Before Yu Lian could speak up to persuade him, Major General Watt Lall continued, "At the end of the day, I'm just a diplomat. You don't really think a mediocre old man like me would be any use doing proper work aboard a ship, do you?"
"Back at the Ring of Miracles, you served as Commander Sayor's chief of staff and inflicted heavy losses on the Empire. Your later defeat was due to the disparity in forces, not any failure on your part."
General Lall said, "You flatter me. At the end of the day, all I did at the Ring of Miracles was use your Defense Is the Universal Answer framework to build our lines. I was just a reasonably competent executor."
He paused, then added, "Before I became a military attaché, I came up through the Marine Corps, so planning ground operations is at least in my line of work. But as for a warship's duties—hahaha—any soldier in that line over there would be far better than me."
Yu Lian didn't answer at once. He simply looked again at the soldiers still standing in formation.
With his keen eyesight, he could easily make out that ninety percent of them were young people under thirty, mostly enlisted men and noncommissioned officers. Even someone like Mota, a civilian with no military rank to speak of, was now filling in as an officer.
Thinking of this, he looked more closely and, sure enough, spotted several familiar faces. They seemed to be members of the Overseas Students' Association. He remembered Tan Jize introducing them after the last God of War Festival, at the celebratory banquet, but he'd completely forgotten their names.
...Come to think of it, you were being treated as prisoners of war instead of being shot on the spot as