Soon the major brought Zhao Chen to the door of a single berth.
"These are your quarters. You have twelve hours' rest from now. In that time you may rest in your room, or go to the starship's canteen to eat, and so on. Your identity details have been updated and can be used aboard this starship. Also, a reward has been paid into your identity card. The equivalent of half a year's pay for a master sergeant. The brigadier general arranged it himself; he said that since he could not raise you to officer's rank, he would pay you a little more by way of compensation. In twelve hours someone will come to take you to your new post. In the meantime. Someone will bring you a new uniform as well. You're one of ours now, so stop wearing that disgraceful outfit." There was scorn in the major's voice, and he looked at the uniform Zhao Chen wore with disdain.
Only now did Zhao Chen notice.
Their uniforms were the same color as his, but there were no small differences.
First, the color was the same but Zhao Chen's was lighter, which made it look very cheap.
And there was less trim on it as well.
Because Zhao Chen had not in fact been a true soldier of the interstellar fleet, but part of the ground-based forces.
In the military, an interstellar soldier naturally ranked above a ground-based one,
which bred a chain of contempt.
That was part of why the major before him looked down on Zhao Chen.
But most likely there was another reason: envy that the brigadier general thought so much of him.
In a mere moment he had gone from a grade-six sergeant straight to a grade-eight master sergeant.
Two grades at once.
For the major himself, that had taken two years.
This lad had taken a little over an hour.
And had the brigadier general's authority been enough, the lad might well have been a warrant officer or a second lieutenant.
Only a few grades below him.
The thought left him rather sore.
Having given his instructions, the major turned and left.
Zhao Chen paid no mind to the ways of getting on in this military.
He went into his single berth.
A single berth it might be, but the space was not large.
Only a bedroom and a private bathroom.
That was all.
But aboard a starship it counted as good quarters.
And had Zhao Chen's post not been interstellar fighter pilot.
Even as a master sergeant he would not have rated a single berth.
Zhao Chen went first into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror.
There was, in fact, some likeness to himself.
But more like himself before his enhancement.
Younger, softer, but the eyes were wholly different.
Before others just now, Zhao Chen had kept his head down as much as he could.
The eyes could be disguised, but there was no small risk of giving himself away.
When it came to acting, Zhao Chen still reckoned himself no match for Lilith.
Whatever part she played, she played it perfectly.
Even playing an empress, the air in her eyes was such that a true empress before her would have felt herself outdone.
Zhao Chen splashed water on his face.
Then threw himself on the bed.
Too much had happened today.
He needed a quiet place now to put his thoughts in order.
By the look of things,
this was most likely no dream.
And even if it were, for now he could only treat it as reality.
That being so,
how had he come to this world?
First, the body was not his.
But the consciousness and the soul were.
Which amounted to a kind of crossing over…
That was much like Zhao Chen's first crossing.
But this crossing was somewhat special.
Before it, what Zhao Chen had faced was three-dimensional space collapsing into two.
Might it be that this phenomenon had brought about his present state?
"I wonder whether the other crew of Seraph Ballista No. 1 are safe." Thinking of Seraph Ballista No. 1, Zhao Chen sighed.
What happened to Seraph-Ballista-class Interstellar Long-Range Hunter-Killer Ship No. 1, no one could have foreseen.
Nor had anyone imagined the catastrophe of three-dimensional space collapsing into two.
Zhao Chen went on thinking about his present state.
This was a universe wholly strange to him.
Its technological civilization was much like his own world's.
Only he did not know its strength, nor what system of powers this world had.
That part of his memory was far from complete.
He could look it up on the network!
Zhao Chen sat up at once, raised his hand and opened a network interface.
But he did not look up what he wanted straight away; first he wrote a small plug-in.
The plug-in would leave no trace of what he did next.
That way he would rouse no suspicion.
After all, if someone were watching him and found what he was looking up, a train of troubles would be hard to avoid.
With the preparation done,
Zhao Chen began gathering 'intelligence'.
First, this universe too was ruled by a single power, but not by dictatorship,
rather by an elected council.
This power was called the Star Alliance, in full the Grand Alliance of the Universe's Interstellar Races.
The Star Alliance's upper body was the Star Alliance Council, in which each interstellar race held a number of seats according to what it had contributed to the Alliance.
Every ten years a Star Alliance Leader was elected.
And in these last ten years the Star Alliance had developed swiftly; in this decade it had broken through to T6 technology and begun moving toward T7.
But in this decade, too, a threat had appeared.
Zhao Chen found, to his surprise,
that in the chronicle of this Star Alliance universe,
the past ten years were far more eventful than the centuries and millennia before them.
And all of it was bound up with this Star Alliance Leader.
First, this Leader's rise was beyond imagining.
Previous Leaders had nearly all been men put forward by the old great powers; after all, it required more than half the Council's members voting in favor,
which took vast connections and wealth.
In this respect, this Leader had them and had them not: to say he had no backing was wrong, for he was a scion of a great family after all.
For his standing was peculiar.
He was the bastard son, born outside, of the ruler of a certain old family.
So, though he carried an old family's blood, no one thought anything of this bastard.
Yet in these ten years,
this bastard had, by iron and blood, fought his way to the top,
not only taking hold of his own old family on the strength of his bastard birth, but bringing other family powers under his control as well,
and in the end becoming this term's Star Alliance Leader.
A journey of reversal worthy of the name!