Secret Infiltration

It was a very special dinner.

A group of senior naval officers and generals stood together singing the navy's anthem, then they actually took off their uniforms and rowed boats across the lake.

After playing in the water for a while, everyone returned to shore. Once they had tidied themselves up, they changed back into their freshly pressed uniforms and began dinner.

The only person there who was not a military man was Lin Qi.

No one discussed anything special during dinner. Everyone ate quietly and quickly, and only after the meal did the atmosphere shed the solemnity it had held during dinner.

Lin Qi had no idea whether this was some kind of military custom, so he treated it as one.

"This is our chief steward!" After dinner, Lieutenant General, Lin Qi, and a Major General stepped aside to chat, while everyone else tactfully gave them some privacy.

The "chief steward" Lieutenant General introduced looked to be in his forties, nearing fifty. His temples were slightly gray, but he looked energetic and was not fat.

According to Lieutenant General, the chief steward was responsible for naval logistics along the East Coast.

That included arranging for retired warships. This all fell under logistics.

They were called retired, but many of those warships were still in service. Once the new military expansion plan and the budget for new warships had been approved, every sailor wanted to command a new vessel. So what could they do with the ones still in service? They could only retire them. But retiring them outright would be a waste, so the ships in the best condition were all converted into training vessels for routine drills.

Even so, some remained.

There was still a major difference between warships and civilian cargo ships, and modifications were necessary.

But