Several hours of advance!
And at the last one interstellar marine battalion pressed forward to the outside of an underground city.
And when they blew the gates open with explosives and saw the sight within.
The members were somewhat astonished at it.
Blue sky and white cloud, sea and high mountain, birdsong and flowers.
Were it not for the broken walls and ruins of mechanical soldiers of every kind behind them, they would likely have supposed without thinking that they had come back to some planet.
"This is… an artificial underground city?" Someone marked the strangeness of it.
That blue sky and those white clouds overhead, and the sun, are not real.
But simulated in holography.
Were one within it, one might truly suppose oneself living upon some planet of birdsong and flowers.
"Look there, quick!" A sharp-eyed member pointed at an island in the middle of a lake at the city's center.
There one could see a vast altar of heaven, and about it several stone pillars, crystal-clear and glittering with golden particles.
Though one of them leaned askew, with cracks upon it, and was held up by certain auxiliary equipment to keep it from falling.
"We had intelligence before bidding us mind something about a Mechanical Divine Church temple.
"And when one of our special fleets attacked before, it worked some effect upon that altar.
"It seems this should be the place," the battalion commander said, his voice low.
"Then shall we go in now?" A company captain said it eagerly.
"Upon the road here we have lost near a hundred warriors.
"Though we see no armed threat within this underground city at present.
"Yet we must have a care.
"The Commander charged us expressly to have a care for two objects of the task.
"The Mechanical Prophet, and a doctor," the battalion commander said, his voice low.
"Commander! I have found, in the middle of that altar, a creature in a black cloak. Might that not be our object of battle!" A member flying a drone in to investigate cried it out.
The battalion commander looked at once at the equipment's picture; and sure enough, in the middle of that altar a figure in a black cloak sat at the altar's center.
Because of the height, his look could not be seen clearly.
"Keep your eyes upon this creature for me.
"Find means to contact the other marine battalions and ask when they can be in position.
"When the other battalions are in position.
"Then we move!" the battalion commander said, his voice low.
Five minutes later, a second interstellar marine battalion found this underground city too, at a mouth upon the other end.
The two battalions having made contact, the order was given at once to attack!
And within the underground city, battle robots came welling up one after another.
War swept over this underground city, which had been all birdsong and flowers.
Explosions, smoke and dust, flame…
The man in the black robe opened his eyes; the sight before him was by now a ruin of the fires of war.
"Do not move!"
Several voices came from beside him; and there, somehow, were several interstellar warriors come killing up about him, muzzles leveled upon him.
Should he make any movement whatever, these warriors would fire.
Though by the Commander's order they would not kill this creature at once; but a mechanism… to leave a head should answer well enough.
Yet past all expectation, this black-robed man was exceedingly meek, and made no movement whatever.
"Set your minds at rest; I… shall not flee.
"And it falls out well; I too… should like to meet that legendary… Owl Dragon Commander." A voice, mechanical to the last degree, came out of this black-robed man.
Thereafter, having fitted and implanted several prisoner devices upon this black-robed man, they escorted him away.
…………
The Dragon Emperor.
Zhao Chen's step was somewhat quick.
Behind him Lilith followed close.
"Commander, shall we not set others to question him first?" Lilith asked it with some misgiving.
Zhao Chen said, "How? This is my own starship; am I to fear he can threaten my safety? That I dare not even meet him once?
"Were that so, I should not have had him brought back.
"And it falls out well: I would see for myself how many secrets there are about this creature."
Seeing that persuasion would not answer, Lilith knew besides that this was a knot in the Commander's heart, and that he must go himself.
What she could do was only to make the course of this meeting as safe as it might be.
Very soon Zhao Chen came into a room.
Only that within this room the creature he wished to see was not to be seen.
But upon the other side of this small room was a vast pane of glass.
Through it one could see the room beyond.
And within that room was an electromagnetic cylindrical cage, with a figure held within.
Upon his neck, his wrists and his ankles were electronic collars.
Within these collars there is explosive besides; should this creature make any threatening movement, this explosive could blow through even a T4-grade starship's armor.
And the glass wall of this interrogation room stands in no danger whatever even from the bow cannon of a T4-grade interstellar battleship.
For within the glass wall there is a star-shield field.
Perhaps sensing that someone had come, this prisoner raised his head, showing that look of his that is like a man's and not a man's.
A human face — but the right eye a mechanical eye giving off a red light, and half the head a mechanical structure.
He looked at the pitch-black wall before him. "You have come?"
And thereafter that wall, black before, turned transparent.
Showing Zhao Chen and Lilith standing across from him.
"Are you the doctor? Or the Mechanical Prophet?" Zhao Chen asked it straight to the point.
The other answered, "What is a doctor? And what is a Mechanical Prophet?"
Zhao Chen's brows drew together; did this creature not mean to answer honestly?
"If you mean… the business of the Starlight Empire… that was my doing.
"If you mean… the business of the Holy Radiance Empire, that too may be said to be my doing.
"As for the Machine Race's business… in a certain sense, that has to do with me as well.
"Though I prefer that others should call me the doctor." The black-robed doctor said it.
The doctor!
Lilith marked that Zhao Chen's hand had closed into a fist.
She could not help calling to mind what had happened in the Starlight Empire's Xueyan Star Region: some tens of star systems sacrificed to the hive-race, and mutant swarms created.
And those interstellar cosmic bug-nests there is at present no way to close!
This strange creature before them is the chief author of it.
"Why did you do these things!" Zhao Chen demanded.
"Because… you are a virus… every carbon-based life is a virus…" the doctor said.
"Ha. So you are an extremist within the Machine Race? Then why have you a human body!" Zhao Chen fixed cold eyes upon him.
If this doctor were truly of the Machine Race, then Zhao Chen might take him for an extremist of the Machine Race.
But by the examination made after his taking, what is this look of his now?
For his genes show that he is a man of the human race!
And in high likelihood from some star system of the Starlight Empire.