Imperfections Chapter 51

In the past, there was no hierarchy and arrangement in the Self-Defense Force—— Cow was the Boss. Cow said, "Hey, come fight a few brothers." And an undisciplined and unstructured group of gangsters with arms on hand were formed.

However, pure ambition would grow among the rabbles. Even among a herd of sheep, a bellwether would always stand ahead, catching a wisp of hope and encouraging others to follow him to march forward.

At first, it was Sat.u.r.day who summoned a gang of brothers who followed Bixing Lu to construct the energy system of the base. Nowadays, it was also him that seized the time by the forelock to establish a real Self-Defense Force.

Bixing Lu went out in a hurry for Jingheng Lin. Due to energy shortage, his return trip got delayed. In this short week, Sat.u.r.day took the lead to make plans for the Self-Defense Force and bring his ideas to the four students, who consulted data in Bixing Lu's digital library. Finally, by drawing from other sources, they pieced together the "Regulations on Administration for Self-Defense Force in the Base".

With a framework and a model, the true Self-Defense Force seemed to be founded

Of course, it was still far away from impressing Commodore Lin. From his perspective, the so-called Self-Defense Force was no better than playing house——a striking underground castle could be dug out by the ants' will when they're united like a fortress, and biologists would marvel at the miracle created by such ants, writing a book that may impress people a little.

And so what? After such "miracle" and being moved by it, it could still not resist a heavy rain.

"We train for six hours a day. First, we familiarize with mech operation and fixed-point patrols. I am quite unclear with the following drill, so it's up to you." Sat.u.r.day took his training group and Bixing Lu to the base, who described his ambitious prospect to Bixing Lu excitedly with his hands dancing in the air. Perhaps, it was due to him being the self-appointed captain of the Self-Defense Force, his confidence increased a little. Or perhaps, it was due to too much s.e.xual gossip he heard along the way, and the sense of distance from Jingheng Lin decreased. It was astonis.h.i.+ng that he should dare to talk to Jingheng Lin, "Commodore Lin, is it the same in...the fortress that you have ever served in? "

Jingheng Lin, carrying Zhanlu on hand, said with indifference on his face, "No, in non-mission time, the professional s.p.a.ce force of the IU must be in training for no less than 10 hours a day. It is a unified regulation set by the Military Commission."

"U-Unified regulation?" Sat.u.r.day's face paled, "It was a match-fixing?"

"Maybe," Jingheng Lin said lightly, "I think they might lose the war intentionally, otherwise they were not so vulnerable."

Bixing Lu asked, "And the Silver Ten Squadrons？Do you implement the training program in accordance with the standard?"

"No, besides from exceptional case, the Ten Squadrons have only six hours for sleep and three hours for meals, ch.o.r.es, rest and reorganization." Jingheng Lin pa.s.sed over Bixing Lu and walked towards the administration building without looking back, "After all, extraterritorial pirates haven't rested for years."

Jingheng Lin's words were actually meant to stop Sat.u.r.day's daydream——compared with soldiers in the IU Armed Force who were born with a decent background, fed with balanced nutrition and educated under formal military education, those who were born in the hapless base were bean sprouts with congenital deficiency. Even the IU Armed Force collapsed in disarray and with many whose whereabouts were unkown, these bean sprouts actually attempted to transform themselves from cowards to heroes by shouting slogans and receiving chicken soup for the soul.

Wasn't it a joke?

However, because Jingheng Lin did not want to discourage Bixing Lu openly, he minced a euphemistic statement. But Sat.u.r.day, a bit of rough fellow who couldn't get accustomed to the roundabout statement in Wotto-style for a short while, fished out his personal terminal unconsciously and calculated the training hours of the Ten Squadrons.

"Did you get it?"Bixing Lu b.u.mped his shoulder.

Sat.u.r.day said helplessly, "Maybe...he means that our training hour is inadequate?"

Bixing Lu talked at a venture, which completely misinterpreted Lin's idea, "Commodore Lin means that if you can keep up with the criteria of the Silver Ten Squadrons, he would help you in troop training. Do you know the Silver Ten Squadrons?"

Sat.u.r.day shook his hand.

"The Silver Ten, the protective umbrella of eight galaxies, is the true elite force of the IU. They are stationed in the Silver Fortress, and the interstellar pirates dare not invade the eight major galaxies, thus giving rise to complete victory in decades of wars. Get it?"

The more nonsense Lu talked, the brighter the eyes of Sat.u.r.day were.

Bixing Lu who looked like a heretic who was peddling his afrodyn patted Sat.u.r.day's shoulder and lowered his voice, "Do you want to become the new Silver Ten Squadrons?"

Sat.u.r.day's reason was about to be toppled, "But we are just a gang of hooligans."

"There is no 'but'." Bixing Lu's expression became grim, he replied firmly, "Haven't you heard the ancient proverb? 'Real men never looks back at explosions', go ahead and never look back. The IU considers you as a hooligan, so you are a hooligan? Wotto has already been beaten to a hornet's nest, so why do your values remain as old as the one in the old society? "

After being hoodwinked, Sat.u.r.day turned back and ran away like an arrow that has been released from a stringed bow, as if his main artery had been injected with a tube of chicken's blood directly.  He even forgot to ask the reason why Cow didn't come back with Commodore Lin.

Bixing Lu then took a few steady steps, then accelerated, running after Jingheng Lin in no delay.

Jingheng Lin has just gotten rid of President Lu who talked without restraint. But no sooner had Lin entered the administration building, he met the hostile eye of Monoeye Hawk.  

Jingheng Lin had lots of qualms about Bixing Lu's weird physical condition, thus he stopped Monoeye Hawk at once, "Hey, Brother Lu, I have something to ask you."

"I have nothing to say to you." Monoeye Hawk angrily interrupted Lin's talks, "I know you son of a b.i.t.c.h are nasty and shameless, but I never actually expect you to be such a despicable motherf.u.c.ker!"

Jingheng Lin was baffled and confused, "What? Have I stepped on your tail while sleepwalking?"

Monoeye Hawk said, "I would never give my son to you, give up the illusions forever!"

 They had maintained a speechless and tacit understanding over Bixing Lu's lot, but Jingheng Lin didn't know the reason why the old Persian Cat became out of wits, and he was also disinclined to go into the whys and wherefores. Lin immediately retorted with a sneer, "You have the final say."

At that moment, Bixing Lu's footsteps rushed towards them. Bixing Lu heard squabbles from them from far away, "Dad, do not disturb Lin's rest, he was tired and exhausted after going out!"

Monoeye Hawk was speechless.

Jingheng Lin felt that his patience has reached its limit to an extent that he would suffer an extreme headache from hearing another word of Bixing Lu. Therefore, Jingheng lin fled in a hurry, with a word left to Monoeye Hawk, "Watch over 'your son' first!"

It was a blatant menace, Monoeye Hawk howled back, "I'm gonna kill you!"

Jingheng Lin hummed slightly as he got in the elevator. They had a row with irrelevant answers produced, succeeding in further deepening their misunderstanding, that sounds about right!

Bixing Lu, who was hurrying to mediate, looked up and found that Jingheng Lin had already escaped quickly faster than a flying Apsara*, while his father went towards Lu with his b.l.o.o.d.y mouth opened. Bixing Lu realized that trouble was going against himself, so he threw his father a kiss at once and said, "Dad, long time no see, I missed you so much!"

*ethereal beings in Hindu and Buddhist mythology who inhabit the skies, and are often depicted taking flight

After he spoke, he continued to miss Monoeye Hawk, and without waiting for his reply, took to his heels and ran.

Having overcome all his difficulties to avoid that pair of father and son, Jingheng Lin went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and hung the dormant Zhanlu in the repaired Heavy Mech No. 3 and let him auto-reboot. Before he could sit down and drink, he went straight to the underground private prison.

Cow Spencer has been jailed in utter darkness for nearly a month. Except from the robot for meal delivery, Spencer could not even see a mouse. His figure got increasingly thin.

At the first sight of a living person, Spencer fully displayed the heroic spirit of an interstellar trafficker ——  Cow pounced on the bottom of Jingheng Lin's feet, hugged Lin's leg and began to howl, "B4, I know I am at fault, I've been reflecting for almost a month now, I am a f.u.c.king a.s.shole, I owe Monoeye Hawk and my brothers an apology. If not for people in the base, I would be hacked to death, I......Ee!"

Jingheng Lin was not willing to start talking to him, so he took out his gun and pointed it against Spencer's head.

Cow loosened his grip and retreated, squeezing a flattering smile to Jingheng Lin with his snot running along his incomplete teeth into his mouth.

Jingheng Lin said, "Say something reasonable."

"B4." Cow calmed down and whispered, "What kind of times are these? People who cross the desert would cherish every drop of his urine, and I, after all, is more useful than a bubble of urine......so what should I do? I can kneel and kowtow for apologies in front of everyone. It's no use? You can dig up my ancestral graves in the underground channel. Generations of my ancestors including my parents and other relatives sleep here! As long as you can cool down, you can do anything you want! Please let me out, and I would follow you, serve you and keep secrets for you, or you can riddle me with bullets."

Admiral Lin was very knowledgeable, but he rarely received the gracious invitation of "digging someone's ancestral graves". Lin was afraid that "shame" wasn't in Spencer's dictionary. Lin's eyelid twitched, "What can you do for me?"

"I have a spy within the pirates." Cow said with seeming seriousness, "It's true, no kidding. I had saved a birdman which has a bird body with a human hand in my early years. He can fly. When he gets dressed, he is as same as humans. Up until now, he is in the hands of the pirates. And it was also him that sent me the message that pirates would invade the Eighth Galaxy."

Jingheng Lin's heart missed a beat as he heard it, but his face betrayed nothing, "Another bulls.h.i.+t from you and I'll riddle you with bullets right now."

"Nonono! I don't talk bulls.h.i.+t" Cow was furious "B4, your distrust must be attributed to the fact that you haven't seen birdmen. I'll tell you, in those early years, human-shaped pets were all the rage in the black market, hence these f.u.c.king smugglers hunted for handicapped kids everywhere and rendered them neither humans nor beasts. They were sold to those psychopathic rich people. So the birdman was not a rarely-seen creature, and there were also human-shaped pets with snake body......"

Jingheng Lin interrupted him, "I know human-shaped pets, they cannot survive at all. It is basically a bonsai in a nutrition box. Who do you think you're fooling?"

Cow gave him a s.h.i.+ny grin with gold teeth, "Ah, B4, this is what you don't understand. Think about it, nowadays interstellar trip hasn't been a novelty anymore. Compared with it, the human-body grafting technique is nothing. If they want to make it, nothing is impossible."

"The IU's prohibition on human-body grafting technology is ascribed to a violation of both ethics and law, while profits will also prevent us from developing such technologies——the short lifespan of human-shaped pets is beneficial for our sales——and a human-shaped pet with hundred years of vitality would lead to overstock. What's more, the maintenance of the nutrition box and the production of special nutri-gel designed for these pets are no less profitable than the sale of pets. You know, n.o.body wants to lose their job."

Jingheng Lin gave a reserved sneer, "Surprising that you should know about microeconomics."  

"No, just nonsense, and it's for the same reason." Cow hung his head, paused before continuing his words, "But then, someone broke our rules. Must be a fool, someone rich who was obsessed with human-shaped pets, bored out of his wits, wanting to strike himself out of the ordinary, then spent a large sum of money — I have no idea how big it is, all I know is that there must be a whopping price, lots of people were hired to develop the human-body grating technology, naming it the 'Nuwa Project'." 

Jingheng Lin's eyes widened, "Nuwa? What big words. "

The Cow fawned on Jingheng Lin promptly, "Yes, money talks. It is with no doubt that rapid progress is made in technologies, and money drives it. Eventually, the project succeeded and a batch of human-shaped pets that could live a normal life was made and even retained their own brain. And that's where the birdman came from."

"Birdman," Jingheng Lin questioned unexpectedly, "What's his name?"

"Ah?" the Cow failed to understand it, "Birdman? Birdman is birdman, a pet..."

Jingheng Lin interrupted him, "And then?"

"As I've said, they are people who broke the rules. You can have a lion's share, but you cannot eat up all of it. Then the leakage of the Nuwa Project has attracted crazy fans of human-shaped pets, some peers who regarded them as the mortal enemy that deprived them of their revenues and jobs, and other greedy peers who wanted to get the technology by disturbances and messes. It seemed that they were hunted all over the world......Eventually, no one escaped this murder. Moreover, successful samples went up in smoke, only the birdman survived by chance."

Jingheng Lin went straight to the point, "How did he survive? How did the Nuwa Project leak?"

This time, Cow didn't answer immediately, his eyes twinkling a little.

Jingheng Lin ran his finger over the mouth of the laser gun, and Cow cowered and faltered, "The birdman, who was a handicapped orphan who no one wanted, together with his brothers and sisters, some of which had problems too, was adopted by an illegal welfare house for a while. Later on, the house realized they could earn a little from them and it wasn't worth spending to cure them, so, they were sold to a laboratory specialized in human-body grafting. Before the whole lab was sold in the extraterritorial black market, two of his companions died in the lab and the other two could not have an independent life without the nutrition box. Only the birdman survived."

Jingheng Lin questioned closely, "How did you know?"

"People living in the underground channel have to rely on my staging post, neither Nuwa Project nor Gaia Project can be hidden from me." Cow hesitated a little, "A bit of curiosity drove me to pay a visit to the lab. As a result of years of cooperation, you know, they didn't have a good excuse to refuse me..."

"You found the birdman and communicated with him stealthily." Jingheng Lin said, "How did you interact with them? You knew a little bit of lip language, didn't you? And you smuggled him out of the lab."

"I...I drank too much and didn't think about it that time." Cow wiped his face, "He told me that two of his surviving companions were bought by a big shot interstellar pirate. He was gonna look for his lost companions and begged me to take him to the extraterritorial black market. It was his values of family affection, as well as his loyalty that made me burn with righteous indignation..."

"f.u.c.k off, stop playing tricks with me!" Jingheng Lin interrupted him tartly, "The toll fees in the underground channel are charged on the profits, don't you think I know this? Transactions of human-shaped pets is your greatest source of revenue. Therefore, you are the last person to break the rules and the first person to make use of others to do your dirty business, right?"

Cow looked a bit pale, "Your...your conclusion was too..."

"You took the birdman to the extraterritorial black market and sold him to those interstellar pirates according to his wishes. So, do you know who he is?"

Cow shook his head, "Prying into the status of other people is the greatest taboo in the extraterritorial black market. However, not so many people are crazy about human-shaped pets, so..."

"You exhibited the birdman in the black market before the leakage of Nuwa Plan and the destruction of the experiment. After that, the birdman, who bears deep grat.i.tude for your kindness, was known as the only survivor in the Nuwa Project and was sold at a good price in your deal with interstellar pirates. Mr. Spencer, you take the lead among a flock of unscrupulous merchants. It's no wonder that you should have lived so long." Jingheng Lin knocked Cow's forehead with his laser gun, "And then?"

Cow stammered out, "Then...then it has been nearly thirty years that I haven't seen him. In my deal with interstellar pirates, I told my buyer that the pet cultivated in the experimental lab was sensible, smart, and unique and had an intimate knowledge of the technology of nutrition box and formula of the nutrition gel designed for human-shaped pets. I also told them the small capitals would produce lucrative profits, which could dispense them from furtive employment for taking good care of other human-shaped pets...... "

Jingheng Lin cracked his knuckles one by one——it was inconvenient for Primalien to openly hire after-sale servicers who fed human-shaped pets secretly. Maybe they had conducted many experiments in confidence, most of which ended up with failures. In that sense, that's no wonder that the birdman, an equivalence of their breeder, has the right of free access.  

"The ordinary human-shaped pets couldn't survive for more than two or three years, thus I guessed that he had buried all of his companions by himself." Cow whispered, "But I didn't expect that he should have such a long life on the pirate's side. At that day, I came across him in the saleroom as I led my brothers to exchange goods in the market...He couldn't speak, read, and didn't know sign language. The pirate might have thought he just took a bird out, and I also left out of consideration that he might have still remembered me. As I pa.s.sed him by, he deliberately stepped over my toes and squatted down to clean my shoes, taking the opportunity to tell me in lip language to deliver a message that pirates were gonna mount an a.s.sault on the Eighth Galaxy after two months."

Jingheng Lin asked, "When did the Nuwa Project start?"

"Over thirty years ago," Cow struggled to recall the past, "I am not quite sure of the exact time...but when I found out about it, they already made a successful experiment. The project might have been finished...28 years ago."

Jingheng Lin asked, "Who's the sponsor?"

"I don't really know it." Cow said, "OK, it was disclosed by me, then the situation was out of my control. I dared not to get involved into such a mess again. Finally, all of them are killed, and I suspected that the mysterious sponsor was in it."

Jingheng Lin was silent for a moment.

Cow carefully watched his expression and took the chance to say, "He could be my spy on the condition that I have done him a favor and the pirates are unaware of it. Please let me out. I have a way to contact..."

Jingheng Lin looked at him with a rather weird gaze and turned away, leaving Cow's shouting in the private jail.

Among the galaxies, the soil of impudence, dirtiness, obscenity and timidity was so vast that when a wonderful flower sporadically grew here, it might not have a good end.

It was the great era of the NSC.

Jingheng Lin connected the rebooted mental network of Zhanlu, "How's the Heavy Mech No. 3?"

"Good adaptability," Zhanlu replied, "with abundant energy."

"Good." Jingheng Lin covered the whole base through the mental network, "I would rush out the survey map within 24 hours and make preparations for the construction of remote communication. Ares Von will definitely react to Primalien's disappearance."

Zhanlu said, "Yes, Sir."

Jingheng Lin took the elevator to the guest room in the administration building, hearing the whistle for a.s.sembly of the Self-Defense Force. Their organization of physical training was meant to be reminiscent of a game of playing house.

But they didn't know they only had two months left...or maybe even less.