Jack turned the chair around and sat watching the Officers from around the cargo deck converge. With them all across in front of the stage Jack continued to look at them for several more minutes before finally standing up and ignoring the podium. Ok Gentlemen. Here is how it is going down.” Jack waited a few seconds before continuing. “I need officers that want to fight and are not in Vice Admiral Ditzen’s frame of mind or employ. I know the Navy is your career and leaving a ship without the Commanding Officers approval is tantamount to suicide though I notice that several brave Officers have already gone in spite of that. They will go far. So I would like to assure you that if any of you would like to join me you have your Commanding Officers full approval. Please head for your ship now and get your things.”
As several Officers left two of the Captains jumped up together. One of them practically shouted. “I have given no such approval. Any officer leaving my Command will be deserting and their careers are finished.”
Jack smiled as he turned around. “Please Captains. All of you have already signed authorizations while signing and witnessing the promotion Orders. Copies have already been sent to your Officers PDA’s. Turning back to the group of Officers before the stage. “As I said you…”
The Captain that had screamed at Jack lunged toward Jack drawing his weapon screaming incoherently. Jack lifted is hand palm toward the Captain. As a light from his palm hit the Captain, he went flying back across the stage crashing into his chair. The weapon flying out of the hand and off the back of the stage. “Please, there has already been way too much violence and you can always appeal it back at The Rock but even then any officer that transfers now is still legally covered since they have done no wrong.”
Finishing his turn to face the Officers in front of the stage. “As I said your Commanding Officers have already signed their authorizations for anyone that wishes to transfer. If any of you are even thinking about it, look up at what you may one day command.”
Jack noticed one officer looking at the Vice Admiral out of the side of his face and getting a node from Ditzen. As the Officer started to leave Jack pointed his palm light at the man. “Stop right there.” Staring at the man for a few seconds before continuing. “I don’t need Ditzen’s sycophants. You can step to the side of the stage with the Admirals men he is planning to kill me with as soon as I sign the orders. That goes for anyone else that thinks they have more interest in helping the Admiral and not the Navy fight the Spiders.” Jack started running the light over the other officers. Stopping on one. “Yes I think you would be a good Destroyer Commander one day. Join the club.” Then going on as the officer looked around her and then left. Jack stopped on another one. “I recognize you. You can join the Admirals groupies.” Finishing flashing the light across the rest. “Fact is I would be honored if the rest of you joined my little outfit. I can promise you all adventures killing Spider ships and possible I am sorry to say, a glorious death for a few of you. You will be on the front lines working your butts off but only if you want to and willing to give your all. You all may return to your ships. You have a couple hours until the Bulk Carrier leaves to make up your mind but don’t wait too long. Dismissed.”
With the cargo deck mostly empty Jack turned to the Vice Admiral. “Well Ditzen, I guess I can’t put this off any longer. Let’s sign your orders to take over the station.” A crash echoed across the cargo handling deck as a turret was dropped from the side of one of the ships ringing the deck.”
“What the hell is going on now? Why has that turret been taken off my ship?” A Captain stood up staring at his ship as a Destroyer dropped down from the overhead with a loud deep whine and slipped between two ships and out of the cargo bay. Fighters that had been parked ringing the core started dropping and zooming out of the bay in groups with loaded transports following.
“We are stripping the ships Gentlemen.” Jack said as he looked at the turret being lifted off the deck in what looked like a large U shaped horseshoe.
“You will return the turrets when you finish repairs right.” The turret floated out past the ship.
“Sorry but I have other plans for them. Besides why do you care? You just signed your ships away. You are no longer the Captains of those Hulks. Check your PDA’s. You even attested to them being hulks and not repairable. Though I don’t think the Engineering Department Back at The Rock is going to agree with you. You really should learn to read what you sign.”
One of the Captains turned to Ditzen. “You have got to stop this.”
“Just as soon as the Orders are signed the New Station Commander can put a stop to it I am sorry to say but then we have already stripped the turrets and much of the equipment from the backsides of the ships through cargo hatches you can’t see from here.” Only 200 feet of the main living and gun sections at the bows of the ships ringing the cargo deck could be seen leaving what was happening on and around 90% of the ship a mystery.
The Vice Admiral looked at Jack with daggers in his eyes as he waved his hand and a screen was rushed out from the side of the stage and placed on the table. “What the hell do you think you are accomplishing with all of this. I will just reverse it all as soon as I am in Command.” Pointing at the screen. “Now sign the damn orders so I can put a stop to whatever the hell you are doing.”
“Why certainly Vice Admiral.” Jack leaned down placing a stylus from his pock to the screen and stopped. Straitening up. “These are your orders Vice Admiral and rightly you should be the first to sign them.” Jack stepped to the side.
Ditzen growled impatiently and bent down and signed, placing his bios against the screen. “Now sign Turner.”
Jack started to bend over again and stopped. “Sorry Vice Admiral but let’s see if the Captain’s still want to sign for you. This time they are signing to your competency and fitness to be the Station Commander instead of just witnesses. And if they refuse, my signature would just be confusing with the orders in limbo. I know it is normally just a formality but regulations are regulations.”
“Why you little shit. I should…”
“Come now Vice Admiral. Have your Captains sign so we can get this over with.”
“Criste… Ok. Get up here and sign the damn thing and be quick about it!” The Vice Admiral demanded as he turned to the Captains.
Each Captain went out of their way this time to examine each and every tab and subsection of the orders and attached sheets.
A half hour later with most of the Destroyers, fighters and bombers gone after a steady stream of noisy irritating departures the last Captain finished with the last sheet and stood up.
“Fucking Finally!” The Vice Admiral shouted. Then with a little more control. “Sign the damn Orders now Turner.”
“Why certainly Vice Admiral. About time this mess was over.” Jack sat down in the seat the last Captain had just vacated and started Going through the orders and the attached sheets. As Ditzen started drumming the table with his fingers Jack looked up. “There seems to be a problem with the attachments Vice Admiral Ditzen.”
“What the hell do you mean a problem?”
“You are lacking form 782. The form attesting to your qualification to run this Station Vice Admiral.” Ditzen started turning beet red as Jack smiled up at him. “Tell you what Vice Admiral Ditzen. I will give you a quick verbal test concerning the basics and call it good. Will that satisfy you?”
Rolling his eyes. “Yes by all means give me the damn test.”
“Ok then let’s start with the basics. How many decks does this Station have?”
Ditzen just stared at Jack for a couple of seconds then. “How the hell am I supposed to know that?”
“Aaa you look it up or ask someone or count them to make sure they are all there.” Shaking his head. “Well then how about how many Fusion Reactors does the Station have and where are they located? That should be simple enough.” With the Vice Admiral’s bland stare. “Ok then. How many Fission Reactors does this station have?”
�
��What the hell. Who the hell uses Fission reactors anymore?”
“Sorry Vice Admiral but some Spider Battleships do use them to power their main weapons. They power up and down faster than Fusion reactors do. Fact is we are in the process of stripping the Fission reactors from the station just because they are so primitive and take up so much space but you would not know about that because you have not even bothered to get your fat ass off this deck let alone familiarize yourself with the very station you wish to Command. You are just as likely to walk out an airlock into vacuum as to tap the control on the wrong valve that would vacate a whole section of the station killing thousands. Hell, you probably don’t even know where the fucking Admiral Quarters are let alone how to even open the hatch to get into them and you want to Command this Station.” Taking a deep breath. “You take me for a fool. My signing your orders says I certify that you know how to operate this station safely which makes me responsible if you wind up blowing the fucking fusion reactor because you are too stupid to even know where it is let alone who to assign to operate it. This is not a Republic Station Vice Admiral and you are going to have to at least learn where the Admiral’s shitter is and how to operate it. Regulations say that I have the responsibility to train you to operate the Station before I turn it over to you. So I suggest you get busy learning your Command instead of hatching plans to start mines around a station you can’t even operate. You are a smart man so it should only take a week or two.”
Ditzen now beet red with his veins about to burst, screamed. “Kill this Fucker!” Then dived under the table hugging the deck with his hands over his head.
Jack’s helmet ratcheted up over his head to fast to see creating a mirror bight bubble.
A Dozen laser beams lanced out hitting his suit and helmet.
The beams reflecting from the crystal mirror finish of the suit and helmet as Jack just sat there with his hands still on the screen. The reflective beams hitting the Officers still on the stage and even back at a few of the shooters. Though the few beams that reflected back into the groups that had suddenly fired hidden weapons did not have much time to do any damage. A torrent of blaster balls streaking down from the overhead killing everyone in the groups including some of the ones not brandishing weapons. Shooters and Bystanders all in the tightly packed group used to hide the weapons long enough to fire in their effort to kill Jack fell dead in less than a half second after the first shot was fired.
Jack’s suit acquiring a few blemishes that smoked a little as his helmet ratcheted back down into his collar. Bending down as he scooted his chair back Jack looked under the table at Ditzen. “You should stop cowering under the table and go over to your people and check if any of them are still alive. The least you could do for getting them killed.”
An R-bot dropped on the stage next to Jack and held a gun on the Officers sitting and standing around the stage in shock as others with Red Crosses started taking care of the wounded on the stage. Most of them wounded from laser beams reflecting from Jacks armor.
“Fuck them. A needed sacrifice but how the hell are you still alive? Those pumped up lasers should have burned through even the best Republic Armor.”
Jack just shook his head. “You really are that stupid aren’t you even after reading all my reports.” Taking a deep breath. “Damn shame you are a full Vice Admiral and I am only a temporary Vice Admiral or I would have you in the brig already. But the Regulations say I can’t touch you unless I witness you murdering someone and even then I would have to prove you did not kill for the Good of the Navy to an Admiral’s board. Now if I was a full Admiral I would just shoot you for the good of the Navy with the evidence I already have and your statements but then those regulations have not been used for over 400 years.” Jack had always known that Captains in space had the power of Judge and Juries but he had just been shocked a few hours before to learn that Admirals had almost the power of Gods.
Jack pushed the screen away. “Well, all I can do is wright a report of your actions and orders that I witnessed and send them to The Rock and hope your friends aren’t too powerful but I won’t hold my breath. As for you taking Command of the Station, form 782 has a list of standard questions you have to answer and places you have to visit using Bio and GPS recognition codes so no one can answer them or go to those compartments for you and the Station is yours. Shouldn’t take you more than a week or two to finish. If you run and don’t eat or sleep. You and what is left of your staff have quarters on the Flag deck even though you don’t have a flag. That is if you can find it.” Jack stood up. “Good day Admiral.” Jack started to walk to the podium and notice a rapidly cooling body with Captain’s pips on his collar sitting in one of the chairs on the stage. A barely perceptible hole had been burned through his head by a reflected laser beam. Shaking his head as he glanced at the carnage around the ends of the stage, Jack continued to the Podium.
Ditzen sat up still under the table looking around at the carnage he had created as Jack walked to the Podium. “All remaining crewmen will return to their ships and their normal duties until further notice.” Jack announced to the few hundred remaining crewmen. Then turning, Jack started walking back toward the sled now at the back of the stage.
“Turner!” Ditzen stood up using the table to pull himself up. “Where is the Flag deck?”
Jack stepped onto the sled and turned around. “Now that is a damn good question Ditzen. You and your staff are only authorized to use the facilities in the Admiral’s quarters on the Flag deck and no others will recognize you. Too easy for you to eat the wrong food or drink and die from poisonous alien food. Though you have free rein to all decks and hatches, be careful not to walk through the wrong hatch or push the wrong button. You could get killed since you can’t read or understand Godspeak. This is one Fucking Big Station but I am sure you will eventually find the Flag deck. But be careful, the elevators will dump you into one of the airless damaged decks if you push the wrong button. Oh and I hope you eat recently. Finding the Admirals Quarters on the Flag deck may be a whole other problem. I have to go and reorganize what is left of the crews of 8 Battleships and thanks for the mining equipment you packed the transports with instead of food and supplies. I will put it all too good use.”
The sled pulled out from the stage and headed for the edge of the cargo deck and slipped over and out of sight leaving a screaming and cursing Vice Admiral behind. He quickly found out that no one on the deck would even tell him how to get off of it let alone where the Flag decks where.
Chapter 19; Fleet Trap
Jack sat up on the edge of his bed and looked out the deck to overhead port at the hundreds of domes spread out across the surface of the bubble. The Domes had been created when the huge Battleship destroying fusion explosion’s shockwave in the mass of Nebula cloud material creating the rapidly expanding bubble of carbon plasma started to slow from the massive amount of cloud material it had picked up and cooled as it hit a very large comet of ice, and rare heavy metals that was scooped up and then embedded into the surface before it could completely melt and flash away. The expanding cemetery gasses buried in the then, more plastic than liquid plasma, created the hundreds of varying sized domes from a few yards across to tens of miles depending on the size of the ice chunk embedded.
One of the survey crewmen that had tripped over almost colliding into the mountain range sticking up from what was mostly a mineral and metal rock covered forever plain, into a cloud of ice and vapor that mostly hid the miles high domes, noticed a hole in one and then another and since they were looking for and seeing vast amounts of rare metals she took a closer look into what turned out to be hollow mountains or domes and then proceeded to tell everyone she met back at the Hulk Station about her amazing odd discovery. The Domes were picked as a research and mining station months before the Vice Admiral had shown up and had rapidly grown into quit a large station of its own right, due to its distant location and many rich deposits in and around it. Though once they knew what to look f
or they had found dozens of other fields of domes around the bubble but none as big or as rich in metals and minerals surrounding the mountain range of domes.
The problem was the reason they had found the mountain range of domes in the first place was the vast amounts of lighter materials forming a cloud around the mountains that included mostly water vapor that had leaked out of the domes when the rapidly expanding super-heated gasses inside the bubbles had burst many of the domes. Though luckily bursting usually meant only creating a relatively small hole where the dome’s wall had an imperfection from a high concentration of metals or other material that had not quit been boiled out before the rapidly expanding and cooling plasma had solidified. But the cloud was making it hard to navigate around the domes with visibility and sensor penetrations of only a few miles at best.
Jack knew that the cloud would keep expanding over the years and hide the domes from discovery as the rest of the Nebula cloud slowly dropped back down to the bubbles surface but at the moment it was a pain in the butt with all the traffic and material that needed to be moved into specific domes. The shame was that it would be years before they would be able to build habitats in the bigger domes simply because they did not have enough air to fill them yet. But then that actually was a blessing in disguise in many ways.
Jack watched a string of shuttles dropping down from the Bounty to the open hole in one of the medium sized domes that was having tunnels built to the surrounding smaller domes that were quickly being made into habitats (or at least pressurized). The lengthened hull with the two hulks combined was paying dividends. Jack looked down at the Red Peppers own string of containers and equipment streaming down toward the central medium sized dome below them with its own network of tubes being constructed to the domes around it that were already sealed up with refugees inside them. The light from the torches heating and powering the domes shining out around the covering of surface rocks around the carbon crystal domes. Each dome radiating a slightly different color of light according to the trace elements in the carbon diamond making up each dome. Jack could not help admiring the beauty of the patchwork shining from the many domes they already had lit up but knew with some sorrow that they would have to coat the domes soon with something to prevent the domes from being so readily spotted not to mention adding insulation to reduce not only power consumption but again to keep the domes from standing out like beacons to heat sensors.
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