The month passed quicker than they had expected it to, in no small part due to the presence of the gaggle of inquisitive scientists hellbent on unraveling the secrets of the universe as fast as they possibly could. Minor advancements had already been made, since having the men and women that had spent a large portion of their life mastering their field of study was a vast improvement on simply reading their notes. Fortunately, it wasn’t anything that required drastic changes to the ship they were building, as the only advancement that wasn’t mostly application of technique was for the railguns. A different loading mechanism and changes to capacitors and cycle rate, and extensive heat sinks along the barrel nearly doubled their fire-rate.

Evan’s communicator chimed and he groaned. “Whoever that is, it’s too early. They can call back during normal human hours.” Kinzie grouched from next to him.

“It’s the Rocketman, err, Hubert Doofus.” Evan grouched back.

“His name is Hubert Duphran and you know it. Tell him to call back later.”

Evan answered the call. “Is it ready? Today’s the day right? When can we go up? These blueprints are amazing and all but I have to see one in person and functional!”

“See what?” Evan grumbled. “It is way too early for this, I’m going back to sleep, I’ll call you back when I wake up.”

“The starship engines! You said it would be safe to board the new ship in a month one month ago!”

Evan and Kinzie were both suddenly wide awake. “Lisa? Is it done?” Kinzie asked anxiously.

“Not quite yet, but it will be before you could make it up to it. It’s just not fully pressurized yet, and I’m being careful not to deplete the air in the city too much. I have a shuttle from Earth arriving with enough to finish the process in five minutes.”

“Wake up the others!” Evan almost shouted at her. “Hubert, we’re getting ready now, we’ll meet you in the shuttle bay as soon as we can.” Evan hung up the call and started rooting around in the closet for something to wear other than pajamas. Do you think I should wear casual clothes or a business suit in case someone wants to talk to us about important stuff when we pass by Earth?”

“The suit,” Kinzie said distractedly as she tried to choose between a couple professional looking outfits. “I would be shocked if Rebekkah didn’t have some plan in mind to leverage a battleship the size of this one. Lisa, did you transfer your core to it yet?”

“No, everything is ready for the transfer, but I need somebody to oversee the drones doing the work since I will need to be deactivated for it. There are also nearly two dozen experiments that might become harmful to the scientists performing them when I shut down. I informed them that we would be shutting down for a short while and they agreed to take a break.”

“How many of them want to move the ship?” Evan asked as he worked to get his shirt buttoned properly.

“About three-fourths of them. The rest are curious about it and want to see it, but would prefer to stay in Haven for the time being.” Lisa replied succinctly.

They met Jason and Rebekkah at the airlock, neither of which looked to be fully awake. “It’s going to be kind of strange going back to Earth as one of the leaders of a foreign power instead of as a game developer and philanthropist.” Evan mused as they flew the short distance to Haven.

“You do know that describing yourself as a philanthropist kind of makes you sound like an arrogant jerk instead right?” Jason asked.

Evan shrugged. “And? I don’t-urk!” Kinzie interrupted him with a not too gentle elbow to the ribs.

“Too early for that, Jason if you start the bickering again you’re next.” She grouched.

“We never did get around to releasing that second game did we?” Evan changed the subject. “We should release it as a surprise gift to our loving fans when we drop in. First month free due to our accounts still being frozen. Just put it up for download on the systems we already sold and distributed. We can sell new ones online when we are able to charge people for things again and deliver them with drones. People would probably like that.”

Nobody responded with more than a glare as the shuttle landed. A crowd was waiting for them. Enough of one to merit a second shuttle for comfort and safety. The scientists all piled onto the shuttles while chatting energetically about the different research they were working on and all the miraculous things they had discovered in the database. Before too long the drones finished loading Lisa onto the shuttle, and they took off without hesitation. The flight was a short one, but the tired quartet was eager for it to be over, as the constant jabbering of the scientists ground away at their nerves.

The moment the shuttle docked and the airlock light turned green, the scientists piled out the doors in childish glee. Jason, Evan, and Kinzie went to accompany the drones and ensure Lisa was properly and safely installed in the heart of the ship. Rebekkah had other plans. She reclined the chair she was in and closed her eyes. “You guys go ahead and get our girl installed, I won’t be needed for a couple more hours at least, so I’m going to take a nap.”

The others walked along behind the bots hauling Lisa. “Anyone else notice that not one of the scientists seems to be the least bit concerned about us?” Evan mused. “When they got here they were mostly polite and always asking if we knew where they could find whatever it was they needed. Now they hardly bother to tell us to get out of the way.” He shrugged. “Not that it matters really. Just kind of interesting how quickly they decided they didn’t need us anymore.”

“Yeah, it’s almost like we aren’t intimidating at all. Oh wait, that’s probably true.” Jason replied with a note of sarcasm in his voice.

“What did I say about arguing this early? I’ve had almost three whole hours of sleep, and don’t have much patience right now.” Kinzie warned. “Unless you have a thermos of coffee tucked away somewhere really close by, it’s in your best interest to just be quiet for a bit.”

Before too long they arrived at the very heart of the ship. It was the most heavily reinforced room on board, with a power feed from multiple reactors to ensure that only a colossal amount of damage would take Lisa offline. It was also near the command deck, since Jason thought putting windows in spaceships was stupid if you didn’t have to, and they definitely didn’t have to. Far better to have the command center and brain of the ship behind as many layers of armor and hull plating as possible.

When the soft thrum of Lisa’s core powering on filled the room Evan waved cheekily. “Good morning Sunshine!”

A jarring robotic voice flooded the room. “Who is Designation: Sunshine? Scanning. Scanning. Biological infestation detected, killbots deployed. Exterminate!”

“What the?!”

“Oh no, something went wrong!”

“Oh man, you should’ve seen your faces!” Jason was doubled over laughing. “We’ve been working on that one for days!”

“Did I do it right?” Lisa asked. “I asked Jason to help me learn more about humor. Was it funny?”

Evan was a bit pale. “Not even a little bit, Lisa, which is precisely why he found it so entertaining. Maybe you should shoot for more innocent jokes to start with? Instead of jumping right to pretending to be the living embodiment of something people have been afraid of almost as long as the internet existed? Like one-liners or knock-”

Kinzie grunted. “If you say knock-knock jokes I’m going to punch you. Lisa, don’t tell those. I would rather you go postal and try to murder me and everyone else than listen to knock-knock jokes whenever you get bored. As for your little prank, it was a good delivery, believable. Can’t say it’s funny, but the victim of a prank usually doesn’t find it all that funny. It’s alright though, revenge will be had.”

Jason changed the subject quickly. “Are we ready to go? No faults or issues?”

“None! We are ready to go anywhere in the system! I even have a small surprise, I was able to accelerate the production of the armor plates with help from a couple of the scientists. Raziel is already partially armored and it will be completed by the end of the month. Which ship would you like queued up next?”

“Just work your way down the classes of ship, doubling it as you go. The smaller they are the more we want of them. Skip the carriers for now though, they’re useless without swarms of fighters and recruiting enough people to control that many fighters and man the ship is going to take a while.” Jason answered.

“Let’s go to the bridge! Dibs on the captain’s seat!” Evan crowed.

Not on your life.” A deep voice said behind him. “This is my command, the members of the Council don’t captain ships, they give them directives and the Fleet does its best to complete their objective.” Jeffrey was behind them, leaning against the doorway.

Evan stared at him for a moment. “I, uh, direct you to let me sit in the captain’s chair?”

Jeffrey laughed, “I suppose I can let you sit in it for a while, but if you’re in that one, who will sit in the admiral’s chair? Kinzie?”

“Ooh, yes please!” She laughed at the look on Evan’s face.

The bridge actually wasn’t too interesting without the holoprojectors on, it just looked like a bunch of comfy chairs in a slightly strange layout set up in an otherwise empty room. Turn on the projectors though, and it was an entirely different experience. It was almost as though the ship no longer existed around them, enabling anyone in one of their ships to see everything around the ship in real-time. The holo tank, as they had taken to calling it, had convenient and intuitive tools integrated into the system to provide you with the information that was available on any given target. On this one, it was Lisa doing most of the work, but the other ships would have a somewhat larger bridge with more positions aided by simpler AI to accomplish the same effect.

“Alright, I’m bored. Let’s go check out the recreational deck and the labs, see what our intrepid crew is trying to blow themselves up with now.”

The recreational deck was actually quite large and contained everything they could think of to keep a human crew healthy and happy. They had a couple gyms, an Olympic size pool, a movie theater, a track, a shooting range, a bar, and a fairly large park. They had rules for how stuff could be used, of course, no going from the bar to the shooting range for example, and a low limit on the amount of alcohol anyone could get.

They wandered about, amazed that Jason was able to fit all this into a spaceship and ignoring the smug expression he had the whole time. They weren’t surprised to find Dr. Long in the park, inspecting the layout of it. “Passable, but it needs more trees.” She said matter-of-factly as they approached. “I’ve already inspected the hydroponics bay and found it quite satisfactory, the amount of production the new layout can provide is remarkable.

This will revolutionize farming on Earth, no longer will we need vast tracts of land for food production. We can restore a great deal of former woodland to its natural state. Would it be permissible to publish this new data? Or would you prefer to use it to seek a political benefit? I am willing to wait, so long as it gets released relatively soon.”

Jason, Kinzie and Evan all looked at each other, then shrugged nearly in unison. “Rebekkah might prefer that, but I don’t think we should withhold knowledge that can potentially stop deforestation and help feed millions of people.” Evan replied. “Go ahead and publish it, it will take a while for anyone to actualize it on a large enough scale to make a difference so the sooner it gets out there, the sooner it can help people.”

“We’ve arrived at Earth!” Lisa cut into their conversation in a cheery tone.