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"Well, I'm ready," he said.

"About time," Ivan muttered. "You're lucky my favorite hobby is watching paint dry, otherwise you'd be in trouble." He continued to keep his sly smile and winked at Ekove as started to walk towards the first class dining lounge. He hated to stay inside the ship and would have preferred to be on deck, but the weather that day hadn't been too good, and he had to make due playing board games with Ekove and several of the guests. Though he didn't prefer to play with Ekove in front of anyone as, more often than not, Ekove beats him most of the time.

They chatted on their way to the dining room, casual stuff, mostly, as anything important was already discussed to death already. Ivan didn't like the idea of him giving up his career as a stunt pilot; it didn't take a genius to realize how much money he was making for him. Still, with the offers he had to manage other folks and things, and the money he had saved up, he could just down, playing Go and listening to the radio and his grandchildren would still go to college. At least they would if he had any children to begin with...

The dining room was fairly lavish, far more so than your average luxury liner. The only thing that really caught Ekove's attention was the large glass dome that topped the three deck dining room. He was not the one to stall (and he hated the use of that word) dinner time, so and Ivan made their way to sit with some other passengers that Ivan had met earlier on. "Ekove, I'd like you to meet Mr. Linor," said Ivan to Ekove, who was quick to shake the rather large man's hand.
"It's great to see you, I've spoken with Ivan about you over a few games of Go, it seems that you've got your mind set on it despite all of his attempts to convince you otherwise." The fat man smiles at Ivan with that statement. "I actually had a bet that you'd eventually fall out to join the armed forces, though I was suspecting that Feirland would want you."

Taking a seat pouring himself a glass of water, Ekove replied simply. "I wouldn't join anything other than my own country, Mr. Linor, no offense."

"None taken," said Linor as a waiter came up to him, offering him between white and red wine. "I'll have the red." The waiter poured the wine and then left. "As I was saying, I think you'll fit in nicely. From what I heard Ledorn's stringent training regimes and selection processes mean only a few ever get to dream of flying, but that's going to change, or so I heard."

"It's been changed already; they've admitted 200% more cadets than they did a few years, same thing applies to the army," said Ekove. "They realize that if war breaks out and we lose a lot of men, we can't replace them too easily." He took a drink of water, taking his sweet time in downing the cool fluid. "They've also decided to lay off building any more heavy cruisers and two of the older ones are set for scrapping. They've already begun production on the aircraft carriers and twenty new submarines."

Linor just laughed slightly. "You know what's so interesting about your country's navy? While every other one has emphasis on guns, your nation has emphasis on airplanes and torpedoes.