Chapter 37: More Training

I stepped out into the hallway. Immediately someone shouted. “On your right!”

I turned to look and found an entire marine squad jogging down the passageway. They were carrying mock rifles above their heads as they rushed towards me.

The door to the railgun simulation room opened and Ashley darted past me. I grabbed her around the waist and spun her towards the wall as the squad pounded past.

“What was that?” Ashley asked.

“The marines are out training,” I said.

“So?” Ashley asked me. She turned in my arms and leaned into the passage trying to see the squad.

“I guess their sergeant believes in running,” I said. “I remember that we did a lot of that when we worked on physical fitness back on Earth.”

“We did,” Ashley said cheerfully. “But now the passage is clear. Where do we go?”

“Let’s check the bridge simulator and then stop and see Ensign Daniels before checking out the missile simulation room,” I said.

Ashley squirmed out of my arms. “I’ll beat you to the room!” she cried as she raced across the hallway to the bridge simulation room.

My blond concubine crossed the passageway and was only a couple feet from the door to the bridge room when she abruptly halted. She stood there watching the door as I walked down the hall to catch up to her.

“I almost did it again,” Ashley said quietly when I put an arm around her.

“What?” I asked as the door opened. As it did, we could hear someone talking in the room.

“Keep your movements smooth,” a voice that sounded like Blaine’s called out calmly. “The touch pad is very responsive, so you don’t have to jerk your finger around.”

“I’m too used to my old laptop’s pad,” someone grumbled.

“God, just trying to watch the screen makes me dizzy,” a cheerful female voice said.

“Quite Rory,” Blaine replied. “Michael here doesn’t need any more distractions.”

“Hey, I brought Tina,” Michael said. “I knew what I was getting into.”

I stepped into the room. Just as I was about to speak, Chastity called out. “Hey Captain!”

“No, keep your attention on the controls,” Blaine immediately said. “You just have one more gate and then we can end the simulation.”

Chastity ran over to meet me at the door. “Sorry, we knew you’d be working the other simulators so Blaine and I came up with a rather simple slalom course.”

“Just a number of turns to navigate around an imaginary system?” I asked.

“Yes, but you start in jump space. You have to handle the transition back to normal space and the simulation ends when you jump back out of the system. Honestly, we are totally cheating. The system is tiny and you can run the entire course in about fifteen minutes,” Chastity said.

“Blaine did it in twelve,” Terrence said as he walked over. He was accompanied by a middle-aged woman. She held onto him as he approached.

I nodded to Terrence. “So have you gone?” I asked.

The woman giggled girlishly as Terrence scowled. “I crashed. Early in the run you have to loop around an asteroid, and I mistimed igniting one of the engines. Turned right into the asteroid at full speed.”

“That’s why we train,” I said with a nod. “So we can learn the controls and grow comfortable with them.”

“Yes,” Terrence said as we turned to look at the screen. The picture was steady and a countdown timer appeared in the bottom right.

“Good,” Blaine said. “Now remember, keep your hands smooth as you bring up the jump drive. We aren’t going to feel the effects here, but the sleep trainer made it clear that a rough entry can cause vertigo and nausea.”

“I always thought vertigo naturally caused nausea,” I called out.

“From what I gleaned from the sleep trainer this can be quite a bit worse,” Blaine said.

The simulated picture of the ship shivered and then blanked out. Blaine looked at something on the helmsman console and smiled. “Well within accepted levels.”

“I so need a joystick,” Michael said.

“I know,” Terrence called out. “That touch pad is nice, but even the slightest bobble and you end up off course.”

“A joystick won’t prevent that,” I said. “But if Blaine agrees. We can look into how we might reconfigure the helm to fit what you would prefer.”

“Changes are permitted and many ships go with either a joystick or some sort of wheel,” the AI said.

“And we have an answer,” Ashley said with a giggle. “Nice to know that the AI is still listening.”

I looked over at Chastity. “Anything else I might need to know? I want to check engineering and I haven’t stopped by the missile simulator either.”

“There was a teenage girl here when I arrived. I heard her talking to someone through the comm, but she left before I could talk to her.”

I nodded. “That was Kelsey White. She transferred to us from the marines. She’s being trained to be the weapons officer.”

“Where did she go?” Blaine asked.

“I had all the railgun crew in the simulation room working on learning the controls. She joined us. In fact she should be running the training now,” I said.

Blaine nodded. “So tracking is the only position we don’t have filled?” he asked.

“I will do that for now,” Chastity said. “Its not ideal, but while we train we don’t really need communications.”

“But that means whoever we get won’t have training,” Terrence said worriedly as Blaine and Michael came over to join us.

Blaine was accompanied by a massive young woman. She was not quite as wide as she was tall, but no doctor would have smiled upon seeing her. She had a joyous smile on her face as she held his arm. Michael’s companion was an older woman who seemed listless and beaten down.

“Michael?” I asked as he joined the group.

He looked at me. I nodded to the woman following him and he sighed.

“Tina, no one here will hurt you,” he said firmly.

“How can you be sure? I was raped before,” Tina said.

“Did she have problems with pickups?” I asked.

Michael nodded. He had a frown on his face as he reached out and pulled Tina into his arms. She looked at the deck of the passageway as he hugged her from behind. “She hasn’t told me the whole story, but she lived near a military base somewhere on the East Coast. By chance she ended up inside six pickup fields in the first four months.”

“That’s impossible,” Terrence said.

“Not really,” I replied. “We know the Sa’arm needed warriors, so it is very likely that many early pickups would be near military bases in order to try to grab as many soldiers as possible. Heck, I was within one hundred yards of two in the first ten weeks or so after pickups started.”

“And four total in the first year,” Ashley chirped.

“Four?”

“No Ashley, it was five, not four,” I reminded her.

“Four!” She insisted. “The pizza place where you mom got picked up, the restaurant the day Jason tested, that noodle place in Japan and that one in the mall where you called the radio station afterward.”

“Five, have you forgotten the drug store? The one that had Becky completely panicked?” I asked.

Ashley paused and then put a hand over her mouth. “I did forget that one.”

“Who are you talking about?” Terrence asked.

“A friend,” Ashley said. “She lived with my mom for the last year. Both she and my mom found a man they cared for. He had the CAP to be picked up so they tried to stay near him.”

“What happened to her?” MIchael’s concubine said.

“She’s on this ship,” I said. “Her master was picked up at the same time I was, and Becky was with him. But her master is assigned to the marines.”

“One of the men I met?” Chastity asked.

I nodded. “Yes, Morgan was at the social you attended. And I note that you haven’t brought any of your concubines around.”

Chastity sighed. “I haven’t had an opportunity. I want to bring Jezame, but the woman is very timid. Kirk is too worshipful at the moment.”

Ashley sighed. I put an arm around my blond love. She just clung to me as I looked at Chastity.

“Thanks for handling the training here. How is everyone doing?” I asked Chastity.

“You should talk to Blaine. He took the lead in designing the scenario for today,” Chastity said pointing at the former athlete.

“Blaine?” I asked.

“It isn’t too complex. I asked the AI to put together a series of short navigation challenges. The first three for each of us will have five obstacles selected from a list of twelve. After that we’ll add two more obstacles. I figure that each of us will have time to run through six challenges before lunch,” Blaine said.