The command ship, and marauders were the only ones that had boarding parties. So they became my priorities. Three of the four remaining vessels were actual hazards. I was starting to get tired, and Joseph knew it. "Joseph. I need some sleep. You are in command until I wake up." He nodded. "Follow the yellow flashing lights on the wall to the nearest room." He says. I get out of the mock-cockpit seat, and head to the nearest room with a bed. Adrenaline having fueled me this long. My eyes closed before I found the bed, and I was asleep once I did. I woke up to a girl's face only inches from my own. "Ah!" I yelled and jumped back. From this vantage I got a better look at her, she would have to be around twenty to twenty two years old, so fairly close to my age. But her being here, and her violet eyes meant that she was none other than princess Bridgette, and her dress was definitely not meant for space combat, but I quickly noticed a pressure suit under it. She was ready if things went south. "Joe, she is awake now." The princess says. "Oh, goodie. Thanks, pet." I see Bridgett get a grin on her face like someone had just given a dog a treat. "Since you're awake, the last carrier is gone, we have one marauder, and Admiral Seaver's command ship remaining." The hull vibrates sharply as I feel the turrets launch a volley. "Scratch that, Admiral Seaver's ship is all that's left." "You didn't have to kill everyone." I grin cheekily. The past two weeks together, we have figured out how to read each other's moods. I figured I would throw one at him. "I only fired at them if it was obvious they were doing something stupid. Admiral Seaver has come within fifty kilometers of us twice, and didn't even see us." "And you didn't kill him?" I joke. I know there are times that just because you have the shot, doesn't mean you should take it. "I used the fighters and fired toward ourselves to throw him off some, the second time, I used that tactic to clear the carrier. Their strategy of not launching fighters until they see the enemy was their downfall." I walk into the room I had been using, followed by the princess. Joseph is standing next to the cockpit. "Captain, you are now in command." He said, and I saw the white lights come back on, from the yellow they were. He is back in defense mode. "Princess, would you mind sitting in that seat?" I ask, pointing to the one sunk in the floor. It's the same level as the mock fighter cockpit. "Captain, that chair is the controls for my radar, and communications." I get reminded. "Princess, please don't change any settings, just relax. It's my job to keep you safe right now." I look away from her when she agrees to comply. To my left I see a glint of the command ship's armor, and I order the fighters out to it, keeping only ten back. The camera zooms in, just in time to see the red paint splatter across the cockpit windows of the Admiral's command ship. "Alright, that's game. Let's return to base." I said. I sat down in the second cockpit as the ship began to move. The fighter swarm all landed safely. The screens around us all turned off, and Joseph sat on the floor facing the two of us. "Alright, Bridgette, what did you think of your captain's performance?" "I thought it was surprising. I've been on battleships that weren't handled as well. And other than the six hours of sleep when she had you in command, the performance was brilliant." He turned to me. "Did you feel like you had enough control in this battle bridge, or do you think more is needed in here to command effectively?" "Honestly I didn't even realize this was a bridge. So when do we go up against the sixth, that was a crappy simulation, they lost too easily." I said. The princess lost her breath from laughing. "Oh, I have to tell father that one!" She regained some of her composure. "Captain Tauron, since I came aboard, this was all actual. You just single-handedly destroyed an entire battlegroup in thirty six hours, by using their own tactics against them, if you managed it solo, imagine what our enemies could do." The screens around the room came back on, and the formation of red painted ships sitting in front of the air-dock surprised me. I stood up out of the cockpit I was in, and stared at all the ship's I had sunk. "And I never got to use my trump-card." Joseph mumbled. He steered us backwards into the dock, and the doors closed in front of us, and we disembarked. The princess first, to prove she was indeed onboard. I see Michelle, my old bunk-mate standing in formation on the platform when I get off, right next to the sergeant who was trying to get me pushed out. "Excuse me princess." I said as I walked over to her. Her eyes were glassed over and were fixed on the far wall. But I figured I would address the sergeant first. "I owe you a thank you." I said. "Had you not demoted me the way you did, the computers would have never looked at me for this. Pray you never serve aboard a ship where I am a captain." I tell him. He swallows hard, realizing who I am. "Michelle, sorry I couldn't let you guys show your handiwork, I had a job to do." I said to her. "I understand captain." She says, a tear in her eye, at least it's joy and not sadness. When I return to her majesty's side Michelle's face can barely hold the placid expression we are supposed to have. The failure wasn't lost on Captain Canner, and he began yelling at her for embarrassing his ship. "You know that girl?" I was asked. "Yeah. If I keep my current position, I would want her with me." "You aren't going anywhere. What's her name?" "Private Michelle Whittinger." "Michelle Whittinger!" The princess yells. "Fall out of formation, and present yourself before me." Captain Canner is still yelling at her as she kneels before Princess Bridgette. "Captain Canner, I don't recall asking for you, and this is not how one presents themselves to me, go back to your ship." The coldness my old sergeant used to talk to the women in his squad would sound kind, compared to the palpable detest, seething from the words the princess just spoke. "Michelle, thank you for your service. I find I am in need of someone to assist me in ensuring that my new ship is fully supplied before it leaves the dock officially under my banner. I wish to publicly offer the position to you, but I need your response before you stand up." "Princess, if it means serving with Dani again, there is no debate. You have my service." "You do know that Dani sunk your ship first, it was her at the controls." The princess added. "All the more reason to serve with her again," she spoke louder this time. "Captain Dani Tauron just showed every 'Naught in here what she is capable of. After getting demoted for insubordination when she told her seargent he was going to get us killed, five weeks to the day later, she proved it in a mock battle against her own former ship. I'll follow anyone who can back up their claims, and looks out for their people before themselves." ""Here! Here!"" Every female voice in the massive room shouted, which made the leadership turn and gave dirty looks. The movement of the turrets aboard the Phoenix brought everyone's attention to the ship, and the hologram of Joseph stepped off his ship. A formation of three fliers with projector lenses on the bottom flew above him. "Princess." Joseph inclined his head. "Michelle, would you stand for me?" She looked to the princess before complying. "I am Joseph. The Artificial Life aboard Phoenix. You just agreed to become my executive officer. So, you need this." A small crane lowered a MobiGlas for her forearm. She took it, and strapped it on. The red Phoenix on the rare all black case made it obvious who it belonged to. "Princess, one more thing. An executive officer, by your father's order, must be at least the same rank as the quantum mechanic, preferably one rank higher." "I'll fix that. Michelle, walk with me." And like that we went to the briefing room to talk about what had happened. Part of me still felt like I was dealing with the simulations, it was just too simple. The briefing room, was another matter entirely. I got ready to kneel to the king, as did Michelle, when the princess grabbed us, and gave a curtesy, we followed suit. "Admiral Seaver, thank you for the lesson." I said. "No, Captain. Thank you. I made a comment that started this whole thing, and you made me realize how bad things in my battle-group really were. We were constantly called the best, so I thought nothing of a single ship challenge, and underestimated the selected captain simply because you were a woman. You will make a spectacular Admiral one day." I froze. Three weeks ago, I was a private on the verge of being forced out of the space corps completely, and now, in front of the King, an admiral says I'll be one someday. "Rebecca refused the post of captain, but is requesting to be your vice-captain." The King tells me. "She can do whatever she chooses, if I'm in command, I'll approve it." "Captain. Phoenix is your ship. You must confirm, or deny the request." The princess states. "Rebecca will be the vice-captain, Joseph told me that Heather is a natural navigator, I would like to request her presence aboard as well." "It will have to be as a civilian, at least until she is of age." The King says. I confirm. "Alright, now that that's taken care of, have a seat. You are to witness something." I sit down in the chair the King pointed at, Michelle's twitching fingers anxious to check out the computer now on her arm. "Michelle Whittinger." The princess says, once Michelle's attention is on the princess fully, she continues in a formal tone. "I find you out of uniform." I got told about my promotion this way, but I see her eyes flick over everything the way mine must have. "Officers of the fleet are required to wear a jacket over their shirts." Michelle realized what was going on now. The princess went over every procedure for an officer's uniform. Something time prevented for me. "Finally, your jacket is required to hold the symbol of your battle-group on each shoulder so you will not be confused with an officer in a different group. One glance at your uniform should always let everyone know where you belong. From this day forward that symbol for you is a red Phoenix emblazoned in a black diamond, trimmed with gold. Welcome to the Phoenix battle-group." When the princess stopped talking, a woman, obviously a maid, handed her a suit bag with a new uniform inside. "We will wait to continue upon your return." Michelle grabbed the bag, and bolted from the room. A few minutes later she came back in. Her uniform looking similar to mine, officer grey instead of white, the rank on her shoulder was that of a colonel, two ranks below myself. Where my rank was on a bar with a blue fabric, hers was on red, marking her as the ship's executive officer. The knee length skirt reminded me that we did actually have female officer uniforms, but they were so rare they were hardly ever seen. Now that I think about it, there was a skirt in my suit bag, but I completely forgot about it. "Admiral. Joseph warned you, and you had to go and piss him off." The King said. Before I could ask, Rebecca came in, wearing a vice-captain uniform, her shoulder bars in green, resting on the inside of her sole-survivor epaulettes, leaving me the only Phoenix officer in pants. "Admiral, how do you feel knowing your career is over?" Rebecca asks plainly, as though she knows this admiral can't touch her. "Dani's performance was sent to every news agency that was here for the survivor story a few months ago. The public now knows we have a single ship that can decimate our best battlegroup, and if I make the quote properly: 'make them look like recruits that haven't learned the right end of the rifle'? Something like that." "I've learned my lesson to not piss off that A.I. Again." "You won't get the chance." The King says. "As soon as Canner started yelling at Colonel Whittenger, your whole battle-fleet lost recognition with the others." A reporter who followed Rebecca in said. "I was told the elusive Joseph was going to be here as well." "I'm listening, Jerome. I can't project in that room, and anything I currently have that can is banned from that room. It took quite a bit of convincing of the station's security system to let me just listen." "Oh. Well can we get a picture of you?" "His actual appearance is a secret of the crown." The King says flatly. "Yes sire." "You may take a picture of the Phoenix logo, on the side of the ship and use that." Joseph says. The reporter seems upset at this, but nods. Fracking vultures. "Captain, what did you think of the battle bridge?" Rebecca asked "It's amazing the amount of control it has, and the simplicity of the bridge made it to where I was able to command the entire mission from there. The few hours I slept were the only hours I wasn't there." Michelle looked at me, "you slept?" The admiral looked like he had the same question. "I issued an order to the ship's Intelligence, slept for six hours, and returned to the bridge for the last two." "I didn't sleep at all." The admiral admitted. "When you took out The Avatar, I knew we were done." "Sir, that's the first carrier I took out, and the only reason I was able to get him is because Captain Reeves favors the non-armored side of his carrier, relying on line of sight and the expedience of his fighters when launched in that direction. He doesn't rely on instrumentation at all. He was the easiest carrier to take out." The conversation continued like that for the next day, me explaining the fallacies of each captain, Joseph's training having drilled all three hundred ships into my head with his simulations, I was amazed I remembered it all. "How long have you been an officer?" The reporter asked. "I've sat in briefings with career battleship captain's who didn't understand their own tactics to this extent." "Sir," the princess started in my stead. "The rainbows selected her for this post a mere three weeks ago. At that point she had just been demoted for insubordination to private from corporal." He looked to Michelle, "so that's why your comment on the deck." She nodded. "Jerome, the system the armada currently uses for promotion and demotion is broken." I hear Joseph's voice for the first time in a day and a half. "If it were working effectively there would only be two male ship captains in the entire sixth battle-group. The Rainbows and I ran a simulation as to who the best ship crews would be from a strictly skills based standpoint, which we all also agreed wouldn't function properly, and there were only fifty females in entry level positions. And most of the current ship captains, again, from strictly a skills perspective, would be at entry level positions as well." "I had complete confidence when selecting Dani as captain that she could do what she did within the week, and resigned to loosing a half a wing of fighters letting her do it her way. The admiral here pissed me off, and I spent the two weeks training her exactly how to defeat the sixth in the most humiliating ways possible. After only two weeks, she is able to spot weaknesses in a ship within moments, not hours like it used to be. But the Phoenix has a huge weakness, and I will not tell her what it is, she has to figure it out on her own." "It's the Phoenix's strong standpoint on defense. In a real firefight, she is twice as heavy as a standard scout carrier. To offset this, she is equipped with the twenty four turrets, twelve dorsal, twelve keel." "Close, but keep trying Dani." The admiral says. "I found your weakness a mere tenth of a second before my windows splattered red. It's a shame we will never do this again." He tells the room with a sad smile.