Coils knocked very gently on the door guarding the room the Princess was still in. She was exhausted- but she had managed to craft a first draft entirely on her own. All the other engineers had already gone home for the night when she’d started looking for them, and would start arriving for the morning in around fifteen minutes… But she had a draft she could show the Princess.
“Enter,” the Princess called, her voice sounding weary.
She entered… and froze. The conference room didn’t look too much like any conference room she knew of anymore. It felt more like… She wasn’t sure, but she got the idea that the new feel of the room wouldn’t have been out of place on a warship.
The lights had been turned down. The massive conference screen was displaying what looked like a tactical map of some sort, and each screen around Flight was showing something completely different. She’d moved the consoles from a number of other seats up to her, so as to have more screens available- and Coils spotted no less than three active comms connections amongst the screens she didn’t recognize. She recognized only one at first- Admiral Mantle Core, the commander of Equineothame’s network of surface-based orbital defense cannons. One of the others was wearing a Navy pressure suit with the helmet closed, the reason visible in the scorch marks on the wall behind her and on the side of her helmet, and the third was an unfamiliar mare in a large, empty room by herself, scrambling almost frantically around her panels.
She blinked. “Uh…” She muttered.
Flight looked up at her, bags beneath her eyes, and smiled painfully, almost victoriously. “The last shot was fired nearly fifteen minutes ago,” she told her. “We think it’s over, but haven’t finished making sure.” She sighed, eyes flicking briefly to the rolled-up blueprint in Coil’s Bands. “How’s it coming?”
“Kinda okay,” Coils admitted. “Everypony else had already gone home when I started looking, so…” She sighed. “I’m a power systems engineer, so I’m pretty certain I missed something, but I’ve got a preliminary sketch before everypony else starts coming in- and refining it- in fifteen minutes.”
Flight accepted the blueprint, flattened it on the table, and scowled at it. “Huh,” she muttered, eyes following the lines. “You’re right, something doesn’t look right. Not sure what, though.” Her eyes roamed the page for another few seconds. “But yeah, I think that’s exactly what I asked for, so…” She smiled up at Coils. “How long do you think you’ll need to refine it into a final product?”
Coils looked at it. “... I don’t know.”
She nodded. “Okay. Can we make sure it’s operable by bare hooves? We just lost far too many ships to pilots that couldn’t find their Hands in time.”
“You’re alive,” Flight observed, by way of a greeting. It was a few hours after the fight had concluded; Flight had traveled out to the Capital City Landing Pad to meet the injured spacers as they landed. Some of them were headed straight to the hospital- but some of them, including the High Admiral, merely needed to stay within the planetary gravity field for a few days while their bodies healed themselves. Admiral Mantle Core had also traveled out to meet them, and was standing next to her- and periodically casting glances at the two guards that had come with Flight. Thanks to her father’s stipulation, and her position as the Princess, she couldn’t go anywhere without protection… The only exception being on her own ship. Aboard the Space Station, and at the ASC, the guards protecting her and her sister had been able to do it from out of sight via surveillance systems and covering the exits. Out in the open, though… None of her guards liked it when she was out in the open like this.
The High Admiral grinned. One side of her face had been scorched by the two ton plasma bomb that had breached her bridge- and her suit hadn’t automatically sealed her helmet fast enough to protect her entirely. That side of her face was furless and very badly burned, with a couple of blisters, but the damage to her already artificial right eye had been repaired on orbit- or more accurately, she’d swapped the damaged cybernetic eyeball for her spare, which had remained miraculously undamaged in her quarters. “Of course I am,” she answered. “What were you expecting?” She sighed, and looked behind her. “I kinda wish I didn’t have to let go of Midshipfilly Willowstone, but after all that…” She sighed.
Flight winced. When a pony was ‘too young’ in the Navy, they were there in a training capacity- not unlike an internship. They would learn whatever they were studying with the Navy… then leave it again to continue their studies elsewhere or, in some cases, wait until they came of age to resume their tenure with the Navy. Once they were of age, they were a midshipmare, midshipstallion, or perhaps a higher rank, depending on their skill level- but before they were of age, it was always either midshipfilly or midshipcolt. “Willowstone?” she asked.
“My Tactical student,” the Admiral told her. “You might’ve heard her a few times- after I killed that piece of backstabbing trash masquerading as my Tactical officer, she was the sole Tactical officer on the Bridge.” She sighed. “Yes, I know, I should have sent her to her quarters, or gotten her a new mentor, but I was the only other tactically trained pony on the whole ship and my attention was needed elsewhere. That said, she’s a certifiable tactical genius. Completely knocked the socks off her previous scores, and I don’t think she realized exactly how well she was doing.” She glanced back at the shuttle. “She was hit by some shrapnel in the fight, and lost the use of her left foreleg- but I don’t think I’ve seen even a Marine take a hit with as little complaint as she did. She made sure her suit tourniquet had engaged properly… then kept fighting. I actually didn’t realize she was hurt until things started winding down half an hour later- but there’s no doubt in my mind she’s the reason we’re all alive today.”
“How’s her leg?” Flight asked.
She shook her head. “Total loss. We had to amputate it on orbit.” She sighed. “She’s going to be the youngest pony to ever go on medical leave from the Navy; all the other students across the Navy either survived unscathed or were killed outright.” She moved next to Flight, and looked up at the shuttle; a series of stretchers were being slowly removed from it, one by one. “She’s stable as-is, so she’ll be dismounting after they get the hospital cases out, but I want her dirtside until they can get her a good prosthetic.”
“Good thing my dad’s paying for it,” Flight smiled, holding out a hoof. “Tell the benefits manager she’s got my permission to seek the best one there is, to hay with the cost.”
The Admiral smiled as well, and bumped her hoof. “Yeah, good thing, and will do.” She sighed. “And…” She leaned in close, so nopony else could hear. “Whaddya say to taking her as your Tactical officer? She’ll come of age right about when they finish it- and after that, I want to bump her up to LC at least.”
Flight looked at her. “But does she want to?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding me? That filly loves space. She actually begged me for permission to stay aboard.”
Flight raised an eyebrow. “Despite not having slept for however long and having just been through one of the bloodiest battles in history?”
“Bloodiest-?” Admiral Mantle Core asked, surprised.
Flight nodded. “We did a final count after you left,” she told them. “Not counting the Azure… Seven space stations, seven thousand eight hundred ninety-three civilian vessels, three hundred eighteen warships, eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand two hundred sixteen civilians, and a hundred and eighteen thousand two hundred ninety-six Navy personnel.” She sighed. “And that’s not even counting the half or so of the civilian ships that we successfully diverted from the area, or the two hundred or so more that would’ve come floating in like sitting ducks if we’d let them approach the planet when they wanted to, or how all seven stations were successfully evacuated before they got too close, so no casualties there.” She looked up at the Admiral. “That’s over a million ponies dead in an evening… and their ruler doesn’t care.”
Admiral Mantle Core stared at her for a couple seconds. “How… How does he keep ponies from rebelling?”
She shrugged, looking back up at the shuttle, and what had to be one of the last stretchers being lifted slowly out of it. “He doesn’t,” she answered simply. “They don’t care about the death toll either, unless it involves them personally. But when I become Queen…” She trailed off for a second, thinking. “That’s going to be one of the first things I change about this country.”
“Wouldn’t your husband be the ruler?” High Admiral Timber Wolf asked.
She snorted. “He’ll either agree with me… or not exist.”
“And if your parents have a colt…?”
She grinned. “Dad thinks colts are evil.”
“Princess.” The aging stallion that opened the front door to the Airbreathing Starship Company’s main headquarters bowed so low he probably could’ve kissed the pavement without trying, and the tufts on the tips of his batlike ears went so low she probably could have stepped over his head without much difficulty.
Princess Short Flight sighed. She knew that staffing was a persistent problem around Equineothame; unfortunately, she’d become all too familiar with it ever since her sister’s death. She’d personally taken over Orbital Control’s staffing and scheduling departments- and in so doing, she’d already expanded the mere three controllers it’d had before to nearly twelve.
Well… she hadn’t yet. She’d hired fifteen- and the nine that hadn’t been fired yet were still in training, so there were still dangerously large gaps in the timetable that she just didn’t have the trained controllers to cover. And to top it off, one of those three was making noises about quitting in anger over her new attendance policies that actually punished failing to show up for a shift! Controller Clear Skies, the one that had helped her divert civilian traffic from the active warzone nearly two weeks before, had personally appeared before her to apologize for his prior dismal attendance record, and hadn’t missed a single day after the battle.
But she hadn’t expected ASC to hire a thestral. Thestrals were the killers of the night, never to be trusted with anything. He was, however, the first one she’d ever seen herself.
The bright blue hat perched atop his midnight blue mane- and the mop he’d left leaning against the wall next to the door- told her that he was merely a lowly janitor, and likely had no idea that she had been on her way. As a result, he obviously didn’t know what to tell her, and had settled for just bowing… and otherwise not doing anything. He didn’t rise, either.
“We’ll remove him at once, Princess,” one of her Guards began.
She held out a hoof to stop him. “Don’t waste your time,” she told him. She glanced past the janitor to the receptionist’s desk, but it was empty- right when it should have been full. Finally, she sighed, and looked down at the thestral. “Where’s the receptionist?” she asked him.
He glanced behind him as well, apparently confirming that the receptionist’s desk was, in fact, unoccupied. “My apologies, Princess,” he told her, in a firm, oddly assertive voice. “I don’t know.”
“Find her, please,” she told him. “Tell her the Princess is here.” She sighed; he still hadn’t risen. “You may rise.”
He lifted himself up from his bow, bowed his head again, and turned to go look for the receptionist. Flight almost instantly recognized the high, sharpened step of a pony used to walking in mag boots rather than gravity.
“Why is he walking like that?” the Guard Captain scowled, next to her.
She held out a hoof to silence him. “Don’t waste your energy,” she told him.
They then watched the thestral go up to one of the offices off the side of the entry, and look inside. “Uh, Boss?” he asked. “Where’s the receptionist?”
There was a moment of silence while his boss responded. Flight could hear the boredly dismissive tone of his voice, but couldn’t make out the words.
“The Princess asked me to tell her she’s here,” the thestral told his boss.
His boss’ voice gained a lot of volume, and some clarity as well- he’d evidently turned to the door. “Whaaat? Why didn’t you start with that? Wait, don’t answer that.” A large earth stallion poked his head out of the office door, spotted Flight standing in the main entrance, and emerged fully. “Return to your duties,” he commanded the thestral, as he trotted towards Flight. “Sorry about that,” he told her.
Flight shook her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she told him.
“I’m still sorry,” he told her defiantly. “Our receptionist- I still don’t know her name- is on leave for something. She was one of the many impacted by that fight a couple weeks ago. Just like the entirety of my janitorial staff.” He sighed. “I’m also hardly the maintenance manager, but may I show you to the cafeteria while I get the engineers you’re probably here to see?”
Flight smiled wryly at the cleverly constructed message that even he didn’t know why she was there, but he could guess. “Sure,” she told him- and, glancing back to make sure her guards understood what she was doing, she followed him into the building. “I knew the staffing problem was bad, especially with regards to smart ponies for engineering positions or the like, but I never thought that even ASC would have to start hiring thestrals.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Interestingly enough, around here, it’s all the smart pony positions that fill up first. I’d be in one of ‘em, but I like where I am- and nobody’s complained too loudly because they all like how well I get my job done. But when all my janitors suddenly went on leave for bereavement…” He sighed. “Fluffy Ears over there was the only applicant all week- and say what you will about thestrals, he’s a damn good janitor. I only hired him because this place was getting real nasty- but I can’t remember the last time I had somepony show up for all of his first three shifts, and he’s single-hoofedly outdone any three janitors I had before without even breaking a sweat.”
“Fluffy Ears?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That’s just what I call him. Don’t remember what his real name was. Ahh, here we are.” He pushed open a door into a small but empty cafeteria. “So, um, who were you here to see again?”
She smiled. “No idea,” she answered him. “Sent me a message last night that the blueprints for my ship are ready, but no instructions or names. Last time, the receptionist took care of it, but if she’s on leave…” She sighed.
He nodded. “Alright. I’ll see if I can find somepony.” He withdrew from the room.
It didn’t take long for the next pony to appear in the room. It was the same filly that had presented her father’s blueprints to her two weeks prior- and the filly looked like she’d seen better days.
“Princess?” she asked, looking around as she entered.
“What happened to you?” Flight asked, in answer.
The filly’s eyes snapped to her, and she blinked, looking confused by the question. “Wha-? What do you mean?” she asked.
“You were a lot happier last time I saw you.”
She flinched, and hung her head. “That… That fight.”
Flight winced. “I’m sorry.”
“My mom… was in space. She got thrown from the Ponykind when it was hit by a stray missile- the one before the one that killed it- but unlike everypony else, she was wearing her pressure suit; she’d been getting ready for a spacewalk.” She took a deep breath. “She survived. She drifted clear of the warzone, then the Missalius picked her up. She’s in the hospital right now, but she’ll recover.”
Flight nodded. The Missalius was a missile collier- one of the fleet support vessels that had scattered like flies in response to the Everfree’s polarized hull declaring it an active warzone, then stayed nearby to rescue as many stranded spacers as possible. “That’s good news,” she acknowledged. “Out of over a million ponies dead, she wasn’t one of them.”
The filly winced. “Your… Your sister.” Her voice hardened.
Flight winced as well, closing her eyes. “She’s dead. I know.”
She took a deep breath, and let it out. “... She might have survived.”
Flight looked up. “You’re serious.”
She nodded. “When I reviewed the footage… the damage to the Astra looked survivable for the control blister, where she would have been. The wreckage was later obliterated by stray missiles- but the pirate ship that destroyed the Flying Surface also stopped by the control blister to pull survivors from the wreckage.”
Flight’s ears went flat. “Pirates. Of course.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “When I told Admiral Mantle Core, she told me which pirates it was. So… we’ve been designing your ship with that in mind- and plenty of input from both Mantle Core and the High Admiral, who said she’d be returning to space… tomorrow, I think it was. In any case, she should be right about the perfect assault craft against those pirates.” She paused. “Um… Wrenches caught me in the passage, so I don’t have the blueprints. Want to come with me?”
“Sure,” she answered, rising from her seat. “Wrenches?”
She shrugged. “The maintenance manager. Nopony knows his real name, and he never wears his badge, so that’s what we call him. Anyways.” She led Flight out of the room, and down a passage. “When I say ‘perfect’ assault craft, I mean it even more literally than the Admirals know. I’ve been making a few calls these last couple weeks- and if you’re willing to commit her to a two year deep space mission sometime, I can make her even more so.”
“Even more so?” Flight asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. Given that commitment, she’ll be able to light off her Gravity Drive closer to the planet than anypony else, accelerate faster on it, and have a higher maximum top speed, making her- quite literally- the fastest ship in space. Stronger hull polarizers capable of tolerating a few hits from a laser and deflecting anything less than a cee-fractional missile- completely impervious to bullets, even at cee-fractional velocity. It’ll even attenuate artillery rounds strong enough to make anything less than a direct hit miss.” She turned through another door, where there were a few engineers working.
“Hey Coils,” somepony muttered, then glanced up. “Ahh, you’re showing it to the Princess?”
Coils nodded silently, as she tapped a couple keys on the printer, which promptly spat out a blueprint. She took the blueprint, rolled it up, gave it to her Bands, and stepped back out of the room.
“Coils?” Flight asked.
She nodded. “My name,” she answered. “Cold Coils. I usually go by Coils.”
“Ahh,” Flight muttered.
Coils nodded again, leading the way down the passage again. “Anyways, she’s got a very powerful point defense solution. Her decoy bays will take up to twelve of the latest model out there; it should be about five percent more effective than the old ones, which I hear were used to great effect in that battle. Nearly a hundred laser heads scattered across the hull should be able to pick off almost any missile headed towards you- then you’ve got eight fully gimballed turrets, tri-mounted with a plasma cannon, a multi-magazine gatling gun, and a pair of small missiles, up to one ton.” She opened a door into an empty conference room, led the way in, then flattened the blueprint down on the table. “Thirty missile tubes just forward of the ventral cargo bay, and she’ll take any missile the Navy can give her- even airbreathing missiles.”
Flight scanned the blueprint. “It’s a lot busier,” she observed.
“It is,” she agreed. “You might notice her fuel tanks are smaller- that was a compromise we had to make; else, this powerful of a warship would never be atmosphere-capable.” She sighed. “Considering the largest warship we could make atmosphere-capable was little larger than an assault shuttle, there wasn’t much we could do about that. She’s got the tanks to climb into orbit, ascend to standard Gravity Drive distance, and return to the surface twice over, rather than the standard ten times, between refuelings. As you may already be aware, any surface-capable craft is required, by law, to be able to ascend to its service distance, in this case Gravity Drive, and descend back to the surface ten times.”
She nodded. “Yeah. How’d you get around it?”
She smiled. “That law doesn’t specify how she gets there and back. That twice is rocket thrust from the runway, and circularizing in a parking orbit each time. But, we built her into an all-electric low-altitude hypersonic aircraft.”
“Aren’t those impossible?”
She smiled. “Only if cost is a problem. Thanks to the battlesteel construction, she’s a lot more durable than any unarmored ship has a right to be- and we’ve pushed that right to the limit with her airbreathing thrust. And of course, that’s another super-new tech contingent on the deep space mission.” She sighed. “In order to get her to Drive distance and back ten times on a single tank, you’d have to use airbreathing thrust to get as high and fast as possible, and pick the most efficient possible rocket ascent from that. Then you’d have to put your apoapsis at her Gravity Drive threshold, rather than the popular one, and use the Drive at that point to put your periapsis back into the atmosphere for a pure aerocapture and airbreathing return. But she can do that, so she meets the legal requirements.
“Once in space, she’s a bit smaller than a Frigate, but too big to be considered a corvette- and, as another contingent tech, she’s going to be the smallest ship in space to be equipped with an artillery cannon.”
Flight looked at her. “You’re kidding me,” she accused. Artillery cannons were massive, mass-intensive cannons that only superdreadnoughts were large enough to mount. They accelerated singular nuclear warheads to speeds of about point eight cee at the target- and burned so much power it took a superdreadnought’s bank of twelve reactors hours to charge it up for a single round.
She smiled. “I’m actually not. That said, it’ll be a different kind of artillery- and that tech isn’t actually done yet, so I don’t know if she’ll have it when we give her to you or not just yet. They’ll be plasma artillery, firing balls of condensed, hardened plasma at the enemy… and will be a lightspeed weapon. The three reactors at her heart are also a brand-new one, and will feed you the power of four of the current finest. They should enable you to unleash a round from each of four of these cannons twice a minute- though the current expected cycle time is closer to a minute and a half.” She touched the four cannons on the blueprint, long rails across the top and bottom of the ship, complete with doors to hide them behind.
Flight scowled. “Why is the Gravity Drive swimming in so much space?”
“Future-proofing,” Coils answered tersely. “With our butchering of the endurance requirements giving us space and the battlesteel construction reducing her mass by at least a thousand tons, we had tons of space- and mass- to spend on really whatever. You’ll notice she comes equipped with luxury features like a Reactor Recovery Drone, designed to recover a damaged reactor from a crashed vessel before it can melt down or otherwise endanger the environment, and the Energy Beam Relay up here. Her three reactors will be able to operate it continuously, but only at near full power, and you won’t have much power left over- so you might notice she’s got fully five reactor bays here, and we’ve filled one of them with power cells. You’ll have enough reserve depth to get from here to Earth and back without starting your reactors, and the solar paint to recharge from.”
“I’m not seeing any ballrooms, either,” Flight observed.
She chuckled. “If the King will never step aboard, he need never know and she only needs to look like she meets his requirements on the outside. Besides, that ventral bay is large enough to hold a cargo container remodeled to contain all his required rooms at minimum size, and so meet them anyways.” She sighed. “Anyways. You’ll notice she’s got a much larger Hydroponics section than the civvy design did, and a lot more atmo plants or the like- as a matter of fact, that civvy pattern had a life support capacity of eighty ponies… This baby can handle five hundred, though she’s only got berthing for three hundred.” She tapped a couple of small rooms in the middle of the ship; there was a number of bedrooms, and a couple of larger berthing rooms for multiple ponies at once. “You could use remodeled cargo containers in the bays to bring her up to five hundred- or even six, if you had additional enviro plants in them. Her hydroponics and waste processing will support that many.
“Now, as you may have noticed, her passages are a lot tighter than the civvy patterns you’re used to, and the doors a lot more frequent. Combat ships are like that- in the event of battle damage, you need to be able to seal off the damaged area quickly and lose as little air as possible. Every room on the ship is capable of functioning as an airlock, in case of battle damage- and she’ll have a lot of camouflaging so it should be possible for somepony to come aboard without realizing exactly what she is. Which…” She smiled. “Which lends itself to a certain set of secret passages. A lot of them are service passages, but a few of them are only ostensibly so- like this one, directly connecting the bridge and the Captain’s Quarters.”
“Fancy,” Flight observed.
She chuckled. “A little, yeah, but we had the space to play with, you know? Speaking of space to play with, in her broadside bays, we crammed six atmosphere-capable stealth assault shuttles and a pair of tugs as well.” She paused. “Okay. As noted earlier, she’s a pretty big ship. She’s actually about eight percent larger than the civvy design, thanks to the reduction in fuel requirements- and we could have made her another eighteen percent larger than even this, but then…” She sighed. “Not only would she be too big to dock directly to a supply ship rather than transferring via shuttles, but we were running out of ideas for things to cram into her extra spaces. You’ve already got the magazine capacity to salvo missiles for hours. Not to mention that too much bigger and her stealth systems won’t be able to completely hide her signature from enemy sensors at range. They’ll still see through her if you’re close enough, but she should be able to hide from them all the way into missile range, possibly even plasma range if you’re careful.
“Anyways, at this size, you’ll also get to enjoy a fully loaded thrust-to-weight ratio of nearly three on V-TOL, five on forward airbreathing thrust, and seven on rocket thrust.” She stopped, scanned the blueprint briefly with her eyes, and nodded. “I think that’s everything.”
Flight looked at it as well. It definitely looked a lot sleeker than the first sketch had- and, even, the ‘civvy design’. She smiled. “I’m curious what that wrongness in the sketch was?”
“Huh?” Coils asked, momentarily confused. “Oh, that. That one would have never flown- way too much mass, not enough fuel, and what’s more, aerodynamically unstable. We fixed all those problems with this.”
Flight reached out a hoof and touched one of two very long empty spaces behind the wings, almost like gashes in the side. “What’s this?”
“Her wings fold,” she answered. “They’re easily the most fragile part of the ship, though they should be able to handle up to ten gees of lift before failing, so we sought to protect them inside her hull whenever you’re not using them. You’ll notice there aren’t any cutouts for the engines either- those fold too, yet manage to be about three percent more powerful than the competition- another contingent tech. And if you manage to forget to deploy the wings on reentry, she’s also a floating body, and should be able to deploy them after reentry without issue- even at hypersonic velocity.”
She looked up. “You mentioned stealth earlier- is that also contingent?”
She nodded. “Yes, they are. You’ll be able to hide from even the Equineothame Navy at ranges of over five hundred kilometers- but only if you’re running ballistic. Any kind of active emissions, including rocket thrust, is going to significantly increase that range.”
“That’s knife range,” Flight told her. “Suicide range, actually.”
She nodded. “It is. As a matter of fact, your hull polarization will be passively detectible from up to six hundred kilometers because of the additional strength- and five hundred is the boundary for the effective deflection zone, where incoming projectiles are attenuated and, eventually, deflected.”
She scowled. “That’s a lot less than anything else in space.”
She nodded. “Yes. Her polarization field is actually about twelve times stronger than anything else, but it’s also not just a single field but several overlapping fields, which reduces the magnetic field size considerably. If you run it in ‘anti-stealth mode’, you’ll get a standard polarization field at full power, passively detectible from some fifty k-klicks, but it’ll reduce even artillery down to an easy point defense solution, and only the heaviest missiles with cee-fractional head starts will get anywhere near you. Do note that, in order to fire your plasma artillery, you will need to depolarize your hull- the field is powerful enough to destabilize that packet and reduce the effective range from about five light-minutes to three light-seconds. At the moment it’s not possible to fire it in-atmosphere without destroying your own ship, but they’re working on that.”
She nodded. “Alright. What’s the price tag?”
“Depends. It’s about three figures longer with the contingent techs- each of them is worth more, alone, than the entire non-contingent part of the ship. Which is already an order of magnitude higher than an average superdreadnought, thanks to the battlesteel construction.”
She snorted. “Think it’ll bankrupt Dad?”
She shook her head. “It’ll only be about ten percent of his estimated wealth… with the contingent techs.”
“Alright. Let’s show my dad that it’s less expensive to rescue his daughter, even if it costs half the Navy, than it is to force his other daughter to protect herself.” She smiled. “I’ll commit to that mission, and let’s build it.”