"Joseph doesn't want to be repainted." I say to the meeting Admiralty again. "He said the new areas, and the repaired areas can be taped off, and painted, but he doesn't want to disrespect the lost crew by not having something to remember them by." It had been three months since the incident with the idiot captain. It got broadcasted far and wide that he was a child of some chancellor, and held the position simply because his father pulled strings for it, hoping to get his son in close proximity to the princess, it was no secret the ship was to be hers. The chancellor lost his place in the government for abuse of power, and performing actions that needlessly cost lives. "Rebecca, if they allow me to put symbols on the outside of the ship, under the observation deck's windows, I'll let them repaint me. And I want a plaque with every one of their names to be a permanent fixture in front of the captain's seat. A reminder to every new captain what their decisions can cost." I relay his condition to the new paint scheme, and it's accepted unanimously. He had been using his maintenance robots for the last month to short out painting hovers, every person in this room was loosing money because he wanted something to remember the ones who lost their lives aboard himself; and up until now, they refused to hear any of it. They expected me to reason with him, I never tried. They have tried to assign him a new captain, but when he and the last four captain candidates started talking, he rotated the six newly-working turrets to face the men, and the station's A.I. warned everyone that Joseph was ready to fire. I've started to stand away from the men, don't know what set Joe off, but I figured out that he has a very protective personality. The girl he found barely speaks, but when I put one of Joe's ear pieces on her ear, her eyes light up. I can't hear what he says to her, but she gets into high spirits for a while afterward. He says her name is Heather, but she won't talk to me the way she does to him; but she will take food from me at least; not from anyone else. With my help Joseph was able to find the video records of everything that happened during the first mission, and improved the fighters based on how it appeared they were being maneuvered. And he commandeered a fleet of construction bots for about a week. He ended up adding a private room to an unused portion of the ship, and even put a window on the roof with a blast door to cover it. It looked like a ship captain's quarters, but he wouldn't let anyone go in to see it. He wouldn't let me go in unless I was by myself or with Heather. "Next order of business," Admiral Rook seemed to blindly follow his bullet lists. "The status of one Heather Donavan." He looked over his thick glasses at me. "Is this the Heather that survived with you?" "Yes, Sir." "It says here that the ship wants to make sure she is cared for; what do you know of this, Marshall?" "Admiral, Joseph has a very protective personality, his first waking action after he formed was to defend me in a live combat zone, without functional weapons, or direction from a captain. It wasn't until later she was found. I might have been the sole military survivor of that mission; but she was the sole civilian survivor, and who knows what she went through in that life-support maintenance hatch; especially once everything shut down." "Do we know how old she is?" Sarah Williams, director of engineering asks. "Joe told me he found a missing person's report from seven years ago reporting her missing. If it's the same girl, she would be seventeen in three weeks. But her demeanor suggests a younger mentality." I relay what Joe told me. It seems the rest of that conversation was skipped in favor of the next bulleted item, Joe's fighter design would take twenty credits more per ship to make than the previous design, but the pilots who flew them in the simulators, as well as the pilots who flew the full sized one Joe built, adore it, and want it on the much larger carriers. The next item on the list was the most extravagant, and Joe and I both knew it would get turned down as soon as we put it on the list. A Bio-protein assembler. Joe wanted to walk around the ship himself. One of these assemblers cost half as much as a full carrier, as a scout carrier, Joseph was a hundredth of the size at three thousand meters long, nine hundred meters wide, and five hundred fifty meters thick through most of his twin runways. Thicker if you included the original command tower, which Joe's redesign moved to the bow of the ship, in between the runway control rooms. He designed them in a way the runway commanders had line of sight to the ship's bridge from where they were located. It made the original ship design look bulbous, and clownish. This now looked like it was meant to take on carriers and win. I don't know what his previous life was like, and he admitted several times his world was not spacefaring, but when it came to Defense, he was more aggressive than our offensive admirals. "This assembler, we will need to have further discussion outside of this meeting for," Admiral Rook confirmed what we thought. "But I like the idea of this war-game. Your new A.I. wants to test himself out, without a crew, against one of our battle-fleets." This I didn't know about. "I'm sorry admiral, I didn't know about this. He did mention it, but I thought he was joking about it." "I approve of his idea to use simulation rounds, this says they will leave pools of easily washable paint on the hulls. I'd like to see what he thinks he can accomplish against three hundred ships, four of those being full carriers." "If this is a war-game, what is his win condition?" I ask. "Successfully 'sinking' the four carriers." Admiral Rook smiles. "Give me five minutes on the field, and your carriers will be scrap-metal, and only one flight of fighters would have the opportunity to launch between the four." I hear him say. "Ask them to make the win condition for me that I have to sink them all, make it clear that I don't think I can do it, but I want to try." "He says that he thinks the four carriers would be too easy, he wants a challenge that he thinks he won't succeed at, sinking the entire battle-group." "Granted." The Admiral doesn't even look up from his board to ask the others what they think. "Good luck to him. No crew means you can't be on board either, you are technically still assigned to him." "I know Admiral." "Alright, dismissed, and I'll let you know the date of his little game. I'll be pulling sixth out of rotation for it." "Thanks Admiral." I say as he leaves the room. "Sixth, those guys are ruthless." I hear Admiral Vichy whisper as he leaves ahead of me. "They are too used to formations;" I hear in my ear. "They will over estimate their capabilities when facing a single opponent." "You do know that by having no crew, you won't have anyone to fly your fighters." I remind him. "Says who?" He laughs. "If you honestly believe that, then your whole military is going to learn a lot." "Don't demoralize them too much." "When he said he was pulling them out of rotation, are we meeting at the end or beginning of their run?" "The end, just before they get shore leave for a month." "Good. It will give them a month to deal with the defeat." "You are awfully confident in beating the most aggressive carrier group. We have." "They have a weakness. And I am going to exploit it." I shake my head at the confidence of this ship. I step out into the Air-Dock, and I see the front of his ship already being repainted high-gloss black, and the word Phoenix in four meter tall letters being taped off on the lower bow, and in half meter tall letters, the phrase 'Born of Fire: the ashes of defeat only make us stronger.' Under it. "My gods, you really did let them repaint you already." "If my fight is going to work, I'll need to be this color." "They don't use visual sighting." I remind him. "They are going to have to, if they want to sink me. I think I can get them to loose a carrier before they figure it out though." "Alright. Is Heather with you?" "No, she is at school. I made her go today. She has an earpiece with her, so I am paying attention to her. Because of her situation, they are testing her right now." "How much are you helping her?" "None. She needs to know this stuff. Of course, some of it I needed too. She is a near natural navigator though." "By the way, what made you get mad at the third captain candidate the other day?" "Oh! That's an easy one. He started bashing religion, and those that believed certain things." "Your a machine..." I stop myself before finishing the question. He waits a a few seconds before responding to me, his tone suggests that he his carefully choosing his words. "My job, for my military, was to protect the only person in the unit who wasn't allowed to carry a weapon. And their job was to make sure everyone was able to practice their beliefs, and nobody was being vulgar or offensive to the other religious groups. Let's just say it rubbed off. Just because I believe differently than you doesn't give me the right to make fun of you for your beliefs. I don't want to be made fun of in that way, so I don't do it to others. But most other subjects are fair game in my book." "How did you manage to convince Heather to go to school?" "Easy, I told her she could sleep in my room tonight." "The one you had built in that weird place half-way through your ship?" "That's the one." "I was going to ask if I could steal it for the night." That bed was more comfortable than the ones on the station. "You could always ask to share. But since she is in school, it's up to her." "You dote on her too much." "Yes, mother." The quip comes so quickly that I can't tell if he is joking or not.