"You didn't!" Sarah exclaimed in shock.

Yulia had just told her friends about the argument she got into with Alex. It wasn't the response she expected. "He was treating me like a child."

Sarah and Claire shared a look.

"I'm not!" Yulia said firmly.

"Your dad was just looking out for you," Claire responded. "You have to admit, you do tend to get into dangerous situations."

"Those aren't my fault," Yulia pouted at the older girl's words. "I never asked for any of this!"

"We know," Claire added, going for a hug, but Yulia pulled away. She was too upset for a hug right now.

"I need some space, I'm going to go ride my dune buggy. At least I'll be mostly alone out there."

"I thought you said you needed adult supervision if you take it out?" Sarah said as the girls jogged after her.

"I'll just ask one of the guards, I doubt they would say no," she said testily, only to be yanked to a stop by Claire.

The girl looked pissed. "You say you're not a child, but now you want to start throwing your weight around like some spoiled brat?"

Yulia opened her mouth to deny the accusation, but no words came out. Claire was right. Tears started flowing out of her eyes, and she cursed her mood swings before hugging her startled friend. "Sorry," she said, with her head buried into her friend's chest.

She felt Sarah's arms wrap around her, and a head lean against hers.

Claire sighed and returned the hug. "It's not me you should be apologizing to." For character sheets and glossaries, visit MV|LEMPYR.

Claire was probably right, but Yulia kept feeling annoyance bubble up when she thought about apologizing to Alex. Even though she knew she should, what he had done felt wrong to her, and she wasn't at the point where she could forgive him for it yet.

It was stupid, she knew it, Alex had done nothing but try to keep her safe, but it didn't change how she felt. Maybe she just lacked the courage to say she was wrong.

That thought sent a cold shiver down her spine because she needed courage if she wanted to be like Zorina or Katalynn. It didn't help that she woke up in fear almost every night, reliving the attack on Earth or the attack on the ship. To add to her stress, the man who kidnapped her and the pirates who chased her and Markus so many years ago also made a reappearance in her nightmares, chasing her through the halls of Grace until she finally woke up in a sweat.

She had danced around the topic when Katalynn came to speak with her, asking if the woman ever remembered the people she lost. The Asgardian leader hadn't been fooled by her seemingly innocuous question, however. She had told Yulia that she remembered every person, every victory, and every near defeat. That even decades later, she still had nightmares about them. It was not a very encouraging talk.

Yulia had asked her how she managed.

The woman's response was not what Yulia had hoped to hear.

"The past is the past," Katalynn had said, "You can't change that. All you can do is learn to accept what happened and move past it."

Yulia was trying her best to do that, but it was so hard. She didn't want to tell Alex, because she knew he would worry for her, and she didn't want to go to Mrs. Nancy again, because Yulia realized her teacher wasn't the greatest at giving counseling advice.

So far, the best thing she found to take her mind off her problems included throwing herself into finding the solution to an engineering problem, designing, or racing. However, the go-karts weren't cutting it for her anymore. She had too much time to let her thoughts drift while racing the younger kids.

When Alex confronted her, the idea to demand time outside just popped into her head, and she had requested it before she could stop herself. She hadn't expected him to agree.

The trio stopped hugging after a few minutes, allowing Yulia to breathe. Claire had grown a lot over the last year and was turning out to be a carbon copy of her mother, not that Yulia would ever tell her friend that.

"Feel better?" Claire asked.

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Yulia nodded and wiped the last of the tears from her eyes. "If you two come with, we could ask one of your parents to supervise."

Claire grimaced, and Yulia couldn't see Sarah's reaction, but she could feel the girl tense up slightly at the question.

"Only if you agree to drive slower than last time," Claire eventually responded.

It was less than ideal, but Yulia realized that it would be best if she weren't alone during her ride, so she nodded.

Sarah's father was busy with Council business, and Sarah's mother was working, but Claire's dad agreed to supervise them for an hour or so. She notified security, and the trio headed for the garage.

Feeling the wind whip through her hair and send it flowing out behind her was exactly what she needed as she sent the buggy around an invisible track at medium speed.

Her friends yelled in delight behind their masks, enjoying this ride much more than they had back when the buggy was first completed.

Sooner than she wanted to, the excursion was over, and they all headed back inside. After another hug and a goodbye from her friends, Yulia parked the buggy. Her mind was filled with ways to improve the vehicle's handling and suspension.

A few hours later, she realized she was avoiding going home because she didn't want to feel the shame and embarrassment she knew she would when she saw Alex again.

"Would Zorina or Katalynn shy away?" she muttered to herself. She knew the answer was no. She nodded and spoke a few quiet words to give her the confidence she needed. "Be brave."

Dog looked up at her words. Her companion had faithfully followed her all day, even when he wasn't quite fast enough to keep up with the buggy. She patted him on his plastic head. "Come on, it's time to go home."

He barked in agreement and stood, his exterior as pristine as when Alex first built his larger body. Yulia wished she could heal from scars as fast as a robot. Life would be so much easier.

Despite her fears, Alex wasn't home when she arrived. Then cold dread set in, and she glanced at the clock. It was past eight P.M., and she had forgotten to tell Alex she was going to be late. She was about to race out and go to his workshop to apologize, but her stomach growled.

"After I grab something from the fridge," she told herself.

Inside the fridge was a sandwich and a note from Alex.

"I expected you might forget our new agreement. Consider this a free pass; the next time, you'll be grounded for a week. Eat, and go to sleep. You have classes tomorrow.

-Alexander"

Yulia felt so bad that it made the food taste like ash in her mouth, but she was so hungry, she mechanically forced it down. She thought she might toss and turn in worry, but the moment her head hit the pillow, she was fast asleep.

***

Alexander got the alert that someone had entered his apartment, and he looked at the time. He didn't know if Yulia was testing his patience or simply forgot, but the note he left for her was a warning he fully planned on carrying out if she did it again.

He turned back to the design he was working on. When he first envisioned an automated ship capable of deploying automated Stingrays, he turned to the Fishbone. The workhorse ship wasn't quite up to the task without making a much larger version. He decided not to go that route, simply because the Fishbone-class was never designed for military use. He was already stretching the ship's capabilities as a resupply vessel. So he designed a new vessel.

The Seahorse's similarity to the fishbone ended with the fact that it was a hauler. Alexander did away with the three triangular struts that connected the front and the back of the Fishbone, and instead made a spine cradle that could hold up to ten Stingrays at a time.

Each gunship sat along rails, powered by static fields that would launch all of the ships down and away from the carrier in less than a minute. Then the ship could deploy twenty laser pods set along the outer spine for area denial and defense.

The ship itself was armed with a single FE turret and two missile launchers, but it had limited ammunition, because Alexander wanted to keep the size to a minimum to produce them as quickly as possible.

The Seahorse got the full stealth armor treatment, but only the non-active kind. The huge opening used to house the Stingrays made it extremely difficult to armor that section, so there was no point using the active camouflage.

Alexander was still working out the specifics of the new FTL drive system for the ship, but he included the old warp drive as well, allowing the ship to cover vast distances in minutes while also being able to jump between systems as needed.

Even with trying to reduce the size as much as possible, the vessel still came in at over five hundred and fifty feet long. It was also extremely tall and wide to accommodate the Stingrays and launching systems. It was about the length of a destroyer, a very pregnant-looking destroyer.

The ship wasn't meant to look pretty; it was meant to get the job done, and it had plenty of punch to give one of the Shican dreadnoughts pause. The laser pods might seem small, and even with their ability to aim for the same spot, there weren't that many of them, but they had every single improvement in energy storage and discharge that Alexander could shove into the tiny things.

An alpha strike from them wouldn't be as devastating as what his orbital lasers had done to Harlow's ship, but they packed a little more oomph than one of Vanguard's main batteries. Even if the Shican realized they were being controlled by the ship, each laser pod was equipped with its own processor, based on the old processor design Alexander had, allowing for autonomous aiming even if the mothership was destroyed.

There was no space for a computronic cube inside the shells of the lasers, so Alexander had to design the computer components to fit in the available space. The result was significantly more limited storage for the self-learning protocol, but it was more than enough for what he needed them to do.

Krieger and the other captains had already weighed in on the design. Some weren't quite sold on the whole automation thing, or the reason they couldn't just jump the Stingrays without another ship carrying them, but he assured them it would be necessary. He wasn't ready to disclose the other FTL drive details without having a functional design. Krieger likely knew there was some reason for Alexander's decision to go the carrier route, but the man had kept quiet on that point.