“So Peggy has brought back Cadenza to instruct the fusion students.” Allegro said off handedly as Casey aimed the ship upwards. They were being escorted by some F-35’s from Patrick and had just finished playing a silly game of Follow the Leader for an hour or so to give the pilots some stick time. As they approached the F-35’s flight ceiling, Casey blinked the running lights as a wave goodbye. She focused her attention back on Allegro.

  “What’s she like?”

  “Pretty mellow, from what I have been told. She has some notoriety as a theorist, and has some of our equivalent of research papers published. I think she is doing this as a sabbatical for a few years.”

  Peggy had apparently parked near the new United Nations space station. Casey saw it on the sensor displays as United Earth Administrative Orbital Installation 1 and the IFF said its radio call sign for traffic control was “Vowels 1”.

  “Don’t ever change, Squiddies. Don’t ever change.” Casey mumbled to herself as she put it out of her mind. Peggy was just far enough away from them to be considered in a tertiary parking area. As she watched her vector lines, traffic control pushed an automated update to her pathing. She swung on to the revised heading without comment and continued towards what she had started to view as home.

  As Casey brought the ship in for a landing in one of the Poignant Intervention’s hangar bays she saw Peggy standing with Lee and one of the ship’s more generic drone bodies. Casey and Allegro walked smartly down the ramp to stand in front of them. Lee saluted and Casey returned the salute.

  “Requesting permission to come aboard, Your prominence.” she stated to Peggy.

  “Granted.”

  “I assume command.” Casey followed up.

  “You have command. Welcome aboard, Captain.” said Peggy with a smile. “May I introduce Cadenza? She works for Mother, not myself, but will not impair your operations. Our first instructees will arrive in about thirty minutes, and we should have them all aboard within three hours.”

  The drone held up a projector and a chibi squid appeared in the field above it.

  “Greetings, Captain.” said the device. “I don’t wish to appear rude, so let me say that since I have not taken part in any training on how to operate a biped, I am letting the drones operate in autonomous modes. I will conduct most of my interactions through ship systems.”

  “Well, I may command the ship, but Princess Arpeggio has direct control of it and so as long as she doesn’t have any problems then I don’t either.” said Casey.

  “The minutia of ship-board etiquette has long been settled in the Fleet. There will be no issues.” pronounced Peggy.

  “I’ll introduce myself in the Rating’s mess once everyone has arrived then.” declared Casey. “I’ll be on the bridge getting caught up.” Casey headed for the passageway past the hangar bay and then the lift.

  The logs all seemed fairly straight forward from Peggy’s trip back to the Hive Fleet. Mostly checks on assorted systems, some references to the minutes on committee meetings concerning design improvements for parts that were not performing to expectations, and a few replaced components pending installation of redesigned systems.

  “Reading about materials stresses and shear forces really does it for you, eh?” Asked Peggy, who had somehow managed to sneak up on Casey while she was finishing up the reports.

  “Is it time now?” asked Casey, just as the alarm she set for herself went off in her head. “Ah, I see it is.” She stood and stretched and checked herself for imperfections.

  “Let’s go meet the neighbors.”

  Casey walked with purpose to the lift and down to the rating’s mess with Peggy following in a manner that seemed much less urgent yet still managed to keep up. When she arrived she saw Lee and Allegro conversing quietly against a bulkhead and the dozen new arrivals spread out at four of the tables in the center of the room.

  It looked like Allegro had suspended the drone’s programmed activity cycles for this, as the room was otherwise empty aside from a lone drone body parked on the far wall.

  “Captain on Deck!” announced Lee, noticing her arrival. He stood at attention. However, since he was the only other person on the ship from an Earth military, no one else reacted.

  “Thank you, Petty Officer Lee. At Ease.” He visibly relaxed. “I am Ensign Cathasaigh Trainor, Captain of the UNSN A Poignant Intervention. You may have already met Chief Petty Officer Lee, Also present are our instructors and advisors Princess Arpeggio and her retainer Allegro, as well as your own instructor Cadenza. The Intervention is designed to be a mobile forward operating base and tender for up to sixteen scout craft of a type you have probably already seen myself or others flying in news reports.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Casey had approached the first table and stood at its head.

  “That being said, this is a training ship, and we all have a lot to learn in stages as we prepare for more people to come aboard and train in turn. The first things to learn are emergency procedures. This ship isn’t going to see what we would call combat, but space has never been safe. Take that foundational concept as an integral part of everything else you learn here and you should do fine.” Casey reached out to the table and flipped up the concealed cover of a storage compartment built into and down the center of it, where everyone could see a line of a dozen emergency oxygen masks.

  “Welcome aboard and carry on.” Casey finished and headed back to the bridge. “We start in the Engineering sections tomorrow, Peggy?” she asked as the lift doors opened.

  “Yes. We will start tomorrow with a review of how we manage the assorted Engineering sub-groups as well as how they interact.”

  “Alright. I am going to finish the watch and then file reports and make some calls this evening.”

  Casey was prepared to settle in to a routine, but that was broken the following morning when she was woken up by none other than Viny and Caz.

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” She exclaimed as the two woke her with chaste kisses.

  “It turns out that when you work for Tempo you have the clearance to set foot where-ever Tempo says you can.” observed Viny mildly. Some drones were carrying in an assortment of cardboard boxes from several online retailers.

  “And while we may be Shenaning, we don’t want to get un-cleared, so no funny business today.” added Caz. “We are wishing a friend a happy birthday a little early and delivering personal stuff to you and Allegro.”

  “Yes, we get to fix this sterile travesty of a personal space.” Viny followed up as he looked around critically. “You go get to work, and we will have lunch with you here on board. If you are a good girl and get all your chores done this week we will give you a treat when you come home to Chicago.”

  “Yes, because my guys know what a lady likes.” Casey enthused as she scrambled out of bed. She stripped off her sleeping clothes and left them on the floor as she headed for the shower.

  “Peggy, do Casey’s mods change her appearance? Because I swear she’s gotten hotter.” she heard Caz ask from the other side of the door.

  “Only insomuch as they help regulate body chemistry and promote general health and fitness.” Peggy answered him over the intercom as she turned on the water. “They ensure a proper bfp and clean the vascular system. You are probably noticing the clearer skin too. Yours do the same things.”

  She smirked as she stepped in under the falling water. He was probably noticing the afterglow of getting absolutely annihilated all weekend. Ben was a keeper, and she would certainly be gossiping with them about it at lunch.

  The hours dragged by. Only the crushing weight of responsibility kept her focused.

  When lunch time arrived, she did not rush to the officer's mess. After explaining how the weekend went, the two assured her they would visit Ben and work on his style and wardrobe. Then she walked them down to the hangar Bay where a bus was waiting for them. The rest of the day went a lot smoother, and by the time she crashed in her newly decorated cabins she felt like she had accomplished something.

  “Best birthday since…. Hell, since I was a child. Thanks, Peggy.”

  “This one was actually all Allegro. I’ll tell her you appreciated it.”

  “Really? Yeah, that makes sense. You may know about human birthdays intellectually, but she is living the human experience right now. When is hers, by the way?”

  “She celebrates her birthday on the Ides of March.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why I should have expected anything else. When you get your degree at the anything-goes school of problem solving it's best to totally commit to the bit.”

  She caught up to Allegro the next day in CIC.

  “Allegro, not sure who your birthday mentor was, but they taught you well.”

  “Remind me to tell you about the time I got a friend to twist my arm into spontaneously going to an event that turned out to be their surprise party. It was epic.”

  “I’m sure. This one was just right though. It meant a lot to me.”

  “Well happy birthday for reals now that it is the 4th.”

  “Are you turning 17 this March, or 18?”

  “Seventeen. And before you ask, I would like for my birthday to go to a concert. Surprise me.”

  “I’m not sure that’s possible, but I will give a look to see who is announcing tickets going on sale over the next few months.”

  “Just don’t settle for the Blue Man Group. Blegh.”

  “So noted.”

  Casey got back to work. First up was Life Support. There were no air ducts through the ship. Instead, breathable air was distributed and collected in each compartment and transferred through a grid of pressurized lines and tanks to the habitable compartments or to where it could be processed and recycled. Damaged or vented compartments could be bypassed. Same with water. Even compartments that didn't have water fixtures or were kept unpressurized had storage tanks under the deck in case of emergencies. If the ship needed more oxygen water could be split and the resulting hydrogen used for parasite craft auxiliary fuel cells. If more water or nitrogen was needed an automated drone was sent to the outer solar system alongside the regularly scheduled automated drones that collected the ship’s fusion reactor fuels.

  It was all pretty well thought out and constructed, and learning how to operate and maintain the equipment promised to keep Casey occupied for some time.

  “So what is the timeline we are looking at here?” Casey asked Peggy.

  “First, you are spiking the curve. You are going about 20 percent faster than your closest peer. Thus we are using a benchmark progression system instead of a time based one.” answered Peggy. “Get a few more boxes checked off and we will get a new Ensign selected to be your future first officer. We will not be going with an American, so we don’t need to wait for next year’s Academy graduates. We can save that for another one of your peers where the timing matches up better.”

  “Ok.”

  “Then, once they are trained up we can work on more ensigns. The enlisted crew will continue to be simulated until the Admiral can get some classes graduated, and once we are far enough along your officer corps will be drawn exclusively from your ratings via a process that your military currently uses. I believe you call that going mustang?”

  “Is there a reason you're envisioning doing it that way as opposed to an academy for officers?”

  “Yes, if your officers have previous experience as enlisted personnel, you're more likely to keep them for longer as opposed to them bolting for the private sector. They've already made the decision to stick around. And with the mods that everyone will have, careers promise to be very long.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”