Battleship Destroyer (17 page)

From then on all he had to do was ask and it was provided.
The call for dinner mess was sounded and he realized that it had been all afternoon and that he was starving. But being in the middle of a complicated problem he continued until he had finished and by then he had forgotten about dinner.

Then the test
really got complicated.

-------

Jack shuffled into the barracks compartment well after lights out. Beyond starving, his mind was total mush as he flopped into his bunk. Tom turned toward him. "Hey buddy. Where you been? Everyone else was back long before dinner. Was beginning to think they had dumped you out one of the airlocks. "

"Ya
, me too. Been testing. Did not even let me out to eat… but then I did not think to ask. Talking about stupid. How did you do?"

"
Well. I thought I was a good pilot but I did lousy on that part. I seemed to forget my own name let alone how to fly. Thank god they cut it off before I embarrassed myself too much. No, you where jerked out of line before me and I was only out an hour before I was back marching right up to chow time and then again after. At least you got out of all the marching but then you are the one looking like you were put through the wringer. You can go hit mid rats. It should start in another hour. I think this ship has midrats. Never heard of a ship that didn't while under way for the graveyard watch."

"Ya sure. Wake me in an hour ok." Jack was snoring seconds later. Tom followed a few minutes later
in spite his efforts to stay awake.

They were woke up at
0300 in the morning and the marching started all over again after a good half hour of calisthenics. They were given a half hour for breakfast at 0700. An hour class and then more marching around the huge 50 foot tall cargo deck that reached 5,000 feet from stem to stern and 500 feet from side hull to hull with a hundred barracks between the inner and out hulls down the sides. Room for well over 10,000 marines, or in this case recruits. After lunch they were introduced to their weapon. Old M-1 laser guns almost 200 years old. Museum monstrosities that weighed 10 pounds before attachments or power magazine.  After spending an hour learning how to field strip and clean them they went back to marching with breaks each hour to practice field striping their weapon before more marching. By 2200 (10:00 PM) that night they all collapsed into their bunks most too tired to talk, including Jack.

The next morning at 0300 it started all over again. Only instead of just marching with breaks to field strip their laser guns they started
precision drilling. After each meal they had classes for an hour on the differences in equipment and procedures between civilian ships and the navy as well as how to be good Navy personnel and the rules. Having dealt with the differences for years in the Battleship Game, Jack used that time to sleep with his eyes usually half open though he did get caught a few times earning himself pushups and slaps across the head to wake him up with demerits.

Working of
f the demerits was the worst.  It took an hour of guard or watch duty to work off one demerit and he seemed to trip over demerits every time he turned around. Guard or watch duty entailed watching something and waiting for something to happen and reacting properly. Usually for hours on end without breaks. Of course falling asleep was a big problem especially late at night staring at a screen full of boring numbers waiting for it to change certain parameters that required action or tell you to do something, earning more demerits and other punishments if you missed it. The common punishment for falling asleep was a horn, blast of gas, flame, water and even electrical shock. It was a psychological surprise punishment more than painful to teach the subconscious brain to stay awake no matter how tired the recruit was while on watch. The punishment would wake the dead and in only a few applications the recruits own subconscious would start making sure they did not sleep while on watch. The back of Jack's mind knew that could lead in the future to Post traumatic stress syndrome and the inability to sleep after leaving the service and that he would have to be deprogrammed someday as do all combat veterans but it did not even enter his thinking.

T
he company spent a lot of time just standing in formation looking at bulkheads while they waited to do something or the Chief needed to take a shit.  Which he took great pride in taking plenty of time to complete and telling the company all the exacting details and if a recruit did not correctly repeat those details when asked hell would descend upon the recruits and everyone around him or her heads, complete with demerits. You were required to notice and remember everything that went on around you.

With no time off on the weekend except to attend
Sunday morning church if the recruit wanted too. The training continued the second week with marching while the deck under their feet changed from normal gravity to several Gee's and down to 1/10 without warning and at unpredictable times. Drilling suddenly became extremely hard. With the formations usually falling over each other each time the Gravity changed during the first day. The second day saw much improvement with only a few recruits losing their balance and taking out whole sections of the company when the Gravity changed. Though it was starting to change so often that recruits were getting space sick making it even harder. The formations then had to drill through the mess laying on the deck and the legs of the surrounding recruits after chain reaction barfs.

A young girl tried to find Jack but she had not been allowed to access any information about other recruits. Even to find out what company he was in even though she really did not have the time to look him up. Though she
finally spotting him briefly in another company and got the company number off the flag all companies carried with them. She, as with all the recruits were not even given time to socialize in the mess deck with companies segregated and  Sergeants pushing them to finish and return to their barracks or drilling or classes with no time to even look around or anything else but eat.

The number of recruits suddenly started growing to being more than over crowded by the time she and Jack were halfway
through training even though graduates were being shipped out weekly.  Spacers knew what silent dead planetary and military base Comm Stations meant in reality and not the lies the Government was telling the populace as well as the ships that were disappearing in that section of space. By Jacks 3rd week of training The Botany Bay was turning down recruits for only the best as soon as it landed in space ports without having to run adds or pay hookers any longer and the company sizes were being doubled with double bunked racks added to the barracks for new recruits as some graduates were turned right around and made drill instructor Sargent's.

After
finally getting used to marching in varying gravities without falling down or barfing, they were introduced into the obstacle course on the next cargo deck up with a minimum time for each recruit to make it through from one end of the ship to the other before graduation. Jack did not think he would ever make it in the specified time, even if he had 10 weeks to train on it. His body seemed to have two left feet and spaghetti muscles. Though he was glad to see that he was not alone.

The forth
week saw the introduction of the old Mk. 3 Armored ship's Crew Suit (ACS). Armored being a relative term. The close fitting quarter inch think armor was not for weapons protection but simply the ability to survive concussive explosions, fire and jagged mettle during and after battle damage.  It would keep you alive long after a civilian pressure suit had given up the ghost. Jack found it interesting that the suit looked so much like the suit in the Battleship Game he had been playing for years though a lot bulkier and primitive. The biggest difference being that he was actually having to wear it with all the aches and pains associated with it rubbing in all the wrong places of real life. Putting it on proved difficult at first, having to pull or shove the actual parts on as he crawled into it instead of just sliding into a simulation.  Maintaining it in real life proved harder as well with pieces not fitting together as easily as in the Battleship Game. Though most recruits with experience in The Game like Jack, after a couple of hours to learn the real life eccentricities, they seemed to have no problem with the suit knowing how to maintain and wear it like they had been doing it for years. Though everyone had to learn how to walk in it like babies taking their first steps with the mass and other aspects of a real suit impossible to simulate exactly though again Jack was able to get the hang of it faster than most.

Week 5
had them on the firing range for the first time as the classes also started introducing new weapons for defending the ship.

Week 6
actually had them on the 3rd deck up, logging into Naval Ship Combat Simulators (NCS), that resembled an old game module sold across human space for decades but was 10 times more sophisticated.  They were issued Navy personal names and Id's for the simulator and told not to forget them. The first time in the Simulator Jack could not help feeling a little strange. It was like The Battleship Game except by wearing the Combat Suit as he plugged into the NCS, the feedback the suit offered made it feel even more real than anything his old game console with only a video audio helmet, glove, body sensors and a few cheap grav coils could ever provide.

Jack opened
the suits visor and looked down the row of a hundred suits lined up down the bulkheads on both sides of the compartment. Shook his head and lowered the visor again. He found himself in a ship’s compartment as it shook violently. He was surrounded by lines of Combat Suits, but the NCS's were no longer there against the bulkhead of the large 50 foot wide hundred foot long compartment.  Punching up the tactical display, he realized that the ship had been boarded and hundreds of enemy troops were headed their way. Without thinking he raised his arms finding the M-1 laser gun in them. Turning he looked around seeing his company lined up and down the bulkheads along both sides of the compartment like he had seen them only moments before with his visor open. The Ship shook again and still no one moved as they started talking to each other trying to figure out what was going on. Finally with a hit big enough to shove most of them around, they started milling around clumping into small groups. No drill instructors were around while the recruit commander and squad leaders simply milled around with the rest.

Looking down he checked to see what equipment he had attached to his suit and smiled with satisfaction. "Not bad." Turning around he saw a hatch in the bulkhead. Going over to it he
stepped through and pulled a cutting torch off of his belt and cut a quick firing port through the small compartment's bulkhead into the big compartment. Sighting through it, a suit came over to the hatch.

"What are
you doing?" Jack realized it was Tom as the suit picked his own torch off his belt and looked at it as more suits showed up.

Jack looked up at them without speaking for a few seconds then shook his head.
It was so much like The Game. "Start cutting holes like this down the bulkhead of the compartment so you can fire your weapon out of them." Checking his tactical again.

His squad leader came up. "What are you
doing? We have not been ordered to do anything Turner."

Jack stood up from cutting another hole in the bulkhead waist high. "Use your tactical
Corporal. We have enemy troops headed this way and shit is going to hit that main compartment hatch in about a minute. If we don't have cover and a way to fight back we are all going to die."

"But we have not been given orders yet to do anything." He said stubbornly as his fingers started tapping his
forearm to access the tactical display in the suit.

"Well we have not been given orders not to have we?"

"No but well, I guess it would not hurt." Turning around to the rest of the squad. "Ok guys let's get ready." Starting out the hatch. "I better tell the Company commander what we are doing."

"Sorry
Corporal but it is too late. Use your comm." Jack grabbed him and pulled him back into the compartment so the rest of the squad could get in as they started cutting holes themselves.

The
hatch on the far end of the main compartment blew and in rushed a horde of enemy troops. As soon as the hatch went down Jack started firing his M-1 on full auto through the slit he had cut in the bulkhead. The rest of the squad joined in as they finished their slits while the rest of the company started falling dead where they stood or after taking a few steps looking for cover or trying to figure out what to do. The main compartment quickly filled with smoke as enemy bodies started piling up at the far end of the compartment. Few of the surviving recruits spread around the compartment diving for cover, even thought about raising their weapons to fight back for a good half minute if they did at all but then with Jack's squad providing covering fire delaying the onslaught, more and more started bringing up their weapons returning fire.

The enemy bodies piling up at the end hatch
started slowing down. The squad’s mass fire taking its toll cutting the enemy fire to a trickle. Looking around the main compartment as he changed a dead magazine Jack could see most of the company was down with a few scattered around, firing back as best as they could. Then Jack spotted a group in the corner across from them hunkering down behind the bodies of the squad that had been between them and the enemy coming through the hatch on the other end.