Ji Fukui glanced at his notepad. The Chairman was late, as usual. He's probably watching the New Year's celebrations. Decadence appeals to him.
It would be annoying if it wasn't so pathetic. He makes us wait to emphasize his own importance. The kind of insecurity that required such gestures would be amusing in a petty bureaucrat. It was something else in the head of State.
Ji was different. Although a full Minister, with a seat on the Collective Council, Ji was never deliberately late. Ji never made his subordinates' lives - or work - tougher than necessary. Ji prized efficiency above nearly everything else.
Although he was not the Chairman, Ji came closer to controlling the Collective Council than the Chairman did. Ji's control would extend today. Either the Council would adapt the policy change he wanted, or one of his more annoying opponents would be off the Council.
Ji glanced at his target. Tang Sike wore the uniform of an Admiral in the People's Liberation Navy. Even Ji considered him a disgrace to the uniform he wore. He could only imagine what a military officer thought.
As if sensing his rival's thoughts, Sike turned to face him. Sike's moustaches drooped twenty-five centimeters below his double chin. Hidden by the table, his belly forced his shiny Admiral's buckle to protrude nearly that far in front of his shrunken chest.
There was a commotion at the door. Ji glanced that way and saw the Chairman enter the room. He swung gracefully to his feet much more easily than his younger rival.
"Thank you all for coming," the Chairman said, as if he had called the meeting. Perhaps in his mind he had. Ji had no idea how he reconciled his lofty position and near-powerlessness.
The Chairman sat, and indicated that the others could sit. Ji suppressed a smile as his rival sighed in relief while dropping into his chair.
"I am glad to announce the assimilation of New Taipei is nearly complete," the Chairman said. "The remaining problems can be settled by underlings properly applying existing policy. Meanwhile, we may turn our attention elsewhere."
"I have a proposal for where we should turn our attention," Ji said.
Both the Chairman and the Admiral watched Ji warily. "Yes?" the Chairman asked.
"The New Taipei operation has shown we can of project overwhelming power to the far end of our binary system. I propose we begin projecting power across interstellar distances."
"No!" Admiral Sike exclaimed. "Our losses in New Taipei were too heavy! It will take years to recoup them!"
Ji glanced at his notepad. As Minister of Social Hygiene, it was Ji's solemn responsibility to enforce calmness in the People. An excited citizen was a dangerous one. An excited citizen could forget proper safety precautions, endangering himself and those around him. Ji's notepad had a continuously running display of Admiral Sike's voice stress quotient.
Ji pressed a key, commanding the analyzers to pad Sike's voice stress levels. Then he returned his attention to his rival. "You said we were too weak to take New Taipei. But we did."
"Through bribery and trickery!" Sike spat back. "We're still too weak to have taken them in a fair fight!"
Ji glanced again at Sike's voice stress output. It was high enough to justify the next step in their dance. Ji just had to keep it there until an underling noticed.
"You said the capitalists of New Taipei were too wise to bribe and trick. Yet we did it."
"You can't count on that working for other systems! Had New Taipei's settlers been others than refugee Taiwanese, it wouldn't have worked there!"
Ji suppressed a smile as sweat began to appear on Sike's forehead. The rest of the Council should know that Sike's emotional stress levels were dangerously high.
"How many times will you be wrong about military matters, Admiral?"
The spectators to the argument jerked back as a door opened noisily. Ji turned, and was not surprised to see Administrator Jiaxuan, followed by some burly assistants.
"Your pardon, Ministers," Jiaxuan began. "But one of those present has dangerously high voice stress indicators. He should be held for observation, lest he become a danger to himself or the Collective."
Sike hove to his feet, pulling a communicator from his pocket. "This is the final impertinence!" he shouted. Opening the communicator, he had time to shout for guards before the assistants reached his side. Two took his arms, while a third passed the communicator to Jiaxuan.
The communicator buzzed in Jiaxuan's hand. He raised it to his mouth.
"Admiral Sike is unwell," Jiaxuan said. "He is being taken in for observation." Then he shut the communicator and pocketed it. "Again, my apologies, Ministers."
Jiaxuan pulled the door shut behind his assistants, closing off the scuffling sound of Sike's attempts to fight. The room was silent for a minute. The remaining Ministers looked at each other nervously. Finally the Chairman broke the silence.
"This meeting is adjourned. We will reconvene after Admiral Sike is returned to his duties. Or, if his stress is heavier than I think, after he is replaced."
Ji stood with the rest, waiting respectfully until the Chairman left. Then he nodded politely to his peers and left the conference room. He strode down the hall, past the lift and to the stairs.
In Ji's youth, a lift would never have existed merely for the convenience of overpriviliged bureaucrats. A lift would be in a hospital to assist moving patients from floor to floor. Or a cargo lift would assist with loads too heavy for a man to carry up stairs.
The younger generations were growing effete with luxuries there Chairman herself lacked in Ji's distant youth. He reflected on the slow seduction wealth had. It was enough to weaken the iron determination of the Collective.
Ji had reached the ground floor. He pushed the door open and strode past the youths queued up for the lift. At least they still wait their turn for the luxury of the lift. In the Capitalist states, they didn't even wait, but rather pushed in, crowding each other like swine being herded to the slaughterhouse.
Ji entered the suiting room and opened the locker his suit hung in. That was another luxury. In Ji's day, the suits would have hung on pegs in the wall. Most places, they still did. But not in the Tower of the People. Here, every luxury New Guangdong knew how to make was available. Was common.
Ji reflected on the strange seductions wealth offered in his twilight years. Lifts. Bodyguards. DNA repair - as if a single individual's genes were worth the expense. Domed cities - there was talk of wasting tremendous resources, enough for two complete psychological treatment centers or half a dreadnought - in order to build a radiation shield over New Guangzhou. As if such a dome could be trusted to not fail.
Ji shook himself and quickly stripped off his loose outer garments. They were designed to be easy to don and remove, and to not wrinkle excessively when folded into their separate bag. He glanced, more in irritation than admiration, at a young woman whose dress was so impractical that she needed help fastening the zipper in its back.
Ji pushed his feet into the loose legs of his suit, then slid his suit's feet into his sandals. Like Ji's indoor garments, they were simple, tough, plain. A peasant's, his peers whispered among themselves.
Ji had spent his life conserving resources. He was well aware that, for each garment, cotton plants or sheep must be guarded from radiation and native predators; be laboriously collected or shorn; the fibers laboriously separated from their native matrix and spun; the resulting threads woven into cloth, and the cloth itself cut and sewn. Five or six separate workers just to make his shirt, and that didn't include the unknown numbers who transported, carried, stored, and delivered items along the way.
Ji paused to check his mask. The filters had begun to change color, and would need replacing soon. If Ji had been venturing home, he would have swapped them on the spot. But his office was only twenty minutes' walk away, and the filters had at least thirty minutes left in them.
Ji carefully rolled his clothes and put them in their shielded bag. Then he sealed his mask, thrust his arms into his suit, pulled the hood over his head, and sealed the suit. Standing, he turned toward the building's sealed entrance. Behind him, the woman giggled as she swayed on shoes whose heels were obviously higher than she was used to. Ji considered checking her stress levels himself. No, I have a staff for that these days.
Instead, Ji strode to the door, pushed the button, and waited paitently. After almost two minutes, it opened and disgorged a half dozen suited people. Ji waited for them to enter, then entered the inner lock himself and pushed the button to proceed. The door closed and sealed behind him, then Ji entered the outer lock. Ji walked past the radiation proctors - one of the few professions that demanded even less emotional reactions than Ji's own - and waited for the outer door to open.
New Guangdong was a harsh world, unforgiving of mistakes. Its sun, Gamma Lepus A, was an F6 star that radiated more than twice as much as Sol did. Unfortunately for its colonists, more of its radiation was in its ultraviolet band. New Guangdong's ozone layer and radiation belts were also thinner and weaker than Earth's.
The result was a green world that looked like a tropical paradise. The illusion lasted until one passed a radiation counter around. It didn't matter much what kind of radiation counter one used; whatever it detected, New Guangdong's background level was much higher than Earth's.
Ji ignored this as he turned into the crowd of masked and suited people. He glowered as an aircar passed overhead. Another waste of resources. In my youth, only emergency services used aircars. And they were clearly marked, and only used for emergency purposes. In this decadent age, a deputy underminister uses an aircar to deliver groceries to his mistress.
Ji paused at a corner of the People's Municipal Park. A team of workmen was attacking a genetically modified Fukien tea tree. After a moment, he identified the supervisor by his yellow sleeve bands.
"Is this necessary?" Ji asked him.
The supervisor turned, then paused at Ji's suit markings. His bearing became more subdued as he replied. "This tree has definite radiation damage. It appeared in half the seeds collected at the last survey."
"Thank you," Ji said and turned away. In his distant youth, he had planted that tree during the summer he spent helping to plant the park.
Ji was subdued as he finished his walk. He entered the Social Hygiene building with a crowd of others. The door closed, and the crowd was drenched in a cleansing shower as the air in the room was completely replaced.
The far door opened, and radiation proctors passed their detection wands over each individual as they approached the inner lock. Ji waited patiently as the proctor moved his wand over Ji's suit. The wand beeped as the proctor brought it down. The proctor stopped, waved it some more, and the wand beeped again.
"The shoes, Minister."
Ji stepped out of his shoes. The proctor waved the wand some more, then looked squarely at Ji.
"I'm afraid the shoes have had it, Minister."
"I understand," Ji replied.
The proctor lifted the shoes and tossed them into the receptacle by the entrance. Ji turned and made his way into the inner lock.
The lock took time to fill; they waited while several people tried argue, as if their arguments would change the reality of radioactive contamination. Or perhaps there were radiation proctors susceptable to argument? If so, Ji would order their reeducation himself. In the inner lock, the air was again replaced. The lock opened when the room's radiation count dropped to the lowest one might have found on Earth.
Ji took a public locker at random, and swiftly stripped his suit and dressed in what remained of his clothes. Then he strode to the stairs - no decadent lifts in Ji's building - and to the top floor.
As he entered the office, his assistant looked away from his desk communicator. "Do you require anything, Minister?"
"Another pair of sandals," Ji replied. "The last pair had one trip outside too many. And an appointment, at his convenience, with the halfbreed that is Deputy Minister of Collective Defense."
Having given his orders, Ji ignored the assistant as he strode to his office. The details would be handled to Ji's satisfaction. Other details, which Ji must handle himself, awaited his decision.
When China deported its Communists to New Guangdong, other countries asked if they could add their Communists to the expedition. Russians, Cubans, Angolans and Albanians, and lesser numbers of other ethnic groups, were added to the involuntary colonists. Those that deported them wished the groups would kill each other off. This would leave a nearly empty world for the day when technology caught up with New Guangdong's needs for large-scale radiation protection.
They were nearly right. The two largest contingents were Russians and Chinese, and members of both groups kept their ethnic rivalries. The Chinese managed, through sheer mass of numbers, to dominate the planet.
The Russian who had climbed highest in the hierarchy was Admiral Wang Margelov, the Deputy Minister of Collective Defense. His mixed name was one part of his mixed heredity. Dark eyes and light brown - nearly blond, in fact - hair mixed with a face whose shape looked Chinese to Russian eyes, and Russian to Chinese. His mixed ethnicity proved a hidden advantage, as prejudice had taught him early to be more efficient than those around him.
Among his allies, Ji prized efficiency above all else. Yet it remained to be seen if Margelov would be an ally, or another opponent.
Margelov invited his distinguished visitor into his office, offering him a chair and refreshments. Ji accepted tea, then let his brows rise in surprise as Margelov turned to an ancient, polished samovar.
The Russian pot produced a surprisingly good green tea, however. Ji took a sip and looked at his host over the cup.
"I understand you have been to New Taipei lately."
"Yes, Minister. A cold planet. The natives must bundle up so heavily they almost look Russian."
"But less radiation."
"Much less. Less than Earth, in fact." Margelov grinned. "So little, Minister, that public health authorities must administer regular doses of UV radiation."
"Deliberate exposure to radiation?" Ji's voice was incredulous.
"Minister, the human body needs a certain amount of UV radiation. Otherwise it doesn't produce enough . . . Vitamin D, I think it is. Here, enough UV gets through our mask eyelets to take care of the problem." Margelov sipped his tea. "It is a problem more common in Siberia than Guangdong on Earth. I first encountered it in the crews of certain ships that spent most of their time in the outer system."
"How much better is the New Taipein technology?"
"Minister, the difference is almost inconceivable. No matter what the task is, their devices are smaller, lighter, and require less power."
"How is the resource usage to manufacture?"
"They use fewer resources, Minister." Margelov paused to sip his tea again. "But their techniques require more precision in manufacture than we are used to. Fewer workers are capable of such precision. This, I believe, is where the personnel for their entertainment and personal services industries come from."
"A sign of their decadence."
"Perhaps, Minister. But those incapable of the necessary precision work must have some kind of work. They shoud do something to pay the essential industrial and agricultural workers back for their time and effort."
"Decadence as a form of payment. I had not considered it in that light."
Margelov shrugged. "I do not insist upon the interpretation. I freely admit my knowledge of economics is rudimentary. In my position, I serve the Collective best with military skills."
"Will we be able to use their technologies?"
"Yes, Minister. But it will require retraining workers. Some workers will not be able to perform their new duties satisfactorily. Some provision will have to be made for them."
"It is ironic, isn't it, that scientific politics seems to be related to lesser advances in other sciences?"
"Doubtless much of the blame is the small baggage allowances our ancestors were allowed, Minister."
"Baggage allowance?" Ji asked. "My ancestors were only allowed the clothes they wore."
"Ah. Russia was . . . I don't think kinder is quite the word I mean. Anyway, colonists were allowed a certain small amount of baggage. One of my ancestresses grandmothers refused to part with her samovar." Margelov waved at the antique. "So she took it and the clothes she wore. Her husband never let her forget it meant he could only take half his scientific books. The least useful half, as it turned out. But he had been misled about the conditions here."
"He was a scientist?"
"Of sorts. As a young man, he had been the Party representative at a research university. When he was in his thirties, the Capitalists won. He managed to stay on as a university administrator. When he was an old man - older than his father had been at his death - he was deported."
"How well did we do in the recent campaign? What did we do well, and what did we do poorly?"
Margelov paused, marshalling thought. "The strategic preparation was excellent. None of the allies the enemy expected support from arrived until well after the conquest. In addition, nearly half the civil population favored us to their own rulers."
"Are they still of that opinion?"
"Many are. But some of the administrators we have sent are not all-wise. Policies designed to ensure safety from radiation on New Guangdong are a safety hazard on New Taipei. Yet some regional administrators are trying to enforce them on the civil populace. Which makes us all look like fools."
"I will ask people to look into this."
"Thank you, Minister. As for the execution of the actual fighting . . ." Margelov paused and sipped his tea again. "I don't know if it could have been done better. Their ships were much more powerful, better able to absorb damage, and had capabilities we didn't suspect. Capabilities they must have been keeping in reserve, against the day the fighting became truly desperate. We were outmatched in every battle. Only through heroic sacrifice were we able to prevail. And there was too much sacrifice." Margelov remained silent, his eyes seeing something other than his guest and the comfortable office around him.
Ji finished his tea and deliberately set it down. "The reason I asked for this meeting," he began, "is to discuss the Collective's ability to absorb more of the decadent capitalists."
"We are not ready at this time," Margelov responded. "Had New Taipei put up a serious fight, we would not have been ready for them."
"How can this be?" Ji asked.
Margelov looked acutely uncomfortable. "Please understand that I serve the Collective to the best of my ability."
"Does this mean some fault is yours?"
"I do not believe so," Margelov replied. "Please allow me to tell the full story, then you may judge for yourself."
"Very well."
"As a military officer, I am under orders. I must follow them, even if I believe them to be unwise. When allowed to make a choice, I take the one I believe to be wisest, considering both the situation at the time, and the situation I expect to exist in the future."
Margelov paused. "Were you aware we have not improved the design of our warships in over a century? And the designs we use are not the best we were capable of building then?"
Ji started. He hadn't been aware of such details. He'd merely assumed the military was the best judge of such things.
"I mentioned this to Admiral Sike, soon after my appointment to this position. He ordered me to leave things as they were." He sighed. "Perhaps there was a pressing reason, a century ago, to make our ship designs the easiest and fastest to manufacture. But there is no reason I am aware of to keep the design unchanged."
"Doesn't the unchanging, simple design mean we can build more ships faster?"
Margelov scowled. "Yes. More ships. But when ships are so weak that it takes five or six of ours to equal one of the enemy's, it greatly affects morale." He looked up. "Minister Fukui, the military has problems no other part of society face. Like all of the Collective, we strive to maintain the calmness that makes the Collective possible. Yet the emotions of combat are the most intense possible to humans. This is made more difficult when we know, beyond any doubt, that our ships are both more numerous and weaker than any possible enemy's. In the annexation of New Taipei, we lost almost as many sailors to fear as we did to enemy fire. And we lost five times as many ships as the enemy did."
"I was not aware it was that bad," Ji murmured.
"The knowledge was deliberately suppressed."
"For what reason?"
"Should I speculate on the motivations of those senior to me?" Margelov replied. "I prefer to believe that all serve the Collective as they think is best, and we merely disagree on what is best."
Ji noted that Margelov didn't actually say he did believe, merely that he preferred to believe.
"None of this has reached my attention before now," Ji responded. "How serious do you consider the problem?"
Margelov pulled the keyboard out of his desk and typed several commands. A screen in the side wall came on. It was dark for a few moments, then two ships appeared on it. Ji studied the image. The familiar one was a cylinder, with a spinning ring near the middle. Weapons and shuttle bays studded the nonrotaing portion of the ship. The unfamiliar ship was a tenth the other ship's size. It looked like a stretched-out cone, with completely unfamiliar features.
"The ship on the left you may recognize. That's our destroyer. It doesn't really matter which one, because they're identical, except for battle damage, mechanical failures, and repairs. The ship on the right is an armed courier vessel of the capitalists at Magellan."
"Does their coupling here have special meaning?"
Margelov leaned forward. "Yes. I believe they have nearly equal defensive capabilities."
Ji hissed as he leaned toward the screen. "But it's so small!"
"Yes. It would take sixteen of those couriers to enclose an equal volume of ship. Which is part of their advantage: a smaller target. But the Magellan is also more heavily armored."
"What?"
"Yes. The hulls of our destroyers, which are intended for combat, are as weak as a freighter's. In fact, our destroyers are little more than armed freighters; less than half the ship's volume is taken up. The rest is, for all practical purposes, cargo space."
"So the space is wasted?" Ji asked.
"Not necessarily. In the invasion, we filled those spaces with temporary life support systems and load seven hundred troops on each destroyer. And it would be difficult, if not impossible, to reduce the hull's size without eliminating something mounted there on the current design."
"What would you do?"
"I was specifically forbidden to work on this," Margelov replied slowly. "If that restriction were removed, I have a general idea of how to proceed."
"The possibility exists," Ji replied. "How would you proceed?"
"In most navies, a permanent department exists to design ships. Another department - or sometimes the same department - tests new ideas for weapons, strategies and tactics. We lack both functions."
"So you would leave the current designs untouched?"
Margelov smiled. "I would start the ship design department by asking them to find improvements in existing designs that would be easy to implement at the shipyards, yet would offer distinct improvements in effectiveness. We would use the new designs to teach the shipyard workers to build something other than the same ships their grandfathers built."
"This seems elaborate for something you haven't worked on."
Margelov shrugged. "I haven't used any Collective resources to plan. Otherwise, I could have more concrete suggestions. But my thoughts can turn to better ways of working when I have no other duties."
Ji stood, ending the interview. He glanced at the displays again, then turned his attention to Margelov again. "I will discuss your ideas with others. Perhaps you may be given permission to proceed." He nodded politely and left the office.
Before reaching the stairs, Ji stopped in a restroom. Taking a stall, he pulled out his notebook and played the voice stress indicators for their meeting back. Margelov's stress had stayed well within acceptable bounds the entire time.
At the next meeting of the Collective Council, Ji didn't have to wait nearly as long for the Chairman to arrive. The Chairman hurried to his seat, then stopped as he saw the empty seat at Sike's place. After a worried glance toward Ji, he sat. The rest sat, and the Chairman looked toward Ji.
"I take it the news is not good?"
"Admiral Sike is not a calm man," Ji replied. "He perpetuated some inefficient policies. There is some reason to believe he had cause to regret these decisions. Part of his stress might be guilt from realizing the consequences of these actions." Ji made his expression sorrowful. "His therapy is being devised as we speak. It is too early to see how long it will take, or what levels of responsibility he will be ready to handle when he does return."
Ji paused, watching faces as that set in. Wu Jiechi, the Minister for Internal Security, owed his appointment to Ji's removal of his predecessor. Thanks to the last meeting, there was no Minister of Collective Security. And the Chairman was a senile nonentity.
After the rest worked through their essential vulnerability, Ji continued. "Meanwhile, we have to consider the Collective's policies for the future. History tells us that we will not be left alone. Russia, China, Angola, even Cuba were hounded and discriminated against until they became capitalist states. New Taipei early incursions show that we will not be left alone here, either."
Not to mention the undesirableness of staying on New Guangdong is, Ji deliberately left unspoken. A furtive glance around the table showed the others understood that, however.
"I believe we can advance on several fronts. First, we should consider which nearby star systems can most easily be persuaded to accept assimilation into the Collective. Second, we should step up recruiting - and using - special friends in the systems around us. This applies mostly to the systems we can learn the most technology from.
"Our greatest problem is that we have become technologically backward. Other than the technologies needed for protecting planetary populations from radiation, our technology is that used when our ancestors first settled this planet. The lack is most pronounced militarily. On a strict size comparison, we have the weakest ships in a twenty-light-year radius."
"Surely we don't have weaker ships than others!" objected Zhang Guozhang, the Minister for Public Information.
Ji shrugged. "Perhaps some poorer nations on Earth build weaker warships than we do. And my information on systems the far side of Earth is even sketchier. Both due to lacks in our intelligence and lack of interest, I admit."
"Our technology is nothing new to me, " Wu Congyong, the Foreign Minister added. "I hear comments on it from nearly all the diplomats I send abroad. Many have been seduced into abandoning the Collective."
"Seduced by machines?" Minister Guozhang asked.
Minister Congyong shrugged. "I don't understand it, either. Except the two who have had DNA repairs as payment for their betrayal. Being condemned to be childless, then suddenly offered the chance to have children . . . I can understand how that would be seductive. As for the others . . . I don't understand it, either."
"Why haven't the traitors names been publicized?" Minister Guozhang asked.
"My subordinates supplied the information to yours. Warrants for their arrest are outstanding. The rest I don't know about."
"It was decided not to publicize their crimes," Ji added. "The effect on social hygiene would be incalculably negative. They are merely listed as fugitives from Collective justice."
No one objected to Ji's declaration.
"We have another task to contemplate," Ji added. "Our warships are poorly designed. When they were first designed, over a century ago, they were designed to put the largest number of hulls in space in the shortest time with the least expenditure of resources. This was part of the policy that stopped the incursions from New Taipei, and was necessary at the time. The problem is that shipyards today are building to the same designs we adopted then."
"But standard designs are critical to efficient warship construction!" objected Lu Yuming, the Minister of Industry.
"And they lead to an inefficient military," Ji responded. "I have long known that the military has the highest rates of social retraining. Until recently, I thought this was due to the rigors of military life. However, Vice Minister Margelov has corrected me."
"You trust a barbarian?" Minister Yuming asked.
"Admiral Wang Margelov has a Russian father and a Chinese mother. He has spent his entire adult life in the most demanding form of service to the Collective. He rose to his present position through sheer competence, despite the attitude you just demonstrated."
Ji focused on Minister Yuming. "Today, nearly a tenth of our population are non-Chinese. Through no fault of their own, they need social retraining more often than the Chinese. I say no fault of their own, because the cause is usually discrimination. Eliminate those who cannot stand the stress of discrimination, and they have a lower rate of social retraining."
"Is that my fault?" Minister Yuming asked.
"It is if your attitude condones, or even worse encourages, discrimination." Ji paused. "I am considering introducing a new policy, that those who needlessly cause social stress in others are as in need of social retraining as those who cannot handle the social stress." He smiled at the Council. "I am not introducing this for debate today. I merely mention it, as something we should all consider. If the capitalists don't crush us, our foreign population will expand. They must feel that they will receive fair treatment. Otherwise the amount of social stress will require drastic expansions in treatment infrastructure." The treatment infrastructure, of course, was Ji's own Ministry.
"Meanwhile, we have Naval policy to consider. The military feel we do not do all we can to preserve their lives in combat. They feel their opposites in the capitalist armed forces have better treatment. As nearly as I can tell, their feelings are an accurate reflection of reality."
Ji looked around the table. This time, no one objected.
"I think we should consider Admiral Margelov as Minister of Collective Defense. I have asked him to brief us on the problems of current Naval design, and his ideas for improvement. For many of you, this will be your first encounter with him. Although he is half gwalio by birth, I find him to be a man capable of sensitivity and understanding. He also has a formidable intellect. And his ideas for change sound like improvements."
When no one objected, Ji pressed a button on his notepad. The door opened, and Admiral Margelov came in. He strode to the outside briefer's podium, took out his notepad, and plugged it into the briefing systems.
**Margelov glanced around, then began. "You may not have known, but the Collective Navy has used the same ship designs, without any changes at all, for over a century. Think of all the changes technology has made since then."