A month slipped by in a blink.
Zhao Chen's build of the T2 Iron-Hammer-class Heavy Interstellar Industrial Ship was better than half done.
"Looks like from here on I'd best find some crew who know shipbuilding; otherwise, doing all this work myself, I'll work myself to death sooner or later." Zhao Chen, his face smeared with oil, looked at the new ship before him.
He laughed. "Brother — once I've got you, my workload won't be near so brutal."
"Um… Captain…"
Just then a soft, gentle woman's voice came from behind Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen turned — and his eyes couldn't help but light up.
A crisp, pure-white military-cut uniform, its hem a short skirt cut to just above the knee, white long socks on the calves.
And, because she was a succubus, holes had been left specially at the seat of the skirt and the back of the top, so that a succubus's tail and little wings could come through.
The already alluring succubus, now wearing this outfit—
—had Zhao Chen tasting, truly and fully, what was meant by "uniform temptation"!
And in his heart he thanked his little sister!
For this was exactly the ship uniform his sister Zhao Wan'er had designed and ordered. Given the special nature of Zhao Chen's fleet, the cut of the ship uniform wasn't fixed; only the fabric and the general style were set, so that anyone seeing it would know at a glance the outfits were all of one line.
And according to the wearer's particular figure and features, some variations could be made.
For Zhao Chen's soldiers were, after all, either beast-folk or succubi.
"Captain?" Lilith called to Zhao Chen again.
Only then did Zhao Chen come to himself, and, realizing he'd rather lost his composure just now, hurried to feign calm and ask, "Was there something you came to see me about?"
"The material you had us study earlier, we've all finished studying it. May I ask — when does the assessment begin?" Lilith asked.
Only then did Zhao Chen recall the matter he'd charged them with a month ago. "Today, then. Have all the succubi muster in the ship's meeting room."
"Yes," Lilith answered.
Just as Lilith left, Charlotte appeared.
Charlotte had in fact reached this place aboard Blizzard Zero back in the first week of October.
Lilith gave Charlotte a greeting and a bow before leaving; the two of them had met several times over this stretch, and perhaps because of the likeness in their fates, they'd taken to one another and quickly become good friends.
"I can see the succubi have grown used to life here," Charlotte said, coming to Zhao Chen's side — the two of them now as easy together as old friends.
"Well? Are you satisfied with an arrangement like this?" Zhao Chen asked, while looking Charlotte's military-cut uniform up and down.
Because Charlotte was deputy captain, her uniform differed in some details, though on the whole it was much the same — likewise a white top and white short skirt with white long socks.
But worn on Lilith it carried an air of allure, while worn on Charlotte it was every inch a dashing, martial lady-general.
Two wholly different sorts of visual impact.
"There's rumor enough that the succubi's innate gifts run to strong learning and decent management. But you know as well as I — what everyone fixes their eyes on is their bodies; near enough no one's ever put those gifts to the test. I'd guess you're the only one who'd recruit the succubus race to serve as his interstellar soldiers. Were the outside world to learn of it, they'd surely say you were squandering heaven's own treasure." Charlotte teased.
Zhao Chen laughed. "To let them show their worth in the posts that suit them — that's what truly makes them worth their price!"
Charlotte looked at the T2 Iron-Hammer-class Heavy Interstellar Industrial Ship Zhao Chen was building. "This interstellar industrial ship of yours is nearly done, isn't it?"
"A month at the most and it'll be complete. Over this coming while, keep an eye out — buy a batch of beast-folk soldiers who've worked in shipbuilding and repair; same requirement as before, they must be female," Zhao Chen said.
"I'm beginning to wonder if you really do have some peculiar taste. Come to think of it, it is strange — several hundred women aboard our ship, and if not each an immortal beauty, then at least fair enough to look at; and don't you humans quite fancy beast-folk women anyway — what is it you call us… beast-eared girls?" Charlotte eyed him up and down doubtfully.
Zhao Chen said gravely, "Please — we've known each other three or four months now. What sort of man I am, surely you know by now."
Charlotte suddenly leaned in and murmured by Zhao Chen's ear, "Captain, sir — you couldn't have some sort of, ah, trouble with your body, could you?"
Zhao Chen stopped short, then flared up on the instant. "What do you mean, trouble with my body! I'll tell you what — if you've got the nerve, come to my quarters tonight, and I'll show you just what a live wire I am!"
At Zhao Chen's coarse joke Charlotte took no offense; she'd been a captain before, after all, with a pack of big rough beast-folk men under her — what crude talk hadn't she heard?
But to truly go and seduce Zhao Chen — for that she wasn't yet prepared.
"To business, then. Building this interstellar industrial ship — does it mean you intend to go on building a great many ships in the days ahead?" Charlotte turned the thread of the talk.
Zhao Chen nodded. "My aim for now is to build up an interstellar fleet first."
"Then there are a few matters to settle. Right now we have two ships; soon it'll be three. By then we'll need to fix on a name for ourselves — do we call ourselves the Owl Dragon Fleet, after your fief's title, or take some other name? And our fleet crest hasn't been decided yet either," Charlotte said.
Hearing all this from Charlotte, Zhao Chen thought it over, and it was true enough.
The fleet's uniform was settled now; a few other things needed rounding out as well.
"The fleet's name will be the Owl Dragon Fleet; and the fleet crest… we'll carry on the Owl Dragon crest my great-grandfather's generation of the Zhao family once used." So saying, Zhao Chen dug out a dragon-patterned crest from his handheld terminal.
The Owl Dragon Fleet; the Owl Dragon crest.
"Then from now on we'll call ourselves the Owl Dragon Fleet." Charlotte committed that Owl Dragon crest to memory, meaning to have it painted onto the hulls once she got back.
Charlotte went on, "There's one more matter. Though we have only the two ships now— —the arrangement of a fleet flagship is something I think you ought to give some thought to."
The fleet flagship — this meant the head ship of a fleet, the most important vessel of all.
"The flagship we'll leave unfixed for now; we have hardly any ships as it is," Zhao Chen said. In truth he'd long had a notion for the flagship.
It was that T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruiser lying in his system warehouse!
The only pity was that even now he could not yet let it see the light of day.
But Zhao Chen had already decided: the Owl Dragon Fleet's first flagship must be a T3 ship!
To speak plainly, within the Owl Dragon Star System the words "Owl Dragon Fleet" had become a fairly rare thing to hear.
Ever since the Zhao family's decline, the family ships within the fief had never again styled themselves the Owl Dragon Fleet — and so that crest, too, had fallen quiet.
Zhao Chen gazed at this crest, and couldn't help but think of the Zhao family's grandfather of old, who through 1,000 trials and hardships had won his merit and his standing, and so made the Zhao family what it was.
He would make this Owl Dragon crest shine once more across the Starlight Empire.
And send the name of the Owl Dragon Fleet ringing across the sea of stars!