Chapter 43: Are We Ready?

The next morning when I woke I found that I could not remember if I had managed to have fun at the party or not. The appearance of Captain Prescott had left a bit of a cloud over my emotions. Matti was worse off. Once I entered the banquet room she had rushed over to my side and clung to me as I circulated the crowd.

My crew seemed subdued during the party. Several did come up to me to talk, but I noticed a strange look in their eyes. It was as if the argument in the hallway had revealed something that they could not quite wrap their minds around. I worried about it during the party.

There was no time to look deeper into how my public dispute with Captain Prescott was going to affect my crew. Sergeant Griffith had been clear when he said that the AI was watching the success of the training I was conducting, and when I met with my officers the next morning we all agreed that we had to increase the intensity and pace of the sessions.

The first thing I discovered was that this made my fourteen hour days into nineteen hour days. Where I used to have time to wake up and perhaps even enjoy a leisurely coupling session with one of my ladies. I was now being dragged out of bed and thrown into the shower by my ladies before rushing to my personal sleep trainer to try to get in a couple sessions before heading to the simulators.

I even found that I got to spend very little time in the engine, missile or railgun simulator rooms. Instead, Chaz, Warren and Kelsey handled those rooms while I sat in the captain’s chair and ran simulations as if I was in command. We were linking two and sometimes all three rooms with the helm simulations in elaborate war games.

Of course, this proved to add new difficulties. We only had one of each simulation station which meant that either we repeated the same simulation multiple times and allowed the crew who sat out the first time to go in with some foreknowledge of the scenario, or we had to come up with multiple possible problems. It left the crew frustrated as we added every possible situation and battle condition early and then expected them to recover from their surprise.

Everyone was fighting with stress. This was not improved in the first seven days after the party. Captain Prescott apparently decided to see if he could undermine my authority by having his crew stand outside the simulators and gossip about how easy their training was and how well they were doing in the sleep training simulations. This had continued for several days until a brawl finally broke out. Ensign Daniels and I were quick to break it up and issue punishments for our crew, but Captain Prescott’s reaction was to demand that we treble the punishment on my crew while not punishing his crew at all.

The AI refused to accept his demand that my men suffer additional punishment, but other than announcing that loitering outside the simulators would no longer be permitted took no action to punish Captain Prescott’s crewmen.

My crew was more than a little bitter at the injustice. I worried that night that their reaction would cause the intensity of the training to fall, but they surprised me by working even harder the next day. We could not get everyone into a simulator at the same time, but the scenarios we were running were now far more advanced than we had been doing before the party.

Finally the AI announced that we would be arriving at Crucibleat in two days. This occurred just as a simulation came to an end. Blaine was at the helm and sighed.

“You know, I’m really hoping that we don’t have as many emergencies once we board Corsica,” he said.

I had called up a small holographic screen to review the simulation results. Brad and Anders had been the missile team and there had been a noticeable delay in the loading and priming of the second missile we used in the simulation. “I want us ready for any emergencies,” I replied. “And good job.”

“He always does a good job,” Blaine’s concubine Betsy cooed as she ran over to put her arms around his neck.

I could hear the alternate helmsmen Terrence and Michael cough as I activated the communication system to the other simulation rooms.

“Everyone,” I called out. “I want to thank you for an excellent series of simulations. We still have things to work on, but we’ve come a long way in just four weeks. Crew can head home early today. Officers, if you can come to the bridge simulator I want to talk about how to handle the last two days before we arrive at Crucibleat.”

Terrence groaned as he started to slowly walk to the exit of the simulation room. “More drills. I’m so sick of drills.”

“Sweat more now so we bleed less later,” Blaine said. “That’s what my father once told me when I wanted to quit practicing one summer.”

“We’ll see,” I said as Lenore stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. She had been kneeling next to me during the simulation. Now my lovely concubine put her arms around my chest as she leaned over to kiss my cheek.

“You need to relax, master,” she whispered.

Terrence started laughing. “Oh, you don’t have to remind me, B-dog. I already can see just how much all of the training should help. Even two weeks ago I couldn’t have imagined some of the scenarios we have run.”

“You tend to crash into things,” Michael said as he started to walk to the door.

“I haven’t run into anything in days,” Terrence said. “But tonight, I want to run around my pod chasing Mary. I’ve been getting home too tired to really play.”

“Enjoy,” I called out as the door opened. Ensign Daniels walked in, nearly running over Terrence.

“Sorry,” he said to Terrence as he walked over to stand at the tracking station.

“I should get going,” Michael muttered. “Blaine, can I call you later. I want your thoughts on my last run.”

Blaine had to lift Betsy from his lap as he stood up. “You need to learn to turn right,” he replied. “You do it fine when we are out of combat, but in combat you have a habit of turning left every time you evade. You can hear Ensign White get frustrated that you do that.”

“She does?” Michael asked.

“What do I do?” we all heard the woman in question ask from the doorway.

I spun the captain’s chair around to see my last two officers standing and gazing at the crowd. Ensign Munfree had a smirk on her face. She was clearly looking at Michael as Ensign White shook her head.

“Sorry, but all I heard was you can hear me get frustrated,” she said. “Now what were you talking about.”

“About Michael’s habit of always evading by turning to the left,” Betsy said in a happy squeal.

I heard flesh meet flesh and turned to see that Blaine had slapped his forehead. “Of all the times for Betsy’s mind to work,” he muttered. His voice was full of affectionate amusement.

I could see Michael wince, but Kelsey started laughing. “Oh, that! It is frustrating mostly because its always a hard turn and we end up facing in a completely different direction. There have been a couple of times that I’d just selected a different enemy to target.”

“So its not that bad?” Michael asked.

“It’s a problem,” I said. “We’ll have to work with you to get the habit under control. I know Blaine prefers to use vectored thrust to push the entire ship left or right while maintaining course. Terrence seems to prefer to perform barrel rolls.”

“They make sense to me,” Terrence said. “And the sleep trainer made it clear that the artificial gravity in the ship would prevent us from feeling the effects of inverting the ship for long periods.”

“What?” Michael asked.

“The ship isn’t heavy enough to generate natural gravity. We can stand on the deck because of some energy projection system the aliens provide. It means that no matter what position the ship is in, we always feel that the deck is down,” I said. “So if we flip Corsica upside down, we won’t notice.”

“Makes barrel rolls much safer to perform,” Terrence said.

“They can mess up my aim,” Ensign White said. “But they aren’t hard to recover from. But we’ll have to test that in a real ship.”

“Which we’ll have in three days according to the AI,” I said. “So I need to have a staff meeting with the officers.”

Blaine nodded. The former quarterback grabbed his concubine and started pushing her towards the door to the simulator. “We’ll get out of your hair then. Terrence, Michael, get out of here.”

All three helmsmen headed out of the room. Betsy struggled enough to manage to turn and wave just before the door closed leaving me with my officers and Lenore.

“Two days,” I said with a sigh. “Level with me. Are we ready?”

“No,” all three of my officers said.

I nodded. “I thought the same. Let me hear why. Ensign White, you have been working with both the missile and railgun teams, but primarily with the missile teams the last week. What is the problem there?”

“We have two good teams who are ready,” she said in reply. “Morgase and Ingrid are the best we have. They are fast on loading and never miss a change command. The only problem is that the men tend to want to give the orders. Brent and William are almost as good, and Brent is showing signs of being a good team leader, but they can’t handle the more complex warheads at all.”

“Why not?” Ensign Munfree asked.

“Brent likes to take shortcuts and he just isn’t disciplined enough to go through the multiple step process of properly priming some of the warheads. He’s great on the simple ones, but some of them have more steps than he seems able to remember.”

“Is that true on the other teams?” I asked.

“Morgase and Ingrid are fine with the complex ones and reasonably fast, but can make mistakes. The most accurate team is Hank and David, but they are very slow. Both men wear wristbands like a college or pro quarterback would use with the list of steps for each warhead and missile body. They use those as reference sheets to make sure they never make a mistake,” Ensign White replied.

“Hopefully more repetition will increase their speed. That leaves one team. Brad and Anders right?” I asked.

“And if I had a choice, we’d lose Brad. Anders isn’t very good, but a lot of that is confidence. If he could wear a wristband I think he’d work out, but Brad is impossible. He constantly tries to compete with the other teams on speed, but cares nothing for accuracy. I’ve had him mess up the two-step process of attaching the standard explosive warhead to a missile. If that happens on Corsica, it could blow up in the tube,” Ensign White said.

“And right now I don’t think we have any spares or way to swap him out,” I said bitterly.

“There are no alternate crew available,” the AI called out. “Do you wish to note that you have a crewman you need swapped out?”

“Kels?” Ensign Munfree asked. “Can we move him elsewhere?”

“Do you think he’d work on a rail gun?” Ensign White replied.

“He’d disrupt the teams we have,” Ensign Munfree said with a sigh. “And Robert would probably kill him. He already wants to drown Leonard and Casey.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Leonard is the tech on Robert’s team. The man is dependable, but can never seem to handle more than two launches before he goes into a bit of a mental fugue. I’m not sure why, but I do know that Robert isn’t happy with having to constantly get him to snap out of it. Casey is the lead on the team for the starboard gun. He’s overly critical of his men. He also doesn’t communicate well,” Ensign Munfree said.

“Should we move him out and others up?” I asked.

“Won’t work,” Ensign White said. “Roger will probably be ready in six months, but for now he’s feeling overwhelmed.”

“Can we trust our guns?” I asked.

“Not in an extended fight, but short quick battles should be fine for now,” Ensign White said. “I’m more worried about the lack of a tracking officer. Chaz has done wonders learning that role as well as communications, but we need someone dedicated to it.”

“Should I do more?” I asked.

“No,” Ensign Daniels said. “One thing I can say and I believe both Chaz and Kels will agree, is that you already are doing too much as Captain.”

“I sit in a chair,” I said.

“And try to think of what to do next while we handle your current orders,” Ensign Daniels said. “Even my people have noticed that you anticipate the simulations.”

“And before you protest that you help write them,” Ensign Munfree interrupted. “Everyone has heard how you have generated multiple randomizers into the simulations. You only decide how many of each type of situation will occur, not when, where, or in what order.”

“And your voice can be calming,” Ensign Daniels said.

“Easy to be calm when you sit in a chair knowing you are totally safe,” I said. “I do want to do well, but no one gets hurt in a computer simulation. And how are the engine crews?”

“They haven’t seen a live engine,” Ensign Daniels said. “And none of them were engineers before we were picked up. Some of them are picking up things quickly, but they are going to make mistakes. I want at least a week of just running around the Crucibleat system so they can get used to adjusting a live engine.”

I nodded again. “I understand, and I expect that we will have a couple of days at least. But I haven’t received any kind of guidance regarding our orders.”

“None?” I heard both of my lady officers ask.

“We know that Crucibleat is going to be a marine training station,” I said. “From what little the AI has told me Corsica and Ipanema are primarily supposed to be scouts, checking the star systems close to Crucibleat and tracking any expansions made by the Sa’arm.”

“So who would issue commands to us?” Ensign Daniels asked.

“I expect that we’ll be officially attached to a fleet headquarters in a nearby system. But that our official orders will have us on detached duty and using the commandant of the training station as our official liaison,” I said.