After her assistants had left, Yani opened her personal terminal and logged into a secret account that ordinary people had never even heard of. Once she had completed some private under-the-table dealings, she checked the time.
"One, two, three..." She began counting. When she reached ten, the terminal's communication function automatically connected. A holographic projection of her biological father, Feno Berenkester, appeared in the study.
The way things unfolded this time was a little unexpected.
In the past, this clingy old father had always expressed how much he missed his daughter at the first opportunity, and in an extravagant fashion.
But this time, he stood there for quite a while, wearing a faint, stiff smile, as if he no longer knew how to get along with his daughter.
"Dad, if you have too much free time, take a starship to Republic Square and feed the pigeons. I'm very busy."
Feno Berenkester gave a lonely, wan smile, like an empty-nest retiree. His lips quivered, and he said in a trembling voice, "So you're going to Fermo?"
"Before the war, we chose a site in the Celestial Maiden F system in Fermo and began preliminary construction on a space station. This is a very important investment, so I should go inspect it."
"Even now? I heard the warlords and underworld bosses in the Fermo Nebula have started fighting again."
"The warlords and bandit gangs in the Fermo Nebula fight every day. The only difference is how intense the fighting gets."
"But the intensity right now..."
"The ceiling is nowhere near as high as the Far Shore, let alone Marshal Li Yuangele in the Dawn Star Region."
How could the two be compared? The intensity of the war between the Empire and the Commonwealth had already far surpassed the average for the Seventh