Chapter 309: The New Post

The waiter brought the roasted meat on a large platter, sizzling. It was a whole square of pork with the skin on, weighing at least a jin. The skin was crispy and the meat was yellow. The cracked skin was sprinkled with some unknown herbs.

“It smells so good!” Ruan Xiaoqi’s throat couldn’t help but move.

On the platter was also a pile of golden-brown fried potato strips, a few lightly grilled tomato slices, and a few blanched green broccoli florets as side dishes. These vegetables were all “Australian vegetables” that had only started appearing in the last year. In all of Lin’gao, besides the Australians’ own canteens, they were only available at the cooperative restaurant and the trading post. The carefully prepared roasting jus, mixed with the dripping fat, flowed across the platter, looking very appetizing.

The waiter, holding a two-pronged fork and a carving knife, deftly sliced the meat. Each slice had skin, fat, and lean meat.

“This roasted meat is really something!” Ruan Xiaoer exclaimed. “The price is something else too.”

“It’s a rare treat anyway, and besides, we can afford it now,” Ruan Xiaowu said with a newfound air of confidence, having become an officer.

“We still have to save some to get a wife.”

As the three brothers were talking, there was a sudden commotion outside the private room. The sound of footsteps and voices became chaotic, followed by the waiter shouting at the top of his lungs, “Don’t push, don’t push, guests. Please go back to your own tables. This is a chief. Don’t crowd around, don’t crowd around.”

Just as they were wondering, there was a knock on the door of the private room. The waiter’s voice came from outside, “Sirs, a chief wants to see you.”

When a chief wanted to see them, the natives had no right to refuse, so the waiter only had to shout once before the door opened. The person who came in from outside was Pan Pan.

Pan Pan was still carrying that dark box, holding a pen and a small notebook in her hand.

“Xiaowu, I’m here to continue the interview,” she said, pulling out her letter of introduction again. “I’ve also got permission from your brothers.”

The letter of introduction was now stamped with the seals of the Bopu Naval Fortress Area and the Military and Political School, almost covering half the page.

And so, the three brothers’ family dinner turned into Pan Pan’s talk show. The three of them, with stiff expressions, were interrogated in turn by Pan Pan on various issues, including what kind of women they liked. After the interview finally ended, they were posed for several group photos before they were finally let go.

After finally seeing the foreign female chief leave, the three brothers wiped the sweat from their foreheads and sat down.

“Good heavens! That foreign woman really stinks!” Ruan Xiaoer said, panting. “A smell that’s neither fragrant nor foul.”

“How did that foreign woman become a chief too?” the Ruan brothers wondered.

“It seems she’s the wife or concubine of a chief. It looks like there are quite a few red-haired people among the Australians. Several of the chiefs are red-haired.”

“But they all seem to be foreign women.”

“The chiefs’ tastes are really special,” Ruan Xiaoer, being slightly older and having some knowledge of matters between men and women, said with relish.

The three brothers’ gathering continued until 8 p.m. It wasn’t until the factory’s evening time-telling steam whistle blew from the Bairen industrial zone that they dispersed—if they didn’t leave soon, the last ox-cart back to Bopu would stop running. Ruan Xiaoer and Xiaowu planned to go back to Bopu together, while Ruan Xiaoqi would go back to school by himself.

After saying their goodbyes, Ruan Xiaoer and Ruan Xiaowu, under the cover of night, boarded the public ox-cart from Bairen City to Bopu. The two of them were slightly drunk.

“Comrade Sergeant, and Comrade Ensign, do you have your IDs? If not, you have to buy a ticket,” said the ticket seller and guard, who was sitting next to the ox-cart driver, wearing a uniform, a dual-use combat/work helmet, and a leather anti-arrow vest with a steel plate on the front and back.

The guard had a bayonet at his waist and a short-barreled Minie rifle on his back. They were all army soldiers, taking turns on duty on the ox-carts. Their first priority was to protect the safety of the transport line and the ox-carts, and their second was to deter those who tried to ride without buying a ticket.

Ruan Xiaoer and Xiaowu took out their military IDs. The guard moved closer to the lantern hanging on the front of the cart and carefully checked their photos before returning the IDs. Soldiers rode for free as a rule, but they didn’t enjoy this privilege without their IDs.

The last ox-cart was very empty, with only about half the seats occupied. The ox-cart moved slowly. After leaving Dongmen City, the lights dimmed. Although there were lampposts along the road, the streetlights were still just lanterns using candles. Rather than providing illumination, they served more to mark the boundaries of the road to prevent pedestrians and vehicles from going off the road. The cart relied on the lantern hanging on it to illuminate the road ahead.

Every few kilometers, when the public ox-cart passed a blockhouse, a drum would sound from the blockhouse, and then the guard would strike the small gong used to signal departure a few times in response. The number of strikes was different each day, serving as a contact signal for security along the route.

According to the regulations of the police headquarters, all vehicles and pedestrians on the road at night had to carry a lantern as a signal. Otherwise, the blockhouses along the road had the right to open fire at any time upon discovery, with no questions asked if someone was killed. Of course, in practice, they would not open fire unless it was an emergency, but being arrested and held in the blockhouse for a night was unavoidable.

The light from the lantern cast a dim glow in the carriage, and the people were just shadows. In the distance, Bairen City and the industrial zone on the other side of the river were brightly lit. The iron-smelting furnace of the steel plant was probably still in production, and the firelight reddened the sky. The roar of the machinery and the loud clang of steel could be heard clearly even from the other side of the river.

These scenes were now very familiar to them, no longer a source of the past’s panic and curiosity. The Ruan brothers vaguely knew that it was precisely by relying on these steel monsters that roared day and night that the Australians could change Lin’gao, and also change themselves and everyone here.

Ruan Xiaowu’s leave was very full. His classmates from the same class and colleagues he had dealt with all came to congratulate him. They had dinner parties and meals for two days. On the last day, he prepared for the mission he would be going on after receiving his ship the next day. He simply stayed in his barracks in Bopu, recuperating and thinking about how to manage the ship and the sailors.

Unlike the army, which was mainly composed of honest and simple peasants, the sailors were mostly from pirate backgrounds, with all sorts of bad habits, and were more unruly. It took much more effort to discipline them than the army. Wei Aiwen and Chen Haiyang had spent a lot of effort in establishing the concept of discipline and strictly strengthening the concept of hierarchy. Therefore, although the navy’s treatment was far superior to the army’s, the hierarchy was more rigid and the discipline was much stricter than the army’s. Although, under the influence of 21st-century civilization, no one proposed to restore corporal punishment in the navy, the threshold for military legal action was very low. The captain had the right to arrest, detain, and interrogate anyone on the ship at any time during a voyage. A court-martial could be held on board, composed of the captain, an officer or cadet, and a soldier representative from the ship. Once convicted by the court-martial, the captain had the right to sentence the prisoner to death.

Of course, the captain’s power was not as great as imagined. Ruan Xiaowu had been a member of the “Ten-Man Group” and knew that there were secret members of the Ten-Man Group on every ship. The captain’s words and deeds would be reported at all times. If necessary, the Ten-Man Group had the right to take over the ship. Of course, such a takeover would be subject to strict review afterward. When he was in the Ten-Man Group’s training class, the chief had repeatedly reminded them that only when an officer had a definite and imminent act of treason or defection, and there was no other force nearby that could immediately prevent it, could the Ten-Man Group openly show itself and seize command. No other reason could be a reason for seizing command, otherwise it would be treated as insubordination, with very serious consequences.

“You must always remember that you are only secret agents, not military supervisors! At no time are you allowed to shake the authority of the officers. Fighting for the rights and interests of the soldiers is the business of the soldiers’ committee,” Ran Yao had reminded them more than once in the Ten-Man Group’s training class. “Once you meaninglessly expose your identity, you will no longer have this identity, and you will lose your reason for existence!”

In fact, the Political Security General Directorate was very strict with soldiers who revealed their Ten-Man Group identity. Several of Ruan Xiaowu’s classmates in the training class had been punished for violating the internal discipline of the Ten-Man Group, sent to the political department’s disciplinary team, and some had even been discharged from the military and sent to the labor reform team.

He never thought that he would now be the one being monitored. Of course, his Ten-Man Group identity did not change because he became an officer or a captain. Joining the Ten-Man Group was almost a lifelong position. Now, of course, a new member of the Ten-Man Group would be added to the Linyun 7, and he could be responsible for monitoring other captains, and even higher-ranking officers.

Last night, a letter with no signature had arrived in the drawer of his dormitory—the Political Security General Directorate wanted him to wait for further instructions at the Bopu Naval Officers’ Canteen at breakfast this morning.

While waiting in the bustling line to buy breakfast at the canteen, a native naval officer he had never seen before approached him. After identifying a simple code, the other party passed him a document with detailed instructions.

It was a letter with neither a salutation nor a signature. It first congratulated him on his promotion to ensign and his new position as captain, wishing him to “shine” in his post and “achieve new undertakings.” Then came the instructions for his next task.

His mission was changed to be responsible for monitoring the other captains in the naval detachment where the Yute-04 was located. Reports were still to be made once a month, and in emergencies, he could report at any time. The letter emphasized that the reports would be sent by mail, and a mailing address was attached: P.O. Box 119, Bairen General Post Office.

On his own ship, he wondered who the members of the Ten-Man Group were. According to the size of the Yute-04, the crew should be between 12 and 18 people, with at least one member. Ruan Xiaowu felt he could definitely identify them, but on second thought, he felt it was better not to.