When Clovis received the report on Operation White Chrysanthemum's withdrawal, he slammed the tablet in his hand onto the conference table.
The screen did not shatter. Imperial military equipment had always been more reliable in that respect than the people using it. The report remained lit, its first few lines painfully glaring: three of the eight Sutherlands heavily damaged, two moderately damaged; the Lancelot's right-arm Luminous Generator overheated, its Hover Unit damaged; not a single operational objective achieved; major disputes over the Special Affairs Division's authorization procedures; the Area 11 Government-in-Exile had already classified the entire attack as a cross-border military operation conducted without the governor-general's final approval.
Worse still, Cornelia had been the first to discover that White Chrysanthemum was still underway.
After halting her eastward advance in Area 18, she had checked the high-level military flight routes throughout the empire's eastern theater almost in passing. Then she had spotted a covert formation flying low over the Yellow Sea toward Goryeo, bearing Clovis's authorization number yet absent from the Governor-General's Residence's final operations list.
His elder sister's encrypted message contained only two sentences.
"Clovis, troops under your name have launched an operation without your confirmation again."
"I've already attached a royal oversight flag for you. Investigate immediately."
Again.
That word hurt the most.
Once in Luoyang, Chevail had defied his orders and nearly turned Clovis himself into a pretext for imperial intervention in the Great Han's Palace Coup. Now it had happened again in Goryeo: the Colonial Affairs General Bureau and the Special Affairs Division had borrowed his authorization to deploy the Lancelot, a secret transport aircraft, and unregistered Sutherlands.
Twice in succession, all in the name of protecting a prince and safeguarding imperial interests. Both times, only after everything had begun had someone remembered that this colony nominally