“It is that time, isn’t it? It seems like just a month ago I graduated from the Academy.” Casey snarked.

  “Let's get down to the Cape.” A checklist appeared on the screen across the room.

  “OK, let’s see. File a flight plan online, talk to those guys… then talk to those guys… Ah, what do we tell the guys about the flight plan?”

  Peggy pushed the checklist off to the side and displayed a flight path in three dimensions on the screen and then brought up a copy of a form on the tabletop display.

  “Oh, OK… I don’t know what that is. Or that. Do we have a tail number? We don’t have a tail.”

  “In the interests of getting on the ground today, I will fill all this in for you.” Peggy said, and a chibi squid waved its arms from the big screen. The form filled out, and Casey took a long moment to commit the details to memory.

  “If you can submit that, I will start the phone calls.”

  “Dialing.”

  Casey quickly got through the phone calls and then strapped herself in. A twenty minute wait brought them the rest of the way around the planet and they started slowing down over California. It wasn’t long before they made it to the Atlantic.

  “We come to a complete stop above the Karmen line and descend straight down so that everyone’s early warning systems flag us as an anomaly rather than a ballistic missile.” Peggy advised Casey as they zoomed down towards the ocean. “No one would be able to shoot us down but if they tried it would get real annoying very quickly.”

  After landing, Casey followed Ben’s texted instructions off of the flight line to a squadron briefing room, where several pilots were waiting.

  “Good afternoon, Ensign.” Expressed a Lt. Colonel at the front of the room when she walked in. “Everyone, this is Ensign Trainor, who was selected by the Navy to work with, how did they say it? Our friends from out of town. Ensign, have a seat.”

  Casey put her helmet on the corner of the table facing the front and switched her tablet over to transcribe while sitting down.

  “Princess Arpeggio is also on coms.”

  “The spaceship?” asked one of the other pilots in the room.

  “The Princess is a computer intelligence that inhabits and controls the ship, but she is the second highest ranking person in the entire hive, so I can only imagine what responsibilities she has that are opaque to me.”

  “Good afternoon all.” affirmed Peggy.

  “So the mission is a simple fly-by. The only tricky part is timing. We will be crossing over the new stadium from center field to home plate, so check your packet for the waypoints.”

  Someone passed Casey a folder and she held up the documents inside one at a time in front of her helmet camera.

  The briefing went on and Casey spent the time highlighting key points as the transcription appeared on her tablet screen. She was jolted back into the moment as someone mentioned jet wash.

  “No, that’s not right sir.” she interrupted. “Peggy has no engines as we would know them. There is no combustion exhaust to account for.”

  “Where’s the thrust?”

  “While Peggy has a lifting body that does simplify some of the calculations required to stay airborne, she basically moves by falling in the direction she wants to go in. It’s… complicated.”

  The Lt. Colonel silenced the murmured conversations quickly.

  “Let’s get through this briefing and then you all can get to the questions you want to ask. No jetwash, noted.”

  After the briefing, Casey took all the pilots she could handle on a tour of Peggy’s hull with a stern admonishment to keep hands in pockets if they were looking at the contents of a cabinet or compartment.

  Dinner with Ben was fun.

  “So I couldn’t help but notice that you are spending time with me when you don’t have to.”

  “You are good for a night of dining and dancing.” Casey affirmed.

  “Is that all you think I am good for?”

  “I don’t know. Realtalk though, I do like you enough to find out. But if you want this…” Casey indicated to herself “You have some decisions to make. I may be a freak, but I am not casual or easy. I am a whole lifestyle. I am not exclusive, and I don’t expect you to be, but we have rules. I have two fine gentlemen back home. They live in my house right now, and they know what the ladies like. They are my best friends and I don’t plan to give them up, so if you have dreams of winning me like some prize you need to modify your perspective. I am not some cavewoman you can club over the head and drag back to your den. Secondly, I test regularly whenever I have a partner that isn’t exclusive, and I require my partners to do so as well. I am not going to be bringing anything to my boys back home.”

  “That’s a lot to unpack.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you’re the girl our mothers warned us about?” Ben joked.

  “Hey, if you ever do find the one you want to put a ring on, I’ll show you both a good time. And if you ever want tips, call Caz and Viny and they’ll walk you through it.”

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  “Now that’s a phone call I’ve got to make just to see how it goes.”

  The next morning Casey was sipping her coffee and reviewing spec sheets on a tablet when Peggy interrupted her.

  “You might want to get dressed, we will have visitors in a moment.”

  Casey scrambled back into her cabin to get a ship suit on. When she came back out into the central cabin Ben, Captain Tanner, and two other pilots were waiting.

  “These gentlemen will be flying with us today as observers.” informed Peggy.

  “We got you a present.” said Captain Tanner. He lifted her helmet from where he had been holding it behind the countertop.

  “You… personalized my helmet?”

  “We gave the design to Peggy and she applied the graphic last night.”

  Casey took her helmet and examined it. Her last name was printed above the bottom edge on the back, and around the rim to the left side a Challenge coin was impressed into the surface. The front had the single gold bar that said she was an Ensign, but it had a laurel wreath around it. On each side there was a small steam engine pulling a flat-bed car with the word Caboose on it styled like boxes, followed by the aforementioned…

  “Is this a pink Caboose on my helmet?” she asked.

  “It’s lightish red.” said Peggy.

  “It’s pink.”

  “Well that was all Peggy, so you are stuck with it.” Ben tattled.

  “Et tu, Peggy?”

  “Oh come on, that joke isn’t that old! Get some culture!”

  “To be fair, Caboose wore blue. Old show though, not many would have seen it these days.” explained one of the other pilots.

  Everyone just looked at him.

  “What? My dad was a fan.”

  “Whatever. Coffee is over there, if you eat all my food leave me something to last until Peggy restocks. I can't take this thing through a drive-thru.” Casey plopped down on the couch in front of the wall screen.

  “Bring up the spec sheets I was reviewing please?”

  The wall screen promptly displayed technical diagrams.

  “What even is all that?” Asked Captain Tanner.

  “Technical diagrams for environmental systems.”

  “Riveting. Just don’t forget we have a briefing in an hour.”

  Casey leaned back over the couch to look at the pilots behind her.

  “Thanks guys. I hate pink, but that’s on Peggy. It was meaningful and I am touched. Right in the cold dark pit where my bitchy heart should be.”

  “You’re still buying drinks tonight.”

  The briefing was short and soon Casey and the other pilots were walking back out to the flight line. Her four observers followed her up the ramp accompanied by the jeers and taunting of their peers and as she entered the pilot’s compartment Casey saw that Peggy had installed jump seats the night before.

  “This is new.”

  “Don’t get used to it, they aren’t staying. We'll be going around the outside of this group of planes, but we'll be taxing to the runway with the F-35s.” Peggy said as Casey strapped herself in.

  “It seems like we're forgetting something important.” Casey hinted.

  “I forget nothing and I know you don't either. Gravity does what I tell it to.” corrected Peggy as she started moving. As if on queue they got a call from the tower.

  “Tower to Harsese 2. This sounds stupid in my head and I am sure it sounds stupid out loud but I've got to ask it anyway. Are you aware that your landing gear is up?”

  “Functioning as intended, Tower.”

  “Landing gear is just a tool the Man uses to hold you down, man.”

  “Last transmitting aircraft, identify.”

  Crickets.

  “Tower, Harsese Two; sorry, it seems like everyone's a comedian today. We have them retracted since we don't have wheels.”

  “That doesn’t actually reduce the confusion, Trainor.” prompted Captain Tanner.

  “Well, I am not going to give him the whole TED talk while waiting in line to take off.”

  “You are doing great by the way.” affirmed Peggy. “Ground control has passed us off to departures. The F-35s are taking off in pairs, and we will follow them.”

  “Since we are going through this whole dog and pony show, are we pretending to be a plane for the lift to cruising altitude?” Casey asked.

  “It’ll be fun. I’ll even make airplane noises.” teased Peggy.

  “Please don’t.” Casey babied the controls and moved forward a bit in line.

  “OK guys we’re up.” she said as she moved onto the runway. “Prepare to be disappointed, you aren’t going to feel a thing.”

  “Since we are pretending to be a plane today I am going to modify the parameters. How many G’s do you want to feel on the takeoff?” asked Peggy.

  “Actual is best.” said Lt. Nguyen. Peggy accommodated and the takeoff was really quite fun.

  During the flight inland, the radio banter turned to how fast Peggy could go.

  “Before I do a demonstration, let me check with the Scout ships to scan for obstructions.” Peggy hinted.

  “Oh, we get to see real speed now!”

  “Are we good?” asked Casey.

  “Yup.”

  “Alright gentleman, we like to appear casual because we have the kind of power that doesn’t need to be flaunted.” Casey lectured. “Peggy, can you turn inertial isolation back on and give me Mach 3?”

  The scenery outside the viewport instantly blurred.

  “We’ll loop back around, so don’t burn everything trying to keep up. At this speed we can cross the state of Florida in less than five minutes.” In a matter of seconds, Peggy had looped vertically and come in behind the F-35s again.

  “What did that feel like?” one of the pilots asked over the radio.

  “Now I know why Ensign Trainor said to prepare for disappointment. We didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Tragedy. What fun is high G if it doesn’t put your liver into your pelvis?”

  The flyover went off without a hitch. Peggy was able to tweak the timing by tuning in to the live broadcast and calculating the broadcast delay. After the flyby they burned fuel doing acrobatics on the way back to the Atlantic coast. Seeing the F-35s safely on the ground and attending the debriefing, Peggy took them up and returned to orbit. Casey resumed her study of the environmental systems while preparing dinner.

  “OK, I think I have wrapped my head around this, at least in the broad strokes. What do we need to cover next?”

  “Actually, we have something coming up that we need to take care of.”

  “Maintenance?”

  “No actually. You are ahead of projections, so we are going to go see the Queen.”