The starship canteen.
Zhao Chen had not yet come through the main door when he heard a voice he knew.
"These… and these… and these… and these here too — anything with fish in it, bring me a portion of it!"
That white tail was swinging without a pause, the military cap was off and the beast-ears beneath it stood bolt upright, and a finger went travelling down the dishes one after another.
The next second, a hand reached from behind her and took hold of her ear.
"How is it that the first thing you do on getting back isn't to come and see me, but to go hunting for food! Is your own Commander-in-Chief worth less to you than those fish, then?"
Charlotte turned about, saw Zhao Chen putting on a show of anger, and said with her lip pushed out, "I… I was only missing our canteen's cooking, that's all."
"Weren't there interstellar transports arranged to send some food over?"
Charlotte said helplessly, "Ingredients were sent over, yes, but… there are too many soldiers of the revolutionary army. I hadn't the heart to watch every one of them eating nutrient rations. Sometimes I'd simply hand the whole lot out. And it wasn't very fresh either — the taste is nothing at all beside our own canteen's. Look, I've even grown thinner."
Charlotte wore the most pitiable and aggrieved look, for all the world as though she were the one who had been hard used.
The next moment, Zhao Chen's two hands went straight to Charlotte's waist.
And the second after that, Charlotte's feet had left the ground and she was hoisted high in the air.
The women of the crews about them who saw the scene laughed softly behind their hands, and cast looks of envy along with it.
"You have lost a few catty at that," Zhao Chen said, nodding gravely.
Charlotte's face just now was red enough that blood seemed on the point of dripping from it, and she waved her two feet in haste. "Put— put— put me down!"
Zhao Chen let go and Charlotte came down on the floor; she bit lightly at her red lip, cheeks faintly flushed, and looked at the Commander-in-Chief with something of reproach in it.
"Head chef — there are specially supplied ingredients in these few days, aren't there? Set the whole lot up for me," Zhao Chen called toward the back of the serving counter.
"You got it — the Commander-in-Chief may rest easy. I'll see to it you and General Charlotte eat to your satisfaction! And private room A3 is made ready for you as well; the view from it is the finest in our canteen!" said the head chef.
"My thanks."
The ordering done, Zhao Chen and Charlotte went through into the private room that had been set aside for them.
One side of the room was a holographic projection of the cosmic view outside, so that it was for all the world as though they sat within the cosmos itself, enjoying their food.
"How is it you're suddenly back? Did matters go smoothly over on the Warhammer side?" Zhao Chen asked.
For Charlotte to come back so abruptly, there ought to be something out of the common way about it.
"There are matters I must report to the Commander-in-Chief, and matters on which the Commander-in-Chief must decide." Charlotte began, in earnest, to set out what had happened in the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth over the last near half-year.
First of all, these revolutionary forces of theirs had grown stronger; with Zhao Chen supplying interstellar warships without a break, their strength had come to match even what it had been in their strongest days before.
Of Warhammer's 18 star regions, the ground now under the revolutionary army's control, all the scattered pieces of it added together, had already come to the area of a whole star region.
But the greater part of these occupied territories lay in the border marches, and their actual worth was not very high.
And among them the losses to the territories of the Black Wolf tribe and the Black Tiger tribe were heavy beyond the rest.
The Black Wolf tribe had lost a full third of its territory outright, and their standing among the twenty great tribes was already tottering.
Were it not that civil war was breaking out all over Warhammer just now, some tribe would long since have taken their place.
"There's something not quite right here. The commotion you've stirred up looks a bit too large by half. Are the twenty great tribes truly standing by and watching you make your trouble with their eyes wide open?" Zhao Chen knit his brows; he had caught what did not fit in all this.
Charlotte said, "That is their own doing, and done on purpose."
Zhao Chen was taken aback, and then understood, and said with his eyes narrowed, "There's friction among them? They mean to use this disturbance of your revolutionary army's as their chance to set the order of Warhammer to rights?"
Charlotte nodded.
She raised a hand and put up the map of the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth's borders, and the state of the ground actually held at present.
On it were plainly marked the areas each power controlled, the twenty great tribes among them.
"The twenty great tribes have their own frictions and disputes within, in truth. As things stand they fall into three factions. One faction is the strongest at present — the Dragon-folk faction, with the Dragon-folk tribe at its head. Another is the rising faction set against the Dragon-folk tribe, formerly spoken of as the Three Titans, and now, counting the newly joined Black Tiger tribe, called the Four Titans. Each of these two factions means to hold the other down. The last faction is the neutral one, whose strength is not very great, and which has no great appetite for expansion outward — so they huddle together for warmth, and have concluded an alliance pact in private: the moment either of the two factions above makes a move against one of them, the neutral tribes will come to one another's aid. Who rules the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth is no concern of theirs, so long as their own interests are not touched. And this large-scale military action of our revolutionary army's kept entirely clear of the neutral faction's ground; what it was aimed at, in the main, was the Dragon-folk tribe's faction and the Four Titans."
"Then over this stretch of time, besides opening up occupied ground, you'll have had other gains as well." Zhao Chen had heard a little of some of Charlotte's military actions.
Charlotte nodded, and said, "We've made contact in private with no few of the tribal powers, and among them several of the peripheral tribes within the Dragon-folk faction, and tribes that are held down as a matter of course. When the time comes, we'll put these hidden pieces to use and raise a round of revolutionary action stronger than anything yet. And by then we'll join all these scattered occupied territories into one, and form a larger map, and a unified one. There are even those who have put forward the proposal of founding a new Warhammer Empire outright, one belonging to our revolutionary army. But that proposal carries very great consequences, and we're still in discussion over it."
"How many of the twenty great tribes' people have you drawn to your side?" Zhao Chen asked.
Charlotte hid nothing, and said straight out, "The Harpy tribe and the Spider-Queen tribe have established contact with us. Beyond those, we're still working to win over the Centaur tribe, the Minotaur tribe, and the neutral faction's Frost-Wolf tribe and Siren tribe! And besides that, we've been in contact with some of the old-line great tribal powers that have fallen into decline for one reason or another, as our own White Tiger tribe did."
"But if you truly declare independence and found a state, the Dragon-folk tribe will absolutely not let you be," Zhao Chen said plainly.
Charlotte nodded and looked at the Commander-in-Chief. "Yes. Which is why this resolution needs your consent. Because by then we'll need more interstellar warships and more aid in resources. And besides that… I have a suggestion. You—"
"I'll not be stepping forward to hold any post of king or emperor. That sort of thing takes far too much out of a man." Zhao Chen had guessed what Charlotte meant to say.
Be a king?
How should a job of that kind come as easy or as free as being a Commander-in-Chief.
Charlotte had in fact guessed the Commander-in-Chief's mind long since; she had raised it only to ask, and she was not overly disappointed.
"This matter — I'll need to talk it over with some others first. How long do you mean to stay in the Owl Dragon System?"
"A week or thereabouts, at my reckoning. Things on the Warhammer side are fairly settled just now; there's nothing large afoot."
While they were speaking, the robots were bringing dish after dish of fine food to the table, and the great bulk of it was fish, or else had something to do with seafood.
Charlotte, seeing this, was on the point of drooling outright.
Charlotte looked at these fine dishes, and then something came to her of a sudden, and she looked at the Commander-in-Chief with expectation in her face.
For she remembered well enough that the Commander-in-Chief still owed her a promise.