Fatty was jolted out from his thoughts by a burning slap to the face. Caught unprepared, his face had moved from the left to the right as a line of saliva from the edge of his mouth flew out in a glistening arc before landing right below his right earlobe.
At this moment, an electronic broadcaster within the cabin of the transport ship emitted out a message, “First lieutenant Tian Xing Jian, please report to the captain’s room.”
Fatty, who felt like he had been slapped for no reason, could only watch as the female doctor who slapped him walked away. Wiping away the line of saliva frantically, he headed towards the captain’s room.
Within the room, other than Nadal and Rashid, there were two lieutenant colonels, a colonel, and a senior colonel. One of the two lieutenant colonels was wearing the uniform of the air force, signifying clearly that he was the captain of this transport ship. The other lieutenant colonel was the staff planning officer of a combat division.
Seeing Tian Xing Jian walking towards the door and reporting his presence, Rashid hurriedly pulled him in before introducing him to the senior colonel, “This is our Aviation Squadron, 16th Armored Division, Division Commander, Zhou Zhi Sen.
Zhou Zhi Sen was a typical Easterner from Ancient Earth. From his name alone, it would appear that he should also be of Chinese descent. Although he had a short stature and a flimsy figure, his eyes contrasted greatly as they were brilliant and full of expression. Just simply standing there, one could feel from him the aura of a commander who had been through hundreds of battles.
The Aviation Squadron, 16th Armored Division was one of the elite squads of the Leray Federation’s ground forces. They were one of the heroic divisions that had been passed down ever since the battle for independence. Among the 300 ground-based armored divisions and the 200 aviation squadron armored divisions that were formed completely by a mechanized team, their military strength ranked them just two places away from being one of the top-grade, elite squads in the entire Federation—12th. For such a person to be the division commander, he would certainly have to have solid military commanding ability and leadership skills.
Hearing the introduction by Rashid, Fatty immediately saluted him, showing a posture of a proper, iron-blooded soldier as he shouted out, “Greetings, Division Commander! Directly subordinate to the 16th Division, Special Scouts Battalion, Vice Company Commander Tian Xing Jian reports to you. Please deliver your instructions!”
Senior Colonel Zhou Zhi Sen saluted back out of courtesy. Walking towards Tian Xing Jian, he thoroughly observed this fatty, who had led the team out from the enemy’s rear lines with limited transportation and lack of weapons and only had a section worth of Battle Mechas.
“Your family’s name is Tian? A Chinese?” Zhou Zhi Sen asked.
“That’s right, Senior Colonel.” Without a single hair out of place, Tian Xing Jian continued his act of an iron-blooded soldier.
“Very good, stand at ease. Keep whatever ‘Senior Officer’ and ‘Senior Officer greetings’ to yourself.” Zhou Zhi Sen had long ago heard of this fatty. This time, during the rescue mission given by the command team, he was assigned by Bernadotte himself to lead this team of soldiers. He had done plenty of investigations on this commanding officer from the group who had escaped from the enemy’s rear lines.
The stiff fatty immediately let himself down like a donkey, changing to an expression full of smiles as he showed a naive, innocent, and honest look.
Zhou Zhi Sen laughed. “Very good, Tian Xing Jian. A person of noble character should never stop striving for self-improvement. Your name is truly interesting, bringing with it the smell from our eastern culture of ancient Earth.” After having said that, he walked slowly towards the computer control system within the captain’s room and signaled for Fatty to come over. He continued, “Let’s skip all the nonsense. I am truly pleased with your performance this time. Right now, tell us more about the deduction of the battle outcome you had sent to forward command.”
Tian Xing Jian walked towards the computer display screen and took a look. On the display was a simulated three-dimensional map formulated which used the deduction and analysis based on the fatty’s deduction strategy.
This map simulated a real war situation by inputting the deduction numbers and combat plans. The moving images of small soldiers represented the individual units on the map moving according to the deduction. When explaining how the deduction worked, those moving soldier figurines were extremely vital, and they represented how change happened even during the ancient times of war. However, this time, instead of explaining with words, the computer would be the one doing the explanation and self-demonstration.
This set of things was something which Fatty knew from the inside out. Seeing the senior colonel asking him, he did not hesitate to tell him the process of his deduction.
Zhou Zhi Sen listened to the report given by Tian Xing Jian before contemplating for some time and asked, “Are these deduction from the computer in your Battle Mecha?”
Tian Xing Jian truly wanted to say that he had actually dreamt of all of this while sleeping. After all, this fatty had experienced before the logic of how people hated to be famous, and pigs hated to be fat [1]. However, there were too many witnesses when he did his deduction in the underground tunnel, and furthermore, this was his superior’s direct superior. Lying to him would have dire consequences, thus he finally nodded, “That’s right, Division Commander. I personally feel that forward command should re-arrange the related divisions in order to prevent this from happening.”
Zhou Zhi Sen laughed and asked everyone to sit on the sofa. He waved his hands at Tian Xing Jian and said, “This deduction had only been received by the forward command yesterday.”
Seeing the confused expression on Fatty, the staff planning officer, who was a colonel, explained awkwardly, “This deduction was hidden by a traitor, so the planning team did not know of it beforehand. Only after a thorough investigation did we this traitor. Afterwards when he gave up the documents, we discovered the serial number linking to the deduction. At that time, we tried to look for the deduction, but it was all for naught. Only when we finally searched through the computers related to acknowledging successfully receiving a message did we find a copy stored within.”
Seeing how flushed with anger he was, needless to say, this traitor was probably his co-worker. He was the staff officer who sent the Special Scouts First Company to their death.
At this moment, a soldier orderly came in at the right time to bring them tea. The scene started cooling down, as everyone seemed to want to avoid discussing the problem regarding the traitor.
Zhou Zhi Sen picked up the cup of tea in front of him and gave it a light blow. He frankly said, “In any nation, there will be cases of such traitors arising at a certain time. There’s nothing surprising about it.”
He took a sip of tea before putting the cup back onto the table, seemingly as if the cup of tea was scalding hot. Looking at Tian Xing Jing, he said, “We saw your deduction, and we conclude that… it is extremely accurate. To tell you the truth, other than having been assigned here by forward command, the reason why I personally came over here is to accept the mission to ascertain the enemy’s military composition and the end result of the ‘ignition’ plan.”
Tian Xing Jian was puzzled. “Ignition plan?”
The lieutenant colonel staff planning officer took out a document from the file in his hand and passed it to Tian Xing Jian. “This is the plan formulated by forward command during yesterday’s midnight meeting. After your deduction was sent to the forward command team and was analyzed, they think that the outcome you have deduced could be a possibility, thus in order to avoid such an outcome, forward command has already sent three ground-based armored divisions and two aviation battalions to strengthen the defense of the area surrounding 200 kilometers of Catosi Canyon.”
While moving his hand, Zhou Zhi Sen continued from where the lieutenant colonel left off, “Afterwards, just an hour after sending the orders, the forward command team received news regarding a large-scale movement on the enemy side. It seems that there are still some traitors within our internal department. After sending out the orders, the other side immediately changed their strategy.”
Needless to say, Zhou Zhi Sen took over from the lieutenant colonel, as it could be awkward for him to talk about matters regarding traitors.
He continued, “Our intelligence isn’t weak. Hehe, after the enemies started moving, we discovered that the region of reorganization is precisely within this zone where we were conducting the rescue mission. Thus, for the sake of understanding the true military power of the enemy and to ignite this bomb hanging over our head at a location far away, we decided to use the deployment sent during this rescue mission to eliminate all the enemies reorganizing within this region.”
It seemed that Tian Xing Jian had a sudden realization. “That’s why the Federation decided to use a total of five aviation battalion worth of military power! No wonder! I was wondering why there was information about how strong and resolute the enemy’s resistance was… So this was the location where they were regrouping at!”
Seeing Zhou Zhi Sen nodding his head as he smiled, Tian Xing Jian asked curiously, “Then, what about the Myth Legion? Have you found the location they are gathering at?”
[1] This saying regards to how man is afraid that there would be trouble finding them when they became famous, just like how pigs are afraid that they would be slaughtered when they became fat.