what came next.
Seeing it, the little girl said it plainly. "Those swarms of the interstellar hive-race welling up in your rear. It is because they have used a thing of quasi-T5 grade called an interstellar web-way worm. To speak exactly, this is not a Hive Mothership existing of itself, but a functional hive creature attached upon a true T5 Hive Mothership."
Attached upon a true T5 Hive Mothership?
Zhao Chen thought at once of the T5 Leviathan-Sovereign-class Hive Motherships.
"Not, of course, that Leviathan-Sovereign kind you all suppose. But another sort: a thing called the T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership." As she said it, the little girl raised a hand, and upon her palm hovered the projection of a Hive Mothership Zhao Chen had never seen.
This mothership wanted the feeling of slaughter and savagery; upon its body instead were strange green traceries, with something of a religious air.
"But we have not found any T5 Hive Mothership of another type," Little Dragon Girl put in from beside them.
The little girl shook her head with a light laugh. "Though this T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership has no function of visual concealment, it can hide its own energy signal upon every kind of radar. Even with our Machine Race's most advanced radar detection at present, unless one is within an exceedingly close compass it is very hard to detect this class's coordinates. So… this Dragon Emperor of your Owl Dragon's…"
Coming to this, the little girl shrugged, and did not say the rest aloud.
Little Dragon Girl pouted, unwilling to concede it; but hearing that the other side had no full certainty of finding this class either, and thinking it over, her own failing to find it was no very shameful thing.
"Then this quasi-T5 interstellar web-way worm you spoke of just now is attached upon this sort of T5 Hive Mothership?" Zhao Chen asked.
The little girl nodded, and then said, "Yes. Every T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership cultivates a certain number of quasi-T5 interstellar web-way worms. By the records upon our side, some thousand on average."
A thousand?
At hearing this figure, Zhao Chen felt his scalp crawl.
Should such a thing well up in his own rear, the hidden peril it might work was hard to imagine.
"Though you need not be too anxious. This quasi-T5 interstellar web-way worm looks convenient, but it has many short places besides.
"First, a single worm-way jump point it establishes is limited in the number of interstellar hive-race it can deliver in a single day — generally some 20,000. And it cannot deliver T5-grade Hive Motherships."
All this Little Dragon Girl had analyzed out just now.
Worm-way jump point — that would be the term for the bug's bloody maw; a very fitting one.
"And further, before a worm-way network is established, the first worm-way jump point it makes is limited to a certain compass about the T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership. But thereafter they can spread outward upon the first… like a spider's web, layer upon layer, drawn ever further, until at the last a vast wartime fold-jump network may be formed.
"Though once such a worm-way jump point is established, it begins to wither and collapse in about a week. To hold it wants a great supply of blood-food, which is a drawback too.
"And the greatest drawback of all is that once a T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership begins building such a worm-way network, its own coordinates can no longer be moved. Otherwise every worm-way jump point built before will fail.
"And further, for a T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership to breed one quasi-T5 interstellar web-way worm wants half a month; web-way worms spent in a short time cannot be made up, so that upon such a field as this it is in the main a case of one used, one fewer.
"This fellow has one more mark besides. You will have seen it yourself, I dare say: the interstellar hive-race you face are not dull in their field movements as those you faced before, but seem to have an intelligence behind them. This T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership possesses a rather high intelligence — at the least far stronger than a T5 Leviathan-Sovereign's. Once a Leviathan-Shaman appears within a swarm, in the main it is she who answers for the whole field's command. Something after the fashion of this Dragon Emperor of yours."
It must be said that the intelligence this creature provided was exceedingly important.
Above all certain of the later parts, which bore even upon the Owl Dragon Legion's dispositions to come.
Zhao Chen gave Little Dragon Girl beside him a glance; Little Dragon Girl said nothing.
"Why do you tell me these things?" Zhao Chen inquired.
"And if I said it was because I wish to make a friend of you?" The little girl blinked her eyes at him prettily.
"Then let it be so; thank you for the warning." So saying, Zhao Chen closed the video window.
But before long Little Dragon Girl told him the other side had sent a request again.
Zhao Chen agreed to the connection.
The video window opened once more.
"How is it you rang off in the turn of an eye!" The little girl had every look of anger.
Zhao Chen said, with an air of perfect innocence, "Had you not said all you meant to say? You want nothing of me, so we have nothing to talk of. I am very busy now."
Hmph. Playing games of wit with me.
You do not name your terms, and I shall not ask. Let us see who holds out.
The little girl rolled her eyes, and wasted no more words upon Zhao Chen.
"I have projected the position of that T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership here, and I shall send it to you now. So long as you can settle this Leviathan-Shaman hereafter, there will in the main be no great threat left upon your side. To settle these bugs will be only a matter of time.
"As for why I help you. I hope you will do a certain thing for me afterward. As for what that thing is, we shall speak of it when you have dealt with these bugs."
Seeing Zhao Chen about to ask, the little girl went on, "Of course, the thing I ask of you, you may refuse. But if you refuse it now, you will regret it."
So saying, this time the little girl cut the communication without a word more.
Which left Zhao Chen with the feeling of having been paid back.
"Commander, the calculation is done. That T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership is in high likelihood at this position!" Little Dragon Girl told Zhao Chen a set of coordinates at once.
Zhao Chen set them against the coordinates the Machine Race little girl had given.
In the main there was no great difference between them.
It seemed this T5 Leviathan-Shaman-class Hive Mothership was at that very position!