“Where have you been all my life?” Casey asked as she draped her arms over the massive fabricator. Then she remembered there were cabinets and drawers and immediately abandoned the fabricator to rush around the room like a whirlwind, throwing them all open.

  “I hope you're not this fickle of a lover to other humans.” Peggy teased.

  “I love people like I love tools. Very thoroughly and with great enthusiasm and skill. But I don’t recognize any of these.” Casey whinged. “There’s not even a socket or wrench set in here.”

  “These are the tools you need for the parts and tech that we use on our ships. You’ll come to understand it all when we start you on the tech manuals.”

  Casey started closing up the cabinets again.

  “I pine for the day when we can be together!” She said to the room.

  “Thoroughly and with great enthusiasm?” mocked Peggy.

  “And skill!”

  “That’s a bold and dubious claim.”

  “One which I feel no need to expound upon, believe it or not.” Casey returned to the main cabin to finish her pizza.

  “Oh no. You are not getting off the hook that easily. There is no record of you ever having been in a relationship.” confronted Peggy.

  “That’s not the kind of thing we write down unless we want to make it all formal and official. What do you know anyway, your species doesn’t even do that!”

  “We have platonic social groups! Companionship is important, especially to hive societies!” Peggy defended.

  “Yeah, I’ll give you that. OK, fine; whatever. Back when Dad died, I fell into a bit of a hoe phase. There was a wonderful bisexual couple at my high school, Devin and Carlos, that quickly pulled me out of it. I had a pretty wild friends-with-benefits thing going on for a few years with the two of them, and I still dated until I started at the Academy. I am going to be their Maid of Mass Destruction in the Spring.”

  “Maid of Honor?”

  “You didn’t know me back then. I’ve spent the last handful of years working on myself.“

  So how does a Maid of Mass Destruction work?”

  “They intend to have me cosplay as Scáthach.”

  “That sounds fun. Can I be your plus one?” Peggy sounded giddy.

  “Not sure how that will work. What are your thoughts on tying cans behind you and painting Just Married on the back?”

  “I would never!”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  Casey cleaned up the galley and headed to her desk.

  “I have some log entries to write. Can we get some music?”

  “You have an application for a music streaming service on your phone. Shall I log in to that?”

  “Oh, you can do that? Perfect.” Casey hummed along as one of her favorite songs started playing through the cabin speakers, and Peggy brought up the documents she needed to fill out on the screen.

  That night she dreamed of Viny and Caz, and it was later than usual when she finally stumbled out of her cabin to get coffee in the morning.

  “We need to meet some retired Admirals today, are you alright?” Peggy asked delicately.

  “You said...” Casey started

  “And I’m not. But I will say that maybe you should call them.”

  “Yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea.”

  Casey rummaged in the cooler for something to eat.

  “Hmm. Egg bites and French toast sticks. Not that I am complaining, but who made the food selections for the galley?”

  “We’re improvising. Our ships have a lot more of what you might consider real food, differences in our physiology aside, but our supply chains have been fully adapted to life in space for thousands of years. For you we focused on quick and easy selections that meet your nutritional needs, and we intend to make planet-fall frequently enough to shore up your dietary deficiencies with fresh food.”

  “That’s good. There are no fruits or vegetables in the cooler.” Casey observed.

  “There are potato products. Those contain vitamin C. That may seem like a cop-out, but we really do have long term solutions in the works.”

  “Fair. Are we still in the atmosphere? I should get changed into something more formal.”

  “Yes. We are scheduled to pick up Admiral Greene (retired) and her flag aide at ten Eastern in Newport and Admiral Hughes (retired) and his flag aide at two in the afternoon in Ottawa.

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  Casey worked the math in her head. “Is that enough time?”

  “Plenty of time, if we wait to change clothes until we pick up both of them.” Peggy affirmed.

  “Speaking of clothes, do we have pressure equipment for them?”

  “Picked up last night. Tempo will provide the rest of the needed equipment once we confirm measurements on the flight up.”

  Casey was getting used to things showing up out of nowhere.

  “Peggy, it’s almost like you are embarrassed to be seen with me.“

  “It’s only cargo drones and remotes coming aboard, you aren’t missing much. I just didn't want to ruin the magic.”

  “Grumble grumble.” Casey headed back to her cabin to put on her dress blues. Peggy had them halfway there by the time she was ready.

  “Looking sharp, Caboose.”

  “Let’s hope the Admirals agree.” Casey shrugged

  “We will be touching down in five minutes.”

  Casey headed back to the cargo hold. After a few more minutes Peggy lowered the ramp and Casey walked down. A car drove up from the concourse and stopped a few meters away.

  A Lieutenant got out and assisted the admiral, who was walking with a cane. As soon as Peggy got cameras on the Admiral, she lowered the top end of the ramp into its elevator configuration.

  “Think I can’t handle a ramp?”Admiral Greene demanded.

  “I am sure Princess Arpeggio was trying to be respectful.” Casey said as she saluted.

  The Admiral returned it “I thought retiring would mean I was past all the saluting, but here I am in uniform again.”

  “Well, being that the twenty of you are writing the manual, you get to decide if anyone salutes you.” suggested Casey.

  “A compelling argument, Ensign. Let’s get this show on the road.” Admiral Greene retorted.

  “Please make yourself comfortable in the center cabin while we head up to Ottawa, Admiral.” Casey escorted her to the main room and then headed back to assist the Lieutenant with the baggage.

  “Please make yourself comfortable with the Admiral sir. We will have a short safety briefing once we pick up the Admiral in Canada.”

  Casey rushed back to the center cabin once the baggage was secure.

  “You can sit where you please while we are in flight. I am sure Peggy can display some views or trip progress on the big screen while we are in transit.”

  “Pleased to meet you Admiral, Lieutenant. Please feel free to address me directly while aboard.” Peggy requested. The Admiral waved her off. Casey moved ahead to the pilot’s compartment.

  “Are we cleared to leave?”

  “It’s amazing how co-operative those twerps in ATC are when there is a princess and an admiral on the same craft.”

  She lifted off and they rapidly proceeded North. Keeping it just under mach one made the trip take about an hour and a half.

  “How are our passengers?” inquired Casey.

  “Reticent.”. Peggy informed her. “Breaking the ice is not working.“

  “Well, luckily they are not going to be my boss. They are just going to be in charge of picking my boss.”

  Shortly they landed and repeated the exercise for the Canadian Admiral, who was a mountain of a man.

  “Ah, it makes sense that they sent the American from their little experiment. We weren’t big enough ourselves to qualify, but that’s the way these things shake out sometimes.” He dropped his salute, allowing Casey to do the same.

  “Which of your Admirals did they dig up out of retirement for this?”

  “Admiral Greene is aboard sir.” She led him up the ramp.

  “Spectacular! This is going to be fun.” As Casey showed him into the main cabin he roared out “Greene, you bitch! Even in retirement I can’t get away from you!”

  “Then you can chuck yourself overboard once we are underway!” she hollered back. He stomped up and clapped her in a massive meaty handshake.

  “I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I am pretty sure the two of us can make it a lot more interesting!”

  Casey stood by while the two caught up, before catching the attention of the Lieutenants and tapping her wrist. The two of them smoothly brought the two Admirals to order.

  “OK, a few quick points before we get underway.” started Casey. “It goes without saying that space is a hazardous environment, so the standard duty uniform is called a ship suit. It applies mechanical pressure to the body so it doesn’t have to be inflated, and thus is easier to move around in.”

  Peggy helpfully showed some images on the screen of the ten participants in the pilot program wearing their ship suits. It wore surprisingly well on all of them, probably due to the individual tailoring.

  “Please keep your helmets in the same room with you while you are not within the atmosphere. In the case of loss of atmospheric pressure, you may have as much as fifteen to twenty seconds to put it on. We will be changing before we lift to the station. Admiral Greene may use my cabin, and there is a room you gentlemen can use through that door.” she pointed it out.

  “The station administrator can answer questions you may have when I leave you, but do we have any questions now?”

  “Aside from the safety issues, why are we trusting the aliens enough to go along with any of this?” Admiral Greene called out without hesitation.

  “All the risk slash reward calculations were above my pay grade, but it seems to me that the life or potential career of an Ensign is the most minor risk imaginable for the DoD. The rewards already obtained have already paid for whatever may become of me. And now throwing a retired Admiral into the pot for the opportunity to retain influence in the future that is coming doesn't seem to have tipped the scales too much in their calculations.”

  Admiral Hughes laughed uproariously. Greene still seemed pissed.

  “You are so sure it’s coming?”

  “So far it is costing us nothing to find out the answer to that question. And if we dig in our heels and resist their efforts to teach us how to improve ourselves then they just go around us and fill out the new global military with the Chinese or Russians, and the US gets to choke on its newfound irrelevance.”

  “Can confirm.” Peggy added. “We will try to draw evenly across different influence blocks to keep everything balanced, but that is going to be tough enough without one of the biggest potential participants taking their ball and going home.”

  “This new navy is going to exist with or without us.” Casey shrugged. “We haven’t made as many friends globally as we should have, so if we want its guns pointed elsewhere, we need to staff it with as many of us as we can manage.”

  Greene looked like she was going to explode, but Hughes shushed her down.

  “One last point I have is that we haven’t seen a real military ship yet. This ship is a test bed to field trial human usable equipment, but it is effectively unarmed. The equipment it has on it would absolutely crush any human weapons or defensive tech, but that is incidental to its function. I believe that the Squidies don’t use gravity tech as weapons and there is probably a reason for that.”

  Greene’s jaw dropped. Hughes looked thoughtful. The Lieutenants just looked stressed. Everyone looked over at the big screen on the wall, where Peggy had put her chibi avatar on the screen.

  “That’s not a conversation we were planning on having with the pilot program volunteers, but it doesn’t surprise me that Ensign Trainor figured it out. Can confirm every word.“