The Zero-G commando battalion was three thousand strong with standard military personality programming. They followed orders and fought to the death. They were physically similar to myself with two variations of unit type.

The grunts, designed for physical combat, were the larger in size. The double-wide refrigerators of muscle could walk through walls and tear things apart with their bare hands. They stood three meters tall with shoulders a meter across. They could wrestle one of Veronica's monster polar bears and win. They were hulking beings, more like giant gorillas than men. Programmed as assault troopers and police officers, they were the true keepers of the status quo. Only activated when needed for combat, Zero-G grunts were placed strategically around the ship in storage lockers; always waiting, armed, fully powered, and ready for anything.

Sergeant Death, aka Dr. Death, was the grunt unit commanding officer. When he was a human in Echo-1, he was Nathaniel Det, a US Marine special forces soldier with a decade of black ops experience. He once cut a man in half with a machete. Det never failed to complete a mission and boasted a list of kills a mile long. From any normal human perspective, this man was a serial killer. 

He was utterly devoted to the Corps, lived to follow orders, and after being pulled out of the system in his sleep one night he never looked back. He found his home in space and his loyalty to the command structure of the Banga was equal to that of his pre-programmed counterparts. 

Det was placed into a grunt soldier body type but wasn't satisfied with basic unit features. He had several mechanical enhancements applied to his new form. All his internal structures were replaced with the same alloy as the ship's hull with backup hydraulic systems in his arms and legs and a retractable blade that expands out of his left forearm, like some kind of comic book monster. His skull had a built-in helmet. 

Dr. Death's only weakness, he didn't like swimming; he sank.

The second Zero-G unit type were the pilots. I had a pilot type body. Pilots were mixed gender, unlike the all-male grunt forces. They specialized in machinery, equipment, weapons, and data analysis. With heightened reflexes, the pilots were capable of superb real-time interfaces with computer-controlled devices. They kept a constant link to the ship's supercomputer to draw on the sensor array and obtain complete situational awareness.

Lieutenant X, aka Cindy X, or just plain X was the point commander of all the pilots. In Echo-1 she was Cindy Pelton a motocross champion, stunt driver, X Games initiator, and all-around thrill seeker. She came from a small American town in Texas and is generally considered to be a kind-hearted rabble-rouser with a mean streak a mile long. 

Jonas was experimenting with personality types to insert into the Zero-Gs and she turned out to be a big success. X took to space fighter piloting like a duck to water. Her tendency to push the limits of machinery gave her an edge over even the best pre-programmed artificial or droid pilots. Of the three human profile Zero-G commanders she was the most accessible, but you'd have to take a ride with her before she trusted you.

Major Uzi Anger (no one called him Anger to his face), aka Major Uzi, or just Uzi had a military dossier that spanned a lifetime. Uzi was the head of all the onboard commandos and the ship's defense systems. He was considered the fourth highest-ranking individual on the ship and he reported directly to Jonas on most matters. He was primarily a military action man, though his love for covert operations allowed him to take pleasure in being part of Jonas' more off the books philanthropic adventures. 

In Echo-1, he was General Uziel Unger, a decorated tank commander in the Israel/Arab 6-day war, he became a spy for the Mossad, and went on to become director of international espionage. After his tenure in the Israeli army, he trained American as well as Russian Special Forces. He was known to be personal friends with US and Russian presidents through contacts in both the C.I.A. and the KGB. He wrote 4 books on cold war covert operations, had been shot six times, and even took part in one of the first covert operations in space when he posed as a Russian scientist aboard the International Space Station. 

Uzi was cool-headed and shrewd, a brilliant strategist, and a decision-maker who knew every trick in the book. He was eventually killed by a Saudi backed hit squad. It took them three tries, the last being a group of five simultaneous suicide bombers converging on his position. He finally left the simulation upon his death at age 67.

Uzi has been with Jonas for two decades and had sworn a life oath to him. He stationed himself on the battle bridge at the top of the Banga, where he stood with the blast shields open staring ahead into space. He wanted to see what was coming.

***

We left the water ring and had been crossing the Sea of Tranquility for some time when I saw the bubble fields.

"I'm going to detach the cannon and arm now, stay here for a few."

The equipment pulsed and separated from Vronsky and he left me hovering there. I watched him approach the pod. There were five full-grown females and two younger whales, all considerably smaller than Vronsky. They swam close, rolling and rubbing up against each other, whale cuddling if you will. The sounds of their clicking language filled the sea. 

I never imagined whales interacting in such a way; so physically intimate. They all seemed so happy and connected. 

I sat there breathing through a tube watching. They danced together in a humongous harmonious mass. One of the females left the group and swam over to me. They were all outfitted with transmitters but only she spoke to me.

"Hello, Hands. Dixon told me you were a good guy and that my bears frightened you."

She clicked and I was aware that she was laughing. Whales laugh!? I laughed.

"Those are some serious monsters you've created. You do realize they're like twice as big as Earth polar bears and their oversized jaws make them particularly horrifying."

She disregarded my criticism. Vronsky came back, reattached his armament, I took my seat next to the cannon, and the three of us were off. As we swam through the Mediterranean sized blue waters Veronica told me her story.

"I, as you probably know, am the primary science officer on the Banga. This can be a challenging duty for a whale as we obviously need a great deal of help. For the most part, I crunch data and make observations. I do a great deal of work in virtual environments and rely heavily on my staff for the follow-through. I have a fully functioning lab that I have never technically physically been in. I use an avatar for activities where opposable thumbs are a must. My control over her is solid, but it can get confusing being in more than one body. Something I bet you understand?"

She winked at me.

"I was initially being groomed as a navigator. My skill with technology was extremely advanced when I was young. I started working early on with virtual environments, taking the form of a humanoid, and working in simulated labs. I soon realized that scenario had a lot of disadvantages. It was during that time, though, that I stumbled upon my true passion; cloning. 

"I began by making animals. I had a real knack for it. Jonas at the time was compiling animal protocols for his Earth simulation. I sampled many of them. It wasn't long until I started using a synthetic avatar and worked on real clones in a real lab. I made insects and birds and all kinds of mammals. My masterpiece was a woolly mammoth. A fascinating creature, intelligent and self-aware with a marvelous perspective on existence. I've laid the groundwork on making an entire parade of genetically unique mammoths that will have the ability to mate successfully. 

"Now, the trouble with clones is that they generally can't reproduce through many, if any, generations without having uniques DNA strands for all the initial group. As you have seen with my polar bears, I had to use available DNA codes from similar galactic species. It doesn't always work out, but with my mammoth, I was able to secure actual baby mammoth DNA from a frozen specimen that had been passed through museum curatorial hands for millennia. This gave me the edge I needed to really make one of these large Earth mammals."

I had to interject here as, at least on paper, I had been an Earth mammal. I mean, maybe not really, but it seemed real enough to feel like a kindred spirit.

"How? Wait, I mean, are there still people on Earth? How far are we from the planet? Have you ever been? Can I go there?" I had a million more questions.

"You can talk Earth with Jonas all day," she suggested. "He loves ancient history. It's a destroyed lost planet far from everything. It did serve its purpose as a perfect breeding ground and nursery for cetacean life, for a time anyway. Seeing it in Jonas' program, the time period you were from was something like the end of the golden age of the whale on Earth and not long before our ancestors left the planet for good. It must have been a beautiful place back then. 

"Jonas has a vast network of contacts and one particularly precocious reptile called Mox is known for obtaining hard to find items from all over the galaxy. On my first meeting with Mox, I traded for the mastodon DNA by outfitting him with a neural transmitter. You'll meet him soon enough. We're going to rendezvous with him and travel together to the edge of the wormhole. 

"You can ask Mox all about Earth, he's been there. He's bringing me 400 unique strands of elephant DNA. I'll use then to seed the landmasses on Jonas' ice world with woolly mammoths. Large mammals will walk the planet and swim in its oceans. It's going to be an amazing place out of time, much like Earth once was."

We continued across the blue sea. The two whales communicated in their click language, I tried my best to learn and understand it. I listened for hours as we crossed the expanse of the water. The clicks stopped and we moved on in silence. Veronica's eye rolled back and looked at me.

"They're sleeping."

I looked ahead in the water but saw nothing. Above us, there were the occasional air pockets but no signs of a 'them.' I strained my new eyes looking in all directions and then as if appearing out of nowhere I beheld yet another marvel of nature. 

Part of the second pod, some distance below us, floated vertically in the water, motionless. Their great mass forming a series of tall columns, silently lumbering in sleep. We cruised above these peaceful creatures and I looked down at them in their pillar formation. It was as otherworldly as anything I had experienced, including looking into the vastness of outer space. These leviathans of the deep suspended in perfect stillness like they had always been there and always would be. I craned my neck around to watch them fade into the distance.

We moved on, slowly drifted upward, and surfaced. Both whales trumpeted their blowholes in unison. There was a boat waiting, well, I suppose I would call it a boat. I stowed the test breather and pushed off Vronsky. My orders were to go to the airlock and then report to the battle bridge for debriefing and training. 

"This is where we leave you, Hands, when you meet my avatar, remember she is me and be nice to her." Veronica dove back down, her dorsal fin hanging in the air for a moment like the wings of an aircraft, and then she was gone.

Vronsky followed suit, his parting gift to me was an upload of piloting information on the Banga's galaxy class fighters, along with technical specs, and general handling procedures for the Robo-a-gogo. My mind exploded and it became a part of who I was.

I was a star pilot.