The voice from above answered, "Not yet, Admiral. Still running diagnostics."

"Shit." Festina peered sidelong at Uclod and Lajoolie. "You’re saying there’s a ship our scanners can’t pick up, and your Zarett smashed into it at some outrageous speed. We don’t know how much damage the impact did… but since our communications are still being jammed, the enemy wasn’t completely annihilated. Just fucking wonderful." She turned back to the window. "Lieutenant — my compliments to the captain, and could we get the hell out of here at maximum speed?"

"What heading, Admiral?"

Festina glanced at me, "No point in going to Melaquin now," she said, "and it’s a long way back to New Earth." She turned to the window. "Aim for the closest inhabited planet — doesn’t have to be human, if we end up facing an invisible ship, let’s surround ourselves with witnesses."

A Christening

We left the receiving bay with the horde of mooks clattering behind us. Festina apologized, but said it was now official fleet policy for outsiders to be watched at all times.

"And I’m afraid," she added, "the ship has dispatched nanotech defense clouds to keep an eye on your Zarett." She named toward Nimbus. "If any of your component cells go wandering, they’ll be imprisoned immediately." She gave an apologetic shrug. "The High Council has recently developed a phobia about unsanctioned microbes aboard navy vessels."

"I don’t intend to spread myself thin," Nimbus assured her. "I have to concentrate on my responsibilities."

"He has a child," I whispered to Festina. "A baby girl."

My friend’s eyes went wide. "An egg? A living egg?"

Nimbus rippled the mists of his belly, revealing the little ball nestled inside. "Not an egg," he said. "A very young child." His misty hands reached in to caress the baby. "As soon as possible, we should discuss her care. Nutrition, immunization treatments, optimal environmental conditions it would be best if we could find an adoptive mother, but I can bring up a child on my own if necessary…"

Festina was not listening. She knelt in front of the baby, her eyes shining, The front two mocks were also gazing at the infant with dewy sentimentality, though they endeavored not to show it.

"She’s beautiful," Festina said in a hushed voice.

"She is stringy and gooey," I clarified. "No doubt she is an excellent Zarett, but she is most unattractive, Festina. Is there something wrong with your eyes, or have you been crazed by an uprush of hormones?"

Festina chuckled and got to her feet "Don’t be jealous, Oar; I’m not going dizzy with maternal urges. But I like eggs — I adore eggs — and a little creature who resembles an egg, even if she’s already hatched…" Festina turned her eyes toward Nimbus’s foggy head. "What’s the baby’s name?

Nimbus quivered. His stomach closed, wrapping around and around the infant until he completely lost his humanoid form: becoming a thing like an egg himself, with the child swaddled in the middle. "Her name?" he said. "Don’t ask me, I’m just the father. I have nothing to do with my own name, let alone my daughter’s."

"She should be named Oar," I said. "Then she would be admired and respected by all the world."

"No," Uclod said, "I’m calling her Starbiter. That’s final."

He glared around, daring us to challenge him. Lajoolie laid her hand approvingly on his arm. Nimbus kept silent and I decided to bold my tongue too — it would be pleasant to think of a small young person growing up to carry on my name… but there are always things one cannot have, are there not? And having a new Starbiter was almost as good as having a new Oar.

Almost.

The Tale Of A Tainted Tree

We proceeded down a hallway, passing many closed doors with trees painted on them. Festina explained these trees were hemlocks, because the name of the ship was Royal Hemlock.

Not long ago, this had been the flagship of Admiral Alexander York himself, the awful villain whom Festina had slain. I wondered if she had received this ship as the spoils of conquest like gaining ownership of an enemy’s possessions once you had killed him… but apparently the navy did not work that way.

Festina explained there had been a Purge after York died, wherein Royal Hemlock’s former crew members got dispatched to unappealing posts because they were tainted by association with the late admiral. This left the ship almost empty… and the remaining high admirals quickly attempted to re-staff the vessel with their own toadies. This was a perennial game amongst members of the Admiralty, each one endeavoring to expand his or her power by creating ships whose crews were loyal to a single admiral rather than to the navy as a whole. In this way, the admirals created ships that could be called upon for private errands — like the ones I had met near Melaquin’s sun. They had been sent to my homeworld to suppress the truth, even though their "official" duties required them to be someplace else.

With Royal Hemlock, however, no admiral succeeded in gaining an upper hand. Indeed, the new crew had a handful of people from each high admiral’s camp, making the ship totally unsuitable for covert villainies: whatever secret scheme one admiral might attempt, all the other lackeys would immediately report to their own masters. Royal Hemlock became useless for Corrupt Intrigues… so the council assigned the ship to Lieutenant-Admiral Festina Ramos. If nothing else, all those spies would keep watch on my friend’s activities.

"So we are surrounded by sinister infiltrators?" I whispered, peeking surreptitiously at the mooks behind us.

"Absolutely," Festina said, Turning to the mooks’ leader, she asked, "Sergeant, whose payroll are you on?"

"Admiral Wang, ma’am." The sergeant favored her with a quick salute.

Festina smiled and glanced back to me, "He gives a different name every time. It’s become a little joke between us." She turned back to the mook-man. "A good way to put me at my ease, right, Sergeant? Makes it simpler to stab me in me back later on."

"Whatever you say, Admiral." The mook saluted again.

The Lassitude Of Traitors

A door opened ahead of us; Festina waved us inside. "Conference room," she said, "We have a lot to discuss." As our group and the mooks filed past bee, she called to no one in particular, "Ship-soul, attend. Captain Kapoor, please."

A moment later, a man’s voice sounded from the ceiling. "Yes, Admiral."

"Are you free to join us in the conference room?" Festina asked.

"If there’s an enemy ship nearby, I’d prefer to stay on the bridge."

"Very well, Captain… but please listen in, and offer your opinion whenever you like."

"Thank you, Admiral. Do you want the meeting secured?"

Festina thought for a moment, then answered, "No. If we keep our talk too hush-hush, we’ll have all the spies on board trying to find out what’s happening… which means they’ll ignore their real jobs." She sighed and glanced at the rest of us. "I swear, sometimes I want to grab the intercom and announce, ‘Attention all spies, the secret meeting in Conference Room C will be broadcast on Circuit Five.’ Or record every word I say and sell video-chips: proceeds to go to the fleet’s Memorial Fund. Maybe that’d stop our secret snoops from hacking the ship’s computers with peek-and-pry viruses. One of these days, someone’s going to make a programming error while trying to crack our security and it’ll crash some vital system."

Uclod snorted. "Conducting everything in the open won’t prevent that, missy. If I were a spy and everything you did was fully public, I’d be convinced you were hiding something really juicy. I’d tear the place apart looking for it."

"You’d do that," my friend said, "but that’s because Unorrs have a genuine work ethic. I doubt if the Hemlock’s spies are that keen — almost no one in our pampered Technocracy has a sense of enterprise these days. Certainly not the toadies who spy for high admirals."