“Good evening, Admiral East.”
“Good evening, Space Lord,” Admiral East bowed.
The Space Lord smiled. “So what brings you to my office?”
“Ah, yes. It’s about the Starship Athena.”
He gave a single, short nod, prompting her to continue.
“It’s been a few months, and even though they haven’t finished their analysis of Commissioner West, Medical’s results have been looking very good- and in anticipation of a positive overall result, I’d like to start polling our active duty and half-pay officers to see which ones would be willing, if assigned to the vessel or otherwise required by their duties, to get transformed in a similar manner.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And when people on your crew list say no?”
She shrugged. “Then we don’t assign them to the vessel.”
“And when a majority of people say no?”
“Then she ends up under-crewed, preferably in the weapon mounts, since those are fairly easy, overall, to fill up later.”
“Will they be given any special incentives?”
“No- my plan is to send this poll out to a majority of our officers, including everyone on the list but at least three times as many not on the list… and to have the exact same wording in every case, with no hint as to the position at stake.”
“And when people start asking when they can board?”
“We’ll explain that the poll was a pre-planning stage in anticipation of a result from Medical, but that nobody will be boarding until and unless we get the go-ahead from Medical.”
“Alright, you have permission. Go ahead and make your poll.”
Space Lord Matthews raised an eyebrow as Admiral East entered his office for the second time in twice as many days. “Good evening, Admiral.”
She bowed. “Good evening, Space Lord.”
“So what is it this time?” he asked. He was in a rather sour mood, after his entire morning and much of his afternoon had been occupied by disciplinary hearings, a funeral, and a press release connected to the two Navy vessels that had been caught supporting the Black Fang, one of the most infamous pirate groups known to the USN.
“It’s the Athena once again, actually. Medical emailed me this afternoon to inform me that all of their tests were good- and we’re clear to send people aboard. Commissioner West is in recovery from the latest bouts of tests, so they’re planning on waiting to announce it until he’s able to walk out of the building and return to his job. I wanted to check on when you wanted me to send her crew their orders, and when for them to execute them.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that your purview?”
“Well yes, normally, but with the Athena, especially considering we commissioned her without actually evaluating her capabilities and only assuming she fit the requirements, I figured you might want to be part of the process.”
He sighed. “Alright then. With your poll a few days ago, how many are left?”
“Pretty much all of them, actually. It was mildly alarming just how many of the women selected the ‘no problem’ option- and how many of the men selected the ‘only if necessary’ option.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So your poll results have cemented the all-female crew?”
She nodded. “Only sixteen men responded favorably to the transformation potential, and they were all fresh recruits at the lower ends of their classes- which is a category we haven’t been considering for the Athena anyways, simply because she is so massive I don’t want anyone with only a weak grasp of how to do their job causing a problem that sends her careening through controlled space.”
He shuddered at the thought. “Alright. How did her prospective upper ranks respond?”
“I was actually surprised that not one of those had a negative reaction,” she stated, “so they’re all still on. Much of the bridge crew- including Captain Matthews- even selected the ‘oh absolutely’ option- which, on the poll, explicitly specified that it meant they would choose to get transformed even if not required by their job or assignment. I rather suspect they have been following along with Medical’s public updates as well- only last week, they confirmed genetic compatibility with untransformed humans, despite his significantly modified genetics.”
He tilted his head. “How’d they do that?”
“Well, I know his wife was involved, and that she’s expecting now…”
He blinked, then shrugged. “Makes sense. But that really only confirms that male transformed and female untransformed are compatible enough to conceive, but not necessarily enough to bear live young.”
She nodded. “Agreed. I did send a follow-up poll to all the positive respondents to that effect, and not one of them responded negatively to it.”
“... Alright then. How big of a crew do we have lined up?”
“We’ve been able to fill out her crew lists entirely, actually- a full hundred thousand. We’ve also been swapping some of them out these last couple months, to give Captain Matthews the best people we can.”
He sighed. “Alright, go ahead and send them in. You’ll probably want to send them their orders a little ahead of time, and definitely send them in waves, in case something comes up. Speaking of which, what waves are you planning?”
She bowed her head. “The first wave is set to actually be just the Captain, alongside a crate of supplies and a robo-helper to move and open it for her, in case she’s not able to adapt to the new form fast enough to do it herself. We’ll then wait for her go-ahead before we send each of the following waves. The second wave will be all her bridge officers and senior members of each department, including Medical and Culinary; there will be enough people in enough stations to make the crew self-sustaining as far as food and so on is concerned. They will board with a series of large crates and a few more robo-helpers; primarily an initial food supply and about one percent of the ship’s eventual hydroponics supplies, which should be more than enough to sustain her entire crew long-term.
“Naturally, they won’t be expected to plant all her hydroponics sectors immediately, but they will be expected to plant enough to be self-sustaining, and regularly expand it to allow for new crew coming aboard. The third wave will be entirely medical personnel, with all of their supplies- then the following waves will be spread across all departments, in order of seniority.”
He nodded. “Alright, sounds good to me.”
Captain Kayla Matthews, despite having a tactical background, was adept enough as a small craft pilot that she had been asked to fly herself up to the massive ship.
There was a part of her that was eager to find out how she would look as a pony… and part of her that was worried about her future naval career. This thing was, essentially, a passenger liner, after all; she’d checked the documents, and aside from a multitude of energy weapons- which ought to make pretty good point defense, but would otherwise be largely useless thanks to their dismally short maximum range- the ship was only slightly better armed than most passenger liners.
She also had an absolutely stupendous passenger capacity.
As such, she was a little worried that this was the Navy’s way of sweeping her under the rug, so to speak- on duty, but out of the way, and on a largely useless ship. Would they even consider her for another ship?
She sighed and, even though she knew it was unmanned, lit up her transmitters on the approach frequency. It was a habit her instructors had drilled into her, and there was no harm in talking at an empty ship anyways- it just wouldn’t respond.
“Captain Matthews to Starship Athena, come in,” she began.
To her surprise, a response came back, in a melodic, female voice, which practically oozed calm confidence. “Starship Athena to Captain Matthews, I copy.”
It took her only a fraction of a second to recover. “Requesting insertion into the Local Area Control Network for approach control.”
“The Starship Athena’s Local Area Control Network is on frequency zero niner four three niner seven two niner six, use callsign Athena One.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Frequency zero niner four three niner seven two niner six, using callsign Athena One,” she read back, simultaneously tapping the frequency into her transmitter.
“Readback is correct.”
She tapped the enter key, waited a couple seconds in case there were other ships talking on the frequency, then spoke. “Athena One to Approach Control, requesting internal berthing.” Local area control network frequencies were permanently assigned at construction, which virtually guaranteed no two ships would share the same one- so the mothership was referred to not by name but by the particular part of it the pilot wanted to speak to.
The exact same voice answered her. “Approach Control to Athena One, proceed at your discretion to Bay Four Niner Seven Three, located just aft of the middle of the T. Caution internal gravity of zero point five meters per second squared.”
She blinked. Internal gravity? She didn’t know that was even possible! “Athena One, proceeding at my discretion to Bay Four Niner Seven Three, caution internal gravity at zero point five mps squared.” As she spoke, she saw a tiny, horizontal thread of light appear on the shadowed hull at the described point- she was on the dark side of the ship- and start growing taller.
“Readback is correct.”
As she accelerated towards the bay, she had to wonder to herself if this really would be the purgatory she was expecting. It was a passenger liner… but it had internal gravity. That would be the very first non-fictional artificial gravity that wasn’t based in centrifugal force!
She would have to find out what other secrets the ship might be hiding.
She let out a snort. Like the automated traffic control system- at least, she assumed it was automated. The ship was unmanned, after all.