She was not kidding. It was the stuff of legends and obituaries. It would take mastery of at least three classes and iron rank—engineering, medical, and subspace navigator—just to open up the branch, assuming I met the other, somewhat nebulous prerequisites.

  In general, it took about five years to get mastery of a class, which meant, on the long end, fifteen years before I could get my own ship. A lifetime.

  Of course, you could speed that up by risking your life in rifts or against chaos spawn, but few officers were willing to take that risk. The Crow was designed to fly hulks, the massive, ship-sized rifts, but unless she had a full raid group and a ready target, it was a huge waste of time and resources. Hulks required brigades of troopers, entire fleets.

  They were the grand, brutal sieges of the delving world. Winning one could net you a ship or even a planetary system as a reward. Losing one could mean the death of thousands. They were the reason the UPF conscripted on such a brutal scale—the resources and experience gained from clearing them fueled the entire human expansion.

  But Explorers… they were a different breed. They took a small combat ship, a needle instead of a hammer, and dove into the unknown. They rode warps and hyperspace almost at random, trusting their innate sense of the universe’s underlying structure—the branes—to guide them to safety in some uncharted void.

  They mapped rifts, made first contact, and speed-ran hulks too small for a fleet. It was the ultimate test of skill, nerve, and luck. Two out of three expeditions never returned. But the ones that did… they came back legends.

  There were only two paths they never followed: in towards the ancient, terrifyingly advanced core species who viewed humans as vermin, and out into the intergalactic darkness where beasts lurked that could snack on tyrants. Our little corner of the galactic arm was plenty big enough to get killed in.

  “For right now,” Commander Taera said, pulling me back from visions of cosmic exploration, “your being female caused a bit of a reshuffle. It’s not bad, since we have another male coming in in about a week, and our ship is tight enough that two new males would have caused a problem, since the drone pilots are part of security, not deck. Is this bonding thing going to cause a problem?” Her tone was practical, pulling us back to the immediate concerns of shipboard life.

  I shook my head, pushing the grand future aside to focus on the present danger. “Bonding is not always sexual. We have been engineered to be strictly male-oriented. ‘Sister’ bonds do occasionally occur when two people are really spiritually attuned, but it’s unlikely here, and I have enough spiritual affinity to avoid forcing the issue unless it’s truly an emergency case."

  "If the living arrangements are segregated, it should be fine unless someone tries to force-bond, at which point, I have to apologize, but I’d kill them before I’d let that happen, just like I would any rapist.” The words were flat, absolute. There was no room for negotiation on this point.

  She nodded, her expression grimly approving. “Fair enough. We try to screen people carefully, but sometimes problems still slip through the cracks. If someone does that, well, even Naval attachments have been known to disappear. Our Captain is a woman, but don’t let that encourage you to bully the men! We are a merged ship, but abusive women are every bit as much of a problem as abusive men, especially when you start talking about the various rankings.”

  Her gaze hardened. “In some places the whole ‘might makes right’ philosophy applies, but not here… we might not be proper fleet, but we still have laws based on merged UPF guidelines, not slaver world customs.”

  She gestured vaguely. “If you check your file, the shipboard regulations have been attached to your standard contract. Read them, mark that they have been read and agreed to, and you will be responsible for following them. Once we leave port next week, the Captain immediately becomes the ultimate authority, followed by me, and neither of us have any real patience for beautiful monsters and evil ass-kissers. That might work in the regular fleet, but not here.”

  She cleared the table’s surface with a wave of her hand, and a holographic image flickered to life above the dark wood. It was an old photo, grainy and faded, from before the genemod bans. Three Maenads. Two looked like they had pure human forebears, stunningly beautiful with an air of fierce grace. The third was shorter, with much larger, expressive ears like my sister… or like me. “Are you going to look anything like this?” Taera asked, her voice neutral.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  I studied the picture, a knot of anxiety tightening in my chest. “Possibly a little like this one?” I said, pointing to the shorter one. “But we are each unique, just like humans. I mean, yeah, we were designed to be appealing to a broad variety of genemods, but we are still our own species. Once my hair grows out more, it should be sort of a bright blue… not like a weeb, but close.” It was currently a short, practical, mousy-brown cap, hiding its true color.

  She sighed. “That might be a problem. Our security forces are well-trained men, but they are still men. If you look ANYTHING like that, you could present a discipline problem, just like a nymph or dryad. Do you drop pheromones or anything? Special nutritional or environmental filters?”

  I shook my head quickly. “No pheromones, but I am exceptionally…. Vulnerable to them, so a filter, for me, might help… but that vulnerability will mostly be done when I finish maturing. We tend to have triggered adolescence, and start to develop once we find potential bonds, which already hit me when I was in training… I am over that now, so any other potential bonds are unlikely to catch me.” I hoped that was true. Wasserman’s presence had been a thunderclap that had jump-started my entire development. The echoes of that were still reverberating through me.

  “So your uhh… Chrysalis thing, it will be over soon?” she asked, latching onto the term.

  I nodded, grateful for it. “Yes Ma’am… I very much like that term, and I wish I could crawl into a cocoon until it ends. The medical staff already picked up a recipe for the growing pains that seems to be working well, and I am more than happy to work with supply. I am from Korse, and while I’m not resistant to heavy metal poisoning like a goblin, I probably will need copper supplements for a while until I can slake it off and turn less… umm…. Green.”

  I looked down at my faintly green-tinged skin. “We have a reactive metabolism, not an adaptive one. If you have high-intensity gravity training, I’d also rather keep it up. It’s been useful so far, and if I have to delve directly, it should help keep me alive.”

  Commander Taera nodded slowly. “If you take care of the ship, we will take care of you. We have a grav workout chamber that uses inertial enhancement, if that works, and we don’t subscribe to the whole ‘standardize everything’ doctrine most fleet ships have when it comes to drone pilots. You will get your own pod and lander, and we support innovation in upgrades, just talk to me before you proceed with any major changes. It’s far easier here to get permission than forgiveness, and if you have a positive change, we would be happy to propagate it across the other drops and even license or patent it for you or the ship, depending on how far-reaching it is.”

  She chuckled, a genuine one this time. “I have yet to meet a drone podder that is NOT filled with ideas for upgrades. Most of them are scrot, but a few of them have gone into regular production. Our drone fleet is massively advanced compared to a usual fleet carrier, because we listen.” Her expression turned stern again. “For the women, we only have three special rules.”

  She held up a finger. “Don’t pit the men into competition with each other…. Which might be hard for you to follow if you look anything like the Maenad pictures I have seen.” A second finger joined the first. “No drama in the shifts or when we get into action.” A third finger. “And most importantly, do NOT get pregnant. We are an active-duty ship. If you want to have children, we will work something out, but getting pregnant ‘accidentally’ is a dereliction of duty and will be punished accordingly. We are a doctrine ship, and our doctor won’t perform abortions unless your life is threatened.”

  Her gaze was iron. “I expect you to abide by these rules. Pregnancy is YOUR responsibility, and we have several different medical options for preventing it if you are active. I don’t recommend any of the hormone supplements while you are… changing, but when you are finished, talk to the doctor. If the pregnancy is NOT your fault, I expect to have a man up on charges and most likely walking out of an airlock without a suit, regardless of his rank or cultivation. That sort of thing may be ignored in the fleet, but it is not ignored here.”

  She lowered her hand. “Courtesy between the decks is expected, and can be punished if it is not followed, but there are limits. If you see a pair of goblins working on a piece of the ship and talking trash to each other, regardless of what sort of dirty scrot they may be unloading, it’s not your problem. If they start including you in their trash-talking, it becomes actionable, but getting offended by common talk is a 'you' problem. We have all cultures on board, and as long as they follow shipboard law and church doctrine, it’s not our problem who did what to whom and with what particular tool, or who has what particular political, ideological, or social opinions.”

  She paused, letting it all sink in. The room was silent except for the faint, almost subconscious hum of the ship’s systems. “Are we clear? I have this talk with every new crewman.”

  I nodded, the motion feeling heavy and significant. The conversation, the interrogation, the onboarding—it was over. I had passed. I was in.

  She smiled, a final, sharp flash of warmth. “Good, let’s not have any problems, and if you do your job, the ship will be behind you every step of the way.”

  The door hissed open again behind me. It was time to meet my new crew.

  [author]

  Roisin has survived the XO's inquisition and is officially part of the crew. What do you think of the Valkyrie's rules? Harsh but fair, or overly strict? And are you excited to meet the rest of the crew?

  [/author]