Li Yao slightly frowned. "Isn't that too much of a word? Are the officers of the Burning Prairie Fleet all so narrow-minded and vengeful?"
"Not exactly. It's a bit complicated," Tang Dingyuan explained.
"The Burning Prairie Fleet was the best of the best. The commanders of the fleet thought highly of themselves and did not bother to lower themselves to the level of the miscellaneous troops. At that time, there were too many miscellaneous troops in the Federation that were expanded with ancient, wasted starships, but the Burning Prairie Fleet never mocked other miscellaneous troops as' garbage fleets'.
Bai Xingjian's fleet was called 'garbage' not only because of their outdated equipment and their broken starships, but also because of the officers and sailors under Bai Xingjian's command. "
"Oh?"
Li Yao blinked and said, "What's so special about Bai Xingjian's officers and sailors?"
"A space fleet is developed from the 'navy' in the age of a planetary civilization. It is a troop class with super high technology and great emphasis on lineage and heritage. It is easy to build a brand-new starship, but it is very difficult to establish an excellent battle team on a starship, from the members in the bridge to the sailors and maintainers in the engine compartment!"
As the captain of Firefly, Tang Dingyuan had a lot of feelings about that. "A hundred-year army, a thousand-year fleet. It is not just a saying. In both the Federation and the Imperium, once they enter the highest state of war, dozens of Crystal Suit legions can be summoned at any time. The ordinary people who are armed with 'skill cards' and the ancillary systems of crystal processors can also grasp the usage of the low-level Crystal Suit very quickly after rapid training and become qualified 'infantrymen'.
"But a space fleet, especially a 'Deep Sky Fleet' that can cruise in the universe for years and decades with self-sufficiency, is a completely different matter. Owning a starship is only the first step. The real key is the sailors, navigators, fire control officers, and so on, who are well-trained and experienced in thousands of critical posts!
Bai Xingjian's subordinates were a fleet of carriers. His original subordinates had no battle experience at all and could not be trained in a couple of years. Even though he managed to get a lot of ancient starships that were almost scrapped, he did not have suitable hands to manipulate them.
Therefore, Bai Xingjian walked on a 'crooked path' that was despised by the 'elites' and 'trump cards' of the Burning Prairie Fleet.
He began to expand his manpower on a large scale, and the first people that he recruited were the space pirates of the Flying Star Sector! "
Li Yao was slightly dazed... "Are there still space pirates in the Flying Star Sector?"
"Yes, but they have just been released from prison."
Tang Dingyuan shook his head, as if he were amused. "You may not know this, Captain Lin, but an enormous, gory war of space pirates broke out in the Flying Star Sector more than a hundred years ago. With the support of the Temple of Immortals, an organization of Immortal Cultivators, the space pirates were once in their prime and savaged the entire Flying Star Sector. They were almost on par with the regular armies of the major sects of the Flying Star Sector!
Of course, under the leadership of 'Vulture' Li Yao, the Cultivators of the Flying Star Sector won the war and conquered Spider Den, the nest of space pirates. Countless space pirates realized that they had been tricked by the Immortal Cultivators and surrendered.
The leaders of the bandits who had killed too many people were, of course, executed, but not all the space pirates were sentenced to death.
According to the severity of their crimes, their sentences ranged from life imprisonment to thirty to fifty years. Many space pirates were locked in prisons on resource planets with harsh environments and spent decades in labor, moving from the 'old Federation' to the 'new Federation'.
By the time the new Federation launched an expedition to the Uranian Ring Sector under the summons of Ding Ling Dong and launched the first large-scale space war since the new Federation was founded, almost eighty years had passed since the war of space pirates and the riot of the Immortal Cultivators in the Flying Star Sector. Even the space pirates who were sentenced to life imprisonment had mostly served their time and been released from prison after several reductions in their sentences.
Naturally, even the youngest bottom-level sailors seventy years ago were more than a hundred years old at this moment. The technical backbones on the space pirates' warships, as long as their Cultivation was not too high, were all white-haired old men at this moment.
Burdened by their dark past as space pirates, they did not have a pension. They were often discriminated against in society, too. Also, after decades of labor, they had been out of touch with the rest of the world for too long. How could they possibly find a good job? Most of them worked as waiters in restaurants, crystal refilling stations in shuttles, and salespeople in supermarkets. They spent the rest of their lives in poverty.
In the beginning, nobody thought much of the space pirates in the past. Everybody considered them to be hairless tigers whose teeth had been plucked decades ago. Defending the Federation or endangering society seemed to have nothing to do with them.
However, Bai Xingjian suddenly thought of recruiting the space pirates in the past when he was short of hands! "
Li Yao clicked his tongue in amazement. "Isn't such an approach against the military law of the Federation?"
"If it is the Burning Prairie Fleet, it is true that the identity of the recruits is strictly examined," Tang Dingyuan said. "Those with criminal records are generally not recruited.
"However, the miscellaneous troops in the local areas are not so strict. Captain Lin, you should know that the Xing Yao Federation is made of the seven Sectors. In the past hundred years, it is hard to say that there was no friction between the seven Sectors. Take the three core Sectors for example. There are space pirates in the Flying Star Sector, demons in the Blood Demon Sector, and even the Tian Yuan Realm, which is the most fundamental of all, has the Patriots Partnership. Who doesn't have a past? If those with criminal records were not allowed to join the army, there would be few available candidates!
Besides, those people were mostly Cultivators with remarkable computational abilities. It would be inappropriate for them to continue wandering in society after they were turned down when they intended to join the army and serve the country!
Also, the Xing Yao Federation had developed from the 'Old Federation' of the Tian Yuan Realm to the 'New Federation' of the three Sectors in only a hundred years. Then, it had expanded from three Sectors to six Sectors. Its territory had more than doubled. It was expanding so fast that the system in various aspects could barely keep up with it.
Therefore, the miscellaneous troops that Bai Xingjian's army, which was not even a third-rate one, were often the decisions of the fleet commanders alone. The General Staff of the Union Army in the Heaven's Origin Sector would not interfere with the decisions of the fleet commanders as long as they saw the results. They did not have enough manpower, energy, and resources to interfere even if they wanted to.
"Therefore, Bai Xingjian successfully recruited a lot of 'former space pirates' who had just been released from prison after decades and were now washing dishes and helping customers in supermarkets. They were back to their old jobs!
It is said that the recruitment process was quite dramatic. For the few 'talents' that he valued the most, Bai Xingjian observed them in the places where they worked and convinced them in person. Quite a few captains of the current 'Big Bai Fleet' were even dragged away from the restaurants and supermarkets by him because, according to the messages delivered by spiritual cranes, the 'former space pirates' did not believe that they were qualified to pilot a starship after decades of imprisonment! "
Li Yao could not help but chuckle. "It does sound like a joke."
"Who says it isn't?"
Tang Dingyuan held back his laughter and said, "Bai Xingjian was a famous person in the Union Army in the first place. Despite his decline, the news about him still spread to every corner of the Union Army very quickly.
At that time, everybody regarded him as a joke and thought that he had been mentally deranged again. However unreliable he was, there was no reason for him to turn to the former space pirates who had lost everything, right?
Let's leave their personalities aside for now. It must be noted that they had been in prison for more than eighty years and smashed minerals on dark, cold resource planets for more than seventy years! Many of them were so old that their teeth had all fallen out. Could they still see the waterfall-like streams of information on the mainframe crystal processors of the starships? Could their hands, which were used to holding drills and picks, control the cannons on the starships?
Even seventy years ago, they were just a bunch of space pirates who knew nothing but harassment and ambush. What could they possibly do in the competition of the great fleets of the regular army in the War of the Uranian Ring Sector?
A disobedient, ambitious, and disobedient commander of a fleet, a bunch of former sailors on civil carriers who had just been converted into soldiers, and a bunch of former space pirates who were in their seventies and could not even stand straight and were doing odd jobs a year ago … Such a combination did not seem reliable at all.
Most importantly of all, Bai Xingjian was from the Burning Prairie Fleet. When his hilarious and crazy behavior was mentioned, other people would always mention the Burning Prairie Fleet in passing. They would always say 'Bai Xingjian, a former officer of the Burning Prairie Fleet, is so and so' or 'Bai Xingjian'. They would even omit the name 'Bai Xingjian' and say that 'a certain senior officer from the Burning Prairie Fleet was indulging in whimsical ideas and messing with a bunch of stinky space pirates'. How could the Burning Prairie Fleet, which claimed to be the savior of the Federation and had risen to power by suppressing space pirates, tolerate such criticism? The Burning Prairie Fleet and the space pirates had always been at odds with each other! What's so strange about them calling Bai Xingjian's troops a 'garbage fleet'? "
"That explains a lot!"
Li Yao took a long breath in relief. Nobody knew the irreconcilable conflict between the coalition army of the major sects of the Flying Star Sector and the space pirates on Spider Den, the antecedent of the Burning Prairie Fleet better than he did. Bai Xingjian's actions had indeed poked the hornet's nest of the Burning Prairie Fleet. He was more and more curious about who this audacious' Bai Xingjian 'was exactly. "What happened next?"
"Although it was called a 'garbage fleet', the War of the Uranian Ring Sector was the first expedition of the Xing Yao Federation across Sectors. There was a lot of work to be done, and the frontlines were tight. Even a piece of garbage had its uses. Bai Xingjian's garbage fleet was also assigned some simple escort missions."
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