"..."
At the abandoned mining base, inside the Command Center of the Terran base, Darius had only recently gotten up. With no combat assignments lately, he was still dressed in civilian clothes. He took a sip of strong tea and set the cup down on his office desk, then let out a breath and settled into the chair behind it, calm and serious.
He leaned back and found a comfortable position. Then he folded his hands on the desk and looked at the new recruit standing at attention in front of him, his deep-set eyes full of helplessness and a hint of meaning.
Darius had already gotten a general idea of why she had come to report to him while washing up. But he still hadn't decided what to say to her. He'd planned to work up his temper and practice his blade technique, then warm up with a sparring match against the brats in his guard. He hadn't expected something like this to come up.
"..."
The young female recruit, who looked about seventeen or eighteen, stood there with her head bowed, fidgeting anxiously and hardly daring to move.
She already thought she'd messed up again. So, standing before the highest-ranking officer at her base and bracing herself for a lecture, she wore a nervous, uneasy expression on her still-youthful face. Her apprehensive gaze kept drifting to the side of its own accord.
"All right!"
At first, Darius had wanted to give the recruit a proper dressing-down.
But she was a young girl, and she'd only just been recruited from among the refugees on this planet. She'd been hurriedly put on the job after less than ten days of training, so a few mistakes at work were only to be expected. After thinking it over, he couldn't bring himself