"The group's affairs I leave in your charge. Though we have no combat mission for the time being. Training must not fall off. Above all this great draft of new men, whose joining with our people must be hurried forward."
"Other groups, and the fighter groups aboard the other carriers, have said before that they wished to learn the Eighteenth Group's training methods. I have arranged for my own people to go to your groups severally and instruct. They will teach you every skill and tactic they have learned from me."
"Should anything unexpected arise in that time, proceed by the emergency plan I drew up before; whether I am here or not, so long as you can show what your training has made of you. There should be no difficulty whatever."
When Zhao Chen had given out the last of his instructions, he boarded an interstellar cruise liner with the General.
Zhao Chen stood in the passage and looked through the port at those fellows of his, still watching him from the berth.
And did not leave it for a long while.
"It seems they truly revere you." The General stood beside him with his arms folded, a trace of envy in his eyes.
Envy, as it seemed, that Zhao Chen should have such a bond with those under him.
"It may be so," Zhao Chen said mildly.
He did not know how much faith these people had in him; he only did what he ought to do.
Though he had come to this world against his will, and taken up this post.
Since he held the post, and these men followed him, he must naturally answer for them!
So it had been in the Owl Dragon at the first, and so it was now.
Lilith had once told him, at his ear, that he was a man with too heavy a sense of responsibility.
In the common way he looked like a careless sort who handed all his work off; but when he was needed, he was forever the one standing tallest of all.
"But I have heard that since you were made supreme commander of all my fleet's interstellar fighters. You handed the authority of every carrier's flight command straight down. And held one plain conference by screen, ten minutes from first to last. Of the business of the other groups aboard our own mother ship you have asked nothing. And even in your own Eighteenth Group, near enough every task has been thrown to your subordinates." The General eyed Zhao Chen doubtfully.
He truly could not make the man out, whether this was idleness, and handing off all his work, or a way of training up his subordinates.
"Ahem. It is to make those subordinates familiar with the work the sooner. For the great bird cannot carry its nestlings forever; they must learn to fly at last for themselves," Zhao Chen said, putting on a look as though the thought were wholly his own.
Nor did the General ask further.
For nothing much had gone wrong so far; indeed, there was a thriving spirit in every flight group,
which at least showed that Zhao Chen's way had nothing whatever wrong with it.
But had the high men of the Owl Dragon been here, they would beyond doubt have caught a familiar taste in it.
The same trick over again.
"The banquet is to be held in the largest interstellar city behind the front. We are taking this cruise liner, and shall pick some people up along the way. It should be three to five hours before we come there. If you have nothing else to do. Shall we go and have a drink?" The General laid his hand on Zhao Chen's shoulder outright; it had the form of a question, and left Zhao Chen no room to refuse.
There was no help for it; Zhao Chen did not refuse again.
It would serve besides for getting to know this general a little.
He had followed the man near two months now.
And still knew little enough of him.
Only such trifles as could be looked up on the net.
This general was of the Song family: Song Qingshan.
In name, half brother to the present Star Alliance Leader.
And one of the very few of the Song family's direct line who had not been drawn into that civil war across the universe between the Song sons and that Song Chen.
Which was how he had lived to this day, and come by no little standing besides.
The Song family had meant at first to set him up as a lord of sorts, holding certain important resource regions.
But this General Song refused it.
General Song chose to enter the Star Alliance's forces; his ability and his gifts were both good enough.
But there is no doubting that his becoming the youngest brigadier general was owing to the Song family behind him.
Which was a thing Song Qingshan could not escape, however he might wish to.
What others thought at first sight of him was not what a promising young brigadier general he was, but that he was a son of the Song family.
Brother to the Star Alliance Leader, and such titles as those.
Only Song Qingshan's rise to major general was wholly by his own merit in this campaign, and owed nothing to the Song family.
Save that, having the Song family, such a bestowal went the more smoothly.
Soon the two came to a luxurious restaurant.
This was an interstellar cruise liner, a thing luxurious in itself.
Commonly used by the Alliance's nobility, and in wartime requisitioned for a season to carry officers.
Though it belongs among auxiliary interstellar warships, and mounts no weapon whatever.
Its speed far outruns any interstellar warship, and it has a powerful star-shield besides.
Its technology grade is T5.
But even faced with an ambush by T6 interstellar fighters, it can get clean away,
unless it should meet with a very bad case indeed.
Which is why it is the first choice for Alliance officers to travel in.
Within that luxurious shipboard restaurant,
Song Qingshan did not ask for any private room,
though he had every right to it.
He only took Zhao Chen to a seat by a window, where the sea of stars outside could be seen.
"I do not like sitting in a private room; I would rather sit outside. It makes me seem an ordinary, common man," Song Qingshan said mildly, opening the panel to order drinks.
Zhao Chen could not keep from laughing.
An ordinary, common man?
Those who serve at table here are none of them ordinary, common men.
And those who sit and eat here are every one of them of senior colonel's rank at the least.
This is called ordinary and common?
As for the drinks he was ordering, a single serving of one was worth two or three years' living for a common man.
Though to be sure, Zhao Chen's life in the Owl Dragon had been luxurious too; only he had kept it quiet.
He looked the drinks over and ordered one at random.
Just then Song Qingshan, across from him, fixed his eyes on Zhao Chen and asked: "Zhao Chen, I have looked into your background. You are of a common family merely; your parents died in an accident while you were at the military academy. You may be reckoned a class only a little above the common. Yet you can order drinks at such prices without blinking an eye. And when you handed out every award you were given to your subordinates, you did it without the least hesitation. What manner of man are you?"
So his own conduct had raised Song Qingshan's suspicions after all.
Zhao Chen turned his head aside and looked out at the sea of stars.
He said flatly: "I do not know myself. When I have seen those I cherish die before me. When I have seen those who followed me go and fight for me, and be killed, and never turn back from it. I feel that other things are of no importance whatever. It is only a string of figures. It is only a bottle of water."