Battleship Destroyer (58 page)

Tapping on the screen in front of him.
"Ah training hours went up 1 percent."

The Captain took
a good swig finishing off her drink and smiled as she refilled it. "That was what the Exec told me yesterday. Issuing orders for the crew to use The Game when most of the crew saw no sense in playing a game they considered a useless waste of time. Simply because the peace time Navy was still using mostly time on duty in the real world for determining promotions and not ability and I don't blame them. Especially now with a war on and ships are short crewmen at only75% manning levels, so their jobs are keeping them busy. As the Exec and I found out when the few that complied with last week's orders were simply putting in the time with little effort. No, we are going to start getting the first of millions of Dirtbags out of the yearlong training camps starting next month, that will be lucky to have a few hundred hours of vacuum and weightless time under their belts. They are as likely to vomit on the equipment they have been trained to maintain as fix it and will barely know which end of the ship is the bow and need good officers while we are short on even bad officers for the crews we have now. It makes me sick."

The Captain leaned her chair b
ack to relax as she took a sip of her refilled drink. Savoring a long lost friend. "The only way to get the majority of crewmen to use the program efficiently was to make an example of someone. Luckily we had a damn good candidate aboard once I got his old game record. Not that we did not have the record already. What we did not have was his game name and like most of the recruits when they were signed on at boot camp, Mr. Turner used the new name we gave him. Though The Game seemed to know him somehow, it just didn't tell us. The Ensign provided me with his old Game Name and to my surprise he turns out to be the very person we have been looking for." Shaking her head. "Looking for, for the last fracking two years." Taking another sip she smiled as her First Officer looked at her baffled. "Mr. Turner is the designer of our new fleet Destroyers Number One. The ones being massed produced at the Earth system belt construction station for over a year now. Though the Admiralty moved the fixed rapid fire 8 inch guns into turrets and are stockpiling them on Mars because we don't have crews for more than a handful of them. I did manage to get a hundred of them as escorts for the Dwarfs since they refused to give me any battleships and a hundred more to patrol and close in defense of The Rock. Though with only 8 inch guns most consider them useless even with a good load of torpedo's and missiles as short ranged as they are even with a full load of external drop tanks. Which is why no one is in any particular hurry to activate and crew them with no evidence the enemy has anything small enough they think they can fight.  But now with Mr. Turner’s new Reaction Massless engines and dumping their drop tanks, they can out run our fastest scouts ships and look like they maybe powerful enough in groups to take on our battleships. Too bad even our battleships can't take on theirs at this time in a fair fight." Taking another swig. "We are not likely to get another chance to take on one of the enemy battleships at 36 to 1 again. Which means we are screwed unless we can get enough of those damn Destroyers and crews for them and even up grade them."

The ship's First Officer
stared at her shocked. "But Captain, you even said those Destroyers are untested in Combat. You can't bank the Republic's whole defense on them."

"Who said banking
, Number One? All the disposable Destroyers need to do is survive long enough running around the enemies rear areas shooting up their supply lines and stations to side track the enemy into breaking up into small enough fleets chasing them so our massed Battleship fleet can take on one at a time once we have built up enough of the New Battleships. Shaking her head as she took another sip of her drink and chuckled.  "We have been looking at all the engineering Colleges and ship companies trying to find the person that had designed the ship on The Game, with no luck and he just drops in by shear chance. No. A few days ago I had the Exec. change the protocols to signing our new recruits as well as old crewmen onto The Game to include asking them for all past names on any pervious programs they may have played as well as previous E-addresses and I would be disappointed if we do not find a lot more surprises."

The First Officer turned back to the terminal and tapped keys for a few minutes. "Damn sir. You know how to call it. There are all kinds of
experienced, The Game officers and even Captains popping up now. If this holds up on the rest of the Support and Battleship fleets, we have plenty of officers to bring us up to quota for the Battleship fleet and the new Dirtbag Recruits coming down the pipes."

Looking at the First Officer she had picked for this ship
only a few hours before they launched on this mission, mostly because she hoped with a little time as First Officer she could make him into a tolerable Captain, like she had done to her First officer on the Red Dwarf. She suddenly wondered if it was possible to take someone the game had made into a Captain and simply give him or her a ship. No it had taken her getting a stiff drink to hand over the ship to Mr. Turner just for target practice and stimulate The Game participation. She would turn back into a raving alcoholic if she made him a frigging Captain. "Yes Number One, though I had the best of the recruits that had enough Collage degrees to become officers, (even though Beu-Pers did not like their Colleges), assigned to the Transport fleet even if I had to make them Cooks. I am surprised that most of them turn out to have The Game time as well. I hope that we will find you are right.  Though I have a feeling that Admiral Binghamton is going to do something stupid before I can get back with the fleet upgrades.  If he does, the likely odds of the fleet surviving his battle with the enemy is incredibly small. History shows that the defenders in any new war have a grave disadvantage simply because they are fighting with old tactics and equipment the enemy knows all about and how to defeat them or they simply do not attack in the first place."

She took a big swig of her drink.
"No. My orders from Central Command were to find out what the enemies strengths and weaknesses are and survive long enough to get that information back to Earth and The Rock, so we could build a fleet to defeat them. I was planning on using the unaccredited Collage graduated crewmen after a lot of additional training to make up the cores of the crew Officers we were going to need if we managed to escape. We just lucked out that Mr. Turner showed up at just the right time with that engine of his or his grandfathers, to hopefully avoid a major but expected disaster." Chuckling as she shook her head. "And now has shown me how to take care of our Officer Training problem for the new stupid Dirtbag crews as well."

"Ok Captain. So this Mr. Turner i
s a poster child for The Game to train new officers. How far are you going to push him up the ladder before you dump his ass back down to where he belongs? He does not hit me as real Captain Material."

The Captain turned back around
leaning up toward her First Officer waving her drink in his direction thinking to herself. (Like you would know Captain Material if it shit on you!) Then out laud with a smile.  "As far as it takes Number One. Besides it does not look like I will have to do much pushing, if I can keep him from being afraid of his own shadow and freaking out when someone looks at him sideways. After all that was what the game was all about. I am still waiting to criticize him simply out of fear he will fall apart in front of the crew with his background of abuse. That could kill The Game for training Officers in an instant when it got back to Fleet Command Rock.  No. We are going to have to choreograph his first big mistake very carefully."

The Captain thought for a minute.  "No
, we have to be careful but we are going to push him until he is no longer useful to the cause while wringing everything out of him that is possible as far as new advanced technology goes. Including designing a NEW CRUISER TO TAKE ON THE ENEMYU BATTLESHIPS. Which is why we were looking for him in the first place. No. We can bury him in a research posting so he never gets near even a commanders posting on a ship.  Then, if we are lucky he will get himself killed in some glorious way making him a martyr for recruiting and The Training Game's cause before he could do something stupid. Having to court martial or demote him would not be good, in fact disastrous."

She turned and watch
ed Jack sitting in the Command chair working hard on the gun upgrades with carbon copies of his screens in front of her flashing pages and calculations and diagrams too fast for her to read any of them. Looking away because her eyes were starting to hurt she pinched the bridge of her nose. "But then getting him killed even as a martyr would be a waste and he is a good looking likable kid perfect for a Poster Boy and he just may be able to offer some more help in the equipment design department.  I could bury him in the old ship production factory in Earths Rings that is producing the new Destroyers, where he could do no real harm and still be handy when I need to drag him out again when The Game usage starts to slow down or we need someone to flash in front of the Press and Politicians while he works on new improvements for the fleet. That is if I can make a hero of him somehow. After all he did create our new propulsion engines. Though most inventors usually only have one good idea in them, but we will see. Mr. Turner has turned out to be a good organizer when it comes to scientific programs. But we can't let that stand in the way of promoting The Game. We already have a good organizer even if he is a lying creep if I need to use him. I will just have to wait and see how the game is going later on and if we have to, we can always make Mr. Turner a martyr."

"What
? Glorious deaths are hard to engineer Captain and leave traces and lead to inquiries."

"No
, not with an enemy that loves to kill. All we will have to do is send him out in a ship when we are done with him and have the need of a hero and the enemy will take care of that for us. Probably in one of the very Destroyers fresh off the production line to test against the real enemy. He will perform one last final service and tell us what alterations are needed to the ship if the first test battles go badly."

"What! You are going to make him a Captain of a ship? That is ridiculous Captain
ah, Admiral."

"No. Don't be jumping to ridiculous conclusions Number One. He only has to be on the ship of that class to die in battle to become the martyr we need. What rank he achieves is going to be up to him and his abilities. But then
you do have a good idea. Having a young The Game trained Captain is worth a ship's weight in gold for publicity, advertising, bond drives and recruitment. We could have millions across the planets enlisting when we make him a Captain in a year or two. Yes we are going to have to promote the shit out of that boy until most of our crews are on the Game each and every day. God, we are going to have the best trained crews in history right out of the yards."

"Now wait just one. If you
even make him a Commander let lone give him command of a ship without being qualified, they will burn your ass alive and burry you so deep you will never see the sun again. You won't get a chance to send any of those Destroyers into battle."

"Then you just be sure he is qualified Number One
if we need him. Besides, I am not sure we are going to need him to make even Lt. Commander. As you said, The Game is doing just fine, finally."

"And what about that Ensign that keeps tagging along and won't let him out of her s
ight. We or you have got to get rid of her or she will blow the whistle on you once he is buried or gets killed. Let me transfer her to another ship."

"Ah, No.
I am the one that ordered her to keep a close eye on him. She is no problem if she is with him. No. Fate seems to have thrown them back together for some reason anyway, so don’t' fight it. Go with the flow." The Captain was still worried about that damn Red flag on his file even though he had met the woman that had put it there and the Ensign was actually working out well even if she did have to ignore a few regulations. She suddenly realized it even made for a better story to the press. Ship mates trained together on The Game, fighting the good fight to the end. Smiling.  "I like it.  Besides I get the feeling that without her he would pretty much fall apart, even if he doesn't know it, she does." The Captain laughed shaking her head. "I assigned her to guard him simply because I needed her jacket to hide his uniform and someone to keep an eye on him while I was busy checking on him and arranging the meeting with the Admiral of the attack fleet. Then watched him fall apart until she stepped in and it became clear that she was an old ship mate and madly in love with him and he was without a clue. They are even sleeping in the same cabin without sleeping together. But then I have heard that most geniuses are socially stupid. Probably some moronic belief in chivalry or something. But then he may just be too afraid and immature to try and touch her even if she laid down naked in front of him with her legs spread. No. I think we need to keep those two together. If nothing else but for the entertainment." They both started laughing. Cutting jokes at Jack's and the Ensigns expense every few minutes.

Holding up the empty
liquor bottle she looked through its clear sides and shook her head. "Oops. Looks like I fell off the wagon." Throwing it at the First Officer where it shattered on the hatch. "That is what I get for not checking to make sure the Captains liquor cabinet was emptied before coming aboard this damn ship." It really wasn't a complaint.