Yu Lian watched the video. Colonel Simon Vayali was only twenty-five, yet already weathered by hardship. Yu Lian gazed at him with deep affection, as though he could already see a great general blossoming in the Dawn Nebula.
"This kid really does have the makings of a great general!" he said.
"Of course! If he hadn't had the makings of a great general, we wouldn't have invited him aboard the Blue Sovereign on Navy Day all those years ago. And you wouldn't have invited him to join the Lionheart Club at the first opportunity," Rozes said.
"Oh, Comrade Rozes, you really know how to talk." Yu Lian gave his adjutant a sidelong glance. He couldn't help but marvel. Plenty of people in the system could spend their whole lives without learning how to praise themselves while buttering up their superiors like this. Even his flattery was so slick it made your skin crawl.
Besides, you'd invited Simon because he was graduating that year, and his psionic awakening meant he'd naturally make a good sniper and artilleryman. And the reason you'd heard the name of some little soy-sauce shop owner's son was that, during his final year at the military academy, the man directly above him had been the former adjutant of Horatio's grandfather.
Just then, Simon Vayali began speaking again in the blurry footage on the screen. "Sound check, sound check. Broadcasting to the entire universe: I'm Colonel Simon Vayali, chief of staff of the Blue Star Commonwealth Marine Corps' Thirty-Eighth Division. Uh, Commander Schiller, you really aren't going to say anything? Uh, all right, heh. Then I'll take the spotlight myself. I'm actually a little embarrassed."
He took a tactical sip of water, and his voice abruptly turned grim. "It's 04:27 on December 26, Year 833 of the Commonwealth