Battleship Destroyer (19 page)

At the end of Ten weeks, Jack and Tom stood at attention with thousands of other recruits in the huge cargo deck that had served as a parade, calisthenics and marching ground between planets for the last nine weeks as the Captain of the training ship welcomed them to the United Planets Navy and then dismissed them. For the first time since they had boarded the training ship Botany Bay they were allowed to go most anyplace they wanted to without being in a company or squad and marching, even to eat chow when they wanted to during the designated hours that is. They headed around the ship for the hell of it, just because they could before going back to their barracks to find out what their assignments were. Jack found himself looking for someone without thinking though he could not remember who or why when he thought about it. Neither noticed being followed as a young woman tried to catch up to them. But the crowd of thousands of graduates suddenly able to go where they wanted made it impossible for anyone to follow anyone and the gal soon lost Jack in the crowd as she was swept away by her fellow recruits wanting to celebrate.

In their barracks compartment Jack noticed that a
ll of his company had various assignments on the new Battle ships just coming off the production lines at the battle fleets production yard station they were due to ship out for the next day. The Company listed dozens of officers amongst them included a couple of pilots and even the company commander turned out to be a captain. All had assignments except Jack. All the screen said under his name was to report to the Classification Center when convenient. Turning to Tom baffled. "Maybe it is a computer error?" Tom said.

Jack
was escorted to an office deep into officer’s country on one of the top decks of the ship. The woman behind the desk looked up as he entered, returning his salute she smiled. "Turner, please take a seat. I am so glad to meet you."

Jack sat down in the seat in front of her desk. "Why don't I have an assignment as a pilot
sir?"

"That is the problem Spaceman
Turner. We just do not know what to do with you." She watched Jacks stone face turn baffled. "If it was simply your lack of education we could cope but it is just so many things that do not make any sense to us."

"What do you mean lack of education
. I have 3 doctorates along with half a dozen bachelor degrees. I would have had another doctorate and a bachelor's degree in sub-atomic mass particles by now if I was still back home on the Turner Joy."

"Sorry Mr. Turner but all your
diplomas are not worth the paper they are printed on. None of the Colleges you have them through are accredited with even the transport commission let alone the Navy.  Which is another of our dilemmas. Why would you spend so much time and effort at online universities that the transport commission would not recognize even for approving Officer certifications let alone the more sophisticated pilot criteria's you needed for the posting you wanted? Especially when certified accredited universities are readily available even if they do cost more."

"What the hell sir!" Jack's mouth opened as he tried to say something but failed.
Finally.  "My. Ah. My parents arranged the courses for me. Or should I say they gave me a list and I picked the ones I wanted. But they picked the Colleges. I didn't think it mattered what schools as long as they had what I wanted." Jack shook his head as he bit his lip and a tear trickled down his cheek. "I… I... that makes sense though. That is why dad never talked about me being a ship's officer and Pop kept adding to my lessons. They knew I couldn't but why?  Am I as stupid as they kept saying I am?   Is that why the courses were so easy because they were junk to keep an idiot busy. Why dad was talking that last night about making me a Petty Officer and my brother wanted to keep me a crewman."

"I do not know what your parents thought
Turner. That is part of the dilemma. You have an I.Q that is off the chart and an unusually adept understanding of the subjects your junk diplomas are in. Fact is you understand far too much for what the courses taught. We keep records on all the schools for accreditation purposes and your Colleges do not even teach a fraction of what you know. We cannot understand why. We contacted your parents but did not get much information from them except that they believed the old junk science crap that said Neutron babies die short horrible deaths before they are 6 years old, along with a few other misconceptions we will not go into."

"
I am going to Die before I am 6?" Jack's mouth dropped open as he looked down at the deck shocked.

"No Mr. Turner.
They actually thought originally you would die before you were 3 and then 6 and then just extended that year to year. Only the severely deformed die young and you are not deformed even if your genetic makeup is a little different as is quite a few Tramp ship recruits. Another one from your ship in fact." With Jacks baffled look. "Your DNA has a few twisted normally dormant genes that seemed to have been activated that we do not understand but you are 100% human. What we are trying to figure out is how you knew what to study as well as how you accessed the advance information to go so much farther than what your anemic courses taught. We cannot find any emails or letters to instructors that could have pointed you in the directions you went as well as the material to get were you got. We have even asked every professor and scientist in the Republic that have the knowledge you have (over 10,000 of them), if they even know you somehow and while most of them say the name Turner is familiar, none of them have ever heard of you. Only the top accredited universities had the materials you needed and they are very tight about who they give it to. Yet you not only got the material but knew what to study out of all the crap that was worthless." She looked at Jack for a few seconds. "Did you have an instructor on the Turner Joy that pointed you in the right direction? Gave you the advanced material? Told you what the books don't? Answer your questions?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders as he looked down frowning.
"Well yes I guess so. Pop would spend hours talking about astrophysics and any other subject someone mentioned or he noticed that I was working on. Giving me additional reading material and computer programs to do. I think he was a professor at some little collage a long time ago. He kept giving me books and grading my papers and telling me to do it again even after I got passing grades from the collage. Not to mention all the time we were arguing when he disagreed with what the coarse said."

"Pop? You mentioned Pop before
as have others from your ship. What or who is Pop?"

"My Grandfather,
George Phaph Turner Senior mam. We always call him Pop. Why? I don't know. At two hundred years old he can pretty much do as he wants. But then we are not supposed to talk about him off the ship. I think Pop is running from something in his past but who would care about a two hundred year old man who has trouble remembering what planet he is on."

She started typing into her comput
er. Her fingers racing over the glass top. "Oh yes. My god! He is still alive?" Her eyes grew big. "Your grandfather was the Chief Scientist and inventor of the drives we use in our ships. My god! You had him for a professor." She sat back staring at him for a good minute talking to herself. Finally shook her head and smiled. "He disappeared 30 years ago according to the Encyclopedia Galactic after buying a Transport ship to run cargo and study neutron stars. It is a damn shame your schools were not accredited. I could have bumped you up to the Propulsion Institution of Earth for your grandfather alone even without your other scores. But then your scores guaranty you would have went."

Taking a deep breath she sighed
shaking her head sadly. "Now you need to decide what you want to do. I can give you the rank of Chief enlisted none commissioned officer and your choice of postings." Tapping her key pad, a screen appeared in front of Jack with lists on it.

"What the hell. I sign
ed up to be a pilot on a Battleship and I don’t' want anything else." He spoke up stubbornly. "Well maybe a Fighter Pilot."

She looked at Jack sadly. "I am sorry if I did not make
myself perfectly clear. You have no accredited degrees. You cannot be an officer or a pilot of even a life boat."

"What the hell! I have been flying shuttl
es and transport boats for a decade. Between planets as well as reentering the atmosphere and making orbit."

"Not legally you
haven't'." She shook her head sadly staring at him as he stared back for several seconds but finally his shoulders slumped and he sat back looking down at the deck tears flooding down his cheeks. She finally went back to typing for a few seconds as she talked to herself again and then looked up with a smile. "Tell you what. I can give you credit for all your basic courses and some of your advance courses as upper basics or intermediates in the accredited universities." As he looked up baffled, wiping his eyes, she continued to type. "That means you can have most of your bachelor degrees back and they will be worth something in about a year with your doctorates after that if you work hard which I know you can do. You may even get away with simply submitting your doctorate theses from before if they are any good since the original schools were not accredited." Jack just continued to stare at her as her fingers ran across her desk. "I have enrolled you into the service's toughest academic university. One famous for eating students and spitting them out as raw meat. Only 20 % ever graduate in the correspondence program. The university your grandfather attended in person and graduated with honors and was a professor at and you should have been attending all along and at Governments expense. I have given you all the courses you will need to get your degrees back plus a few extras that will do you a world of good as well as the Navy. You get your bachelors and we will make you an officer where you can earn your basic pilots license. When you get your doctorates in engineering and Astro Physics, we will put you in starship pilot training for battleships if you won't let us send you to design new engines and weapons."

But until then you have t
o serve as a Chief tech. You have the training for that at least. That is the best I can do...” She touched her ear phone listening for a good half minute face going through several transformations, making a few comments as if Jack was not there. "He did what in The Game?" She listened for another minute and then. "Let me get this straight, if command was dumped on him in the middle of a battle he usually won the battle even if it was hopeless to begin with, but if he was given command to start with he would try doing everything himself without giving orders until he died and his men got slaughtered That does not make sense…"

She started going
through screens scanning them almost too fast to read as she continued to talk to her self under her breath. After a good 5 minutes she sat back and took a deep breath and took over where she had left off. "But maybe it does. If he had to retreat into The Game some Ten years ago then that is where he grew up while he shut down in the real world to protect himself from the verbal abuse his ship mates reported and shows psychological signs of. If you give him command while he is out of The Game he is still a boy, if shit hits the fan while he is already in the game giving him command, he does great. It fits." Finally she shook her head with a frown before smiling as she looked at Jack while listening for another minute before continuing.  "Now Jack; there is a problem concerning the rank of Chief now that we think about it. You have demonstrated no command authority during basic training outside the game even though they tried dozens of times to give you, (along with everyone else), the opportunity to command, to show us your abilities. Each time you have done everything to avoid telling or asking anyone to do anything while shutting down completely around groups."  You could not command a dog if your life depended upon it. At least until you mature. That will just take time. If we are lucky things will fall into place about the same time next year when you finish your degrees. Until then you need to decide what you want to work at."

Jack just looked at her for a full minute not even glancing at the list under his nose. "You couldn't just
? Ah… just let me?  Ah, go to an accredited school and, and, finish getting my degrees?  Could you please?" Jack pleaded

"Sorry Jack.
That would be much too comfortable for you. Collage alone would do you no good right now. Especially with the liberal antiwar, big communist government party masquerading as liberal human rights and welfare class bent at most campuses. You are still a boy and would eat it up whole heartedly and be anti-military, anti-war even when the enemy chopped your head off or enslaved you. You would be worthless to us when you came out. They would have you believing that a democratically elected forever dictator would be good for the welfare of the masses with labor reeducation camps for those that do not think as them.

You
need to get out on your own and learn how to be your own man and work with others equal or even inferior to you and feel what freedom truly is. Fact is; I am now sure that the best thing for you would be to start as a 3rd class.  It was suggested spaceman but I am sure you would take being a spaceman as much too comfortable allowing you to hide behind other peoples orders. That would be fine if we had years for you to grow up since you really are not even a spaceman but a kid mentally right now. I think giving you a little responsibility and opportunity with the occasional spaceman to issue orders to while helping you on your jobs, will be character building and force you to grow up faster than you would otherwise." She did not say anything about not wanting him to have to put up with the abuse boot seamen got, figuring he had quite enough of that already. "Other than that we think it would be better if you had to earn your promotions at whatever job you pick so you can do just that. Grow up. Since you definitely have the training for any of a dozen prime crucial specialties, you just need to pick one."