Chief Bajin, his expression somewhat dazed, looked at the "child" before him, and made to remove the helmet from her head.
"Aiya… aiya… Commander, sir, this… this helmet… won't come off…" The "child" clutched the helmet on her head with both hands, tugging for all the world like someone pulling up a radish — but no amount of force did any good.
Zhao Chen was rather at a loss for words. Surely this creature hadn't spent the whole of her wits and talent on the technical side of things? No, that didn't add up either — this exoskeleton combat armor was a product of technology too, after all.
Zhao Chen reached over and pressed a button on Annie's neck, and the whole helmet at the head split open of itself, revealing a big head.
"An… Annie! It really is Annie!" Chief Bajin came forward, swaying, both hands trembling. Chief Bajin, who hadn't shed a single tear even in a battle he'd known must end in death, was now streaming with them.
"Dad!" Annie, too, looked at her father with feeling — the kin she'd thought she'd never see again this life, now appearing before her once more. Stirred, she made to fling herself at her father. And the next second, she went straight down in a face-plant.
"Cough, cough…?" Annie spat out the dirt in her mouth and looked, thoroughly wretched, at her own two legs — still trembling and refusing to obey after the high-altitude jump. She shot the Commander a resentful glance.
Zhao Chen looked away. This was no fault of his. Why, the first time he himself had landed in this fashion, his legs hadn't gone weak at all.
"Annie, are you all right!" Chief Bajin closed the distance in two quick strides and helped up this eldest daughter he'd pined for these six months and more.
"I'm fine — just went a bit weak in the legs from the landing." Annie got to her feet, smiling ruefully.
Chief Bajin looked Annie up and down, and pinched her chubby little face. "Annie, I thought for certain these six months out there must have been very hard on you — so how is it you've actually gotten plumper?"
With her five meals a day in that ship's restaurant, every one of them triple anyone else's portion, it would've been a wonder if she hadn't put on weight. Come to think of it, it was odd — eating those portions, Annie had only rounded out a little. That constitution had left no few of the women crew envious.
Zhao Chen watched this reunited father and daughter from the side. Loath as he was to interrupt the joy of their long-parted reunion, given the present situation Zhao Chen stepped forward and said, "Chief Bajin, the joy of a father-daughter reunion may have to be set aside for now. First we need to deal with the matter at hand. Many of your dwarf people are still under the Fire Salamander clan's oppression!"
Chief Bajin wiped away the tears on his face and looked at this human man dropped from the heavens. "Might I ask who you are, sir?"
"Let me introduce him — this is Commander Zhao Chen of our Owl Dragon Fleet; it was he who saved me…" Annie gave a brief account of everything she'd been through.
Hearing that it was Zhao Chen who'd bought Annie from a slave trader, Chief Bajin was overjoyed, and hastily said, "Thank you so very much, Commander."
"Let's talk of the business at hand. Right now I need you to give me the locations of all the dwarf survivors; I'll send mecha units and interstellar drones, bit by bit, to rescue them. At the same time, I need you to contact those dwarves however you can — safety first. If any have already been surrounded and threatened by the Fire Salamanders, they may surrender for the time being; I'll rescue them!" As he said those last words, Zhao Chen's expression was very grave.
Looking at the bodies of the dwarf warriors who'd fought and fallen all around, his heart was full of fury. He might have laid eyes on the Fire Salamander clan for the first time only just now, but Zhao Chen's impression of them had already sunk to the very bottom. These accursed lizards had gone and slaughtered his future technical staff! And every last one of them was a treasure, mind you.
"Understood — I'll see to passing the word down!" Chief Bajin nodded again and again, then reminded him cautiously, "That is… Commander, sir, the Fire Salamander fleet is not to be taken lightly. They have a T3 Arkham-class Medium Interstellar Battleship. It was on the strength of this T3 warship that they annihilated our dwarf fleet in so short a time."
Zhao Chen raised his head and looked at the cloud layer overhead — punched, as it seemed, with a hole — that was the direction in which the T3 Blizzard had left just now.
"That T3 Arkham will soon be history."
Chief Bajin was taken aback. He asked his daughter beside him in a low voice, "Annie… this fleet commander of yours — how many warships did he bring this time?"
Annie held up one finger.
"100?" Chief Bajin felt considerably more at ease. If it was 100, then with that T3 interstellar battlecruiser leading them just now, there shouldn't be much of a problem.
Annie shook her head.
"10?" Chief Bajin knit his brow slightly. 10 wasn't unacceptable either — they'd all be high-quality warships, surely.
Annie shook her head again, and said something that left her father dumbstruck. "One. Just that T3 Blizzard from before."
"One?" Chief Bajin's eyes went wide.
"Dad, don't you go underestimating the Commander's T3 warship — it's super, super amazing!" Annie planted both hands on her hips, for all the world as if she'd built that warship herself.
"Charlotte, everything all right on your end?" Zhao Chen had kept a comm link with Charlotte on the T3 Blizzard's bridge.
"Rest easy, Commander. These fellows aren't even enough to fill the gaps in my teeth." Charlotte's boundlessly confident voice came through.
With those words from Charlotte, Zhao Chen was naturally set at ease. And what he had to do next was poach some employees. Zhao Chen looked at Chief Bajin with a smile, eyes narrowing nearly to slits. Then he looked again at the dwarf warriors behind Chief Bajin — short in stature, every one, yet each of them sturdy and strong.
T3 Blizzard — Bridge
Charlotte stood before the captain's chair where Commander Zhao Chen usually sat; before her was a holographic display of the whole battlefield. One warship, facing 300 or 400. The Fire Salamander fleet had completed its muster. From a god's-eye view, it was the T3 Blizzard with the planet at its back, facing the Fire Salamander fleet closing in in a net-like encirclement.
"Deputy Commander, the scan of the enemy fleet's ship data is complete. The enemy has one T3 warship, 57 T2 warships, and the rest are all T1 warships. The T3-grade warship is one T3 Arkham; the T2-grade warships are…" Aili was reporting the enemy fleet's data beside her.
But Charlotte cut off the rest of Aili's words; her eyes were fixed only on that T3 Arkham.
"Apart from that T3 warship, the names of the other ships don't matter. They're nothing but a pile of scrap iron," Charlotte said coldly.