Battleship Destroyer (16 page)

"Well Chief
, I did not think they would take anyone this late with you lifting off shortly but since you are, I will join in the fun." The Chief continued to stare at her. "I have relatives out that way Chief." The Chief stared at her for another couple of seconds then pointed at the line in front of him. "Oh. Yes, you were counting weren’t you." She walked over and got into line where he was pointing. He then started counting where he had left off.

A minute later a boat came down that had just taken off from the other side of the port
's civilian section and landed behind the Chief close enough to blow his uniform around forcing everyone in the line to shield their faces and recruits to run out of the boats way as it landed. The back hatch opened and a load of men and women walked out with duffle bags and started lining up all along the fence including where the Chief had already counted.

Counting to ten with his eyes closed as the boat took off again the Chief returned to the
far right side of the line now way past the gate and started counting again as another boat landed directly behind him again. Turning to yell at the ones coming out the hatch to go to the back of the line, more people with duffle bags started coming out of the fenced enclosure that had been dumped off on the other side of the compound by a van. He caught sight of several other vans headed that way with another 40 or 50 individual scattered across the lots from the civilian pits walking that way. Shaking his head his comm sounded.

"Did you give those boats permission to land Chief?" The Captain was one heart beat from
yelling.

Chuckling. "No Captain. Se
ems we have been going about recruiting all the wrong ways. You may have to get another ship to come back here and take some of our planetary stops if recruiting goes this good from now on."

"
Hell Chief I am getting calls from all over the port for us to wait for recruits to find transportation to the fence line. I will start sending boats around the port as soon as we get them in the launch rails.  No, we don't have the ships to come back here any time soon. We will crowd them in somehow until we can ship current classes of graduates out. I think you just made Master Chief. Just get them aboard and we will swear them in before launch and process them in as we go."

"Not me Captain. It’s the news and the fact that we are here
doing something positive and ready to leave and no one wants to be left behind if they were even thinking about joining."

"Damn Chief." The Captain was not one to curse forcing the Chief to raise his eyebrows. "We are
now getting calls from the stations, moons and rocks around this damn system wanting us to wait for people wanting to join your fence line. How the hell does a bunch of men lined up along a fence to enlist, make it clear to a damn mining rock on the other side of the system this fast. Well as I said Chief get them on board now and we will worry about the details later. We have a schedule to keep and now we are making a couple stops before we leave the system. There are 32 over crowded transports scheduled to pit at our next system full of possible recruits that won't wait for us being late. We launch in an hour and no later."

"Ah yes Captain we will get a count as they board sir." Looking around the Chief shook his head. "And Captain.  It may be a good idea to call ahead and tell the Next stop we are coming. You may find them waiting for us when we get there. Make things
go a lot faster on that end sir."

"Very well Master Chief. Get them aboard. Out."

Boats started flying off the sides of the ship as the catapult on minimum power made sure they cleared the ship. Some started climbing into the sky at full throttle while others arched around to land around the port.

The ship would leave the system with
well over 3,000 additional recruits. Some of them having no more space experience than the ride in the training ship to orbit when they followed the recruit lines at the port. The secret of the alien invasion was no longer much of a secret in the space ship community. Or most anyplace else by then.

"Jack." Tom
said from the bunk next to Jack's, jerking him back from the tarmac outside the training ship.  "I can't believe I am leaving my family behind. I can't believe how sad seeing my ship still sitting there makes me. I can't believe I have joined the Navy to become a fighter pilot. Hell. I can't believe I followed you through that fucking door."

"Ya man. I am sti
ll trying to figure out what happened as well." The form fitting bunk seemed to move under Jack to conform to his body as the decks gravity coils hesitated to keep up with the maneuvering ship as it climbed through the jet stream over the port. Then a few minutes later the picture in the screen turned as the ship took up a new course. "They aren't wasting any time heading for the next star system Tom. It's a shame the gravboard operator is a blind idiot. He is not compensating for anything until after it happens." Jack turned his head to look at Tom and came up nose to the form fitting plastic foam that had appeared forming a fence around the bunk as the ship took off. Surprised, he sat up enough to looked over the fence and closely at the bunk Tom was laying back in mostly out of sight He suddenly realized that the bunks had gravity coils built into them and the fence was to keep someone from hanging something out from the gravity field and getting it cut off by the possible hundreds of Gees difference.  "Damn Tom. This must be one fast ship with gravity coils in the bunks." Looking back at the screen and the distant port wavering in the screen with the ships mere specks, Jack bit his lip and turned from the screen and shut it off.

"
Haven't you read anything?" Said Tom. "All Navy ships have coils in their bunks in case the ship takes damage knocking out the deck coils. They don't want their crewman going splat into a puddle of goo at a 200 gees."

F
or the first time since he woke up to the sound of the Vacuum alarm, Jack started looking at the world around him with some interest. But all he could see was rows of acceleration bunks. A hundred to be exact, made out of their sleeping bunks so he took Tom's suggestion and started reading the Navy's introduction book after turning his screen back on and tapping the icon flashing at the corner of his screen.

Sometime later
the ships public address system blared. "All recruits will report immediately to the placement test center when their names are called no matter what you are doing at that time. That is all."  

Chief
Starly came into the compartment a few minutes later. "Ok you lazy worms. Enough napping. Up and at attention on your pads! Move it! Move it! You are experienced spacers and a few gee's is nothing to you."  Everyone took their place on their foot pads and the Chief and his training Sgt.'s spent 10 minutes adjusting everyone's attention stance. Finally the Chief stopped in the middle of the Compartment shaking his head. "I had hoped that crewmen from transports would at least know how to stand at attention but that just shows how stupid I was. Hopefully you will all improve with time." Walking to the entrance to the compartment. "We are going to take a tour of the ship now. We don’t want any of you worms getting lost on this little tub and walking out one of the locks without a suit unless you really are one of the few that insist on committing suicide in every class. Pay attention since we will only tour guide once and since you took so long getting into what sort of passes for attention, we will take it a little faster than planned."

"Company; Portside
, Face!" One hundred recruits turned mostly as one to face the Chief and the entry hatch. "At the double time, and keep in step, right foot first, double ranks, forward, march!"    Even with cadence their marching at double time was a cluster screw resembling a circus more than an army. But with training Sgt.'s seeming to come out of the wood work, they managed to make it around the ship stopping at the important spots for a short lecture as most tried to catch their breaths. Though Jack could not tell himself how to get to most of the places once they got there the first time around the mile long ex assault carrier. But by the third circuit around the ship, he was starting to make some sense of the layout even if he could not breathe and every muscle in his body felt like lead. The most important point was that the ship was laid out horizontally with the main deck running from the bow to the stern five thousand feet away with most of the additional decks above and only one below. Unlike normal transports with their hundreds of decks laid one on top of one another 90 degrees to the length of the ship from the stern up to the bow making it cheaper to build and operate with the gravity coils only having to compensate for inertia in the same direction as what gravity was needed.

The
second time around the Chief slowed them down to a walking march and the training Sgt.'s started to get anal about keeping in step and distance and timing and poise and keeping their eyes forward. Jack used the slowed pace to veg out on the cap of the guy ahead of him and catch up on some sleep with his eyes open. A technique he had developed on his long days spent following his father or brother around the Turner Joy, bored out of his mind as they performed routine ship's inspections. Something his brother was always totally anal about taking as much as three times as long to do as their father ever did. Sometimes he felt that his brother was simply torturing the various crewmen.

Jack
was just starting to relax and was half asleep when his name was called to report for testing. It took a couple of seconds for it to register that his name had been called. By then a Sgt. was already jerking him out of line. The Sgt. escorted Jack to the testing center, placing him alone inside a cubical before leaving. Jack sat there for half an hour snoozing with no excuse to keep his eyes open as he propped his feet up on the desk though it seemed like only a few minutes. A siren sounded making Jack jump. "Recruit Trainee Turner; please start your test."

"What?" Jack rubbed his eyes looking
around as he stretched finally feeling half way human and noticed that the flashing table top was a glass computer control screen with a big outlined button icon that said. (Start Test.) "You know I would do a lot better after a good night's sleep and without this hangover." And realized that the short nap had gotten rid of the hangover though his mind still felt a bit fuzzy.

"Yes as would everyone. But we don't want academics that turn stupid when they are tired. We need
crewmen that can fight smartly even when they are exhausted. Now please start the testing."

"Now that is the first thing that makes sense since I have been here." Jack tapped the icon on the screen. A half hour later the Vacuum alarm went off as he was in the
middle of a test on basic physics. Jumping up he started for the door. Stopped, smiled and sat back down, continuing the test. Mumbling to himself. "Hell. I am 4 armored hulls from the nearest vacuum." A dozen times after that, alarms sounded or the compartment shook with the sound of distant explosions and eventually even smoke started filling the compartment making him cough for a while but Jack ignored them all.

Then half way
through a simple boring navigation problem in real time he was trying to figure the point of, the board went dark. Sitting back a few seconds Jack frowned. The navigation plot had the ship impacting the planet if a course change was not programed in eventually. Suddenly things were interesting again. Shaking his head he started looking around the console and found a power breaker under a small hatch in the back that had popped. He reset it and the board came back to life but then he had to reboot it and reinstall the program then call up the navigation data and calculate the position of the ship. Catching the ship just before it would have entered the planet's atmosphere with several low moons and stations close by. He had to rapidly plot some radical maneuvers in his head to get the ship out of danger. Not having time to use the crude navigation program.

Finally
able to relax with the ship safe he sat back, took a deep breath shaking his head satisfied with himself. And then looked up. "Really that ship should have had another 15 minutes before it was even close to entering the atmosphere from the time the power went out. Shame on you." He said to whomever was giving him the test in a whisper. Not expecting them to hear him.  And then a few seconds later the next question that had come up that Jack had known the answer too immediately upon seeing it, disappeared before he could answer it. Jack sat looking around for a couple minutes.

Then the
test restarted with a vengeance as if someone had decided to punish him. A few minutes later he suddenly felt like it had been hours as more and  more of the questions jumped from subject to subject incomprehensively while forcing him to work to find the answers. Not that he did not know the answers most of the time but there just seemed not to be any rhyme or reason to the sequence of questions as they continued to get more complicated. Finally needing reference material he did not have. "Well. If you are going to cheat by giving me questions that can't be answered without books I may as well go home." A screen popped into life on the bulkhead next to him with a list of reference materials. "Ok." Making a face he reached out and touched the reference book he needed. And the screen changed to that book. "Ok, how about a scientific calculator while you are at it?" One appeared beside the test screen. "Damn. I should have had that 5 questions ago. Any other little goodies that will help me on this test?" Another list appeared on the other bulkhead to choose from. Jack glanced over it. "Well those should come in handy." And started taping the list.