Chapter 22: A Week of Work

Jade and Bryn pounced on me as soon as the door to my home opened. They dragged me inside and quickly had me on the bed as they worshipped my body. It kept me from immediately asking the AI for information on potential crew and they refused to halt until I slipped into a dreamless sleep.

The next several days turned into a medley of meetings, simulation sessions and fleeting moments to caress and cuddle with my ladies. They did everything they could to stay out of my way while I tried to build the nucleus of a solid crew, but also to support me whenever it was possible. I rarely held a meeting without one or both waiting on me and massaging my back and shoulders as I spoke about various elements of the ship’s crew.

Getting a crew organized was proving to be frustrating for everyone. I had a relatively solid bridge team, although my worries about the helm position was proving to be prophetic. Elsa was solid, but very unimaginative. She would quickly and accurately respond to my commands, but in the six simulations she participated in she never offered an opinion or suggestion. She piloted the ship and that was all she wanted to do. Her counterparts were far more involved, as both DeMarcus and David would ask questions and try to better interpret what they were seeing in their displays. DeMarcus also liked to flirt with Tilly and Este, which frustrated both ladies a little as they were struggling to ride herd on the fractious mob that was the gunners.

That was proving to be the worst part of the job. The combined pickups from a basketball camp and several gaming tournaments had provided nearly one hundred potential gunners. Este was happy to rotate recruits through the simulations trying to find people who could follow orders while excelling at operating the temperamental weapons. It seemed that every simulation found one or two more gunners with the skills, but putting together teams was difficult. Several of the athletes hated listening to the gamers. Worse, there were several female recruits who berated the male gunners when conflicts over positioning occurred. This always resulted in the ship taking simulated damage.

Tilly, Este and I ended up holding a regular meeting that would start about forty minutes after every simulation. At first it was immediately after, but I found that talking with my other officers and crew was too important to delay, and the pause allowed everyone to calm down a bit after a particularly nasty argument during a simulation.

This meeting was usually held in my pod, but after six days where I never left the pod, I decided that it was time to change things. The AI had informed me that there were a couple of lounges near the center of the ship, and one had a small meeting room that could be made private. So, as we completed another simulation, I pressed a button on the command chair that would send out an alert ping to everyone.

“Crew, and prospective crew,” I began. “I’d like to thank you all for another simulation where we completed all objectives. It still is not flawless, but there has been considerable improvement. Some of you know what you did wrong. If that is true, please try to find time to undertake training to help you eliminate those errors. Now, does anyone have any comments or concerns?”

David had been working at the helmsman for this simulation and surprised me by speaking up. “I have a question for the gunners. When we approached the second ship, I had to turn the nose toward the ship to accelerate and build up the vector. I noticed that the fire headed towards the ship dropped. Should I have held the nose more to the left, even if that slowed down our approach?”

Este immediately responded. “It wasn’t the best angle of approach, but part of the problem was that we had two teams get crossed up and head to the same part of the grid simultaneously. I won’t say that keeping the nose a bit more to the left wouldn’t have helped, but we also can’t have thirty gunballs trying to fit into the front third of the grid like they all did.”

“That was on me,” I heard a gruff voice respond. “I heard the calls, but mixed up which team I was leading and joined the move to the front. We were supposed to swing to the backside and help clear the reinforcements that had just appeared from behind the moon.”

“I should have made sure you had the right callback,” Tilly said. “We also need to be careful about crosstalk. Once again for all gunners, make sure you complete every transmission by saying ‘over’”

“Why over?” I heard another voice asked.

“It makes it clear to all listeners that you are finished. If you wait for someone to say over before speaking it reduces the chance of crosstalk. Its also why we’ve tried to remind everyone that you need to run two comm channels. One for your gunball team, and one that you mostly listen to for the ship commands. Only the team captains should be responding on that channel,” a female voice that I recognized as one of Este’s prospective team leads said.

“Please,” Tilly said. “I’m already having to try to monitor all gunball comms and when you start crosstalking on the ship channel it makes a mistake like what Charles did likely. I didn’t even realize he had responded to the wrong instructions until the Captain asked where her clearing team was.”

“And can we please start communicating repair needs on the repair channel,” Luther grumbled out. “This is both for any gunball that wants to return to the bay for immediate repairs and anything involving grid damage or a stuck gunball. I do have one person who tries to monitor the channels so we can try to anticipate calls, but there is no way we can provide clear guidance when there are ten people using a channel to coordinate their fire.”

“Did that happen again?” I asked.

“Team four, gunball three just showed up at the stern elevator without warning,” Luther said. “Not only did we not expect him, but we were trying to bring down another gunball with damaged atmosphere seals. It could have been a major problem if he hadn’t noticed that the elevator was descending. But he stopped with about a third of his gunball hanging out over the opening.”