I looked down at my iPad, which Skippy had wiped of software and replaced with his own. It displayed status of critical ship systems in a way that made sense to me, however redundant Skippy said that was. It was also filled with all kinds of courses I was expected to take as a US Army officer, and one of the Army lieutenants aboard had been tasked with getting me up to speed, in addition to her regular job. As much as I passionately hated administrative details, I was determined not to be a whiny pain in the ass about it. There were silver eagles on my collar, as long as I wore those eagles, the Army expected me to act like a real colonel. Damn. At my age, I was supposed to be doing stupid things, and hopefully learning from painful experience. There was no time for that now, I had to make up for my own lack of experience by relying on my subordinates. Delegating. I needed to get comfortable with delegating a whole lot. Lt. Colonel Chang was my executive officer, he was in charge of the crew day to day. Major Simms was now back working in her specialty of logistics, she was still frantically stowing away the mountain of supplies that were pile haphazardly in the cargo bays. She felt confident we hadn't forgotten anything vital. Somewhat confident. She'd also, with Chang, drawn up a duty roster for the crew, including assigning people to work in the kitchen that we'd set up in a cargo bay. There were no cooks among the crew, we were all going to take turns cooking and cleaning, including me. On this cruise, there were going to be cheeseburgers. Chang also had a work crew tearing out the tiny Thuranin beds, and replacing them with comfortable human-sized mattresses. For entertainment, Skippy had downloaded the entire internet, and every movie, book and video game ever made.

With Chang, Simms and others tasked with day to day operations, that left me free to handle important strategic matters, like dealing with Skippy. "Skippy, you confirm we're ready to leave orbit?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, whatever." He sounded slightly miffed that our new procedures meant that we humans needed to confirm things on our own, instead of relying on him for everything. "Everything is hunky-dory, Colonel Joe. Warp factor nine on your signal, something like that."

"Skippy," I said after cutting the intercom to people outside the bridge,  and whispering into my microphone so Desai and her copilot and navigator didn't hear, "we talked about this. We cavemen have to fly this ship, after you find the Collective and ditch us for AI paradise, or wherever you're going."