“Don’t you think The Rock will get a little suspicious when those same marines go back to The Rock along with the ships and their crews with different stories?”
Leaning in to whisper into Jack’s ear without really whispering. “How stupid do you think I am turner? They are never going back to The Rock. They are here for the rest of their fucking lives as are the rest of the Battleship crews. Why do you think I picked ships with crews that had lost their ships in that slaughter? I need workers for the mines I am establishing around this station. The first batch of Battleships built in the Spiders Shield Deck configuration was a waste of materials with a dozen thin shield decks, half of them the same size as the main hull. While the damn fleet crews from all over the Republic who lost their ships are manning them instead of the Congressional Earth Union crews loyal only to Earth. The reason why the surviving Battleships were spread out across The Cloud as pickets stuck at transfer andentry stations before they were put to use as Cargo ships. I already have their orders assigning them permanent duty to the Station guarding that fucking hole in the Sphere and those dead Spider Battleships. They are going to die in my mines. By the time I retire, I am going to be one of the richest men in the universe with my own seat in the Senate with the Rank of Supreme Admiral and the savior of the Republic to my fame with the weapons my new slaves produce for me in those factories you told me about in your reports.”
Frowning suddenly as he stepped forward until they were face to face. “By the way where are those slimy little creatures? You may be able to hide them for a while from my officers but my troops will find them and that little mining station you call New Home you think you can run to.” Chuckling. “Did not think I would notice you trying to run and hide out amongst the rocks did you moron. Just let me make it perfectly clear. You can’t get far enough away from this station in the short amount of time you have had to hide from me. I will find you at this little mining station and put you and your little vermin to work making me rich as well as famous.”
Jack just stood there waiting for the Vice Admiral to wind down as he tried to ignore him while reading the speech he was supposed to give that had been written for him. Resisting the urge to look down to check and make sure his Comm was still on broadcasting the Vice Admirals ranting’s to the entire station including the new arrivals standing in the ranks in front of the stage, while keeping his face blank. The sound curtain around the stage keeping the speakers broadcasting his words to crewmen without ear receivers, from echoing back onto the quiet stage.
Flipping his hand toward the podium Ditzen continued. “Go make your speech and get it over with. Try begging for forgiveness you slave loving traitor. Maybe they will not tear you apart before my men kill you. Now that I think about it. You are actually too dangerous to keep alive.”
Jack waited reading over the speech again as Ditzen took his seat before turning around and stepping to the podium. The ranks of shocked or baffled faces stretched out before him.
Jack stood looking out across the Cargo Deck as he pushed the podium’s microphone away. His Comm was still on from when he was intercepted by Ditzen, simply hitting his arm panel to turn on the outside mike as Ditzen had walked up. The Station and most of the crewmen and marines could hear his Comm in their ears better than the speakers recently hung on the Cargo Deck Bulkheads echoing around and over lapping words from various distances though the air curtains strategically installed had prevented most of the echoing that would have made half the speech unintelligible for half the troops.
Jack finally took a deep breath and let it slowly out as he wiped the screen clearing the speech the Lieutenant and Pan had written for him. Then. “A little over two years ago I and my best buddy joined the Navy a few days after turning 18 when we were dragged by a couple of the most gorgeous monster breasted girls we had ever seen into the Recruiting office.” A chuckle could be heard from the troops spread out in front of Jack.
“Jack. What are you doing? Read the script.” The Lieutenant said in his hears.
“After over 10 years in The Game and 7 years commanding and designing my own ships in The Game. With a half dozen Doctorates and a whole bunch of bachelor degrees I was bored stiff of sitting behind the damn Gravity board on my Family’s Trampship’s Bridge and cleaning out septic tanks and welding injection nozzles. You all know how it went. With way to much booze and promises of being a Starship pilot I joined the Navy trying to get down the almost none existent pants of the gal that dragged me into the recruiting center with my nose half way up her butt.” That got a laugh rolling across the deck again as Jack smiled sheepishly. “I dreamed about those boobs and cursed that butt all through bootship.” Chuckling a little. “And still do once in a while.” Most of the deck laughed. All of them smiled.
“Damn it Jack, the script is not just a guide. If you don’t stay on script you will miss important points they need to know without crossing the line revealing any secrets.”
Jack looked around as his face turned sad. “You all know what happened almost a little over half a year ago when we lost half the fleet. And most of you also know that we could have lost the whole fleet.” Looking stone faced. “You probable also know that what saved half of the fleet including most of your butts was the upgraded engines installed in half the fleet that did not require Reaction Mass that allowed them to escape the enemy Spider Battleships that ran down most of the battleships with the standard reaction engines when they ran out of reaction mass.”
“I wish to apologize for missing out on that fiasco. At the time most of you were trying to stay alive I was on my way back to The Rock.” A mumble started across the deck. “Though I was trying to stay alive as well when we ran into the Spider Battleships blockading The Cloud. To make things worse for you and the thousands of crewmen and ships lost is that the fleet of transports I was with using the new massless drive engines was making a mad dash back to The Rock not only to pick up Conversion kits to rebuild the engines in the entire Battleship Fleet but to grab the new 24inch guns for the fleet as well as new torpedoes and other new weapons in order to give the fleet a chance against the Spider Battleships after finally finding out just how powerful they were, or at least how powerful we thought they were. As it turned out even then we were wrong as they were even more powerfull than we could even imagine. Now for the really secret part that will get me in real trouble. The reason we lost so many ships and crews and attacked when everyone knew it was hopeless was because the Attack Fleet Admiral had family on the planet just captured by the Spiders and refused to wait for the upgrades that would have given the lost ships and their crews a chance to live.”
Ditzen jumped up from his chair. “You are going to hang Turner for divulging top secret information. I don’t need to kill you now the Navy will do that for me.”
“Oh shut up moron. You still have to kill me or I will expose your whole operation you want to create, as a fraud before I ever face trial. Besides do you really think they are going to hang a Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient? The most they will do is haul my ass someplace where I can’t get into trouble.”
“You are lying. You can’t be a Congressional Medal of Honor Winner.”
“Hey moron. Boogle it.” Jack suddenly wondered how many lined up in front of him were at that moment doing just that. “Now sit back down while I finish introducing you.”
“Does not sound like you are introducing me at all, but keep digging your own grave as long as you want.”
“Thank you.” Turning back to the assemblage. “I told you that ultra-secret that the Vice Admiral just confirmed for you so you would believe me when I get to the unbelievable shit.” Looking around the cargo deck at the eyes staring at him. “Something else you can check on yourself is that I am the designer of the engines that saved most of your lives.” Smiling for a couple of seconds before continuing. “Four of the Battleships docked around you have the new manufactured engines. Four others have the upgraded version that uses the core of the old
engine. Which is why the ships with the new build engines can out run the rebuild engine ships without working at it. Just to prove what I say. If you look at the engine head manufacture name plate, you will find my grandfather’s name as the design engineer with my name attached on the upgraded engines as lead engineer. Jack J. Turner. I believe I was an ensign at the time.”
Taking a deep breath. “Now comes the unbelievable parts but please keep in mind that all these medals making me look like a cheap whore or clown if you prefer, were all given to me for what I am about to tell you. What I am about to tell you is also a result of usually spending 40 to 80 hours a week playing The Game for over 10 years between collage classes while trying to avoid my big ass abusive brother and of course work. All of you know about The Game and most have spent major hours on it. Few if any have gotten up to level 9.” Looking around the deck for a few seconds as he took a deep breath. “Since the age of 14, I have been a ship’s Captain designing my own ships and winning and losing battles.”
Jack pointed up at the overhead and one of the Destroyers directly over him. That Destroyer with the big guns is one of my latest designs. The Navy has built thousands of them as a cheap way to keep the politicians off their backs and provide local planetary defense for the Systems across the Republic. Though their version does not have the big 16 inch gun, the stock 8 inch guns are still impressive firepower against Republic ship and our old neighbors. It is a shame the Navy Brass has seen fit to hide most of them in storage after the politicians see them coming off the production line. Though I am getting ready to do something about that but more on that later.”
“On the Transport Squadron’s trip back to the Rock and before you guys got your butts shot off, we ran into a lone cruiser version of a Spider Battleship with only a few guns and one shield deck. You would think that 40 plus Armed Transports with hundreds of guns and torpedoes would be able to take one little Spider cruiser out but we lost one ship and had several others damaged and still we almost did not destroy it. But we learned a lot from that little skirmish.”
“With help of all the scientist and engineers that had helped me design the engines we managed to upgrade our weapons by the time we got to The Cloud and found it was being Blockaded by some 70 full class Spider Battleships. With the Spiders massing their ships to stop us from even getting to the Nebula Cloud, Admiral Halsey accepted my plan to get the fleet through the blockade and into The Cloud without losing most of the fleet. I managed to do just that and on the way knock out half the enemy fleet without us having to fire a shot using help from The Rock. The 5 Spider Battleships our 30 some Battletransports had to take on directly and managed to sneak up on before attacking shot the shit out of half a dozen of our transports before we finished off the last of them. I was given Command of the hulk that was the Red Pepper simply because there was no one else to take command at that time and place and what was at that time just a drifting hulk. My orders were to get it back to The Rock if I could make repairs or crash it into the cloud at a hundred times the speed of light to keep it out of Spider hands.”
“Well we got it running barely and on our way to catch up with the rest of the fleet we had to go past one of the Battleships we had just knocked out with the Red Pepper needing more repairs. I took advantage of the time to take a boarding party to find out who and what we were fighting. Since no one in the Fleet or Republic yet had a clue even what the enemy looked like.” Holding out the Medal of Honor. “That is where I got this thing killing a few thousand of what we called Black Apes and why our uniforms are painted Red. We liberated a bunch of Apes that had been condemned to die for no better reason than because they made one of their officers upset. I had them painted Red so we could tell the difference between them and the Black Apes on the Spidership’s crew. Without their help my crew and I would have been killed and the massive amount of intelligence we now have about the enemy would have been lost.”
Jack carefully laid the Medal of Honor back down on his chest. “By the time we got done there, most of the Republic fleet was not only gone but the other half of the Spider fleet was coming back for revenge. Using some of the slightly upgraded weapons we had put together, the Red Pepper managed to kill a few more. With the help of the slaves we had liberated (that the Spiders use for crew) we were able to upgrade our weapons even more that allowed the Red Pepper to escape and kill the 4O some Spider ships that followed us to the Cloud entry point by playing hide and kill in the clouds. Catching them in ambush after ambush and then finally capturing these two Spider Battleships to make this Station which entailed killing almost a hundred thousand Black Berserker Apes using advanced weapons designed and built with human and slave cooperation. It took us weeks of hard fighting and many casualties.” Jack turned to the Lieutenant as he changed the channel. “What do you mean many casualties? I get back on your script and you have me saying many casualties? And besides we did not kill most of them.”
“Well there were many casualties. I was one of them remember. That battle still terrifies me in nightmares and yes we did even if it was from them jumping across vacuum trying to attack us.”
Shaking his head Jack blanked the screen with the speech on it again as he changed back to the general channel. “Just look around you at this station as final proof to all I have said.” Looking around at the thousands staring at him. “I am responsible for killing more enemy ships and troops than the whole entire Fleet using only one ship for most of them. What do you think I could do with a fleet?”
Looking around at the Vice Admiral staring a hole through Jack’s head. “Am I a traitor because I am gladly using the help of thousands of Ex-slaves that hate the enemy as much as we do? Am I a liar because I try to tell the truth about old out dated tactics and that lining up our Battleships against superior enemy Battleships that outnumber us 10 to 1 to be slaughtered is not a good idea? Too bad because I want to win. I want to save the Republic in spite of Greedy assholes like the Vice Admiral here or a 4 star Admiral that is to stupid and greedy to get his family off the planet he half owns before the invasion and cared so little about the men and women under his command that he readily accepted sending a quarter of a million of them to their deaths for one chance to get one ship in to rescue his family that were already safe in the hills fare from the enemy that did not give a rats ass about hurting as long as the enemy were left alone to strip the planet .”
Ditzen turned beet red as Jack turned to glance at him and then back to face the troops. “I still am in Command here for a few more minutes at least and that gives me incredible power. It gives me the power to accept transfers from anyone that wishes to transfer from the ship they now serve, to the Red Pepper and my Command if they really want to kill the enemy with a chance to survive and talk about it. Whether or not Vice Admiral Ditzen or his Captains will allow since they have no say about it while you are on my station. All you have to do is step out of your formations and go and get your personal belongings out of your ship and report to the Bulk Carrier in docking slip 9. I have already assigned the ship to my Command replacing the ship’s Captain and the crew that do not want to transfer and just happen to be off the ship at this time and have already submitted their resignations. One little tid-bit for all those who would like to chance MOS’s to something else you would like to do or simply to jobs that you spent years training at in The Game. All you have to do is transfer off your current ship and ask for a new Job MOS.”
“What the hell are you doing Jack?” the Lieutenant demanded. “This is not part of the agreed upon speech even if you did ignore most of it. Admiral Halsey will never approve of you stealing crews from other ships let alone a transport.”
Jack switched his Comm as he watched the crewman and marines start to move from their formations. “Bull, I think he would happily approve but he is not here and I am. Now I need enough R-bots and marines to drop down to protect our new crewmen as they get their belongings. One R-bot for each new crewmen. Get it done. I already see several cr
ewmen being intimidated back into line.”
R-bots started dropping from the overhead landing next to anyone that even moved out of line toward the side of a formation. Anyone trying to stop them was quickly rounded up gagged and their hands and feet bound and left sitting on the deck.
“As for taking the bulk Transport Lieutenant, I am going to take a lot more than that before I am done. Those Battleships are going to be little better than hulks before we get done if I have my way and I can delay Ditzen a few more days.”
Jack turned around to look at Ditzen fuming in his chair. Jack could see the Gears in his mind and then suddenly. ‘Ya turner, just keep it up. You are just condemning all those crewmen to death alongside of you. You are out of excuses now and have to turn over Command of the Station or get shot for treason.’
Jack smiled. “Don’t worry Ditzen. As soon as the few that want to transfer are aboard the Bulk Carrier, we can get on with signing the orders.” Ditzen continued to look at Jack through the top of his eyes and a drooping head. His lips sneering.
‘You just wait Turner. The instant you sign those orders you are dead. No. Maybe I should just arrest you. I was starting to have some fun torturing people to death. That would be a much more enjoyable way to kill you. I have read books about specialist in the trade being able to keep their victims alive for weeks while making them scream for hours several time a day. How long can I keep you alive Turning for keeping me waiting for what you can’t stop.’
Shaking his head Jack turned away from such a sick mind and watched a growing number of crewmen headed for their ships. An R-bot dropping down next to each of them before they had taken more than a couple of steps.
Battleship Destroyer 2 (Battleship Destoryer) Page 73
