“I’m a pilot, not a driver for a million-ton hulk of ceramic and metal.”

She scowled, looking a little confused. “The ship flies, no? I do not understand. What is the difference?”

Steph snorted. “A ship this size, it responds like a garbage scow. A Double A fighter? Trust me, Milla, there is no comparison.”

“Even with the . . . what did you call it? Nick?”

“NICS,” he corrected. “Neural interface, but yes. NICS is intended for precision maneuvering. It won’t make the ship any more responsive, just more precise.”

“Oh.” She practically pouted.

Steph couldn’t help but laugh at her expression. He’d known people like Milla before. Lots of folks didn’t understand the allure of strapping into a fighter and powering through multiple barriers like a bat out of hell. To her and people like her, anything that weighed under a hundred thousand tons was a toy ship, and guns that couldn’t take out half a planet were pea shooters.

He preferred the surgical precision of a fighter. The ability to take out a bad guy in a room without waking up people sleeping in the next was an awesome capability. Hammering the surface of a planet until it cracked was a job for lowbrows with compensation issues. What was worse, he wasn’t even going to get to be a lowbrow. He was just a bus driver.

That said, he didn’t want to bring Milla down, so he put on a smile and just shrugged it off. “So you’ll be running tactical ops, then?”

She nodded. “Yes. I believe that I will be completing my training under a Lieutenant Rivers?”

“Waters.” Steph laughed. “He’s good. He handled the Odyssey in combat. He knows his stuff. Listen to the man.”

“I will.”

“Waters has been assigned to the Bellerophon, I think,” Steph said. “They’re giving him command. Learn everything you can from him. I know you know the systems here front to back, but he knows how to fight a ship.”

“I will,” she said again. “Do not worry.”

“Milla, love, I never worry. I’m just awesome that way.” He grinned at her, winking.

With the admiral away from the Forge and the Heroics, Commander Jason Roberts found himself with annoyingly few things to take up his time.

Actually, he supposed that he should consider himself Captain Roberts, the admiral having asked him to take command of the Achilles. It was, in every measurable way, a step up from the Odyssey, and yet he felt diminished since accepting it.

Though I expect that has more to do with the fact that the nation I represent has, in effect, gone from a nation one billion strong to a thousand people begging shelter and sanctuary from the Priminae.