In short, Lieutenant General Jaeger Sobeck had used a method that combined decisiveness with tact, while preserving everyone's dignity, to bring the meeting back on track.
Whether or not he himself realized it, everyone present certainly thought so.
Duke Bayren glanced at the young "Wolf of Dawn" and smiled. Then he turned to Lieutenant General Neyali on his left and asked, "How are your injuries now?"
His voice was still gentle, and he seemed just as kind and generous as ever.
The Imperial Army officers gathered here came from all sorts of backgrounds: the Imperial Guard, the sector garrison fleets, the vassal lords, and even some of the mobilized troops from the Zhechong Prefecture. They served in a wide variety of systems and organizations that were, in theory, on equal footing, with no chain of command between them. It was easy to imagine what their usual relations were like.
Indeed, only a kind and generous elder like him could unite them into a single force and send them into battle.
Lieutenant General Neyali's face was ashen. He moved his mechanical arm, and a flash of bitterness crossed his face, but he quickly forced a smile. "I only lost an arm and a leg. It shouldn't affect my work."
His smile was, of course, thoroughly professional, showing the easygoing restraint of a mature adult. But the gratitude in his eyes when he looked at Sobeck was entirely sincere.
In fact, Lieutenant General Neyali had lost more than an arm. He had also lost half a kidney and half a lung. The medical department had managed to pull him back from the brink, though, and he was now fighting on at his command post with prosthetic limbs and artificial organs.
Naturally, for a traditional Imperial noble, using artificial body parts was terribly