T4 Gemini-class Heavy Interstellar Industrial Ship · master control room.
"You have all had a hard time of it this while. Once this hull-bursting stretch is past, I shall strive to give you a short long holiday."
"Commander, this is what we ought to do. The generous provision we have here may be said to surpass any place in the Starlight Empire several times over; for which, to work hard for the Owl Dragon Legion's development is perfectly natural."
The master control room's door opened slowly.
Zhao Chen ran his eye over the working desk. It was one scene of wreckage, and a great many electronic screens still hung unclosed in the air.
"Strange — Chief Engineer Annie ought to be here." The technician looked round the empty desk, unable to make it out.
The next second, she felt a hand seize hold of her own ankle.
"Hol… hol… holiday…"
Whereupon a voice of deep resentment came up from beside her foot.
The technician lowered her head, and saw that in the darkness of the corner another hand was making ready to reach out.
"Aaah… a ghost!" The technician, in her fright, lost her footing and tried to flee backward; but with one of her feet held fast, this only sent her body tipping back.
But very soon she felt her body come to rest against something, and a scent that carried the male in it came whistling up from behind her head.
At this she thought of it of a sudden!
Behind her was the Commander.
Did that not mean… that she was lying at this moment in the Commander's arms?
At the thought of it, she felt on the instant that ghosts and such were of no importance whatever, and truly wished that time might stop at this moment.
But very soon the voice behind her head sounded.
"Annie?"
Only then did the technician discover that the one holding her foot was Annie herself.
Only that Annie at this moment wore a look of one for whom life held nothing.
"Chief Engineer Annie!" The technician hurriedly helped Chief Engineer Annie up.
The pupils of Chief Engineer Annie's eyes seemed at this moment to have gone loose and scattered.
"I grant you half a day's holiday."
But the next second, one sentence from Zhao Chen brought Chief Engineer Annie back to life where she stood.
Chief Engineer Annie gave a start through her whole frame, shot straight up before Zhao Chen, seized Zhao Chen's arm in her eagerness, and stared at him with great watery eyes. "Do… do you speak the truth?"
Zhao Chen rolled his eyes. "When have I ever hoodwinked you?"
Chief Engineer Annie thought about it in earnest, and this was indeed so.
Though this Commander pressed her rather hard as a rule, whatever he said he had always made good.
"How… how is it… that you are of a sudden so kindly?" Annie retreated a few steps warily and covered her chest with both hands, wearing the look of one who sells her art but not her body.
Zhao Chen was for a moment without words. He explained, "The conditions on both sides now, the Holy Radiance Empire and the Warhammer Interstellar Federal Kingdom, tend for the present toward stability. I have handed the business of the two sides to Charlotte and Lilith respectively; should anything arise I shall be told of it at the first instant. And set against that, my staying over there is of no use at all — I am a mascot and nothing more. We are urgently short of interstellar warships now, so I thought that here I might be able to help you somewhat."
Zhao Chen had, after all, starship engineering at his back; in the ability to plan work as a whole he might fall short of Annie and the rest in experience, but the greater part of the work Zhao Chen could still help see through.
"Wonderful. I have forgotten by now when my last holiday even was. The first thing every day when I open my eyes is work, and then eating, and then work again, and then eating, and on with the work. I work at the least 15 hours a day! No — it must be 18! My head feels as though it were about to crash…" Annie poured out the tale of her own toil without pause.
Zhao Chen pressed a hand down on Annie's head, knowing her little designs. "Set your mind at rest; what I promised you shall not fall short by a hair. And if all the building plans are completed smoothly when the time comes, I may give you some extra reward besides."
"Hee hee hee, then I shall take my half day's holiday first. I mean to eat my way through every snack I have gone without this while, and get through those few shows I never finished!" Having said it, Annie made ready to dart out.
But Zhao Chen pressed a hand on her head once more.
"The holiday will not run away; but first I must understand something of how your work stands at present. Go and call Nana and Spider Queen Iris over — and they have half a day's holiday as well," Zhao Chen instructed.
Annie pouted; and though she was somewhat too impatient for her own brief holiday to wait, she went honestly enough to tell the two chief engineers to come.
In no long time.
The two chief engineers arrived at Annie's office.
And walking in, they saw Annie lying in a massage chair got from none knew where, enjoying the massage and at the same time drinking a drink and eating snacks.
The massage chair had besides a mechanical arm expressly for clearing away the rubbish, which could also open those snacks and pare the skin from fruit, for Annie's convenience in eating.
"Sister! How is it you are idling again! Do you know how great our work load is now!" Nana, seeing her own elder sister idling, knit her brows at once and went up to reprove her.
Annie began explaining without thinking. "I am not, I—"
Wait…
Annie seemed to realize something, and said at once, "This is not idling; this is the half day's holiday the Commander gave me."
Zhao Chen, watching from beside them, saw the shift in Annie's look, and could see that as a rule she must be pressed to her work by her younger sister Nana often enough.
Seeing Nana's eyes turn his way, Zhao Chen nodded and said, "You have all been working hard this while, but you need some rest as well. So my coming this time is on the one hand to assist you in your work, and on the other to let you rest half a day first."
"Is that all? I have no need of rest. All I want now is to go back and build my interstellar warships. This place feels like a very heaven. It is simply too blissful!" Spider Queen Iris propped her cheek in her hand, an excited feeling in both her eyes.
Nana said in earnest as well, "We need no holiday. The building tasks press now, and the Owl Dragon Legion's expansion plan is coming due before our eyes. And there is this batch of the T5 interstellar warship building plan besides; all of it wants time put into it. If there is nothing else, then we shall go back to our own posts first."
Having said it, Nana glanced at her own elder sister; but on second thought, since it was a holiday the Commander had allowed, she said nothing of it.
In fact she knew too that though she and Spider Queen Iris looked very busy, within the same hours of work the value Annie could produce surpassed theirs.
Perhaps this was simply Annie's gift.
Zhao Chen looked at these two chief engineers and sighed within himself — these were five-star employees indeed!
"You choose not to rest, and I have no way to stop you. But I need now to understand in brief how your work stands and by what procedures. For a stretch of time hereafter I shall stay here and work along with you," Zhao Chen said.
These words did set Nana's and Spider Queen Iris's eyes ringing, and they looked at the Commander for all the world as at so much prey.
For they understood very well that the Commander's ability in starship technology far surpassed Annie's — since these unbelievable interstellar warships were what the Commander had produced.
Though that had always been a mystery.
But upon any point of knowledge touching this starship technology, one need only ask the Commander, and the Commander could always answer without hesitation.
Could they but have my lord Commander's technical guidance, it would be simply lending wings to a tiger!
Thereafter, from the meeting report at the outset, the two women went on to circle round Zhao Chen and discuss questions of every kind.
"I think this step of the process might be simplified further; and were it so, the building time of this class of interstellar warship might be cut by 1%!"
"That can indeed be done — one need only make the change upon this part of the production line."
Annie watched the three of them talking away like a house afire, and asked in a small voice, "Then there is nothing here for me; may I go first?"
Zhao Chen glanced at Annie and waved a hand, to signify that she might go and take her holiday.
Annie put out her tongue, and pressed something on the massage chair beneath her; and this massage chair could actually move of itself, sparing Annie the time of making her own way.
As for afterward, Annie did not take the whole half day's holiday.
She rested a bare hour, and after one great meal returned to her own post.
And amid grumbling without cease, set to working for the great boss once more!