At the banquet, Yu Lian also ran into his old friends from the Youth Club, Admiral Horatio Wayne and Admiral Akina Mountain Hachiman. The two were about to serve as commander and chief of staff of the Commonwealth's expeditionary force, taking an elite fleet to join the Alliance's growing peacekeeping force and restore order in the Fermo Star Region.
Miss Yamida Belenkaster, who had just become the new president, presented them both with the Liberator Medal, the highest honor the Alliance awarded to foreigners.
After the ceremony, the two friends found Yu Lian, who was hiding in a corner and stuffing himself.
He had been about to ask them what was going on, but Akina Mountain Hachiman spoke first. "After the meeting on Huaxu, you'll have to get back to Earth soon. Michiel says his term is up and he doesn't want to run again. He's recommending Chester as the new prime minister to form a cabinet."
"Chester?" Perhaps the timeline had jumped too far ahead, because Yu Lian found himself at a loss.
"You once said that even if we signed a mutual defense treaty, we had to preserve as much independence as possible in our armaments. At the very least, we needed to have a say in the upstream stages of design and development. Chester doesn't have much administrative experience, but after all those years overseeing armaments and military training, he's the best person to reorganize the nation's military-industrial departments as prime minister." Hachiman pushed up his glasses. "Besides, the head of state is a marshal and the prime minister is an admiral. It's not that strange."
Some of the "big, clumsy" parts factories, like the Tulong Machinery Plant, could be phased out. But companies like Falcon Aviation, the RN Shipyard, and the Agency could be kept. That