"It's probably different," he says.

"Probably. How'd you do it?"

"Cheated," he snorts.

"Ooh, that sounds like a fun story."

"You know how I'm a mutie? Well, I linked up my whole command. And then when we got to the buggers' home planet, I linked them and they surrendered as soon as our side found somebody for them to surrender to."

"Oh, nicely done. Reminds me of how I handled the Prom Ghost, only yours is obviously much larger-scale."

"What's a Prom Ghost?"

"Her name's Minnie. She got killed at her prom about eighty years ago, and her ghost had serious anger issues and she killed some people at proms thereafter if they met certain criteria. I found her, talked to her a bit, and used some of the square wishcoins Shell Bell made for me when she visited to fix the emotional problems and the part where she could only haunt prom, and now she's running around enjoying herself someplace. Standard procedure would have had me disperse her instead."

"Good one," he approves.

"Thanks. Now that you've made peace with the aliens, what're you and Aegis gonna do next?"

"Be admirals," he says. "If we can get ourselves unkidnapped first."

"I wish you the very best of luck. What do space admirals do?"

"Not a whole lot, when there's no war on," shrugs Sue. "But we're gonna be talking to the buggers for a while. Right now I'm pretty much the only one who can."

"Because of the mutation thing. Can you do that with your Bell or does she shut you out? What about me? And you met Angela and Stella and Amariah before, right, did you try them?"

"I can do Aegis if she tries," he says, nudging Juliet's mind.

Juliet's version of the power doesn't work like a wall. It works like she's insubstantial. There is nothing to nudge, even if it looks like there should be. Juliet doesn't appear to notice him doing anything.

"But not you, apparently."

"Huh. Well, we all get the same sort of power, just in different ways - Stella and Golden are pretty closely matched but even theirs aren't exactly identical. Did you try the other Bells you met, or did they not think to inquire?"

"Don't remember."

"Fair enough. I wonder how long it'll take Aegis to find her way into Milliways. I wanna meet her."

"She's the best," Sue asserts.

"We do seem to have a knack for attracting companions and significant others who'll assert that about us," says Juliet. "I wanna meet her so I know what makes her different from Bells in general."

"We had a kid together," he offers, as a possible distinguishing feature. "Not the usual way - I don't think she's had sex, and she definitely hasn't had it with me. But it turns out this game we both played a lot ended up turning into a person."

"...That," says Juliet, "is definitely a weird one. Angela and Micaiah are gonna have a kid but I think they produced the happy news in the traditional way. How did a game turn into a person?"

"It's a computer game," he says. "And she's really smart. Her name's Jane."