"It seems the lord Commander… has investigated me… not a little," said the doctor.
Nor did Zhao Chen hide what he had already charged his people with. "I have taken your genetic information, and am looking into your particulars through the three great empires' information networks."
"There is no need of such trouble; what the lord Commander… would know, I shall tell him."
Within the human eyeball of the doctor's left eye there showed a thread of recollection. "Where shall I begin?
"……
"Let us begin from when I was fleet commander of the Seventh Fleet of the Starlight Empire's Fourth Expeditionary Army."
Fleet commander of the Seventh Fleet of the Starlight Empire's Fourth Expeditionary Army?
At these words.
Zhao Chen's brows drew together.
Lilith beside him began at once to look into this information.
"You were an officer of the Starlight Empire?" Zhao Chen asked.
"I was once," the doctor said in his recollection.
"Then why should you have become this thing, and do such deeds against the very homeland that was yours!" Zhao Chen demanded.
"Homeland?" The doctor shook his head with a light laugh. "That fleet commander who was willing to fight for his homeland died long ago, within that campaign."
And just at this time Lilith clapped Zhao Chen upon the shoulder from behind, and a video window appeared before her.
Across it stood, of all people, Marshal Chu Changhe.
"You are… Ge Hui?" Chu Changhe too had seen the man imprisoned across from him; but perhaps because he differed too far from the man in his memory, he could not be certain.
"Captain Chu, it is long since we met," the doctor said.
Zhao Chen marked what was particular in the address: he did not call Chu Changhe Marshal, but Captain Chu.
Which shows that the relation between the two should be no ordinary one.
And Chu Changhe, in his service and his entering the army, did not use the Chu family's standing to place himself at once in a high seat.
But climbed up step by step, from deputy captain to captain — and rose exceedingly fast!
If Zhao Chen remembered rightly, Chu Changhe had been captain of two interstellar warships one after another, over a span of some half year.
"Ge Hui? Is it truly you?
"Did you not… fall in battle long ago!
"How should you have… become… this…
"Those things… were all your doing?" There was every disbelief upon Chu Changhe's face.
"Yes.
"The Starlight Empire, the Holy Radiance Empire — all of it was my doing." The corner of Ge Hui's mouth rose slightly, as though he were showing off his own works.
Hearing Ge Hui's answer.
Chu Changhe asked in astonishment, "Why? Why should you do such a thing?"
"Why!
"Was this not what you people chose!
"Marshal Chu!" Ge Hui of a sudden roared it, past his own mastering.
And this time his address changed as well, to a cold and icy Marshal Chu.
Zhao Chen looked toward Chu Changhe, asking whether there were some story between the two.
Chu Changhe let out a sigh, and looked at Ge Hui with complicated eyes. "Ge Hui was once my adjutant; he followed me three months.
"Three months only — but he left a deep mark upon me.
"For he was of no noble birth, and had no backing whatever; he was but a commoner.
"Yet he was exceedingly able, and by his own ability became, before he was thirty, the adjutant of a T3 interstellar warship."
Zhao Chen's eyes went to Ge Hui, upon whose face was a self-mocking smile — as though, hearing Chu Changhe's words, he too had sunk into recollection.
To become, in a commoner's standing, the adjutant of a T3 warship before thirty is an exceedingly hard thing.
Though within the Starlight Empire's military system there are channels of promotion granted to commoners besides, and academies such as the North Star Starship Military Academy will take commoners in.
Yet a commoner without backing or standing must pay several times the labor to rise.
"Afterward I heard that for his outstanding showing upon a field he was raised to be a fleet commander, able to command three hundred warships.
"And thereafter, in a campaign upon an expedition into the Machine Race's occupied district, seeking to recover a resource point.
"The whole expeditionary army met the Machine Race's counter-stroke and was annihilated to the last ship.
"And afterward, because of an error in command, part of the imperial army chose to withdraw with no thought for the friendly forces fighting at the front, so that several star systems that had been in our hands fell as well." Marshal Chu Changhe said it in his recollection.
"They did not fall — they were ABANDONED by you!" Ge Hui roared of a sudden.
Zhao Chen sensed something, and asked, sounding him out, "Is it because upon the field you were given up by the high commanders in the rear.
"So that your fleet was annihilated to the last ship — and for that you have carried your hatred?"
Ge Hui said with a cold laugh, "I am a soldier; a soldier's duty is to obey orders.
"If upon a field I and my fleet must, where there is no help for it, be given up, I have nothing to say.
"But… THEY should not have been given up!"
They?
Zhao Chen caught the important part within the words.
At this time Lilith said quietly at Zhao Chen's ear, "I have found a piece of information that may bear upon this.
"Galactic Star Calendar 2988, mid-July.
"The Starlight Empire's Fourth Expeditionary Army, in carrying out its task, lost near nine parts in ten!
"Among them the command of Ge Hui, fleet commander of the Seventh Fleet, annihilated to the last ship."
To this point there was very nearly no difference from what Zhao Chen had just come to understand.
But Lilith's next words unveiled the riddle: "By the materials, Ge Hui's wife and his newborn child.
"Were in the KO1 star system, which was taken by the Machine Race a day later… and died."
Zhao Chen's eyes shook; he looked toward Chu Changhe within the video window.
"The KO1 star system?
"That should be the very system the high command, finding matters going ill, ordered abandoned outright.
"But… at the time all the servicemen's families should have been withdrawn?" Chu Changhe said in surprise.
"Yes. All the servicemen's families were withdrawn.
"To speak exactly: all the NOBLE servicemen's families.
"Not only were their kin withdrawn entire — even a dog of theirs had the standing to board a withdrawal ship.
"But my family, and the families of servicemen of common birth by the tens of thousands, were barred outside the withdrawal ships.
"Abandoned upon that planet of despair, to wait for death!" Ge Hui rose up sharply in his rage; but the next second his body, striking against the electromagnetic cage, shook without cease, and he fell to the floor.
Zhao Chen's brows drew together; he looked toward Chu Changhe.
Chu Changhe's face was exceedingly ugly too.
But he said nothing; it seemed that what Ge Hui said was, nine times out of ten, true.
For at such a moment there is no need to lie.
Ge Hui sat where he had fallen, and laughed at himself. "I was too foolish then; I held that I fought for the Starlight Empire.
"That though I fell, my family might take the pension and live without care for food or clothing.
"But when I survived that field by luck and went back to look into it.
"I found that my wife and my child, having no standing to board, had been cruelly abandoned.
"Only because the officer in charge of that withdrawal ship, drawing up my wife's papers, found that her husband was but an officer of common birth.
"So that she had not even the standing to board!
"And ahead of her, a noble lady with three pet dogs she kept could board!"