The next morning Casey started by familiarizing herself with the Operations bridge consoles. Overhead she could see an abbreviated view of the ship-wide system status display that engineering worked with. Each section was tagged with the current efficiency rating of the equipment in that part of the ship along with the performance evaluation scores of the simulated team of crew members staffing it. In front of her was a slowly scrolling schedule for the day with different resource allocations marked on it along with deadlines for assorted taskings.

  To the right of that was a screen that showed everything that came up unscheduled and needed a priority decision on. Most everything there was handled at a lower level by Allegro and the drones, and Casey only had to review it to make sure red lines were squashed promptly and yellow lines turned green in a reasonable time frame. Casey noticed however that Allegro was purposefully letting some tasks drag to see if Casey was paying attention. Casey found herself on the intercom frequently calling up this station or that to check on different ratings (all simulated by Allegro through the drones) to move things along.

  Peggy was sitting in the big chair during this exercise acting as Captain, although she was actually standing over Lee’s shoulder at the helm reviewing how to safely move a ship this size.

  “So the controls are going to be the same as the scout ships, but the larger the ship the more deliberately it is designed to move for safety reasons.” Peggy was explaining.

  “So over a certain size the gravity array becomes a gravitas array?" Quipped Lee.

  “Oh, that’s a good one. I simply must write that down.” deadpanned Peggy as she stepped back and headed back to the Captain’s chair. Sitting, she turned and looked at Casey.

  “It’s fifteen minutes until change of the watch, and can you tell me what you are missing over there?”

  Casey started queerying different departments for readiness and everything came back green.

  “No, it appears I can’t. What did I overlook?” Asked Casey.

  “Environmental has a combination of ratings coming on shift that has not been certified together as a crew. The Petty Officer of the Watch could override that if he feels that they are capable and compatible to work together, but Allegro, through the drone assigned to that role, hasn't done that.”

  “Well shit. Allegro, put another point on the score board please?” asked Casey.

  Allegro, who had parked herself down in CIC, displayed the running tally on a screen to Casey’s left. It showed the score was fourteen to three. A smaller picture-in-picture showed her face from her station in the bowels of the ship.

  “You are going to owe me so much ice cream.” warned Allegro. “Lock it in.”

  “I’ve been doing this for one quarter of a day so far. I’ll get there.” deflected Casey. “Ice cream does sound nice though.” She sent a com request to the appropriate station. After a moment a notification popped up with the details of a supervisor override in Environmental.

  “There we go.” Casey reviewed the rest of the departments. “So, Ice cream?”

  “Get through the rest of the watch without anything exploding and we will jump down the well.”

  “Jump down the well?” Asked Lee.

  “We use different slang in the Hive Fleet. I’m improvising here.” pleaded Allegro.

  Later that day Allegro and Casey climbed aboard the scout ship that Casey knew so well.

  “Peggy has to stay behind now, so you are going to need to do all the stuff.” Allegro told her as the two of them walked through the airlock and into the central cabin. The two dropped their bags with changes of clothes and continued to the front compartment. “It requires significant computational resources to move the princess, so I’ll co-pilot with some checklists.”

  “I’m not licensed anywhere. I feel like this is going to be a problem.” hedged Casey.

  “We are handling the paperwork.” explained Allegro. “This flight will be part of your certification process.”

  A chibi alien squid appeared on one of the pilot’s screens as Casey sat down. The two waved a greeting and Casey quickly reviewed the status indicators on her ship suit and bucked in. Looking over to the seat behind her left shoulder, she saw Allegro doing the same.

  “I’ll remain in contact with the handheld communicator, but the bandwidth required for the drone body isn’t reliable from a low stellar body orbit.” Peggy explained from the squid on the screen.

  Casey queued up her checklists on her third eye. Over the next thirty minutes she and Allegro filed a flight plan and ran through them. Finally Casey pulled the scout craft up from the floor of the landing bay and eased it through the huge doors leading out into vacuum.

  “Smartly done Ensign.” endorsed Peggy. Allegro made approving noises.

  “And you did that totally solo.”

  “Felt good.” Casey looked over at Allegro. “Clear to proceed?"

  “Get to the Kármán line and request approach clearance from Chicago.” Instructed Allegro.

  “Plot me a vector please?” After a moment a flight path was projected on Casey’s forward holographic screen. All she had to do was follow it like a roller coaster track to a stationary position over Illinois. A short chat with ATC once they stopped, and then a steep drop to the ground and they were unbuckling and changing clothes. Casey stuck with the tried and true t-shirt and jeans, but Allegro had picked a cute sundress and floppy hat with sandals. Allegro surprised Casey by lowering the cargo elevator to reveal a flattened oval the size of a minivan, with equivalent seating.

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  “We got a hovercar?” Squealed Casey.

  “Yeah, and it goes faster than a Maclarren.” Enthused Allegro. A throat clearing noise came over Casey’s comm unit. “But we should probably follow all applicable traffic laws.”

  After visiting with airport security they were on their way to meet with the boys for treats. It was a national chain but the selection was acceptable.

  “Ally, these are my boys, Viny and Caz. Boys, this is Peggy’s friend Ally from out of town.”

  “How out of town?” asked Caz.

  “All the way out of town.”

  “Sweet.” added Viny.

  Soon enough they headed to the counter to order. “I’ll have peanut butter and mix in that one and those two.” Viny pointed out his preferred toppings.

  “Strawberry with chocolate chunks and mint.” Caz followed with his own order.

  “One more of the same for my friend here.” Casey instructed the clerk and pointed to Allegro. “I’ll have cookies and cream with strawberries, raspberries and cherries mixed in.”

  They all sat down and the boys dug in. Casey took a bite and gave Allegro, who was fishing around the mix-ins in her ice cream, a hard look. Caz was the first to notice.

  “What’s up, chica?”

  “Solid food is a turn off for Ally.”

  “Mrmph. What?” Viny asked.

  “Squidies are on a liquid diet. It’s an evolutionary biology thing. Chewing is weird.” Explained Allegro. She took a bite of her ice cream. “It is good though, I think.”

  “Steak for dinner?” prompted Caz

  “Maybe.” Declared Casey. “How are you two doing on the job search?”

  “Surprisingly, it is over. Administrator Tempo gave us an offer yesterday that we couldn’t refuse.” Viny chimed in.

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “Peggy told us you were busy and to wait for our outing today.”

  “What are you going to be doing?”

  “Liaison stuff.” Viny said. “Meeting with people when physical body-having is a plus, and keeping the calendar. We will be getting a physical and injections this week.” he pulled a communicator out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

  “It is always a pleasure, Ensign Trainor.” Tempo said from the pocket sized device. “You have some quite capable associates, and I am more than pleased to have them in my employ.”

  “That takes some of the sting out of the remedial education assignments.” Caz bantered. Viny returned the communicator to his pocket.

  “Those would apply to any human though.” Allegro helpfully added.

  “If we are done with the backhanded compliments?..”

  “Sorry.” Allegro had a thought and her face brightened again. “I have questions though, if you three don’t mind.”

  “Sure.”

  “How is your relationship structured? The documentation I have read on it seems to have contradictions, vaguities, and uncertainties.”

  “OK, so Viny and Caz are engaged to be married, which is mainstream, even if the percentage of the population that are in same-sex relationships is lower by an order of magnitude. That being said, they are bisexual rather than gay, and I am their mistress. That part is pretty non-standard. You can look up the definition of a polycule at your leisure."

  Caz just looked confused as to why Casey was explaining it.

  “We are a mono-sex species, and most of us have no reproduction function; so relationships don’t work the same way for us.” Allegro informed him.

  “She is old enough to be my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, and she has never done the sex.” Casey snarked, but lost her smirk with a stray thought.

  “Human hormones now, crap. Mentally you must be a mess. Has the Hive worked out solutions to all that?”

  “Yes, but I have been advised not to speak too much about it. Suffice it to say that while my human body does have the expected evolutionary pressures, we typically don't and I don’t in specific find the human form to be stimulating. No offense, you all just don’t, ah, do it for me.”

  She shrugged. “That is how you say it, yes?”

  “Yeah. That works.”

  “That being said, I have refrained from experimentation in that regard. While my body has reached an age post-incubation assisted developmental processing that would meet the legal age of consent in most parts of the world, and most people in your society don’t even wait that long, the legalities of any intimate encounters would be murky enough that we try to avoid them even if we were inclined to try, which I am not. I am a walking grey area.”

  “But as Peggy phrased it to me once, you are taking care of your physical and mental health?”

  Viny and Caz nearly choked on their ice cream.

  “You can talk about it to them, they don’t have the same societal baggage surrounding the concepts.” Casey admonished.

  “I’ll limit my answer to ‘yes’ and ask that you don’t press for details.” Allegro supplied between considering bites of her ice cream. “But how does this whole thing work for you? You make it sound like you are on the outside of the relationship.”

  “Casey will be ride-or-die forever.” Caz interjected.

  “On a more intellectual note though…” Viny said as he reached for Caz’s hand “Casey is a great friend and she adds to the relationship in a way that Caz and I can’t do for each other.”

  “I’m not exclusive though, and we are all fine with that.” added Casey.

  “Viny and I have occasionally brought others into the relationship to keep things fun and interesting as well, but we all take precautions to mitigate risk factors. We have rules.” said Caz sternly.

  “I do need to get out and meet some new faces though.” thought Casey aloud. “I don't want to paint myself into a corner where I have to start considering service members for a dating pool.”

  “But uniforms are so hot.” shot Caz.

  “Hard pass.” retorted Casey. “I am not going to be taking my co-workers to bed.”

  “We could get you into something slinky and take you to a gallery showing?” recommended Viny. “I am sure we could find someone who enjoys the occasional expensive mistake.” Caz and Allegro both gave a thumbs up, which prompted a round of laughter for the whole table.

  “Hmm, that sounds fun.” Casey approved.

  “Thanks” Allegro stood and started collecting everyone’s empty ice cream containers. “That was informative.”

  “Tell me you didn’t pass that whole conversation along to your anthropologists?”

  “What would you do if I did?”