30: Chapter 30 Winning Over

Chen Mu nodded, his right hand reaching for the gun.

Under Maya's guidance, he pulled the trigger for the first time in his life.

"Bang!"

Chen Mu's body had been enhanced, so holding the gun and firing was no problem at all, yet there wasn't a single mark on the target paper. Without a doubt, he had missed.

"Your grip is a little off," Maya said.

Chen Mu looked down at his hands on the gun, feeling that it looked exactly like what Maya had demonstrated just moments ago.

"It's not a glaring issue," Maya said, moving behind Chen Mu with complete naturalness and pressing her chest against his back.

Her right hand reached over Chen Mu's right shoulder, covering his right hand on the gun.

Her fingers were one knuckle shorter than his, her palm resting against the back of his hand. She slid her five fingers between his, pressing his fingers tighter against the grip.

"Index finger a bit lower. The pad of the first joint, not the second." Her voice came from behind his right ear, her breath brushing against his earlobe.

Chen Mu sniffed, catching a pleasant fragrance, perhaps some kind of top-tier perfume.

This couldn't help but remind Chen Mu of a report on perfume from his past life, which stated that perfume was created to mimic human hormones, and therefore often triggered carnal desire.

Chen Mu's Adam's apple bobbed. He moved his index finger off the trigger and placed it back on.

"Left hand." Maya's left hand reached over Chen Mu's left shoulder, covering his left hand that was wrapped around his right.

Her chest was pressed completely against his back. The sensation of those two soft mounds came through clearly, separated only by his charcoal-grey suit jacket.

Chen Mu felt his mouth go dry. He had noticed in the interrogation room that Maya had a scorching hot figure, but now he could truly feel her immense assets.

"The left hand shouldn't be wrapping around the right." Maya's voice continued to come from behind his neck.

Her fingers slid between his left fingers, pressing his left hand tighter against the grip.

"It's about gripping. The hand on the gun is primary; the left hand is auxiliary. Don't use more force in your left hand than your right, but keep it more relaxed than the right. Relaxed doesn't mean not using force; it means saving your strength for the moment you need it."

"Now, aim." Maya's voice was full of confidence, completely devoid of the helplessness she had shown earlier that morning while clumsily shifting her hips in the suite.

This wasn't because she had suddenly turned into a spy skilled in honey traps, but because teaching someone to shoot was, in itself, her comfort zone.

She had been a police officer for three years, but she had been shooting for much longer than that.

Chen Mu raised the pistol, the muzzle pointing at the half-body humanoid target at the end of the range.

The sights were a three-dot system, with one green tritium dot on the front sight and two on the rear sight. He aligned the three dots, the middle green dot centered on the target's heart.

"Pull the trigger."

"Bang!"

Three rings!

"Your aim isn't great," Maya's voice came from his side.

She had already stepped back to stand side-by-side with him, a fist's distance between them, her face devoid of any unusual expression.

"Just keep practicing. Accuracy isn't a talent; it's fed by bullets."

Chen Mu looked at her and smiled. "Then let's play a little longer! I think we still have some time!"

Maya nodded and pressed against Chen Mu's back again, helping him adjust.

Meanwhile, as Chen Mu was wooing a woman, President Trump and his team of experts were engaged in a heated discussion regarding the information Chen Mu had revealed in the garden.

Inside the conference room, Professor Bloom was the first to speak, circling a tiny circle on his shorthand notes with a fountain pen.

"Sociologically, this confirms a previous hypothesis: Guga Planet is not a monolith. There are hawks and doves. There is the Commander, who advocates for military conquest, and there is Chen Mu, who advocates for communication and observation."

"There are disagreements, arguments, and institutional or non-institutional decision-making games between them."

He drew a horizontal line on the paper with his pen and placed a dot in the center. "But more importantly, Chen Mu chose to reveal this division to Officer Maya. I believe this signals Chen Mu's stance."

Brigadier General Parrish lifted his hand from the table. "Militarily, the importance of this intelligence cannot be overstated."

He stood up and walked to the screen wall, pointing at the optical imagery of the Kuiper Belt fleet. "We have always treated that fleet as a unified threat unit. Two million warships, ten thousand motherships, one command structure, one decision-making center."

"But now..." His finger traced an arc over the dark red light points on the screen. "It might not be. The Commander's faction of force, and Chen Mu's faction of communication."

"Moreover, the Commander is the true head of this fleet. That fleet may not obey Chen Mu's orders; they listen to the Commander. All Chen Mu can do is 'persuade' them temporarily."

He pulled his hand back. "This means the final actions of that Kuiper Belt fleet do not depend solely on Chen Mu's will, but on the result of this invisible game between him and the Commander."

"And we know nothing about the rules, the stakes, or the timeline of this game."

Professor Ache coiled her turquoise necklace. "In mythology, this is a very ancient proposition."

"A messenger sent to the mortal realm develops a disagreement with the deity who sent him. For instance, Prometheus stole fire for humanity but was bound to Mount Caucasus by Zeus."

"Hermes was ordered by Zeus to guide the dead, but he would also point the way for lost travelers."

"Once a messenger enters the mortal realm and makes real contact with humans, he is no longer just a pure executor of divine will."

"He develops his own judgment, his own preferences, and people he is willing to protect."

She looked at Maya on the screen wall. "Chen Mu is not a mouthpiece for Guga Planet. Among the messengers Guga Planet has sent to Earth, he is the first to start speaking up for Earth."

Professor Hoffman looked up from his tablet. "From an astrophysical perspective, if that Commander really decides to 'force talks through strikes' and give Earth a show of force, what would he do? Send a small detachment to attack Earth?"

Advisor Cole turned from the screen wall, his pale blue eyes behind rimless glasses sweeping over every face at the round table. "So, what is our conclusion?"

Bloom closed his notebook. "The conclusion is that our previous judgment needs to be revised. Chen Mu is not just our observer. He is our only ally within a power structure we completely fail to understand—though we don't know how much longer he can hold out."

"He is not an enemy, nor is he a neutral observer. He is someone who has chosen to stand on our side, but we don't know what price he has paid for it."

Brigadier General Parrish's hand balled into a fist on the table. "Conclusion two, and the most important one. If his game with the Commander fails, if he doesn't persuade the other side by the next communication, or the one after that, then our Earth may suffer incomparably painful losses."

Professor Ache hung the turquoise pendant back around her neck. "Conclusion three. Prometheus was bound to Mount Caucasus not because Zeus hated him, but because he chose humanity."

"When Chen Mu said 'I don't know how much longer I can maintain this' to Officer Maya in the garden, he wasn't asking us for help."

"He was telling her that he might not be able to hold on for much longer. Not because he isn't trying, but because the weight he is holding up for us was never meant for him to carry alone."

President Trump picked up his Diet Coke. "So what you're saying is, we need him to hold on."

"If he holds on, that fleet won't move. If he can't hold on, Earth's countdown begins. So he must hold on, no matter what he needs."

Advisor Cole wiped his glasses. "Exactly. So our strategy should shift from previous probing to winning him over."

President Trump stood up and walked to the screen wall. "Cole, I'm leaving this entirely to you. You don't need to report simple resource allocations to me."

Cole nodded.

"Also," President Trump turned around, looking at everyone around the round table, "everything discussed here today is classified as top secret. No one outside this room can know about this information."

"Meeting adjourned!"