“We’re going to wait in the Red Room.” the Admiral told her as they walked in past security. They were all freshly searched, wearing visitor lanyards.

  “Ensign Trainor, Admiral:” Peggy spoke up. “Before we proceed, I need to have a word with security.” The admiral paused and cocked his head. Casey just waved to get the attention of the uniformed security officer.

  “A communications drone will be dropped off at Lafayette Park in five minutes. It is of identical construction to the platform that addressed the United Nations several weeks ago. It will have a tablet with complete specs on its construction for your review. I am piloting it and I would like for it to join us on our consultations this evening once your security team has cleared it.”

  “I’ll let my supervisor know, ma’am.”

  They were led into the first floor of the residence to the aforementioned Red Room. Casey stood against a wall, seeing as she wasn't high enough on the food chain to warrant a visit to this room in her own regard. After a while the Admiral was called away and some time after that Security led in a tall robot identical to the one that spoke to Casey some days prior. The guard posted up at the door, while the robot sat gingerly on a sofa.

  “Fancy meeting you here.” Joked Casey.

  “It has been some time since I have walked on two legs.” Remarked Peggy. “I am fairly confident in my ability to not cause damage to anything by stumbling into it, but I do have to pay more attention to the inputs than I do for most things.

  “Well, you are doing great.’ affirmed Casey. “Although if you can backflip into Mach one and do orbital entry with one tentacle tied behind your back, what’s a little walking?”

  “It’s harder than you are giving it credit for.” Informed Peggy. “We all have specialized segments of our brains to process locomotion, and mine do not match up. I would like to see you give walking on six tentacles a try. You would probably look like someone trying to multibox three games of qwop or something.”

  “Yeah, I'll pass.” Casey decided not to dignify the meme with further acknowledgement.

  After a short while, an aide came to collect Casey, requesting that she leave all of her electronics in the Red Room. Peggy waved her off as if this was the most routine of processes, and Casey followed the Aide to the Cabinet room. There was a woman sitting at the table who was nearly surrounded by file folders.

  “I am Elizabeth Meyers, National Security Advisor.” She started as soon as Casey walked in the door. “Before I let anything extra-terrestrial into the same building as the president, I want to be sure of what we are dealing with.”

  "Fair.” opined Casey.

  “Do you feel like the hive is a threat to us?”

  “No ma’am”

  “Care to elaborate on that, Ensign?” The woman said crossly.

  “No ma’am. Princess Arpeggio is not here to speak to the President. She has provided a method of communication in the most convenient manner possible prior to the arrival of the Administrators. The remote she has brought here is a red phone, if you will. If the President wishes to consult with her, he will. Also, I am not here to speak to the President or to provide the military’s position on any topic. You have the Joint Chiefs of Staff for that. All I can do is provide context to specific discussions and answers to specific questions.”

  “OK then, specifically what do you know of their weapons or defensive technologies?”

  “Nothing. They admit to having a military, so presumably they have weapons. That being said, the ship I am on is unarmed, no discussion of weapons has taken place in my presence, and I haven't seen anything that was identified as a weapon. Their drive technology can be used to cause damage at undisclosed ranges, but they have affirmed that they don’t use that technology offensively. This tells me that those they would consider opponents have some mitigating tech they haven’t talked to us about.”

  “How do you know it can be used offensively then?”

  “Aside from what I have been educated on as a mechanical engineer, I have seen it used in non-lethal fashion to suppress a human twice, and I can extrapolate.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me to facilitate a decision?”

  “If they wanted the planet, they could have taken it back before we discovered bronze.”

  “Thank you, Ensign. You are dismissed.” Casey was led back through the complex to the Red Room.

  “Casey, someone brought tea. I can only suppose there was miscommunication on whether I was physically present in the building. Or if I could drink it without poisoning myself, were I actually here.”

  “It would be a shame to let it go to waste.” Casey poured herself a cup after collecting her electronics from the table. She took it back to where she had been standing previously against the wall. It was a nice tea. The cup was also attractive.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “This is probably older than my grandfather's tea set back home.” she mused. “I have to hang out with alien princesses more often.”

  Peggy just made the robot angle its head at her in lieu of a raised eyebrow.

  It was another thirty minutes before the President arrived, with the Deputy Undersecretary and the Admiral in tow. Casey was already standing, and Peggy stood smoothly as he entered. The Admiral waved to indicate that they were leaving, and Casey followed him out to the waiting car.

  “The National Security Advisor doesn’t seem to like you much.” The admiral observed.

  “It’s been twice this week that people who should know better felt it was appropriate for an Ensign to have any decision making ability on military policy. The disregard for the chain of command offends my sensibilities.” Casey reflected.

  “I figured that's what the problem was.”

  “What’s next, sir?”

  “You head back to the ship and do whatever you are doing out there. I’ll probably be in meetings for the next week over this. Keep in touch with Mike.”

  “Yes sir.” Casey saluted and got in the car. On the way back to Regan, Peggy piped in.

  “This President is so much nicer than the last one.”

  “You met him?” Casey asked.

  “Of course not, but we were watching closely.”

  “What is on the agenda for tomorrow?” Casey asked.

  “More book learning, and if you do well, some hands-on stuff out in the asteroid belt where we will be unlikely to damage anything.”

  “What topic?” Casey inquired with a yawn.

  “Fusion power!”

  In the morning, Peggy gave her some more surprise news over coffee.

  “The first of your implants came online last night. I can see your network infrastructure. It’s building the network security system now.”

  “That seems backwards.”

  “Yeah, except that you don’t have any physical ports to connect to, so that is the only way to make corrections in the event something gets bricked in the process.”

  “Oh, good point.”

  “Also, at this point there is nothing for an intruder to mess with. The system itself won’t even accept patches until the step after, where it builds out the secondary input hardware, which is going to feel very strange until you get used to it.”

  “How so?”

  “It is going to feel like you have two more arms.”

  “Why?”

  “Your primary UI is going to be wired into different areas of your brain to give it a much more visual feel. The system runs faster that way. But it doesn’t work properly if you are partially incapacitated, like high fatigue or concussion. The backup is wired into your motor control, so as long as you can muddle through enough of a thought process to move your fingers you can still use it.”

  “I imagine someone has given this some thought.”

  “Yeah, but for now get some food, because we have work to do.”

  Casey spent most of the day reviewing emergency procedures for the fusion plant. Scrams, core dump and recovery, emergency cold starts, standard starts, replacement of all core systems. She was so fatigued afterwards she had to take a nap before dinner.

  “You did great.” Affirmed Peggy. “It’s late now, but we will do the fun stuff tomorrow morning.”

  Casey woke up not at all prepared for the fun stuff.

  “My brain is filled with gunk.” She observed over coffee.

  “Not a very scientific description of the sensations, but it does convey the issue. You are growing a new pair of hands now.”

  “Is that what this is?”

  “Your brain will have the neurological hardware for two more arms, but they obviously don't exist. At the other end of those nerve endings are the connections to the neural processor. After that you will grow nerve endings to some other make-believe body parts, which will allow you to send and receive complex and fast data with the processor.”

  “So how do I un-gunk my brain?” asked Casey

  “Practice using your make-believe hands.” Peggy advised. “Counting on your fingers in binary and rotating your shoulders and wrists will help the most. Once you get the hang of that we can add more connections and you can multithread on tasks.”

  “How about sign language?”

  “That’s a thought.”. Peggy paused. “I have passed it along to the designers, and they tell me they will start incorporating it into the training schedule.”

  “That sounds great. What are we doing this morning?”

  “I left an out-of-office message on the comm drone this morning. Until lunch we will be in the asteroid belt.”

  “Nice, nice.”

  “We are going to get you some stick time, as the pilots say.”

  “Do they say that?” Casey teased.

  “I have it on good authority.”

  Casey took her coffee to the pilot's compartment.

  “Your neural processor will soon allow you direct input to the ship’s command systems, which will allow you to do most things hands free. Today though, I will give you direct access to the manual flight controls, which you have been using to shadow my maneuvering this week.”

  “So you want me to fly casual?”

  “Yes, there is nothing to hit out here.”

  Casey looked out the forward view port and saw that there was nothing there.

  “Deep space?”

  “We are in the same orbital region as Ceres.”

  “Neat.”

  Casey strapped herself into the seat.

  “Are we calibrated for stick drift?”

  “All systems confirmed nominal.”

  “I have control?”

  “Say it like you mean it.”

  “I have control!”

  “You have control.”

  Casey started experimenting with the inputs and flight modes. The degree of fine control that thirty-two gravity nodes in the ship’s array allowed was surprising. Five hours passed by while Casey was practicing operating the controls and then Peggy used the FTL system to move them back to Earth orbit when Casey stopped to prepare lunch.

  “Your president’s cabinet is being a little ridiculous.” Peggy informed her.

  “Anyone specific?”

  “There are a few that are showing classic conflict of interest issues, and the pushback I'm getting from them is encouraging others to be obstinate as well.”

  “Yeah, that’s not really surprising. Too many corporate interests in public policy. Or rather, too many interests in public dollars.”

  “Most of my answers to your President’s cabinet are that the Administrators will get the issues that they are concerned about on a schedule so they can be discussed. I am limiting myself to answering questions about the arrival of the Administrators.”

  “How is that working out?”

  “We could drop the full complement of specialists into your gravity well in a day. We are not going to do that because that would alarm large segments of your world’s population.”

  “Traffic control is not an issue?”

  “The hardware and specialists to operate it already exist, and the proper amount of each will be tasked and transported as required.”

  Casey took a bite from one of the sliders as she pulled it out of the cooker.

  “More book work for this afternoon?”

  “No, I found out that the squadron that your Space Force friend is assigned to is participating in a Fly-by tomorrow in Orlando, so I texted him to see if we could come and play.”