Summers spoke casually, as if he were talking to an old friend he'd known for years.
Luo Ming joked just as casually, with a hint of malice. "That's right! You're the technical adviser to the New Jade Gate Defense Command and the chief planner at Tulong Works. They call you an adviser, but you're doing the work of a chief of staff. Plenty of people call you Commander Summers behind your back."
The other man fell silent for a moment. A rhythmic flicker of electronic light seemed to pass through his clear brown eyes.
Then he smiled as though he deserved the praise. He was still slender and refined, like some delicate, androgynous boy from a vegetarian family, but his whole bearing was spirited and confident, and his presence was imposing.
"Commander Carter and the others are willing to trust me. And I really am the best person for the job."
Luo Ming nodded. "That's true. If you'd stayed until graduation, your GPA would've earned you a place in the Tiger Tally. You could've even edged out my roommate... Uh, sorry, Thomas."
"That name. It's been a long time since I heard it." A trace of nostalgia flickered in his eyes, but overall he seemed remarkably calm—calm as a real robot.
He really had been one of the finest civilian students at the Central National Defense University. But he'd left the Lunar Military Academy in a way no one would have wanted to see. The academy, established during the Empire's colonial era and granted boundless glory by Marshal Victoria Li, had been left under a shadow.
It would take the dazzling careers of his classmates in the navy, and the string of achievements that followed, to dispel that shadow.
But the glory no longer had anything to do with him.