Free Nimisha's Ship by Anne McCaffrey

together, too?”
    “If Lady Rezalla permits . . .”
    Nimisha knew how well Cuiva and Caleb’s son got on despite a three-year age difference. She also was aware that one of the reasons Caleb liked his present assignment was the extra time it allowed him to spend with Belac. “I’ll make sure of that,” she said.
     
    Nimisha went for the weeklong rejuv procedure of which Lady Rezalla approved. She’d been trying to get Nimisha to take it, if only to protect Cuiva. The ballet was but one of the many activities she had planned, but it was the one that Cuiva enjoyed the most. The child was delightfully appreciative and talked quite excitedly about the various scenes she had particularly enjoyed. All that week she applied herself to her morning exercises and even reviewed vids from her grandam’s extensive ballet library. But the moment Nimisha returned, she was once again the center of the child’s universe. Cuiva greeted her mother as ecstatically as if she’d been gone far longer. And Lady Rezalla sighed with regret. It wasn’t as if the little girl hadn’t been given all sorts of toys to play with—from the very feminine to the same scaled-down toolkit her grandsire had given Nimisha. Nor had Nimisha influenced the child in any obvious way, except by her own example of dedication to her chosen profession.
    Therefore, Lady Rezalla was more pleased than concerned when Nimisha said she was going to solo her new Mark 5 prototype for an extended test run. Her absence meant Cuiva, now a charming eleven-year-old, would be available to her grandam for the duration of the six weeks’ trial run. All three were satisfied with that arrangement.
     
    It was a great day for the Rondymense Ship Yard when the Mark 5 prototype was freed from the last gantry umbilical and moored at the Naval Base station. While the Fiver looked small in the company of the battle cruisers, even destroyers, she had the sleekness of a stellar racer combined with the toughness of a military craft.
    “Dangerous,” Lady Rezalla said, with a delicate shudder. “Why can’t spacecraft be . . . pretty . . . like oceangoing yachts?”
    “She is,” chorused Nimisha, Caleb, and Cuiva, who was considered old enough to take part in the celebration.
    Cuiva never told her grandam just how well she knew the Fiver, inside and out. She did have to try very hard not to hang on to her mother, but she maneuvered to stay close behind Nimisha as the designer did the rounds of the invited guests and accepted official, and personal, congratulations on her achievement.
    “Let’s not be too optimistic,” Nimisha said, dismissing the more ardent comments. “I’ll be more sanguine when I’ve seen the results of the shakedown cruise.”
    The naval contingent nodded sagely at that remark. Caleb tried hard not to look smug, because he had no doubts himself that the Fiver would pass with flying colors. Then it came time for Nimisha to say farewell to her dam, to Jeska who would capably deal with problems during her absence, and to her beloved Cuiva. Despite the number of people surrounding them, Nimisha raised her body-heir into her arms, hugged her tightly, and kissed her six times before giving her into Lady Rezalla’s keeping. She waved to them all until the hatch of the Fiver closed.
     
    A week later, Nimisha brought the Fiver out of warp space at precisely the coordinates she had designated in the Delta quadrant. She was pleased but not surprised. If she’d been a degree off, she would have been upset.
    “Run diagnostics on all systems,” she told the artificial intelligence that managed ship functions.
    “Aye, ma’am,” said the tenor voice she had programmed into the AI. Her early years as a test pilot on long and lonely runs had taught her that it was psychologically reassuring to hear another human voice—and the AI, Helm, was the state-of-the-art in that regard, even to making independent queries and initiating standard procedure actions