"Sir, Castle pinged me." Ark's proxy told me. I had been having him masqurade as my butler since my daughter was born. it was a good thing too. when she had 'run away' when she was twelve, he had already been under orders to let her go, and to assist if she asked, which he did.

"Was it a deliberate act?" because her current classification as a ghost ship, I needed him to clarify.

"From what I can tell, she has recognized a new captian, and has begun startup procedures, but thats all I could get from the back track, then I was forcably cut." he says plainly. "I mention this in private after the fact only because of who the recognized captain is, sir."

I turn to face him, making it obvious I want him to continue, but he doesn't.

"Not here, sir. Your private quarters, and with the missus present." he says.

"its that big of a deal huh? should we prepare for war?" I ask seriously.

"I think the missus needs to hear the answer to that question too." since day one, he hasn't called my wife Queen, only 'the missus' making it clear that he has no respect for her. well quite honestly, I don't have much anymore. before Candice was born, our marraige was a loving one, and we honestly enjoyed each other's company, but once our daughter was in the picture, we constantly argued about how to raise her, we still do; even though she is far from home, and we lost track of her a year ago when Davidson's crew slipped a blockade that we were sure Candice was on the ship at the time for. we haven't been able to confirm since then wether or not she was still a part of his crew, but we had been keeping tabs on him just in case.

I came out of my thoughts as I entered my wife's private bedroom, she was still in her nightgown laying in bed, well past two in the afternoon.

"So, what is so important that you had to tell both of us?" I ask, making it obvious that I didn't want to be here at the moment.

"Castle is reactivated, and began going through her startup procedures five hours ago. her ping to me, notified me of a few things, but made two things abundantly clear. she has recognized her new captain for two reasons. first, the new captian is of her programmed, lineage preference, second, the new captain arrived to her location on a captain's yacht."

"okay?" I urged him to continue.

"the new Captain is a female, of sixteen years of age, is of the Tal Oz Royal lineage, and is named Candice Brighton, she was instructed to ignore the royal mandate to refer to her new captain by her official titles, a few seconds later, the pings stopped, and all of my attempts to return a ping was forcably terminated. Castle did manage to make it clear that if I approach, she will sink me, and even in her crippled state, I have no doubt that she can."

"So you know where my daughter is?" my wife asks behind me.

"I know where the princess will be for the next two days, but it will take nine days to travel there, and by the time we arrive, not only can I guarantee that Castle won't be there, she will be mostly operational again." he sighs and looks back to me. "the only saving grace we have right now sir, is that the captain is the princess, and that Castle will actually obey a member of the royal family. after all your great grandfather commanding her to blow her own bridge charges from another ship is what ended her rampage of our forces during the expansion wars. her hard coded preference to obey the Tal Oz royal lineage is the only thing that has that monstrosity even remotely on our side, but thats only if we don't piss off the princess. Again."

"what do you mean, as her father, I should have some control over Castle?"

Ark is shaking his head quickly to tell me that I am wrong. "no, Terrance's command worked because the bridge commander had stupidly told the ship he was Tal Oz royalty in the middle of the fight; because her captain protocal lists it as a primary preference, it created conflicting algarithms, and thats what caused her to rampage in that battle. in fact, she decimated both sides of the fleet after that, almost equally. her rampage, her revilation of going against the very family she was designed to serve, is why we won the expansion wars in the first place, even if the public only knows her as the most agressive sentient battleship in history, and the first battleship that could not only use mechenical advantage, but also the arcane arts."

"you say it like she is more than a battleship."

"Sir, I flew next to her before I was captured by Terrance. she is a barely controlable wildcard, and worse, the things that she hides in her extradimensional spaces is scarry. I know for a fact that she has a refining center inside one of those spaces that is more effecient than any place in the kingdom. I watched her refine, process, and produce items in a few hours that would take months from any of the current kingdom's facilites. if given the chance, she can even refine stone that would otherwise be useless into synthstone. I watched her sling rounds of synthstone ammunition in the middle of the fleet for no other reason than her saying that she had too much of it."

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"too much synthstone?" my wife asked. "is such a thing possible?"

"Missus, she slung four thousand rounds in that three day battle, every one of them a 50kg salvo of synthstone. I dare not go against her."

"how much synthstone did she have that she said she had too much of it?" I asked. synthstone is very difficult to refine, and mold into usable shapes, mages would pay hundreds of thousands of credits to be able to touch a gram of it, and here he is talking about a ship that used tons of it as disposable ammunition.

"I can't retain any information about her specific specifications, its in my core programming to forget anything specific that I do manage to aquire about her, other than non-military sources. thankfully that particular day that I saw her with the salvos of synthstone, it was being recorded by a media ship, and the altercation was against a band of pirates, all of whom liked to record their exploits, so I was able to aquire a lot of information, and retain it through those tapes. its the things that I can remember happening, but not the specifics of how they happend around her that actually scare me. but that aside, do you know what a 50kg synthstone slug does when it impacts angled hex shields? it shatters, without loosing any kenetic energy. creating the effect of a close range shotgun with every round. she shreded those ships, with rounds capable of ignoring the shields. worse she was using a transference spell, a teleport spell, and her trademark void spell throuhout that fight. but the worst part of it was she was able to use the teleport spell on the enemy vessels too, but sadly, or gratefully depending on how you look at it, she couldnt' use the spell on the crew. as soon as she figured it out, it was a quick win, with most of the ships still in tact."

"why haven't you ever told me about this before?" I ask Ark.

"Because I never thought it a real possiblity to fly with her again. and by the way, if you ask me to fly against her, I will refuse. I will shut myself down before I go against that monster, even in a mock battle."

for my wife's bennifit, I asked a question that I knew the answer too already, but she needed to hear me ask. "So, is there any way that you can communicate with Castle, and see if Candice will come home?" I hoped he would say no, that she wouldn't come home. Candice needs to stay away, at least for another year, in order to be free of my wife's ideals of what she should be and do.

"Castle is under a direct order to not contact me, thats why my pings keep getting terminated, so I quit, out of respect, and fear of Castle. if you annoy her enough, she won't care anymore what happens to her, she will kill you."

"so thats a no then?" Harmony asks. "Albert. bring my daughter home, and since this thing is useless in doing that job, I guess its a good thing you relegated a warship to be a false butler."

I could tell that Ark wanted to strangle her, when she gets like this, so do I. I pull Ark out of her room, and begin walking to my own room, while still pulling on his coat.

"Ark, tell me truthfully, is she alright?" I finally ask him.

"the order that killed the pings between Castle and I was that she couldn't contact me unless she felt that Candice's life was in danger. so for the time being, no news is good news." he told me truthfully.

"Can you get a message to Castle, to pass on when she think's Candice is ready."

"with her current order, I do not know how she will take it, but if I word the initial data packet correctly, Castle should at least read the contents."

"Good. I don't care how you word it, but Candice should know that she needs to stay away until at least a week after her seventeenth birthday, at that time, this situation will resolve itself. I love my daughter, and I completely agree with why she left the way she did, just not the timing of doing so. if she needs anything, I want to help her any way I can."

"I will do my utmost to pass along your words." he nods and walks away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Captain. I am reciving periodic pings from Ark. I looked at the datapackets to see what he was doing, and its the same message every day at seven after five in the evening every day."

Castle seemed irritated about the pings.

"And?" I wanted to know what was important enough for her to stop refining our newly collected ore stash.

"its a video recording of Albert Brighton, should I play it?"

"Dad? yeah, go ahead." I stood from my mundane cleaning to watch the screens. the cleaning bots were beginning to get back to cleaning rather than assiting with repairs around the ship, but I still liked to keep things somewhat tidy.

the video was from Ark's visual perspective, and started with Dad asking if Ark could get a message to me, and finally dad, with tears in his eyes, basically letting me know that it wasn't safe for me to come home yet, but he would do what he could so that mom wouldn't find out he was helping me.

"Castle, I need some private time for a bit. I am gonna lay down in my room on the yacht. unless I am needed, I need to be left alone for a while." I tell her, "Let Ark know I got the message, but not anything else, also tell him that I think this method of communicating could get him found out, and not to do it, have him contact John Davidson, and ask for 'Boss to forward the message'"

"Will comply Captain."

"stop being so damned stuffy. release your emotional shackles already, I figured you would have done it on your own by now." I shout as the yacht's door closes behind me.

I lay on my bed, and cry myself to sleep. I definately needed to hear from Dad, but hearing the message from his own words, I didn't expect. for the first time since I left home, I felt his love for me.