"Commander-in-Chief."
Just as this Little Skeleton was drawing away from Stellar City—
Xue Xiaoxiao came suddenly to Zhao Chen's side, and looked at the Commander-in-Chief with something complicated in her face.
"What is it? Something the matter?" Zhao Chen looked at Xue Xiaoxiao.
Xue Xiaoxiao was of the sort who could keep nothing hidden. During the attack in Stellar City earlier, no one had the leisure to think of anything else.
But now that everyone was safe and back aboard the ship, Zhao Chen had noticed that there was something not quite right in Xue Xiaoxiao's manner.
Xue Xiaoxiao bit lightly at her red lip, and wore the look of one who still could not settle on it.
"If there's something the matter, say it. You're a member of the Owl Dragon Legion now, and if there's anything you need help with, we'll help you without fail," Zhao Chen said in earnest.
"I… should like to ask you for leave." Xue Xiaoxiao hesitated a long while before she got the sentence out.
"Leave?" Zhao Chen looked at Xue Xiaoxiao in surprise.
At a time like this, in a place like this, to ask for leave — there was truly no telling what Xue Xiaoxiao had in that jar of hers to sell.
"I… I have some matters to see to. And once they're seen to, I'll rejoin at once," Xue Xiaoxiao said.
Zhao Chen looked at her straight. "I can grant you your leave. But as your Commander-in-Chief, I'd have you tell me the reason you're asking for it."
Xue Xiaoxiao's expression was a tangled thing; she seemed to be wrestling over whether to speak at all.
Zhao Chen thought back to when the shift in Xue Xiaoxiao's mood had come. It had been when he saw Saint Cana's private car.
And at that moment — that line of sight, that direction.
There had been an enormous advertising board.
And upon that board was—
The Qian family's young house-head is to wed the only daughter of the Star-Shark Interstellar Adventurers' Guild's president.
"Is it because of this marriage between the Qian family and Star-Shark?" Zhao Chen said.
Alarm flickered plainly across Xue Xiaoxiao's eyes.
By the look of it, that was the connection sure enough.
"The Qian family's young house-head can't have been your first love, surely? You mean to go and carry off the groom?" Zhao Chen said it on purpose.
Xue Xiaoxiao came back at once with disgust in her voice. "That dead pervert of the Qian family, my first love! If he were my first love I'd sooner walk out of doors and get run down by a starship and be done with it!"
"Then what is the reason?" Zhao Chen asked again.
Since it had nothing to do with the Qian family, then it was to do with the Star-Shark Guild.
"Xiaoxiao — you haven't been long in the Owl Dragon Legion, it's true. But you were a classmate of Zhao Chen's at the Northstar Starship Military Academy all the same, and you know what his character is. If it were truly some ordinary private business of your own, he wouldn't ask half a sentence more about it. But if you're in some difficulty, there's no possibility of his pretending he hasn't seen it. There's a saying within the Owl Dragon Legion: join the Owl Dragon Legion and this place is your home. I've only been here a few months myself, but I've felt the truth of it deeply," so Chu Xuan urged her, from the side.
Xue Xiaoxiao drew a deep breath, and at last looked at Zhao Chen and told him her business.
"What? You are the only daughter of the Star-Shark Interstellar Adventurers' Guild's president!" Zhao Chen was astonished.
Xue Xiaoxiao nodded.
Chu Xuan was somewhat taken aback as well.
For she knew that this Star-Shark Interstellar Adventurers' Guild was the largest organization of interstellar adventurers in the whole Stellar Alliance; even her grandfather spoke of this Star-Shark Guild often enough.
Back when the Mechanical Race threat still stood, their imperial military had even had no little cooperation with the Star-Shark Guild.
Xue Xiaoxiao nodded.
"But the woman I saw in that publicity photograph — she's called Gu Xiaoxiao, isn't she? And she looks nothing at all like you." Zhao Chen called up that image, with Gu Xiaoxiao's likeness on it.
And this material, too, could be looked up within the Stellar Alliance readily enough now.
"Sister Xiaoxiao I know. She grew up alongside me. I don't know either why she should be marrying that dead pervert of the Qian family under my identity. But I truly am the only daughter of the Star-Shark Interstellar Adventurers' Guild's president! If only… if only we go and see my mother, I can prove who I am," Xue Xiaoxiao explained.
And now Chu Xuan, beside them, turned up something out of the Stellar Alliance's network forums.
"Commander-in-Chief, I find that the reports and material concerning this Gu Xiaoxiao were all put out a year ago; before that, on the only daughter of the Star-Shark Interstellar Adventurers' Guild's president there was nothing but rumor, and no actual material at all. There wasn't even a high-resolution image of her face. An operation of this kind… it's for all the world as though this Gu Xiaoxiao were being set out on purpose." Chu Xuan said it with her brows knitted.
Zhao Chen saw one thing clear, and looked at Xue Xiaoxiao. "If our Xiaoxiao's account of herself is right, then there's only one possibility. Xiaoxiao's mother — the Star-Shark Guild's president, that is — is obliged for some reason she cannot help to make this marriage with the Qian family; and being unwilling to have her own daughter married to that young house-head of the Qian family— and with Xiaoxiao's identity never having been made public before, she has had this Gu Xiaoxiao swap the civet for the crown prince,[1] and take Xue Xiaoxiao's place."
Xue Xiaoxiao's eyes lit, and she clapped her hands. "Yes! Yes! That must be it! Otherwise my mother would absolutely never push Sister Xiaoxiao into that pit of fire that is the Qian family! Back when I left the Stellar Alliance, that Qian young house-head already had a very bad name! How could my mother possibly marry Sister Xiaoxiao to a bastard of that sort! And in all these years my mother never once came to the Starlight Empire to look for me — I thought I'd hidden myself well. Thinking of it now, it must be that my mother didn't want me to come back either!"
And with that, all of these matters were explained.
Xue Xiaoxiao at once seized Zhao Chen's hand in her urgency. "Commander-in-Chief! I must go back and see my mother at once. The Star-Shark Guild must have met with some crisis. I can't let Sister Xiaoxiao suffer in my place!"
"And what can you change, going back alone?" Zhao Chen asked her back.
Xue Xiaoxiao stopped short. There was nothing wrong in what Zhao Chen said.
What could she, Xue Xiaoxiao, change?
She was a graduate of the Northstar Starship Military Academy, and she had commanded a T4 interstellar battleship. And what of it?
She could change nothing at all.
"You can change nothing. But the Owl Dragon Legion can." That one saying of Zhao Chen's woke Xue Xiaoxiao like a bell.
"Commander-in-Chief…" Xue Xiaoxiao looked at him in astonishment.
Zhao Chen raised a hand and gave his order. "Pass down my command. Our destination is changed to the home base of the Star-Shark Interstellar Adventurers' Guild. And send word to Su Lan's side: follow after us, but keep their movements from being given away so far as they can."
"Yes." Chu Xuan set about seeing to it at once.
"Commander-in-Chief." There were tears at the rims of Xue Xiaoxiao's eyes as she looked at him, moved past speaking.
In this moment, the figure of the Commander-in-Chief stood a good deal loftier in her eyes than before.
"Don't go putting on some tear-jerking piece of theater here. A member of the Owl Dragon Legion, in difficulty, and you wouldn't tell me of it. That's taking yourself for an outsider. A month's pay docked." Zhao Chen said it without the least ceremony.
Which saying of the Commander-in-Chief's shattered the whole mood of the place on the spot.
Xue Xiaoxiao pushed out her lip. "Understood."
But the gladness in Xue Xiaoxiao's eyes was past all hiding, and that low and joyless mood of hers was swept clean away.