The hundred members left to the Eighteenth Squadron sat idly in their cockpits.
Some had even set autopilot and fallen to chatting privately with their fellows.
"Heh-heh-heh, getting into the Eighteenth Squadron was hitting the jackpot!"
"Who'd say otherwise? Look at our losses since the squadron was raised. Better than any squadron there is! With a leader like that, I'd put my life in his hands without a thought."
"Our leader's a truly good man; what he cares about most is our lives."
"That's so. Look how ghastly it is over on that side of the field. Our own losses this time were heavy, nearly four hundred brothers, and only a hundred-odd left. But that's the best of any of them. I hear the First Group has had five squadrons wiped out, and even their second elite squadron is down to one in ten."
While they chatted,
a video window popped up.
"Who's calling me at a time like this?"
He opened it, puzzled.
A familiar figure appeared, but the background was not quite right.
"Old Pan, look where we are." Several people were on the other side, all of them Eighteenth Squadron members.
The background seemed to be a fighter's cabin, but larger.
"Where… are you?" Old Pan looked at the scene his brothers were in.
"Heh-heh. The leader arranged this for us especially. Our fighters were too badly damaged to keep flying. So he had us pulled out to a supply transport. Now we can rest properly, and enjoy good food besides." Those on the other side held up drinks and food.
That left the watchers full of envy.
"Damn you lot!" Old Pan and the others laughed and swore.
Then someone with sharp eyes,
noticed something wrong.
"Hey, isn't that the leader's fighter? He's left the escort formation and is flying over that way."
Someone had noticed that the leader's craft, always among the squadron's, had suddenly left them and was heading off into the distance.
"So it is. And look over there. A lot of fighters are gathering in the direction the leader's flying."
"What's going on?"
Some wondered, some were at a loss, some were worried.
A few bolder ones tried to contact the leader.
But he could not be reached,
which raised their suspicions further.
If the leader could not be reached, then the deputy.
"Deputy Leader Li. Why has our leader left the formation?" someone asked him directly.
"The leader has a… task of his own. Command of the Eighteenth Squadron he has handed to… me. We need only keep patrolling here." Deputy Leader Li's voice was somewhat odd, and even choked.
Someone attentive sensed that something was wrong.
And used his name outright: "Li, what is going on? Don't you hide it from us!"
Deputy Leader Li mastered himself and said sternly, "It is the leader's order; you have no right to question it."
At Deputy Leader Li's anger,
no one on the channel spoke again.
They supposed the matter had been covered over.
But soon a man's angry voice rang out.
"Li Da! Our leader has gone to intercept the enemy's fleet reinforcements, and you kept it from us!"
At these words,
the Eighteenth Squadron's channel seemed to explode.
Intercept the enemy's fleet reinforcements?
At once everyone was talking.
They all pressed the man who had let it out.
That man was one of the Eighteenth Squadron's deputy leaders too, though lower in grade than Deputy Leader Li Da.
But to be a deputy at all he was a veteran, and naturally had his connections.
He had just contacted some squadron leaders.
And got the news that way.
Nor did he hide it now; he told them all outright.
Squadron Leader Zhao Chen was to lead a million fighters and hold off thirty thousand enemy warships for half an hour!
"What? A million fighters, to hold thirty thousand warships!"
"Before, tens of millions of fighters barely broke their warship line, and only thanks to our leader's efforts. And it still cost over a million craft. And now our leader is to hold thirty thousand warships with a million fighters, for half an hour! That's sending our leader to his death!"
"Then why did the leader leave us here?"
Some questioned this deadly task.
Others wondered why the leader had gone while the Eighteenth Squadron stayed.
Deputy Leader Li knew it could not be hidden any longer.
He clenched his fists and said through his teeth, "The General gave our leader this task himself. Could our leader refuse?"
At this they were silent.
A task handed down by a general indeed leaves no chance of refusal.
"Our leader took the task, but he set the General one condition. That… our Eighteenth Squadron takes no part in it." As Deputy Leader Li said it, his voice choked.
The channel fell dead silent; a channel only, yet it seemed filled with a bone-deep chill.
At last one man spoke, unsteadily.
"The leader… is trading his own life… for ours…"
As they saw it, a million fighters against thirty thousand warships was a certain death!
Was that not the leader trading himself for them?
"The leader said it. He promised us. That he would bring us back. So you will all stay right here!" Blood had come to the corner of Deputy Leader Li's mouth, from biting down too hard.
Suddenly!
One fighter among the Eighteenth Squadron turned and set off after the leader's craft.
"Old Liu! What are you doing! Leaving formation without orders, do you know that means a court-martial!" Deputy Leader Li saw the craft and knew at once it was the veteran who had let out the truth.
"I'm a soldier of the Eighteenth Squadron. I've followed the leader only a month. But how he has treated me, I know. Without him, my life would have been gone in the fighting before. I fear death; I want to go home. But I can't watch the leader go into danger while I hide back here like a coward. Even if I got home alive. I'd have no face to go on living! The leader said he'd bring us back."
Old Liu's voice choked too.
A man nearly forty, and now his old face was streaming with tears.
"If I don't follow the leader, I… won't remember the way home!"