Chapter 10

After a few days the Oxford sailed out alongside the CSS Tenzing Norgay which was going to bring the families along with us. Instead of exploring the galaxy as intended, the Norgay had been hastily reassigned as a lowly transport, largely because it was the only ship Demeter could lay its hands on for us. It could hold a small number of habitat pods and had ‘long legs’, which was all we needed.

Demeter shipyard topped us off with stores, including six new “war shots” for our limited armament. It felt rather daunting to be a fully operational ship, and it wasn’t until those were loaded that it finally felt real to me.

The month of FTL to get us to Truman was going to be tedious, and since the families were going with us I had decided to run the ship with a reduced crew and let some of them spend time with their families instead of being on the Oxford. To make it fair, I had us break the trip into two legs and the crew would switch off so everyone would get two weeks off. I insisted that I couldn’t be part of the rotation over the objections of the crew, but being Captain, there was no one to overrule me.

Running emergency drills with a reduced crew complement were interesting. Now there was no “first team” and “second team” for things. Almost everybody had to go every time. Not only was there cross training as Sergeant White took over in Engineering for the first leg, but everyone had to practice new roles for damage control and such. One thing that was annoying about it was that we had to send crewmen around the ship to close hatchways and throw levers when we went to and from condition Zebra, when before there were plenty of people spread to take care of that. I could have let the AI do it, but the practice was worthwhile.

When we weren’t running drills I would sit at my station and read from our library, or get into the medtube for some sleep training. I set drills a couple of times to coincide when I was in the medtube, out of it, and it was interesting to learn how they adjusted to having their captain unavailable. Ensign Hendricks did a good job of filling in for me when he had to.

After we dropped out of FTL on our approach to Truman, I recalled my “errant” crewmen and they transported aboard. We glided into the dock at the orbital naval facility and had the watch rotation start.

As soon as we exited the gangway it was obvious just how different Truman was going to be. We were met by a Colonel.

“I assume you’re in command of this traveling circus of space junk?” he asked, pointing at me.

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant Carl Jones, commanding the Oxford, at your service.” I was going to be on my best behavior. The rest of the crew just froze in place behind me.

“Can you explain to me what that graffiti is on your ship?”

“Graffiti, sir? I am unaware of any.”

“That penis painted on your ship. What the hell is that? And is that a goat on there?” he demanded.

“Perhaps the shipyard we left tried to play a joke on us, sir.”

Please, please let him NOT notice our shoulder patches!

“Well, you better have port operations clean up your crapfest out there. You are an embarrassment to us all with a ship looking like that!”

“I’ll get to that right away, sir!”

The Colonel stormed off. I looked over my shoulder at Ensign Williams and he rolled his eyes at me while the crew started giggling like schoolgirls. Thankfully they had been able to hold it in while the Colonel was here or there would have been hell to pay.

“OK, men, “I ordered, “let’s get the hell out of here before we get into more trouble!”

I wasn’t about to have Port Ops scrape that artwork off my ship, but I knew that if I ignored that Colonel’s demands it wouldn’t end well. I needed a plan.

“Hey Todd, come with me to Port Ops for a minute, will you?”

“Sure Pappy. What are we going to do?” he asked me, concerned.

“It’ll be all right. When I lean in to talk to some guy there, I need you to lean in right along with me. I don’t want anyone to see what we’re doing.”

“If you say so. Whatever you need.”

Todd and I strolled into the Port Ops office and there was a counter with an Ensign behind it. The guy looked eager, maybe in hopes of getting posted somewhere else more interesting. I walked up to the guy, putting on the best hangdog looking face I could muster.

“Hey, Ensign, could I ask you a favor?”

“Sure sir. What can I do for you?” I noticed his name was “T. Gordon.”

“Well, I’m kinda embarrassed about this.” I paused for effect and then leaned in as to whisper in his ear. Todd followed me right in, and between the two of us nobody could have understood what was going on.

“Well look, it’s like this. We have exhaust residue built up on our portside engine exhaust and the Colonel caught it. If I get dinged for a dirty exhaust port one more time I think the Colonel is going to get me relieved of my command. Can you help me out?”

Now this was as crazy a request as one could possibly make. Exhaust residue always built up in the nozzles, and every time you ran the ship at full power it all got blown out. He might not know that, however. To him, this would be an unheard of demand requiring hours of maintenance bot effort to delicately scrape the nozzles out without damaging them in the process. No other ship’s captain would have ever asked him to do this, so it probably sounded stupid, or perhaps worse, an effort to saddle him with busy work to no effective purpose as a trick.

With me, a lowly Lieutenant, making the demand, the Ensign could put on his “I’m better than you, but you get the fun jobs while you demand I do stupid crap for you” hat on and decided to light into me.

“Sir, there is NO FUCKING WAY I am going to waste my time doing stupid shit to make your ship look pretty when I have all this work around here that’s actually important. Now if you’ll stop wasting my time, how about you leave me alone so I can get to it!”

Perfect.

“Sorry about that Ensign. I just thought you could help me out” I apologized as we both left.

Todd looked at me inquisitively after we got out the door.

“An alibi. We just bought an alibi.” I smiled.

We walked towards where we would meet our families and came across a view port that showed the vast array of ships at this impressive facility. The Colonel must have watched us come in through a view port like this to see our nose art. There were maintenance bots flying all over the place and ships coming and going. It was far busier than Demeter ever was, that was for sure.

Then we met up with our families and headed to what would be our “permanent quarters” for as long as we were stationed here. I was hoping mightily that they would be the type of habitat pods we had grown accustomed to, as a lot of this facility had a very temporary, utilitarian look to it. The AI guided us through a maze of corridors that still had cables snaking across the walls and ceilings as motorized carts tried to navigate the crowds of people moving around. It had a decidedly low-rent vibe to it.

They actually put us all in pretty close proximity to each other, rather than sending the officers to one place and enlisted to another. I was relieved to see we were getting habitat pods instead of a stack of sandbags and told to make our own bunkers. From the looks of this base, that had seemed a possibility.

I pulled Sergeant White aside. “Hey Sergeant, hold off for a bit on building a replacement for the Sheep Pen. I want to see if we can find a place that doesn’t mean we have to traipse through your quarters to get together. I’ll let you know what I come up with, OK?”

“Sure Pappy, but we don’t mind.”

“Just sit a bit and let’s see what I can come up with.” White gave me a nod.

Susan and I got settled in and I let her go to town with the AI to reproduce the home we had back on Demeter. I decided to get the guys together and wander around our new environs and maybe figure out potential opportunities for locating a new Sheep Pen. I didn’t have to meet with ONI and check in there until the next day, so we had some time to kill.

We wandered a bit until Ensign Chandler stopped as if he had been stunned.

“Pappy, on your left.”

I looked that way wondering what had concerned him so much, but all I saw was this goofy cartoonish sailor guy on a sign that seemed vaguely familiar. It had a huge, deformed lower jaw and had some sort of a pipe clenched in his teeth, and on his over-muscled forearm was a tattoo of an anchor. I scanned around for potential threats trying to figure out what had Chandler so bothered, when Private Smith figured out the problem for me.

“Holy shit, Pappy. It’s Salty Jack’s.” Private Smith observed in amazement.

We all just stared at it for a moment.

Ensign Chandler broke our trance. “They fucking stole Popeye. The motherfuckers probably don’t even serve spinach.”

“What is a Popeye?” Private Smith wondered.

“I want to burn this place to the ground and salt the earth here. This is a sacrilege” Chandler vowed.

“No, no, no!” I pleaded. “We are not burning anything down! I will hold you all personally responsible if anything happens to this restaurant!”

Our informal tour of the base was not going well at all, now.

“Hey, do they deliver?” Private Smith said hopefully.

I shot daggers towards him with my eyes. “We are not going there, guys.”

“I haven’t had good seafood in a long time. Let’s check it out!” Sergeant White enthused.

I was mightily nervous about letting these guys within weapons range of a place called “Salty Jack’s” but they were curious, and honestly, I was a bit as well. I hadn’t seen anything like a restaurant since we had that nice lunch at the Civil Service joint on Demeter, and that was really quite a nice place.

There was a menu next to the door, and it had choices of fried fish of the day, fish and chips, fried shrimp, a seafood special and French fries. They claimed to actually cook food rather than utilize replicators and the odor of grease wafted out of the doorway.

Inside were almost identical leggy, well-endowed brunettes wearing a positively scandalous low-cut, curve-hugging sailor outfits with a skirt that obliterated any notion of modesty. Perched on their heads was one of those enlisted sailor hats, and on their feet were impossibly high heels. The place had a family restaurant feel and a scattering of customers sat at tables inside.

“Hi! I’m Natasha! Welcome to Salty Jack’s!”

The hostess was dressed differently, in a red blouse and a dark blue skirt, but as far as indecency went, she was fully in the competition with the servers inside.

“Uh, just looking for now, thanks” I said evasively.

Ensign Chandler considered her with curious interest. “Shouldn’t your name be Olive Oyl?” he asked.

The hostess looked confused. “Excuse me?

“Never mind, I was just curious” Chandler said, trying to back away.

“Our manager would be happy to answer any questions you have about Salty Jack’s. I can get him if you’d like!” Natasha offered. She waved off into the distance at someone.

With my luck the guy would probably show up armed with a stinger pistol.

I started grabbing guys to drag them off. “Thanks for your interest! If you’d like to fill out the customer survey card and sign up for our messages I’d be happy to bring you into our back room and...” she went on as I herded them all away.

“Pappy, what was that, some sort of franchise or chain restaurant?” Chandler wondered after we started walking away.

“I have no idea, but I think I found a new appreciation for replicator food” I answered.

There wasn’t much else that caught our interest as we walked around, but we did get a good sense of the layout of the base so we wouldn’t feel utterly lost without the AI guiding us somewhere. We discovered where the administrative and logistics offices were, and the Fleet Auxiliary had a corner dedicated to the few facilities they needed at Truman. We decided to pop in there and say hello.

We were greeted by a Staff Sergeant in a Fleet Auxiliary uniform when we came in. “You must be the guys who came in on that new ship this morning!”

“That would be us” my XO answered with a grin. “This is our CO Lieutenant Jones, and I’m Todd Williams, and these guys are the rest of the black sheep.” There were handshakes all around.

“Black sheep, huh? I guess it has something to do with those patches you all have.”

This prompted Sergeant White to dive into another impromptu a capella performance which prompted chuckles.

“Oh, you guys are just a breath of fresh air. This place is pretty uptight. We could use a little more of that around here!”

Sergeant White started grinning, and I just knew what he was thinking.

“Well, maybe we could help you out with that. If you’ve got a little unused sorta private space around here, we might be able to make your life here a little more pleasant” I offered.

“Hmmm.” he mused for a moment. “There isn’t much of that around here, but just maybe some things could get shifted around, and something could open up” he mused.

“Well, how about I let you and Sergeant White get together and you guys can work something out. C’mon the rest of you, I’m sure your families are about ready to ask the AI if it can assign Bo Peep to come looking for us” I joked.

We left the two NCOs to talk business and the rest of us headed back to our quarters.

When I got to my quarters I saw that Susan had made a lot of progress re-configuring the habitat pod so it looked pretty much like what we had back on Demeter. The wall colors in the living room were different, and here and there were some other changes, but my study was exactly as before.

“Hey there, honey” Susan happily welcomed me. “How has your day been?”

“Just fine. I think we are going to be able to establish a Sheep Pen in the Naval Auxiliary facilities so we won’t have to traipse through someone’s quarters to get there” I told her.

“Oh, that’s really good.”

“On the other hand, this place is wound a bit tighter than Demeter ever was, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if we’re going to have to adapt a bit. At least most of that is going to affect me and not the rest of you, but if they start coming down hard on me I’m going to have my work cut out for me trying to keep the BS level down for everyone.”

“Oh, that’s not good. Do you think they’ll make you take the patches off?” she asked.

The unauthorized patches of our unit crest we had added to our uniforms were a source of pride to the guys, and probably the most obvious demonstration of how we sometimes felt about rules and regulations. Since we hadn’t accomplished anything yet, we were vulnerable. Once we started getting some wins under our belts, we might start to get some slack.

Nobody ever bothered George Patton as he was traipsing around Europe wielding a pair of non-regulation ivory-handled revolvers, cavalry boots and other departures from the uniform standard, but he had been kicking so much butt nobody ever questioned it. Or at least if they did, he had earned the authority to tell them where to stick their complaints.

“I don’t know. The lower profile we keep for now, the less likely we’ll have problems.”

I went into my study to do a little research on what Truman had been up to and what was here. There was a nearby system with a useful planet in it named “Tulak”, where the Confederacy caught the Sa’arm in the midst of an invasion. We decided to fight them for it, and a series of pretty fierce ground and naval actions ensued. We learned a lot about the Sa’arm and our ability to fight them on and around Tulak, even testing out nuclear weapons to see what those could do for us.