Coming Home (Free Fleet Book 2) (20 page)

“Okay, so the fighters are good at killing missiles and have the ability to kill ships if they get close enough with their missiles. Yet, with only four missiles, the amount of damage that they do is pathetic. I was wondering if I could maybe take a fighter and modify it to be a bomber.” Seeing my hesitation, he continued.

“A bomber will have the thrust abilities of a fighter, yet it can hold many more missiles, even larger ones possibly. Meaning that ships aren't shooting against a few handfuls of missiles. Instead they're up against dozens of close ranged missiles. Each with the ability to maim or kill.”

I sat back in my chair, resting my elbow on it's armrest as I stroked my chin in thought.

“If you can give me positive simulations, I'll okay it. We don't have the resources to dive into something that might not be an advantage and will cost us a lot of resources.”

“I understand, sir.” I could see in his eyes that he did.

While there were a lot of things happening in the fleet, certain things had to be prioritized. I had to deny Eddie upgrading the weaponry the day before. It would improve our current weapons by thirty percent in range and power, yet the cost in resources and time was too much and would've meant not replacing two sections of armor, as well as putting a brace on one of the structural members of a destroyer.

My pad beeped at me and I picked it up.

“Well, looks like you'll be getting a little more firepower on your adventures, Boot. The shipment of weapons and miners has arrived.”

Boot nodded, and I couldn't help but grin. My fleet was still not fully armed, but at least we would seriously mess up someone's day if they crossed us.

I checked the time against the schedule as I stood.

“Well, good luck,” I said, shaking both of their hands as they too stood.

“I'll let you get back to your ships, and remember, if you need anything, ask.” I smiled as they nodded. The informality in the Free Fleet was something I enjoyed. Without it I would never know the men and women around me. It made my fight for them even harder as I knew that some of them might be sacrificed in order to let others live. It was a bloody calculation.

Yet, for today I didn't have to think about it. Heston asked me if I'd like to take the fighter test the next time I was near his carriers. I laughed but said no. I could handle dropping in a shuttle onto a  planets surface. Being thrown around like a rag doll as my battle suit tried to keep me from blacking out from huge gravitational forces was something I thought was best left to the damned crazy fighter pilots.

I gave them both a two finger salute before I took my seat on Resilient's bridge.

“How long till we start moving Hachiro?”

“Twenty minutes,” Sook reported.

“Where's Shrift?”

“Making final checks,” Acting second in command Kawaga said, his face concentrated on his feeds. He'd played a lot of sniper games before the recruitment, a skill that had carried over to being in the Free Fleet. Yet, it was the patience and cunning, as well as a good ability to think on the fly, which had gained him the position of being Rick's understudy.

Yet, while he had got the position, I didn't know if he was happy with it. I made a note on my data pad as I continued. For now, I could do nothing about his position. I needed him where he was currently.

“Comms, confirm that the supply ships know where to rendezvous with us. Nav, I want you to confirm coordinates.”

“Shrift is saying that we are ready to go,” Comms said. I nodded.

I pressed Shrifts name on one of my screens and his voice came through my implants.

“We're ready.”

“I got that. Want to make the announcement?”

“You're the commander though.”

“Yeah, but you're the one that's put in all the hard work.”

“I should get a raise.” he said.

I laughed. “How about I let you pick your next posting instead of having Eddie just posting you to it.”

“Done!” he yelled, cutting the channel, making sure I couldn't go back as he came on through the fleet wide communications.

“Alright, let's move this damned station! Helms, people's, let's go!” A countdown started as Resilient computed how the ships attached to the station would have to move in order to get it to break free of Earth's orbit. The rest of the route had already been figured out by the navigators and helms personnel of the fleet.

For the next few days, the station and the Fleet would move, continuing on as they had when around Earth. There was no time to wait. There was always something to get done.

The bridge was tense for a few minutes before Helm relaxed.

“We're out of Earth's orbit, proceeding to Mar's orbit.” I connected to Shrift again.

“We good?”

“It seems so.” His tone told me he was sure something was going to go wrong.

“Good work, Shrift.”

“Thanks, James, never promote me again!” he said with feeling as I grinned.

“Noted. I'll leave you to it.”

Shrift cut off as I looked over the bridge, liking the feeling of actually being in command instead of having to do mountains of paper work and my thoughts turned to missing Yasu for a change.

After our talk, a lot of things had changed. We slept in the same bed, when I did sleep. We fought when we had time to and we ate together whenever possible.

I sent a message to her, asking to meet me for a meal if possible.

Putting off paper work? Mess hall C3. XO,
she wrote.

I grinned.
Paper work isn't everything.

***

I was walking through the gunnery decks, helping to get things ready for the new guns coming in when Rick contacted me.

“Sup?” I said, half out of breath as I pulled a burnt rail cannon from its housing.

“We have it!” he said, his voice clearly trying to hide his excitement as if there were others around him.

“We have what?” I asked, lowering the barrel to a grav cart with Krom. “Barrel done! One for recycler!” I yelled. One of the runners took the grav cart and I turned back to the gun, an overlay showing me what else needed to be pulled off of it.

“They've agreed to our contract for protection and they've finalized plans for getting humanity into space. I think that moving the station swayed them.”

I stared at the gun emplacement blankly.

“They've finally accepted it?”

“Yeah, and they've got their first payment of materials ready!”

“This is the kind of day we should get more often!” I said, sharing in his joy.

“Have you started recruitment?”

“Well, I've got the ones that signed up before everything that was okayed ready. Though, I'm going to need a few shuttles.”

I pulled out my data pad.

“How many?”

“Thirteen at least, say, on a running turnover. Have some extras over here maybe?”

“I'll give you sixteen, broken into groups of four, they'll run every four hours,” I said as I gave orders to captains to pick shuttles to be ready to fly.

“Works for me. We also got the okay to have a base of operations. Russia won the bid. They are the ones giving the most in this deal. They're probably trying to get the one up on everyone in the resources industries again.”

“They do oh so love their oligarchies,” I said, thinking of the mega rich Russians that controlled unopposed oligarchies in Russia, pretty much doing as they pleased.

“Indeed.”

The topic made me think of Shirely Manley and I checked on her status.

“Looks like they'll have to compete with Shirely, though. She's setup and about to begin digging into no less than four asteroids, and she's made claims on twelve big ones.”

“Competition is the one thing that humanity knows the best of,” Rick said.

I nodded slightly. “Yes it is, unfortunately. Though, hopefully, we can use it to our advantage.”

“Hopefully.”

A notification popped up on my data pad. “I'm launching shuttles now; they'll be with you in two hours.”

“I'll be ready for them. I'll let you know if anything else happens.”

“We'll talk later, Rick,” I said and I cut the channel.

Weapons, armor, and technical parts, including miners from Parnmal, personnel from Earth. Earth's getting into space and we've got a mining group already set up and pumping out resources.

“We've got another two gun decks to go before we can even think about getting those weapons on board,” Chief Zior barked as he carried a focusing crystal the size of his forearm over his shoulder, chewing his famous gum.

I too had picked up the habit, but only when I was sparring with Yasu or going through training. Chief Zor seemed to chew non-stop. There was a rumor that he chewed even while he was sleeping.

“Come on, my gun bunnies!” he said as his peoples efforts doubled, the scarred, veteran gunner grinning.

“Krom grunted as he began pulling the useless guts from the gun between him and me. Taking that as my queue, I pulled the old power relays.
At least everything with guns is made to pull them apart in a quick fashion.

It was oddly calming taking apart the massive weapons. There was an order to them. They made sense, much like my own rail gun. For a time, I forgot what I was doing as I pulled, turned, and unhooked broken parts, calling a runner to take the parts as I moved on.

I popped in a piece of gum, finding its minty freshness and ingredients focusing my efforts more as I moved to the next gun. I got in the gunners seat, pulling the manual controls for the targeting crystal release as well as pulling the gun in so the barrel was inside the ship instead of in vacuum.

I kept going, moving methodically from gun to gun.

A hand on my shoulder made me turn around. I found Yasu giving me an exaggerated up and down look.

I looked at myself, finding I was covered in grease and grime.

“Forget something?” she asked.

I wracked my brain.
Crap, crap, uhhh meeting? Paper work? Training hand to hand, yeah.
I glanced to the time on my HUD.
Crap.

“Sorry, I just got wrapped up in getting the guns ready.”

“I noticed,” she said, glancing at my battle suit.

We were on the last deck of guns and there were people already working on the last ones. Chief Brusk was sauntering into the room, the movement more awkward with it's exaggeration for a Kuruvian.

Zor growled. “Seems your gun bunnies are having a spot of trouble, bit slow?”

“Not slow, just have more guns to work through, you hippie.”

“You have five more guns there, chompers!” Brusk said as Zor squared off with him.

“Cause my gunners use theirs more, twinkle fingers.” Zor jabbed a finger at Brusk.

“Twinkle fingers! Well, I'll have you know, you clean, baby faced Sarenmenti, that my people have the highest accuracy in the fleet! The reason you have so many guns down is cause your people have to spray everything in hopes they hit the enemy.” Brusk's manipulators shook in annoyance.

“My gunners run their guns to the brink, giving the enemy all barrels.”

“Breaking all of them!” Brusk yelled, his arms moving in annoyance.

“Done gun!” the last crew said as they finished their gun, obviously not paying attention through their sound canceling helmets.

“Good!” Zor said, turning to the gun crew, swiveling his head as if it was a cannon to his fellow chief.

“Now, let’s go and show the starboard side how the port side can drink!” he bellowed. Brusk tilted his head to the implied challenge.

The port side gunners howled as they made a beeline for the exit.

“All except second watch.” None turned back, but as I looked, there were already gunners loitering around, cleaning up the mess that came from broken guns being pulled apart. None of them looked very pleased.

“Remind me I owe second watch a round!” Chief Zor said and grins appeared on second watch's faces.

I followed the gun crews as the chiefs hung back, allowing for me to meet up with them.

“So, you're probably asking what that was all about,” Brusk said with none of the previous anger of before.

“Yes, something like that.”

“Well, it's quite easy,” Zor said as we got on a transport after the gun crew. “Agroup does better when they're against another group every time. It makes it so we get our gunners into the mindset that failure is absolutely not an option. Burns, barrels out, focusing crystals burned out? Well the other side might have the same thing, yet they might be doing it faster. That is not a possibility, but I have to make sure that I beat them.”

“It used to be that there was one Kuruvian crew and one Sarenmenti crew on the guns,”  Brusk added. “It made it so that  they were constantly proving who was better. Though, when the crews mixed, they would be in massive fights, and they sabotaged one another all the time. When the two crews are intermingled and socialize often, then they don't fight as much and they don't sabotage one another. It becomes an honorable sport between two teams instead of a bitter rivalry.”