"I'm not going! I'm not going! Beat me to death and I still won't go!"
Zhao Chen watched Xue Xiaoxiao struggling without a pause.
Had Chu Xuan not been beside her holding her down, there was no saying but Xue Xiaoxiao would have slipped away already.
Chu Xuan came of the Chu family, after all — a house of arms; from her childhood she had not gone short of hard training. Ones built like Xue Xiaoxiao —
by Chu Xuan's own account, she could floor three of them with one hand.
"Is the Stellar Alliance so frightening a place as that?" Zhao Chen looked at Xue Xiaoxiao, at a loss to understand it.
He had summoned Xue Xiaoxiao over just now, and the moment she heard he meant to send her to the Stellar Alliance her face had gone past all bearing with terror, and she took the whole posture of one who would not go if you killed her for it.
"Frightening! Far too frightening! Commander-in-Chief, can we not go?" Xue Xiaoxiao, finding there was no struggling free, turned the most pitiful look on Zhao Chen, hoping to work upon his sympathy.
"Give me a reason that can persuade me." Zhao Chen looked at her.
Xue Xiaoxiao was brought up short at this, and only after holding it in a good long while got a single line out. "There's an old woman there who's especially fond of eating children!"
Looking at the earnest face Xue Xiaoxiao wore, one would think there truly was such a thing.
Zhao Chen waved a hand outright and said, "Since Xue Xiaoxiao is unwilling to go, then we'll not press her. Only I've been thinking that the captain of the T4 Blue-Eyes White Dragon-class Heavy Interstellar Armored Battleship ought to be changed as well!"
"You can't!" Xue Xiaoxiao, hearing that her Blue-Eyes White Dragon was to go to somebody else, was for all the world as though she'd heard that someone meant to dig the ground out from under her own walls; her feelings ran high on the instant.
"So — choose for yourself, then. Our Owl Dragon Legion has always been very democratic." Zhao Chen shrugged.
Xue Xiaoxiao pushed out her lip and muttered a line or two; the words did not carry clearly, but the sense of them was roughly a grumble at Zhao Chen for an oppressive sort of Commander-in-Chief.
"This task you're handing me is to get to the bottom of what trade traffic there is in the Stellar Alliance between the Holy Radiance Empire and the Starlight Empire's Qin Xiaotian as things now stand. Then all I need do is go and get that clear, isn't it?" Xue Xiaoxiao blinked up at Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen nodded.
"Then I can say yes to you." Xue Xiaoxiao, in the end, could only set her teeth and agree to this 'business trip'.
And as to her reason for being unwilling to go to the Stellar Alliance, she chose to keep off the subject still.
On which Zhao Chen asked nothing further either.
Everyone had secrets of their own; there was no need to fasten upon another's and refuse to let go.
So long as Zhao Chen was sure Xue Xiaoxiao meant him no ill, that was enough.
Why trouble over so much else.
"Make your preparations. Take your flagship when you go, and I'll arrange a small fleet for you besides. By my reckoning you can set out in early April. Whatever comes up, report it to me the moment it does," Zhao Chen instructed.
"Yes." Xue Xiaoxiao's answer came without a scrap of spirit in it; and then, having asked whether there was anything else, she let out a long sigh and took herself off.
"How is it this girl's temper is so like Annie's?" Zhao Chen muttered.
"Those two gather together often enough on the rest days. They've grown to be bosom cronies by now," Lilith said at his side.
At which words the scene of Xue Xiaoxiao and Annie larking about together could not help rising in Zhao Chen's mind. Birds of a feather, the pair of them.
With the business of Xue Xiaoxiao's going to the Stellar Alliance settled—
Lilith reported another matter.
"On the business of our sending forces into the Grey Moon Star Region. The war materials are fully made ready, all three Owl Dragon Legions have finished refitting, and the interstellar warships lost before have every one been made good. What it wants is your decision as to who, in the end, is to have charge of this combat mission." So Lilith asked it.
Chu Xuan, the moment she heard there was a battle in the offing, could not keep the light from blazing up in her eyes.
Fighting was a thing Chu Xuan knew well enough — but this was still the first she had faced since coming to the Owl Dragon Legion.
She would come to understand, and to feel for herself more clearly, the might of those Owl Dragon Legion warships.
Zhao Chen called up the relevant material, thought for half an hour, and talked it over briefly with Lilith and Chu Xuan.
And in the end, Zhao Chen made his decision.
"By the intelligence data we have to now. The Grey Moon Star Region has the Zhou family for its chief power. The Zhou family holds one legion fleet, 30,000 interstellar warships in scale, and the great bulk of that was procured within the last half-year, or came of swallowing up other lords' fleets. Its overall fighting power runs to about that of second-line imperial military. Looking at their strength alone, of our three Owl Dragon Legions any one you please could settle the matter. Where the problem lies is in whether Qin Xiaotian will take the chance to make his move — and in that mechanical hive-race fleet in his hands! That means of theirs, so like our own Lucent-class Interstellar Jump Ships, is a thing there's no help but guard against."
Zhao Chen worked at his chin.
"But it's a chance as well. All this while Qin Xiaotian has made no move at all; however we press in the Azure Star Region, however many star systems we take, Qin Xiaotian carries on for all the world as though nothing whatever had happened. My grandfather is turning over how to draw Qin Xiaotian into striking first. Our Owl Dragon Legion attacking the Grey Moon Star Region is one more bait laid out before Qin Xiaotian!" Chu Xuan laid it out.
Zhao Chen nodded. "That's my thinking too. This civil war cannot be dragged on forever; a breach has to be found, and soon. Lilith, make ready to pass down my orders. The Owl Dragon Third Legion is to carry out this operation, with Shen Bing as campaign commander, holding charge over this campaign of attack upon the Grey Moon Star Region. The Owl Dragon First Legion is to proceed to the junction of the Grey Moon Star Region and the North Wind Star Region and stand guard there, ready at any hour to come in support! The Owl Dragon Second Legion is to garrison the Owl Dragon System and hold to combat-ready status. Chitong, though she is the Owl Dragon Second Legion's commander, may serve as the Third Legion's military adviser and assist Shen Bing from a distance. For this operation Shen Bing may draw on 100 billion star coins' worth of war-preparation resources. The strategic aim: on the condition of the smallest losses possible to her own fleet, to annihilate the Grey Moon Star Region's main fleet and to take several key strategic positions; and should Qin Xiaotian not interfere, then to reach, at the last, the aim of holding the whole of the Grey Moon Star Region."
Lilith set down the Commander-in-Chief's words and made ready to pass them along.
With which this matter came, for the present, to a close.
And Zhao Chen had some idle time on his hands.
He tapped open his own System page.
Host: Zhao Chen
Occupation: Top-tier Starship Engineer
Special attributes: Fleet Luck-Value bonus; Eye of Insight
System points: 3,900,000 (monthly fleet earnings: 1,690,000 points)
Task points: 850
Interstellar warships: 25,678
Mission: Annual Mission (incomplete)
Warehouse: T5 Hades-class Interstellar Dreadnought technical blueprint; Hades Matrix module; T5 Creator interstellar warship technical blueprint; Golden Eden-class Starship technical blueprint……
Redeeming the T4 Golden Eden-class Starship technical blueprint earlier had eaten up a portion of his task points and System points.
But given the vast number of interstellar warships Zhao Chen had under him at present, this passive income of his was quite a rosy thing all the same.
"It's time to redeem an interstellar missile ship." Zhao Chen worked at his chin.
Of the whole puzzle that was the T4-series interstellar warships, the piece that mattered most was the interstellar missile ship.
This had been the Owl Dragon Legion's 'soul of the army' all along, and the skill it kept its own house with.
And Zhao Chen had had his eye on one, well before now!