“Are they done yet?” I asked, tapping my foot impatiently. It had been at least two hours since she gave me that timeframe, right?

“...Yes. Yes, John. They are done.” Celeste said, letting out a long sigh of relief. “Remind me never to suggest you taking a week off again.”

“Great!” That single bit of good news made my mood instantly brighten. “So, how long till we can go?”

I heard a dark and sinister chuckle from inside of my mind. Every word she spoke came out like an evil villain’s taunts. “Well, first we have to recall all the crew members that went planetside for their time off. Then, we need to do the calculations for our first warp jump, and make sure everyone is synchronized so that we don’t accidentally appear inside of each other. So… about a day, give or take? Depending on how long it takes the crew to say their goodbyes and pack their belongings to resume the voyage.”

By the time that Celeste was done, I felt my face losing all color. “But… you said two hours!” I shouted out to the empty bedroom.

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” She asked, a grin in her voice. “I guess it’s a good thing I went ahead and called for everyone to return to their ships yesterday. Once we do the spatial calculations, we’ll be able to move out.”

“...That was unexpectedly mean of you.” I said, slapping my face with my hand. “I deserved it, didn’t I?”

“Yup.” She replied simply. “Consider it payback for asking ‘Are they done yet?’ every two minutes… For the last three days.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad, right?” I glanced side to side in guilt, not really wanting an answer to that question.

“I have it all recorded. Would you like to see the highlight reel?” Celeste asked, a grin in her voice. Of course, I had been on the ship, so it was only natural for her to be able to have a recording of me.

“No, that’s fine… Anyways, go ahead and let everyone know that we’ll be ready to launch once the fleet is assembled. I’m heading to the bridge now.” Eager to finally be able to do something aside from pacing back and forth in my room, I quickly got changed and made my way out of the room.

“I already did, John. They should be waiting for you by the time you get there.” She commented in a gentler tone before going silent, likely making her own final preparations. I couldn’t help but smile at the forethought she put into this. Then again, I had likely annoyed her beyond enough to make her want to get this over with as soon as possible.

Huh? What? Are we going now? Great, finally!

Yes, yes. I vaguely responded to Malthan, once again amazed at how he could spend so much time paying attention to me. From what I had heard from Celeste, Sharon, and the others, this was definitely not the norm. Maybe it was just because it was Malthan, and he had too much free time. However, none of the others ever had hardly any communication with their patron unless they were at a temple or in the process of a quest from their patron.

I guess I can just think of him as special. Then again, if I thought about the domains Malthan governed, that could also explain how he was able to just spend all his time communicating with mortals. I mean, he doesn’t really have to do any work for chaos to remain chaotic, or for insane people to stay insane.

I do plenty of work! I just can’t tell you about it. Rules are rules. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I silently nodded, doing my best not to mentally comment on that. Instead, I made my way towards the bridge quickly. Along the way, I saw various people walking along the hallways, inspecting every corner of the ship. Some even carried with them handheld scanning devices. Since the repairs were just completed, no doubt this was so that they could check the integrity of the ship, and make sure everything was ready for launch.

“Are there any repairs that weren’t able to be fit in within the timeframe?” I asked curiously as I continued making my way forward, trusting that Celeste was paying enough attention that she would notice if I asked her something. And sure enough, a response came only a few moments later.

“Aside from the human propulsion system, we managed to get everything in. Of course, we haven’t had any time to field-test the upgrades, but the individual systems had already been tested by their various designers. Unless there is some unpredictable clash with specific systems, there shouldn’t be anything unexpected.” She assured me, causing me to nod my head slightly.

“Good. I wouldn’t want to find out at the last minute that our shields won’t come online.” I groaned at the thought, shaking my head rapidly. “Are the other ships all equipped with what they can use, too?”

This time, the answer that came was a tired sigh. “Everyone’s got the warp core. And the Deus Ex ships borrowed the shield designs to upgrade themselves. However, there wasn’t enough time and resources to upgrade all of their weapons. They did pitch in to create a second cannon for the Executioner, so it doesn’t have to rely on its positron cannon to do damage.”

I nodded my head again at that, before turning the corner and opening the door to the bridge. Immediately, I saw a group of beastmen stand up, along with one mischievously grinning Deus Ex and an eager elf. Before they could say anything, I immediately opened my mouth. “First person to say ‘Captain on the bridge’ or to salute gets to stay home.”

Ackbar was, naturally, not that happy to have his usual antics interrupted, but he was used to it at this point. As for Celeste, she just clicked her tongue in annoyance, as if I had ruined her prank. Moving forward, I went to my very own, comfy captain’s chair. However, I noticed a slight change compared to before. There were now two additional seats, one on either side of my chair.

Glancing to their occupants, I waited for an explanation. The first to speak up was naturally Sharon, who was seated to my right. “What? You didn’t expect us to just always be standing next to you, did you?” She asked playfully. “It kept bugging us that we couldn’t always be here on the bridge with you, since the ship shakes too much in a fight. So we had Celeste install a couple of chairs for us.”

Next up, was Yin’s wonderfully eloquent answer. “No controls…” She said with a slight pout, poking at the arm of her chair positioned directly to my right. Like she said, neither chair had even a single button. Though, they did have a lever down at the bottom, but going by the design of the chairs, that was just to recline it.

That’s right, there are now recliners on the bridge. Holographic television screen, recliners, easy food down the hall. I am starting to feel like this is history’s best mobile home living room. I gave a small sigh as I sat down in my chair, reaching my arms out to either side to pat the arms of their chairs. “Well, let’s do this then.” I said with a smile.

“Celeste, begin calculations. Pull up the spatial coordinates for the nearest known New Human Empire base, and place us three parsecs from the destination.” That should be plenty of empty space for us to land in, but still be close enough that we could quickly arrive via normal subspace travel. My biggest concern was stray asteroids, or space monsters. The last thing we needed was to appear in a nest of abstracts by mistake.

Celeste nodded, closing her eyes and interfacing with the ship’s computers. “I already did the preliminary calculations. There is a 90% chance that the target location contains an enemy base. However, due to differences in gravitational fields, it is recommended that all ships jump at the same time. Otherwise, the destinations might vary slightly, and accidental collisions would be a serious risk.”

“Alright. Have everyone prepare their jumps, and set a countdown.” As I spoke, I felt a delicate finger poking my left hand. Looking over, I saw Yin looking at me with a serious expression.

“Speech.” She said, nodding her head as if that summed up everything. But I don’t wanna! I retorted inwardly, but nodded my head after a slight groan. Speeches were important. Need the dramatic build-up for morale and whatnot. Though, our fleet consisted of mostly unfeeling robots, completely loyal evolved animal companions, and midgets that act like they never graduated high school.

“Fine, fine.” I turned my head back to the front, ignoring the small thumbs up exchanged between my two wives. “Patch me through to the fleet.” I ordered, bringing my hands to my sides as I stood up.

It took a moment for the connection to be set, but after the communications officer… I think her name was Skyla? It’s hard to remember names when most of the crew changes out on a regular basis! Anyways, this one was evidently an evolved turtle, judging by the shell covering her back like a backpack. When Skyla gave me the thumbs up, I began my speech.

“Ahem. Attention everyone. I hope that you all enjoyed the vacation. Hopefully, it is the last one that we will have before this is all over.” Both because I hoped that this wouldn’t take too long, and I doubted my sanity could survive weeks of doing nothing again. “We are once again going to be heading into enemy territory. However, this time we are prepared. Before, we suffered some losses when we first engaged their ships, due to not being able to understand and predict the level of technology that they were going to be using.”

“This time, everyone has been outfitted with new systems specifically designed to fight against the New Human Empire. From what I understand, each ship should now be more powerful than it was before by a large margin.” Except for the Qu’Lopti, but let’s just let them power up through the power of imagination. “Now, we can fight them, and we can win.”

“For each base we hit, our primary goal will be to discern their main base of operations. For that matter, myself and the primary landing party will be descending to whatever base we come to. Our objective will be to access their systems, your objective will be making sure we don’t get nuked from orbit. Honestly… That’s probably the harder of the two jobs.”

I gave a quick glimpse at Celeste, who gave me a thumbs up, before once again addressing the fleet. “Now, with that out of the way… Sons of Chaos, launch.” Not wanting to be hit by sudden shifting or anything like that, I abruptly sat down as I gave the order. Who cares if it ruined the image of a professional captain, I’d rather have that happen this way than if I stumbled back by accident.

Seeing that, Celeste had a slight grin on her face, but nonetheless hit the final command to launch the ship. The experience was… strange. Not only was the ship surrounded by an array of multicolored lights, but even the interior of the ship was. I could barely see Sharon and Yin next to me beyond the bright lights that blocked my vision. And then, in the next instant, those lights were gone just as quickly as they had arrived.

“Report, Celeste!” I called out, reaching a hand up to my head, feeling a mild headache coming on. Not likely from any side effect of the transfer, but just from the blinding lights flashing in my eyes.

“Uhm… Destination reached.” Celeste spoke up after a moment. “Distance to target, three and a half parsecs. Though, and this is just a suggestion, but it is ill-advised to use that when we are going to be closer to the target zone.”

Looking around, I could see what she meant. I wasn’t the only one that had suffered from the sudden blast of the powerful lights. Almost everyone in the bridge was showing at least minor signs of pain in their eyes. “Duly noted. Proceed forward at sublight speeds until everyone recovers from the jump. Status on the fleet?”

“Everyone arrived successfully.” A dog-eared man called out. “The Executioner was a few seconds behind, and appeared a couple dozen kilometers behind us. But, nobody is reporting any damage.” He said as he rubbed his eyes, looking at the screen.

“Understood. Okay, let’s get moving, then.”