The ship felt a lot more human than the Primmie ships, possibly because of the input of human designers and engineers from a relatively early point in the process. It had certainly taken a short time to go from bare bones to almost complete, especially given that they’d been revamping the plans practically on the fly to incorporate Terran technical capabilities.

When did I start thinking about us as “Terrans”? he wondered as he walked. Steph supposed that it was logical. After all, the Primmies were human too, so he couldn’t consider people from Earth as simply “human” anymore. Earther just sounded stupid, so Terran it was.

The Odysseus, and the rest of the Heroics, were built with the latest Priminae power and drive systems for FTL. Priminae lasers were, unfortunately, not combat effective against the Drasin, so they’d gone with Terran designs, enhanced as high as they could with the power they had available. That made their knife-range weaponry about as lethal as it could be, but Steph knew that if things got that close they were already in deep kimchee.

The standoff weapons were somewhat more impressive, primarily the transition waveguide cannons that bristled across the Odysseus’ decks like the big-bore cannons of old blue-water navy battleships on Earth. They could spot a target at fourteen light-minutes, which utterly redefined the term “standoff range,” but unfortunately had to sacrifice the pulse torpedoes as the system was considered insanely dangerous by the Priminae engineers.

The worst of that was that he couldn’t disagree with them.

A thump and a string of curses in English caught his attention, and Steph turned in the direction of the voice he recognized. He came to a stop at the feet of someone who was buried in one of the wall panels up to her waist.

“Milla?”

The slim and small woman cursed again, bringing a smile to Steph’s face as he considered how much she’d changed since he met her. The cursing in English was new, mind you. He supposed that she must have learned some particularly choice words while in D.C., and knew well from personal experience that it was always easier to curse in another language than your own.

The woman in question pushed herself out of the space behind the panel and looked up at him. “Stephane? What are you doing here?”

“I was assigned to the Odysseus,” he said, grimacing slightly. “Chief helmsman.”

She smiled brilliantly at him. “That is excellent. I volunteered for duty with you. I have been asked to handle the . . . tactical systems. Is that right?”

Steph chuckled at her confused question. “Well, I expect that you’d know better than me, but if you mean did you use the right words, yes, you did.”

“You don’t seem so happy with the assignment,” she said, examining him closer as she cleaned off her hands.