Ela was still arguing with Ran. "From now on let her learn to control it on her own. As a Vugni she knows what to do."

"Yes, dear sister," Ran said. I didn't need to see the gold sparkling over her Greater Self to tell she was greatly amused.

"I want you to mean it."

Another Warship sized smear coalesced in the distance. It could only be Dai.

Ran let out another ladylike laugh. "But I do."

Interlocking green triangles winked in and out of existence around Ela. "Even if she only succeeded coherence after the third time?" Her voice had traded volume for seriousness.

"Her launch was just sloppy. I did not believe for one moment Father Dzayiss had chosen an unworthy mental predecessor to model her on."

Mental predecessor? It sounded like the key to the mystery of my human memories. "Ahem!" I raised a hand. "Could you teach me what a mental predecessor is?"

"That'll have to come later!" Ela pointed a finger at me. "First you'll have to apologize to Ran."

"Right." I had called her a stupid brat after all. "My apologies for earlier, I was not in a sound emotional state and said something I didn't mean."

"It's quite all right." My three-eyed sister was still in a light mood. "My avatars' appearance is that of a younger girl than yours and perhaps it bothers you that you then have to call me your 'older sister'. Let me assure you that age doesn't matter all that much to us."

"N-no, if anything I was the one being a brat." I poked the tips of two index fingers together while I drew circles on my hull with another. "Good sisters don't yell at their older sisters, right?"

"Even the most loving families argue with one another. That's a truth older than humanity and Dai isn't bothering with a proper breaking procedure."

"Huh?"

"Brace yourself, Shishi."

Dai's Sphere crashed into mine, merging with it at the point of contact like magnetic marbles. The angle of attack had caused us to orbit Ran and Ela in a conjoined tumble, the universe wildly spinning around us. What the hell is with this girl? I fired my mundane drive in a mad attempt to stabilize us. Unfortunately, Dai tried to do the same and we only tangled ourselves into a deeper chaos.

"Try to synchronize!" Ela called out.

Without much of a thought I reached out with two of my virtual hands and grasped talons. Immediately Dai's hull erupted in a violent orange with her avatar appearing right in the middle of it. She was fuming.

"Calm her down by sharing your experience of Yamurduk with her." Ran this time. "The battle must've been too decisive for her."

I tried to recall the feelings of the battle without regressing to that emotion of murderous violence. But this girl, she raged and growled. "D-Dai! Dearest Dai, would you please let me share my experience with you? " I almost recoiled from the sight of her snarling face when that feeling countered it. Suddenly I was calm and certain, no longer threatened by her violent expression or her terrible claws. She was my sister after all. Modest magenta and violet flames billowed from Hekkamuk's spearhead while images from my fight flooded my mind, and—judging from her calming expression—hers as well. "See? This is how I fight."

It worked. The orange blaze retreated and only her silent expression remained. "Let's stabilize our orbits and match them with Ran's and Ela's." Those big eyes stared at me and I felt I could finally read them. I smiled at her and together we adjusted our vectors.

As the silhouettes of our sisters grew in size, a modest audio only comm line opened from Dai's command center to mine. "So terribly sorry for that," captain Furesham said. "She was in one of her moods. You didn't experience any trouble, I hope?"

"Well," Velteragni began, "Our own Ship sent us on a course between two simultaneously collapsing contract drives. After that this was nothing more than a little bump."

We could hear the other captain laugh. "I can see why Dai is fond of our youngest Ship," she said. "Surely a promising omen, no?"

"As promising as any. I'll look forward to any future missions where we'll be working together."

"Likewise. Right now, though, I'll be looking forward to getting reprimanded by fleet captain Obettur."

"He will understand. Ships have their eccentricities, especially Dai."

"I don't expect any more than some stern words, but they're still words that have to be said." It sounded like she had resigned herself to this small and inconsequential fate with a wise calm as if it had actually mattered. Captain Furesham was of the kind that took her job seriously, despite not explicitly showing it.

As our captains concluded their exchange, Dai got her own reprimand from Ran. "If it weren't for both of your Spheres of Influence you and Shissurna would be debris and your crews surely lost to the void."

Dai, of course, said nothing, but I felt I could understand her intentions perfectly fine.

And so did Ran. "Yes, I know not having your Spheres deployed is a dire situation deserving of greater alarm, but consider the hypotheticals."

"..."

"Hypotheticals have their uses sometimes. They're not always pointless."

"..."

"I'll admit, I didn't warn her in time." Ran cast her eyes down looking defeated and paused shortly. "It was amusing. Don't tell Zhamar I said so." Faint waves of red washed over her Greater Self.

I decided to butt in. "It's all right, nobody got hurt and only a little bit of Fae Matter got used up."

"Yeah," Ela said, "You should allow yourself to have some fun every once in a while." She was sitting with her crossbow over her shoulders and her arms hanging over it again.

"I still would like it if you didn't tell anyone."

"No worries, Ran." Ela slung her crossbow on her back and leaned back. "Looks like Luma will be here soon."

A good distance away a great blur rapidly coalesced into the clear image of our oldest sister. Shortly thereafter the great engines of her mundane drive lit up for just a few moments. Due to her great mass and specific tuning of her Contract Drive her deceleration from superluminal speeds didn't drop off near vertically like with us Warships, allowing her to cover great distances at mundane speeds without wasting large amounts of reaction mass. Despite that she still took some time to catch up with us. While firing her retrograde drive we finally got caught in her massive Sphere of Influence. "What a bother to make all these hasty maneuvers." Her avatar appeared mid sentence. "I take it the battle was a success."

"A decisive victory as predicted in the oneiromantic simulations," Ran said.

Ela was eager to follow up. "Couldn't have done it without our littlest sister! She was great out there."

"Oh?" Luma said and turned to look at me with a warm smile. "Have you stopped doubting yourself, Shishi?" Concentric golden rings ran over her hull.

I fidgeted with my five free hands. "It, uh, seems so."

"It seems so?" Luma repeated.

"I..." A few faint blue arrows darted away from my avatar. "When I fought I knew we would win."

The gold rings on Luma's hull kept appearing. "You knew it all along." She looked deeply into my eyes. "As soon as your fears were in the shadow of Yamurduk you could only be honest about your abilities."

I thought back to the battle. This strange new emotion hadn't been overblown bravado, it came with an instinctive knowledge of my firepower and defensive abilities weighed against our enemies. As the mind of a Warship, the life of a staggeringly powerful weapon, this should've been obvious. My misgivings had been nothing but a thin veneer covering unwavering certainty. Was I simply afraid of my new life, wishing to avoid the responsibilities that came with it? If so, I was truly pathetic.

"You are a glorious Mezhained Warship, Shissurna," Luma continued, "You will be feared throughout the whole of human space." She spoke as if she was aware of my thoughts. Was I that easy to read?

"I-I guess I'm not the kind who wants to brag about that sort of thing."

Ela joined the conversation. "It's not about bragging, Shishi. It's about who you are."

"Well, I—" All of a sudden Dai's avatar was right next to mine. "I, uh..." She started rubbing her cheek against mine. "There is another Shadowstar fleet coming after us. I-I will learn more when fighting them, I'm sure. " A furtive giggle that I had heard once before rang in my virtual ear. Dai was excited.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you two," Luma said, "But it's highly unlikely they will follow us to the Ikkatfo 4 system." I was a little shocked to discover that a part of me really was disappointed just as she had said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Ikkatfo 4 belongs to the Greater Kayaalid Prosperity Sphere. They require many procedures for mercenary fleets to pass through, including a statement disclosing the identities of their clients."

Therein lied the rub, I was sure. "And their client, or clients, don't want to be known?"

"We have our suspicions but it looks like this war will come to an end without us learning who was even behind it."

I looked at Dai. To the untrained eye she seemed expressionless but in the short time since I began to live I have learned the subtleties of her body language. "I'm so sorry, older sister."

She raised her clawed fists in some sort of martial art stance.

"I don't think the fleet captain will let us stay behind. We have to stay together as a fleet."

Her fists remained raised

"There will come another time where we will fight together. I'm sure of it."

She reappeared on her own hull, fists no longer raised, but with one hand held out. Did she want me to hold her hand?

"Yes, let's synchronize our times," Luma said and reached out a hand to Ran who took it.

I sheepishly grabbed Dai's hand with one of my right hands.

"Can I pick a hand?" Ela asked as she closed in beside me.

"Any of my left hands is fine with me," I said.

She grabbed the hand of my left back arm. Ran linked hands with Dai while Luma completed the chain with Ela. It was done in an instant. All over my Greater Self I announced that my internal time and date had been synchronized with Luma's. My crew accepted the offset caused by faster than light travel with few complaints.

Luma let go of Ran's and Ela's hands. "Only one more thing before before we leave."

"Get ready, Shishi," Ela called out.

"What is it?" I asked.

Four supply vessels docked between Luma's forest and her cylinders disengaged and, guided through the great Ship's Sphere of Influence, all four made their way over to... Me? The surprise had taken my voice but the yellow bristles were there for the other Ships to see.

"Gifts for you and your crew," Ela said.

I blinked in disbelief. "Wh-what's the occasion? Oh, wait... My launch? Or my first victory?"

"Both," Luma said. "We celebrate the newest addition to our fleet and the bravery of her crew."

I accessed their manifests and was greeted with lists of various foodstuffs, materials and even things like books. Cheers went up among my crew when I told them. To them this was a blessing from up on high, the affirmation of their Vugni's place within the sisterhood of protectors.

My voice trembled. "I don't know what to say." After a life where I barely managed to experience what it was like to have someone care about me, I was suddenly reborn into a world where friends and family went wherever I went. "I..." A little voice inside me said I could not possibly deserve this. It drowned in a trickle of tears and I learned that even a war machine could cry. "I will prove I'm worthy of your love. I will prove it again and again."

"That's almost more tears than your reservoirs can hold, littlest sis," Ela said. "I hope you're not letting them through your physical avatars."

"Only a little," I said, wiping the virtual tears.

Luma said, "My my, I've never seen someone so happy about gifts before."

I looked down at my hull where strings of multi-colored particles fled from my avatar. It felt right for joy to have so many hues.

"About now should be the time when the Shadowstar reinforcements will arrive in the system," Ran informed us, "The fleet captain would like to remind everyone to prepare for Fae Tunnel traversal."

There was still a final gift I wanted to give myself. "If you're fine with it I would like one last full resolution sensor sweep of the system as a memento."

"Ah, of course. As brief as it was, this was your first time in regular space. We understand."

With that blessing, I took in the scenery of the Erlkandr. With a massive blue sun it naturally had many inhabited worlds orbiting, both natural and artificial. Rocky planets, gas giants, moons, space habitats of many varieties, and countless communication satellites where demons were supposed to dwell. They were all mere glittering dots in a collection of necklaces surrounding a giant, incandescent, blue pearl. Even the gas giant the tunnel entry points orbited was just another glimmer among them. This was the home of a stupendous amount of humans in all shapes and sizes, nearly all of which completely unaware of the battle that had taken place just earlier.

Beyond the system itself was the glowing, speckled dust of the milky way, only a fraction of which belonged to humanity. But a fraction of a galaxy was enough to make the number of humans so ridiculous that my knowledge tree didn't even bother with an estimate. Humanity had obeyed the ancient forgotten God of Abraham and multiplied.

With this sensor record of my new world I was reminded of the present that had been the most precious to Becca: a little ship in a bottle.