by Ivan Kal
“You don’t need to worry, I won’t put you in passive mode unless I really require privacy. You will learn faster if you are learning alongside me.” Adrian said.
“Thank you.” Iris said.
Adrian went to breakfast, and then to work, Iris remained silent for that time. His work was basically being Laura Reiss’s assistant, he followed her around the station, and sat in the meetings she and her team had to discuss the Fleet organization, the team basically reviewed proposals submitted by other teams and decided which were to be implemented, beside listening in and giving his opinion when Laura asked, Adrian didn’t have much to do, so he focused on learning as much as he could. And now that he had an implant he would be able to spend his free time in the simulators, which were a bigger versions of the game he played, Fleet Commander. The entirety of the game was in fact the same as it was in real life, it was a simulation, though none of the players really knew that. From the game he learned most everything he needed to know about commanding a ship and a fleet. The game was made in such a way that winning the scenarios awarded points which the player then spent on first improving his ship, and later buying new ships, until he had enough to create a fleet of ships. The scenarios varied from simple transport missions, escort, and pirate hunting, to major fleet actions against other fleets or stations. There were many customization options, players are able to buy different components and implement them on their ships, or design new ones from available technology. Laura told Adrian that every piece of technology in the game was in fact within their capability to manufacture, and that they incorporated many ideas that the players had implemented in the game to real life application. The simulator that Adrian would now use was far more advanced than his simple datapad game. The simulator interacted with the users implant in order to create a believable virtual reality, he would be able to walk through the ship inside the simulation, and command a ship from the bridge. There were also devices that enabled the users without implants to enter the simulation, but Adrian will not need to use them now. He was told that since there was never anything close to the kind of fleet they were trying to create, and as no one had any experience with commanding space ships, they would all be scored based on their achievements in the simulators, and after a certain period be given a rank in the new fleet and a position that best suited them based on the simulations. The simulations will include many different scenarios, some would put a person in command of a warship, other in command of a merchant vessel, some simulations would be entirely populated with computer generated people, other with other people who were running their own simulations, sometimes they would be put in teams where they would rotate on the ships posts and be scored on their performance on each. Adrian knew that the simulators would be coming online within next few days, and that the other recruits for the fleet would be arriving then as well, and also that he would be joining them. Laura told him that most of them will be at least five years older than him, and some more, they were recruiting from all graduates of Olympus, even from those that went to military school, and hoped to later go to the army. Adrian was a special case, being that he was raised by Olympus. He was the only one that was invited from the younger population of Olympus before he graduated from higher schooling, as the Fleet didn’t accept applications, the recruits were invited to join, hell, most people didn’t even know about the Fleet.
Adrian reached the meeting room and entered. The meeting already started, so Adrian made way towards his place at Laura’s side and sat down.
“So, we are in agreement about the ranking systems?” Oswald Mein asked the room, before being recruited to fleet he was in charge of the cargo ships, and later in charge of the few military ships that Olympus had, Adrian found out that they even existed just recently.
There were nods and affirmative answers around the room. He then recited the new ranking system from his datapad.
“So, the person in charge of all our fleets, will be called Fleets Master. The ones in charge of specific fleet will be Fleet Commanders, though we don’t have multiple fleets just yet.” Oswald said with a smile, his comment produced a round of chuckles from the room. “Next are Task Force Leaders for groupings of ships smaller than fleets, which will be called Force Leaders, Next will be ship commanders, what would ordinarily be captains, they will be called Ship Masters, first officers will be High Primes, third officers Low Primes, next will come Chiefs whether they are medical chiefs, engineering or others, all will hold the same rank. The next rank will be Adjutant, who is in charge of specific groups on the ships followed by Station Handlers, Navigation – Ship Handler, Communication Handler and so on. And then the crewmen, Cadets Tier 2 and Cadets Tier 1 being the lowest rankings in the fleet.” He finished and looked at the room for any objections, it took them a couple of months to agree on every rank, some wanted to transfer the Navy ranks from the countries on Earth, other wanted army or even air force ranks, they spent many meetings arguing until finally Laura had enough and ordered new ranks invented. After no one spoke up, Oswald sat down. And Laura spoke.
“Thank you Oswald, now since we are agreed on this, and in the nick of time as the first recruits are almost here, we need to discuss the plans for our shipyards.” She brought her datapad taped it a few times and brought the information she needed. It baffled Adrian why she didn’t just bring the information on her implant, and then realized that she like most everyone in Olympus were much older, some even from the time before, when implants weren’t common place, he deduced that it must have been habit.
“Alright, currently Olympus has three shipyards operational, with another one coming online in a month or so, orbiting Jupiter. Now, we have thirty seven ships given to us by Tomas, twenty cargo and transport ships, thirteen mining ships currently in the belt, and four warships also in the asteroid belt.” She looked at around the table for a moment, taping her fingers on the table. “We have seven hundred recruits incoming, and not enough ships for them to use, of course they won’t be allowed on the ships for at least three years while they go through the training, but it still leaves us with a task of deciding how many ships we build and for what purpose, that leaves us with thirty seven ships we already have, their crew will be rotating with our more promising recruits, and they will attend the fleet academy for at least a year, since they already have experience, some will stay on to teach a few classes before returning to their posts. But the new recruits will need new ships. Tomas gave us complete control over two of the shipyards to be used for the fleet. And he gave us green light to build a maximum of ten new warships. It seems that the League and Concordis have started construction on their own warships, they are of course keeping it a secret.” She smirked, and the rest of the room chuckled. “In three years we can build twelve warships, or sixteen of any other class. Now bear in mind that Tomas plans to cut us off in four years from his supply lines, he wants us to be self-sufficient, meaning we will need to increase the number of our own mining ships, and cargo/supply ships. But until then we can rely on Olympus supplies. Any thoughts?”
The rest of the room then discussed pros and cons of various combinations, ranging from building all warships to all mining and cargo. The discussion continued until Oswald asked.
“Do we have any information on the Leagues and Concordis intentions?”
“Our sources tell us that they sold it to their leaders as a precaution, and that they have no intention of starting any conflict, though we did notice a slight increase in their military activity on the ground, but that doesn’t really impact anything in space.” Laura said.
Oswald nodded. “And how much do we know about their ships capabilities, how many are they building and how do they fare against ours?”
“We have acquired all of their designs. Their ships have heavier armor but are smaller, ours are hundred meters long, theirs around eighty, and theirs use rocket propulsion, while our tech in that regard is much superior, our variation on VASIMR drives gives us much greater speed, and
our ships are better armed.” Laura sighed. “We didn’t put any of our more advanced weapons on the ships. Tomas didn’t see the need.” She said in way that clearly conveyed that she disagreed with that stance. “And also, he didn’t want to antagonize the Earth governments even more than we already have, in case that they found out about the ships. So we have basic kinetic weapons, railguns that fire metal slugs at the fractions of speed of light, they might be crude and hard to aim at moving targets but still very effective when they hit. And missiles. We also have small laser emitters used for clearing debris or anything else that might endanger the ship, but they are low power. The designs that we have acquired show that their ships will be armed with missiles only, though of a slightly greater payloads, and they will have a greater number of missiles on board. Concordis has started building two ships, while the League has three under construction. If everything goes right they will be operational within two years.”
The room discussed the information for the next two hours, until finally deciding that they would commission four additional warships bringing their “Security” force up to eight, three transports and three mining ships. After which they will build one additional warship per two years with the rest being mining and transport ships. The Olympus itself had more ships, which Tomas used to ship materials mined in the asteroid belt, and on the Moon and Mars. The one shipyard still under his command was dedicated to expanding Olympus mining and transport capabilities, the greatest problems they faced were with the transport of goods. Olympus operations in the belt produced more than they were able to ship back to the Moon, but Tomas still insisted that the operations keep working at 100% capability, with the materials being stored on the mining sites waiting for transport. In fact Olympus produced much more than it used, and most of the excess materials were sold to countries on Earth. Probably one of the reasons why they didn’t push harder to shut down Olympus. At least until they get their own mining operations up and running, but until now they were content to buy materials from Olympus, and expand their influence inside the Earth’s orbit, their colonization attempts on the Moon have been small to date with just a few recon bases, and no settlements.
With the goal of the meeting accomplished Laura dismissed the room, Adrian stayed behind with Laura like he always did after a meeting. Laura usually discussed the meetings with Adrian, and asked him for his opinions on the topics.
“So, what do you think? Is it smart of us to increase our military capabilities in space?”
Adrian was familiar with most everything on the topics, learning things by attending the meetings, and basically shadowing Laura everywhere. He had no doubt that it was her intention, he realized quickly that he was being groomed for command, of what he still wasn’t sure. He attended classified meetings with Laura, in his spare time he studied on technology that was used on Olympus ships, from military vessels to transport and cargo. He studied regulations, and continued with his martial arts training. He learned about command from watching Laura, and learned about the logistics of space colonization.
“Yes, we have a lot of assets in space already, much more than the Earth countries combined. Their plans to build military space ships in secret implies an agenda other than defense, but then again we did build ships capable of war in secret as well. But their intentions don’t really matter, we need to be able to defend our assets in space much more than they do, our entire economy is based in space, since leaving Earth we have shut down, sold, or transferred most of our Earth enterprises to space. Any loss will impact us much more because of it.” Adrian said, trying to use a more professional tone, like the one he often heard various Olympus personnel using when reporting to Laura.
Laura smiled and nodded.
“Yes, you are right, though Tomas still wants our military capabilities to remain a secret.” She said.
She looked at Adrian for a moment and then asked. “Did the integration with your implant go well?” She asked.
“Yes, there were no problems.” Adrian answered.
“And the AI?”
“There were no problems with her as well.”
“Her?” Laura asked raising her eyebrow.
Adrian felt a blush coming over his face and answered quickly.
“She said she would prefer it if I referred to her as a female. I mean after she chose a female name.”
“You didn’t name the Ai yourself?” She asked surprised.
“Ah, well it didn’t seem right, I asked if she wanted to choose her own name and she said she did, I provided her with some of the books from my collection, and she chose a name from them. Then when I told her that the name is female she said that it didn’t really matter if it was male or female as she had no gender, but that if it made me feel better I could refer to her as a female.” He said in a single breath.
Laura looked at him approvingly. “Really? From the reports I read, all the Ai’s of this type were named by their users, and every male user gave his Ai a male name, and every female hers a female one. Hmm… you need to send the data from your implant to the research department, as soon as you can, they would be very interested in it. But let’s move on to other things. You will be attending the fleet academy soon with other recruits, I have no doubt that you will graduate with highest marks. But nevertheless I want you to focus solely on the classes. And of course you are not to speak anything of what you heard during our meetings, you have high clearance but your classmate will not.” She looked expectantly at Adrian until he said that he understood.
“Good. After you graduate we’ll see about the continuation of your career.” She narrowed her eyes at him and continued. “I have no doubt that you have already figured out that your educational path is different, and that we have other things in plan for you.” When he tried to feign surprise, she scowled at him. “Oh, wipe that expression of your face, I have no delusions about your intellect, I and my superiors know very well that you are unique. And as I said we have plans for you, but you do need to keep your focus and surmount all the obstacles we put before you.” Now there was no need for Adrian to feign surprise, as he was genuinely surprised. He assumed that he caught Laura’s eye and that she groomed him for a command position within the fleet, but knowing that even her superiors had taken notice, that scared him. As far as he knew Laura’s only superiors were Elias Bakas, who commanded the Olympus military, which in fact now made him the same rank as Laura, and then Tomas Klein himself. And the thought that Tomas Klein was interested in him was frightening. “Attending the academy will be one of those obstacles.” She continued seemingly unaware of Adrian’s thoughts. “The academy will put you amongst other recruits, most of who will be older than you. You will need to not only pass, but also make them recognize you as their equal. Your intellect has always put you ahead of those your own age, but being intelligent is not the same thing as being smart. Now you will be in situation where everyone around you will have more experience than you. We are hoping to level the playing field for you a bit.” She smirked. “Do you think you are up to the task?”
Adrian swallowed hard he looked at Laura and realized that even with his smarts he was still far behind those older than him, he thought himself smarter than anyone else, and even though he realized that they had plans for him, he still failed to see the scope of those plans.
“Yes.” Adrian answered, but not really sure whether he truly was up to the task.
Laura looked at him, her eyes searching something in his, then she finally nodded
“Good.” She then stood up and left the room, leaving Adrian alone with his thoughts.
Later that evening Adrian sat in his room thinking about his future. He still struggled with the notion that someone had plans for his future, he feared that his life would not be his own, that he would be limited by the path set before him, like when he was in the orphanage. But then again, this was an opportunity, he knew that everyone in Olympus was free to choose his own path, it was he who chose to go to the military,
and then to go to the fleet when opportunity presented itself. He could have refused, and continued on to the military school. And he knew that he was given much more opportunities than anyone else. What he learned over his life in Olympus was that here, skill was valued over anything else, age and experience did factor in, but skill was paramount. That skill usually came with age and experience did make things different in Olympus, where most left school well past the age people on Earth did. And they could afford it, people lived longer now than in the past, and had more time to study and get experience before choosing what they wanted to do. Adrian was the exception, he was given the chance because of his intelligence. He had no doubt that he needed to confirm their trust in him, but he was also a bit scared to have them trust him that much. He kept thinking it over before finally deciding that he would continue to give his best, and hope that he lived up to the expectations they had of him. He lost himself in his thoughts until a soft female voice interrupted his mussing
“Adrian, may I ask you something?” the voice said.
For a moment he was startled and started looking around his room for the source of the voice, when he saw that there wasn’t anyone there with him, he realized to whom the voice must belong to.
“Iris, is that you?” He asked.
“Of course. There is no one else present here.” She said.
Adrian shook his head and grinned.
“I see that you synthesized a female voice for yourself.”
“Obviously.” She said. And Adrian swore he could feel a touch of amusement in her tone.
“I like it.” He said.
“Thank you.” She said, and now he was sure he heard pride in her tone.
“You wanted to ask me something?”
“Yes. I wanted to know if I could have access to the rest of your databases. I have already read through your book collection several times, I find that the material becomes less entertaining after fiftieth read through.” She said.
