"Rice every meal…" Zhao Chen's brow furrowed a fraction.
The light in some of the crewwomen's eyes began to dim.
Zhao Chen shook his head. "Rice at every single meal is a bit much — because we can have congee and bread in the mornings, noodles and such at midday, and rice or some other fare in the evenings."
Hearing the captain say this, the crewwomen whose eyes had dimmed were, in an instant, restored as though to heaven itself.
"All right, keep eating, all of you. I'll go see to some other business first." Zhao Chen, seeing the joy the crewwomen were struggling to hold in, tactfully took his leave of the dining hall.
The moment he stepped out, he could hear the laughter and the cries of delight that rose up behind him.
"Good heavens… we can actually eat rice at every meal, every single day!"
"Is the captain having us on? How can this be… why, even our old fief lord's fleet never had treatment like this!"
"I don't think the captain would lie to us. Just look at the food he gave us just now! It's the best I've eaten in my whole life."
"Would the captain even need to lie to us? We're slaves he bought — even if he gave us none of this, wouldn't we still have to work for him, obedient as you please?"
The corners of Zhao Chen's mouth curled upward. This was exactly what he wanted.
What he wanted was not a lifeless, dead-spirited slave fleet, but a fleet with morale and the will to fight — an elite fleet!
True, in this age the technology of the ships themselves outweighed, to a certain degree, the morale of the crew aboard them.
But at the same tier, a fleet with morale would always be the stronger.
And a fleet with morale could work miracles!
How to have such a fleet?
Simple. Give the crew the things they wanted; fill them with hope for what lay ahead.
Do that, and anything whatever that stood in the way of that hope, anything that sought to crush it, they would regard as a mortal enemy!
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
Hurried footsteps came from behind him.
"Captain, sir — I think this decision of yours is a very ill-considered one!" Charlotte planted herself in Zhao Chen's path.
"What's the matter? I think it's splendid — everyone seems quite pleased with it, don't they?" Zhao Chen shrugged.
Charlotte said gravely, "I'm grateful you're improving the crew's meal standard. But a standard of 0.3 star coins per person per day — do you have any idea what that means!"
"I can manage that much arithmetic. 10 star coins a month; and with 100 crew as we have now, that comes to a monthly outlay of 1,000 star coins," Zhao Chen said calmly.
Charlotte spoke in dead earnest. "1,000 star coins! Do you know how many energy blocks that could buy, how much in military supplies, how many missiles, how many rounds of ammunition!"
Zhao Chen looked at Charlotte with a smile. "Finished?"
Charlotte went on, "You can improve everyone's meals; I think 0.1 a day, or even 0.05, would do well enough. And there's no need to give up artificial food entirely, either."
Zhao Chen waited for Charlotte's words to fall, then said with a smile, "I know what it is you're worried about. But to my mind, none of that matters as much as everyone being happy and content. Before, they were a pack of lifeless, dead-spirited slaves. But do you know what it was I just saw in them? Hope! What I want is a fleet with hope — not a fleet like so many walking corpses. All right, then; on the matter of welfare and the meal standard, there's nothing to discuss. This is the captain's order. It will not change, and it will not be lowered — and in the future, should the need arise, it will even be raised, step by step! If a captain can't so much as fill his own crew's bellies, then he's no fit captain at all."
As he spoke, Zhao Chen suddenly reached out and brushed a finger across the corner of Charlotte's mouth.
Charlotte gave a start. She saw a single grain of rice on Zhao Chen's fingertip — and then saw him, of all things, pop that grain into his own mouth.
"In a while, have the logistics people come for a meeting. We'll talk through exactly how much in living supplies to lay in, and the menu for the ship's dining hall going forward," His piece said, Zhao Chen paid no mind to the flushed-cheeked Charlotte and had already walked off into the distance.
Thump, thump, thump.
It was a good while before Charlotte came back to herself, a hand pressed over her heart.
The captain's gesture just now had truly plucked at her heartstrings.
Above all his unshakable insistence on setting that "extravagant" meal standard left her with a feeling inside she couldn't name, couldn't put into words.
……
"The menu's settled, then; from now on you'll provide the crew's meals according to it. Since we'll be setting off on the long voyage in a few days, I'll lay in a batch of living supplies and military supplies. Charlotte, you're in charge of drawing me up a detailed inventory. When it's ready I'll have someone deliver all the living and military supplies we need. You needn't concern yourself over the funds — just calculate it all by Blizzard Zero's actual needs." Zhao Chen looked round at the several senior crewwomen gathered for the meeting.
"O… of course," Charlotte answered — but from the moment she'd walked into this room, she hadn't once met Zhao Chen's eyes.
"You in logistics can start getting ready. I'll order a batch of food ingredients first, to be delivered within three hours. Our new meal standard starts from tonight's dinner," Zhao Chen said.
"Yes!" The logistics crewwomen were, every one of them, brimming with high spirits, and filed out of the meeting room.
"Ah… listen…" Zhao Chen looked toward Charlotte.
But before Zhao Chen could get a word out, Charlotte left one line behind and hurried off. "I'll go and tally up the living and military supplies we'll need."
Zhao Chen was baffled. Why did his deputy captain seem to be acting rather strangely?
That evening.
Word passed from one to 20 to 100, and news of the ship dining hall's changed menu soon reached every post aboard.
Earlier they'd all assumed the captain's policies would take a good while to be put into effect.
Never did they imagine that a thing said at noon would already be changed by evening.
Before long, crewwomen who weren't on watch came swarming to the dining hall.
The dining hall now was already a wholly different place from before; even its very arrangement had been altered somewhat.
What had been a ration-issue system had now been changed to a self-select one.
Before, all three daily meals had been fixed to a set menu, with only one or two choices of food at any given time — nearly all of it artificial food, divided into "Set A" and "Set B" and the like, the portions fixed and never a scrap more.
Now it was another matter entirely.
Beyond the food laid out for the choosing in the display cases, one could also order directly from the kitchen, picking out whatever one wanted to eat, and the kitchen would make it fresh on the spot.
The food chosen had, of course, to be on the menu, and its unit price ran a touch higher.
The breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus had each been expanded to a dozen-odd categories.
And each crewwoman's meal allowance had likewise been set at 10 star coins a month.
Every crewwoman dining could order freely — so long as, over the course of a month, she didn't run past that allowance, and so long as there was no wasting of food.
"There's meat, too!" One crewwoman pointed at a plate of pork strips stir-fried with vegetables, her eyes gone stock-still.
That particular dish ran a bit pricey, worth about three days of the meal standard. But with a little thrift here and there in the ordinary run of things, meat once a week was no trouble at all.
"Ah… excuse me, can I order now?" one crewwoman asked, timid and yet unable to wait.
"Of course you can — anything lit up on the board, and anything laid out in the display cases, you can order." The head chef came out in person to say so.
This beast-folk head chef had once served as a cook for a certain beast-folk lord and had a real gift for it; aboard Blizzard Zero, she'd taken the post of logistics head chef.
"Give me a rice bowl with topping!"
"I want a meat cutlet!"
"Just give me some rice and a vegetable dish!"
"I'll have the beef noodles!"