"Great, thank you. Before we jump, our ship, the other ship, the frigate, uh, Skippy, does the frigate have a name?" Saying 'the ship' was getting old, especially now as we had two of them.

"The Kristang name for the frigate is Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory. Or close enough."

"You're kidding me." I exclaimed. I would have figured the lizards would name their ships something like Hamster Killer or Assassin.

"The Kristang warrior caste is rather devoted to poetry. I see this surprises you."

"Poetry?" Chang asked, and we shared a look. Neither of us could imagine the hard core warriors we'd met on the space station sitting down to compose poems.

"I have extensive examples of Kristang poetry, would you like to-"

"No! No, thank you." I sure as hell wasn't in the mood for lizard poetry. "We'll call it the, uh, the Flower for now. I don't want to call anything 'Victory' until we've achieved something significant. Back to my question, do we keep the Flower, or get rid of it? It's damaged."

"Sir," Adams spoke up, "I say we keep it. It's damaged, but we know it works, and how to control it, sort of." The looks she gave told me that, while I may be a senior officer, I didn't know much about combat, as in, never give up a potential asset in combat. She'd already reminded me of that once before.

"Sergeant Adams is correct, Colonel Joe," Skippy said, "the damage to the Flower has not significantly degraded its combat capability. There may also be situations where having a Kristang ship may be useful."

"All right then, we keep it for now."

"Speaking of names, what do the Thuranin call this ship?" Thompson asked.

"I hope it's not another long-ass name like the Flower." Simms said sourly.

"The Thuranin do not name their ships, each ship has a numerical designation." Skippy said.

"So, we get to name it, then." I mused.

"Oh come on, we gotta call it the Enterprise." Adams said with enthusiasm.

"Not every starship has to be named Enterprise." Major Simms protested. I guessed she wasn't a Star Trek fan.

"This is the first human starship. If you don't count that Kristang ship we jacked. It has to be named Enterprise." Adams insisted.

"America is not the only culture with famous fictional spacecraft." Chang protested. "We should consider-"

"It's not your ship, monkeys!" Skippy said. "You're like my hired crew. If anyone gets to name this ship, it's me."

I waved my arms to get everyone's attention. "How about if we concentrate on where we're going first, and worry about names later? Where are we going next? How do we contact the Collective, Skippy?"

"If they still exist-" Skippy started to say.

"If? You're not sure they still exist? Do you know where to find this Collective?"