Guan Tongtong's head was caught and pressed down; her two hands worked away in their excitement, for all the world like churning boat-oars.
"Lord Commander, don't be shy now… come… let this young miss steal a few kisses first…" Guan Tongtong's mood was excited to a degree beyond describing.
"Ahem, ahem… by the look of it, this mental state has recovered quite nicely." At this point, a female voice sounded off to the side, most ill-timed.
Wasn't this paradise?
Why should there be someone else's voice?
Guan Tongtong turned her head and looked to one side, only to see three women-soldiers dressed in white medical uniforms looking at her with a kind of odd, peculiar gaze. At this point, a trace of bad premonition rose up in Guan Tongtong's heart.
"This… where is this?"
"This is 'Recovery Ship No. 1'; we are the medical personnel in charge of your recovery phase." one medic woman-soldier said.
Guan Tongtong was dumbfounded; her body slumped down all at once into a sitting position on the sickbed. She looked at the Zhao Chen before her, unable to believe it, and murmured to herself, "But… but haven't I already died…"
As she spoke, Guan Tongtong straight off lifted a hand and gave herself a slap. Clutching her somewhat red and swollen cheek, she drew in a cold breath.
It really did hurt!
"This isn't a dream?" Guan Tongtong was utterly dumbfounded.
"You've only just now awakened; your body's condition is still not too stable. Put on some clothes first, or you'll easily catch a chill," Zhao Chen said from the side.
Guan Tongtong was taken aback; she lowered her head, and in one stroke her whole face flushed crimson.
Half a minute later.
Guan Tongtong had shrunk half her head into the quilt.
Too mortifying!
Quite simply too mortifying!
Right now she wished she really had just died and been done with it. To have, of all things, before the very face of the Commander, spoken words so brazen and lewd — and to have done… that…
"Can you recall your last memory a moment?" Zhao Chen sat by the bedside and inquired.
Guan Tongtong calmed her emotions, and softly recounted the last fragment of her memory. It was the defense battle at the Snake-Sovereign Fortress of the Reef Star Region's Snake-folk system…
"Lord Commander… I plainly… remember I didn't make it in time to evacuate the T2 Black Rhino I served aboard; how is it I've appeared here again?" Guan Tongtong looked at Zhao Chen in bafflement. But in the instant her eyes met Zhao Chen's, she hurriedly withdrew her gaze once more. Those things she'd done just now were, after all, still playing ceaselessly over in her mind; by all estimates she'd never forget them in this whole life.
"What I'm about to say to you next concerns the Owl Dragon Fleet's current highest level of secrecy. You must guarantee that you'll uphold the highest-level rules of confidentiality," Zhao Chen said gravely.
Guan Tongtong nodded in understanding. As a crew member of the Owl Dragon Fleet, one of the things they studied before entering service was, precisely, the rules of confidentiality; for matters of differing secrecy levels, they had to make correspondingly differing responses.
"You did indeed already give your life — half a day ago, in the Reef Star Region's Snake-folk system, in the Snake-Sovereign Fortress defense battle. The T2 Black Rhino No. 077 you were aboard was destroyed by an enemy ship and fell. You were one of the names on the roster of the fallen. But now, you've been revived. Our Owl Dragon Fleet has a black-tech; just what it is, exactly, I won't explain too much to you. In sum, it can revive you. And this, too, is why you've appeared here," Zhao Chen answered.
These words, Zhao Chen didn't conceal from the medical personnel behind him. This was something they were bound to learn sooner or later. The faces of the medical personnel were, for a stretch of time, filled with disbelief — but the caliber befitting Owl Dragon women-soldiers let them quickly master their emotions, their expressions restoring to as before.
"Revived…" Guan Tongtong was quite astonished, but quickly digested this matter too. For, after all, a conceit like "revival" was, in the interstellar age, no novel term at all; it was merely that, up to now, no one had brought this technology to pass, that was all. And so, upon hearing this, their degree of acceptance was, all the same, rather high.
Guan Tongtong at once asked the one matter she cared about most. "Then… then can I still return to serve in the Owl Dragon Fleet?" Set against her own life and death, what Guan Tongtong cared about most was, still, whether she could return to the Owl Dragon Fleet.
"The full recovery of your body still needs half a month's time; within this stretch of time, so long as you can pass the relevant physical and psychological examinations, you can return to the Owl Dragon Fleet. But because this technology of 'revival' is still in a classified phase, you cannot divulge it to anyone; and at the same time, we'll conceal your former identity — you'll be slotted into another interstellar warship in the identity of a 'new crew member.' On the premise that this technology has not been made public, you cannot meet or make contact with any friend you knew before. Which is to say, you'll vanish from your former 'world.'"
Zhao Chen said gravely, "But I can guarantee to you that this life of 'vanishing' won't be too long. 10 years! At the very most 10 years — so long as our Owl Dragon Fleet possesses strength enough, then you 'revived' ones' identities need no longer be hidden."
"Lord Commander, I understand. I'm willing to obey this order. I was already a dead person to begin with; now I have not only a chance to live once more, but can carry on my life in the Owl Dragon Fleet besides — this is already the greatest fortune of mine." An expression of happiness surfaced on Guan Tongtong's face.
"But there's one more point you must bear in mind. Though you've come to know of this matter of revival, you must on no account hold any thought of making light of your own life. This technology has, besides, a great many 'drawbacks,' and there exist, too, certain risks — and so you must treat each single life of yours as your one and only life!" Zhao Chen admonished. So as to keep these revived crew members from developing any notion of making light of life, Zhao Chen meant to give them a preventive inoculation.
It was just at this point that a shriek came from the room next door.
"So hot… so hot… so hot!"
"Guan Tongtong, you rest well first. I'll be awaiting the day you return to the Owl Dragon Fleet." Having enjoined this one line, Zhao Chen strode swiftly toward the sickroom next door.
At the very moment he walked into the sickroom, he saw the two crew members marked at the yellow level shuddering ceaselessly, at this moment, upon their sickbeds, giving out, at the same time, wails and sounds of agony.
"It hurts so much! It hurts so much…" One of them, a woman-soldier of a mere 18 years, was already streaming with tears, her expression somewhat on the verge of collapse.
"Quick, inject the sedative! Help hold them down!" the medical personnel shouted.
Zhao Chen went up of his own accord, and, one in each arm, gathered the two of them into his embrace.
"Don't be afraid! The Commander's here! The Commander's right here!"
Suddenly, a slight, stinging pain came from Zhao Chen's shoulder. The woman-soldier on his left hand, who'd been crying "so hot," had, at this moment, directly bitten down upon Zhao Chen's shoulder; blood had already seeped out through his clothes. The woman-soldier on the other side, for her part, was pummeling at Zhao Chen without cease — the movements of her pummeling gradually slowing, and then quieting down.
"Lord Commander… you're bleeding…" the medical personnel at his side said with concern.
"I'm fine." Zhao Chen looked with a tender ache at the women-soldiers in his arms; as for the wound on his shoulder, it was, in fact, merely a scrape of the skin, and at the very instant the woman-soldier let go of her bite, it restored itself to as before.