“But I don’t have anything to wear.” Snarked Casey.

  “First, we don’t wear clothes so we don’t regard fashion as a factor in social interactions. Secondly, your atmosphere is all wrong so you will be in your environmental equipment anyway.”

  “Haute couture!”

  “You are in a mood this afternoon.” Peggy observed.

  “I can tone it down for your mom if I need to.”

  “Maybe. Play it by ear. The queen has a sense of humor, but it isn’t a human sense of humor.”.

  “When are we going?”

  “We’re already here.”

  Casey stuffed the rest of her slider into her mouth and rushed for the pilot’s seat. Catapulting herself into the chair, she buckled the straps around herself in record time.

  “We are just inside the edge of the fleet’s safety perimeter, so everything is still out of visual range. I’ll bring up some visuals from sensor data.”

  Peggy repositioned one of the holographic screens from overhead to directly ahead and brought up a view filled with tiny specs.

  “There are close to a million ships in the fleet, although a large percent are scouts that we are using to picket the Oort cloud.”

  “How far out are we?”

  “Galactic standards prescribes a fleet security envelope of not more than the distance between the inner and outer edges of the closest star’s liquid water zone. Everything further is considered ‘international waters’ so to speak.”

  “An interesting standard.”

  “It’s unambiguous and easy to calculate.”

  “How far is that for us?”

  “About seven tenths of the average distance between your planet and Sol. I can cross that in about eight hours if I don’t put undue stress on the power plant or gravity array.”

  “So I guess I’ll be taking a nap.”

  “Yup.”

  Casey wrote her log and turned in for a few hours. When Peggy was two hours out she woke Casey up.

  “Time to get ready. You will potentially be in a hostile environment for several hours, so make sure you are comfortable.”

  Casey took the time to bathe and eat and otherwise ensure she was ready to stay in her suit for a prolonged period, and Peggy called her back to the pilot’s seat early enough for the best view of a spherical ship so large that even a half hour out it dominated the forward view.

  “Last time I saw something that big it was on a Blu-ray disk.“ Casey mumbled.

  “Its name doesn’t translate into anything that would make sense to you, but this is where our Queen and most of the hive that is still biological reside. I haven’t been back aboard since… ah, close to thirty of your years now.“

  “How big is it?”

  “I don’t have its current schematics, but it has been in a continual and ongoing state of rebuild since it was first constructed about eight thousand years ago. Every now and again, it gets a little bigger as new facilities are built onto it and inner parts are repurposed and rebuilt. My sensors say it is an average of ninteen or so kilometers in diameter.”

  “How big was it when it was first built?” Casey followed up.

  “New hive fleets typically start with a nest ship of about a kilometer and a half or more in diameter, but usually not more than two and a quarter.”

  After another short while, Peggy flew the ship into one of the many docking bays built into the side of the large structure.

  “I’ve had a thought.” informed Casey.

  “Bated breath, etc.” snarked Peggy.

  “In a nod to two influential names in science fiction from my world, I am just going to call this place “That’s No Moon.”

  “Hmm. Mother approves.”

  Casey secured her helmet and headed to the airlock.

  “Atmospheric pressure is lower than what you are used to, which doesn't matter much because there are some gasses in the mix that would do you considerable damage. You won't be breathing the air. More importantly, the gravity is lower. It is about seventy two percent of that found on Earth.”

  “Thanks.”

  Casey lowered herself on the lift and met a Squiddie at the bottom. It looked like some AI art mashup of an octopus and a scorpion, and could easily clear her head if it walked directly over her.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “That's me.” Peggy said over her helmet speakers. “Synthetic body.” She waved a tentacle.

  “Gotta see mom eh?”

  “It would be rude not to. I don't call as much as the queen would like, but light speed lag is a thing.” She moved off to a bulkhead on the far wall. Casey moved quickly to keep up. She didn't see any other Squidies in the bay, but the activity level was stratospheric once you considered all the remotes working in the area.

  “Are most of your crew for this ship digital as well?”

  “Not as much as it seems from what you see here, but even the biologicals tend towards augments that allow them to work in virtual environments. If you want, you could also have those augments built out. Not much downside there.”

  Peggy moved down the hallways at a pace that was deceptively fast, using the walls for stability as much as the floor.

  “Sorry, muscle memory, so to speak.” Peggy apologized once she saw how much Casey had to push to keep up. She slowed down considerably.

  “I’ll be translating until your implants are in.” she confirmed. “We have several ways of talking that are not available to you right now.”

  It wasn’t long before they came to a large chamber with a handful of Squidies in it. Three of them stood in the eight foot range, two stood ten feet tall, and the last measured in between the two at nine feet.

  This one glided over while the larger ones hovered. The smaller three circulated around the group, staying in line of sight of the Queen. The queen ran her sixteen tone scale and then changed her orientation to include Peggy. The three Squidies in the background danced around to stay in her field of view.

  “Mother says she understands that you are not ready yet to speak to her in Standard and also conveys that it is good to see you again, Ensign.” Peggy translated. “Circumstances and time constraints being what they are, she has switched to digital communications, which is more robust than our own method of clicks.”

  “It is a pleasure to finally meet face to face.” answered Casey.

  The queen continued to shift her attention between the two, with the smaller three Squidies shuffling back and forth every time she angled her body.

  “Mother recognizes that you are serving your people with a higher measure of adaptability and dedication than your fellows in the pilot program, and looks forward to seeing the speed at which humans can reach galactic educational standards.”

  “I feel compelled to state that I have a competitive advantage in that regard as I am unable to forget things.” Casey reminded her.

  “Finally, Mother says she is so pleased with our progress that she intends to maintain our pairing. My sisters will be shuffled to other pilots for better personality matches.”

  “Then I shall endeavor to continue to impress.”

  The queen drifted back several feet and was quickly swarmed by the hovering trio. Peggy prodded one of her shoulders with the tip of a tentacle to swing her back around to the exit.

  “That is all the time we have for today.” She paused then added. “At this point in your culture we would stop at a cafe or something, but I fear that even if you could eat it, our food presentation doesn’t have the same artistry here as it does in your world.”

  “Back to the ship?”

  “Yeah.” Peggy led the way. “With what my mother said, I’ve decided to move ahead with the next phase of the plan. So we get to watch the engineers open the ship up and install new hardware.”

  By the time they caught up to the depressurized bay where Peggy had moved the ship to, she had already pumped out the atmosphere and the engineers were working on opening the hull with a combination of gantry arms and remote drones. They got the nose with the pilot’s compartment completely separated in about fifteen minutes and one batch of arms went to work on that while the rest moved some components around to install fixtures into two void spaces on either side of the ship.

  After another half hour the arms were repositioning the front of the ship to reattach it. During that time, Peggy gave Casey some coaching on a sixteen note scale.

  “I’ve finished checking the pressurization.” Peggy told her after about two hours.

  “That’s great, because I am so ready to take this helmet off.” Casey proclaimed as she headed for the hatch. She pulled her hair free as she reached the center compartment, and saw two more doors in the forward corners of the room. Each door led to a room with two beds and matching locker space.

  “I take it the plan is to expand the crew?”

  “Eventually, yes. We will be switching up to a larger hull before we do too much of that. Right now we need to find you a Chief Petty Officer.”

  “Building a cadre?”

  “Yes. You are going to need a Chief of the Ship at some point, but a Command Master Chief is too senior to start training on introductory skills and also too senior to work directly for an Ensign. They would view it as a demotion.”

  “That’s a good point.” Casey confirmed as she entered the pilot’s compartment and saw that two more seats identical to the first had been installed. They faced the rounded back corners of the compartment by default but Casey could see the hardware that allowed them to gimble and rotate just like the pilot’s seat.

  “I don’t have any connections that would get us someone good without leaning on the Admiral.”

  “I actually have a plan for that. We are going to go see the Governor General of Canada.”

  “You figure they are going to put their best foot forward in order to get it in the door?”

  “For the clout of having the first enlisted to be selected for the pilot program, I think they will move fast too.” Peggy confirmed. She detached and started moving away from “That’s No Moon” at speed as Casey buckled in.

  “Just a reminder though, the Canadian Navy has a slightly different rank structure than the US. The grades are the same but the names are shifted one grade or different. We are going to ask them for a Petty Officer First Class instead of a CPO.” Casey reminded Peggy.

  “Ok, I have an appointment for the end of day Monday and they know we would like the uniformed head of the Navy to be present.”

  Peggy dropped Casey off at Earth Administrative Station One and she took a bus down to Chicago. After a whirlwind weekend with Caz and Viny, she made the return trip the same way on Monday morning.

  “Let me review some things I might be expected to say in French and write my logs and I'll be caught up.”

  Peggy brought them into the airport in Ontario, and rented a car. Casey dressed casually.

  “I had a card delivered that you can use for expenses.” Peggy told her. “Until you are transferred over when the new service is set up, you can use your navy pay for personal things. Meals and expenses while you are not in Chicago are on us.”

  “Do I need to keep the receipts?” Casey asked.

  “No. We would like to keep all the records electronic. You have the morning to see the sights. Come back after lunch and we can get ready.” Peggy instructed. Casey cleared customs and picked up the car. Parking at the mall, she spent the morning window shopping, and Peggy instructed her on damage control procedures while she walked.

  Lunch was something from a Canadian national chain. Casey returned to the ship in plenty of time to don her navy uniform. As she was finishing checking her lines, she heard the door to her office open.

  “I’ll be going with you this afternoon.” Peggy’s voice called out from the other room.