The Recruitment: Rise of the Free Fleet

by Michael Chatfield

  “Paid for it with an added five years on my contract.” He growled before continuing.

  “That’s only until they end of the war and five years.” I said lightly. It does make a perfect cover for never letting us go. I thought as I continued talking.

  “Have fun training? I heard about your rules.”

  “Apparently a lot of people did.” I said dryly. He laughed at this.

  “We spent more time drinking soju than training.” He reminded me with a grin in his voice.

  “Yeah but you all didn’t seem to have the Earth shattering headache after!” I complained as he grinned.

  “Have you seen the rest of MT?” I asked.

  “Nope, only damned stone warrior.” I saw Yasu’s head move minutely to listen better. “You?”

  “None other than you, but may I introduce my wife.” I said with a flourish.

  “I’m guarding the door.” Her icy tone making it apparent she didn’t want to be introduced as Bok Soo’s eyes went wide.

  “That’s not who I think it is!?” He let go a belly laugh slapping the armrest into uselessness with his servo assisted HANDS.

  “Omo this is daebak! You married the ice mistress!!” He said as I glared at him trying to silence his laughing as I noticed a stiff movement of her head.

  “Shut up Bok Soo.” I muttered.

  “Ah Salchar, you should meet my own Young Eun Hee!” A Mecha beside him punched him in the armoured shoulder.

  “Why my cherry blossom.” He said looking completely unabashed.

  “Good luck Eun Hee.” I said bowing my head to her slightly.

  “Good to meet my husband’s Hyung.” She replied bowing her head deeper than I had in a sign of respect.

  “Hey I’m older than him!”

  “When have you ever acted that way?” She retorted hotly turning on Bok Soo I could see the twinkle in her belying any malicious intent feeling my own eyebrow raise skeptically and a grin appear on my face.

  “Well…” He grinned back at her unable to stay serious. I remembered where I was and the limited time we might have.

  “Use the universal jack in your forefinger.”

  “Found that one when I pulled the finger off one time.”

  “You always where good at taking things apart.” We grinned at one another. “Okay so use it to jack into the command chair, should be on your left.” He did so.

  “Alright now access the logs of all personnel and parse it out among your people. Read them. Also upload the sleep training files you find needed for helms, navigator sensors, tactical and weapons bays.”

  “Doing so.” His voice all business now.

  “Alright I’m going to setup a forum turned chat room like we had on MAT running through the low level communications. We’ll run it like a buffer system. Whenever we have contact the we’ll upload information to those connected until it reaches its destination.”

  “Same codes?”

  “Yes. I have it on my visor chip which I kept so I can pull it all from there. Get everyone linked in. I’m going to make it your job to work with Rick and get in contact with everyone, including those not on just our ships.”

  “Understood, Rick?” he said with a questioning stare before returning back to his work.

  “We were in the same squad on the training station. Good guy, military American Air force reservist.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been busy.”

  “Just surviving.”

  “Look after yourself Salchar.” His voice dead serious as he looked me in the eye.

  “You too Hyung. Good luck Eun Hee.” I said nodding to the impromptu comm. officer as she cut the feeds. I turned to the group working on the sensor array.

  “What have you got on sensors?”

  “Confirmed ten ships they’re classed as two massive troop carriers, four small corvettes, two cruisers a battleship and the Golden Refuge.”

  “Alright pull all of the sensor data. I want full scans of everything on the hull; pinpoint anything useful like sensors or weapon systems. Use your universal ports.”

  “Yes Commander.” I put my helmet back on as it locked I pulled up my communications suites.

  “Henry, you cleared the ship yet?”

  “Yes Commander. Just coming back to your position.”

  “Alright. Good job Henry.”

  “Return to the shuttle.” Officer Turek said through everyone’s helmets with almost a bored tone. It seemed that whatever interference Eddie and Resilient had run had worked.

  “Alright, you two take point.” I said as I remembered my broken rifle bringing my plasmid sword to bear and reloading my pistol as I followed the two I’d pointed to. Yasu and the others falling in behind me.

  Even with the ship reported as clear I didn’t want to find out it wasn’t as we walked slowly. Henry quickly met up with us combing our force with his as we filed though the ship and to the shuttle. The interior of the ship where the fighting had happened was left pockmarked and burnt from fire, with the green aliens and their blood creating a vivid contrast. We piled in the shuttle as fast as possible securing ourselves in our harnesses the wounded eerily silent, either unconscious or asleep from their wounds and hell fire in their systems. Twelve hadn’t made it back to the shuttle.

  The airlocks quickly sealed as the pilots unclamped from the hull and accelerated for the Golden refuge.

  I could see another larger shuttle used by the crew slide into place over the airlock we left behind before I started reading more into the information we’d scrounged from the ship.

  We disembarked from the shuttle people telling their battle stories already. I stayed quiet the entire time as I kept reading through the information we’d gotten from the other ship. I numbly gave back my broken rifle and put my weaponry away before removing my Mecha.

  I sat on the seat Shrift had left from when we’d been working on my Mecha. Not noticing the glare from my wife as she practically slammed her Mecha into its spot and stormed out of the bay. Or Henry as he shooed others back to their rooms instead of bothering me casting me a look as I thought, read and anger grew within me. I put down the pad, my fists white from being clenched so hard.

  “Something on your mind?” Shrift asked as the armoury doors locked on each side.

  “Could say that,” I hissed. “I have my confirmation. Now how can you Eddie and Resilient help me?”

  “We can disable and destroy the internal kill switches. The ones on your Mecha is another problem.”

  So we have a piece of a solution.

  “How in the hell am I going to convince the others.” I said to myself more than Shrift.

  “There’s a documentary.” He pulled out his data pad and a movie file waited on my data pad.

  “That’ll help some.” I said as I jumped through the video.

  “Now go and take a damned shower.” Shrift said after a few minutes, bringing me back to reality.

  I smelt myself, not liking the result, as my stomach reminded me that it required food.

  “Sounds like a good idea.” I said, stretching as I walked out of the armoury, typing a message to Henry.

  Meet in the mess.

  I followed a map that someone had created of Resilient, quickly getting to the mess as I joined the line for food. I returned a few nods and a few grins which I replied in kind to before I took my seat, eating and checking the data pad.

  Five minutes later Henry appeared, I waved to the food as he went and grabbed a bowl and joined me.

  “I outlined on there the things I think we should go through; from basic fire arms drills and handling to using them in close quarters and everything in between.” I flipped through a few very detailed pages. As he ate, the man certainly didn’t waste any time, he had already picked out people to be trainers.

  “I take it you’ve looked into these trainers?” I said as Henry cleared his throat.

  “I checked all of their skills first. I also only picked people that are willing to teach,
and not order about. It’s why the list is so small.” He said in his no-nonsense way, I knew anything that he said would be as if written in stone. If he said the sky was purple, it was purple and I could trust it.

  “Very well. I’d like to meet them if possible.” Henry took back his pad and typed something out as I ate and he joined me after he was done typing.

  They appeared in a few minutes.

  “Well grab some food and explain to me your plans. I want every detail.” They nearly all seemed to grin as they grabbed food and clustered around Henry and myself.

  Looks like I might have an NCO core. I was going to need to build an army and I needed the most experienced at the centre of it, pushing the less experienced forward. If I played my cards right I could make something that was a half-way decent group on the Refuge. I could only show the other ships how to do it.

  I asked them one by one how they knew what they knew about the areas they were to be training others in. Their answers left no doubts in my mind that Henry had picked well. As they talked I glanced around the room looking for anyone paying us more attention than I would like to see or if anyone had any qualms with what we were doing. By now the crew and the Sarenmenti must know what we were doing with their random observations. If they didn’t they would soon when we began training tomorrow.

  It didn’t seem like anyone cared as we had our discussion. I did however study the other occupants in the room, mainly the Kuruvians and Sarenmenti. The few Kuruvians in the room constantly mingled with the humans asking them questions. All Kuruvians had one major similarity, they were curious as hell, much more than humans. I didn’t doubt that most of them were recording us eating and interacting with one another to study it later on.

  The Sarenmenti with us were all officers who kept to themselves. I watched as they grabbed the food in their four jaws, tossing their heads back and cutting the hard rations to shreds. It was hard not to stare at such a bizarre eating method.

  After everyone had finished their food and Henry had outlined the training program in detail they all looked to me.

  “You’ve convinced me you’ve got my go-ahead. Based on your performance which Henry will record you will all be allotted a rank, from squad leader to Company Commander.” They all nodded seriously. Henry sitting back, already evaluating them and looking at them as if he was going to give them people to command.

  “Otherwise Henry I want you to get started tomorrow, people still need to get accustomed to Golden Refuge we don’t want to throw too much at them. Also have a talk with Shrift and the other armourers about the weapons.”

  “Sir.”

  “Now I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep.” I stood nodding to them as the majority of them gave me lazy two finger salutes as I moved to put my tray in the retrieval bay and pulled out my data pad.

  Following it to my own quarters. I reached it finding a hand reader which I put my hand over, my identity chip unlocking the door as I looked up to see an irate Yasu coming out of the shower wearing nothing but towels.

  “I didn’t see anything!” I said immediately turning away—and into the traitorous door which had closed on me

  “Baka!” she said noises coming from behind me as I heard a closet being pulled open viciously.

  “You dressed?” I received an infuriated pillow to the head in way of response.

  “I am dressed you Fujitsu.” She said moments later. Great Japanese swear words. Swear words and certain phrases from different cultures hadn’t been translated yet, though I hope they would be soon. Not knowing what Yasu was calling me would play on my mind.

  “Alright, I’m going to take a shower and then sleep for a few hours.” I said as I edged towards the shower

  She made a noise that made it clear it didn’t matter to her as I turned and walked briskly into the bathroom.

  Breathing a sigh of relief as the door behind me. I peeled off my battle suit as I got in the shower letting the battery acid like cleaning solution wash over me studying my still mostly healed stomach before toweling off. Even when it seemed that my possible problems would be lessened, instead they’d grown even more. I put on my battle suit feeling drained as I walked back out into the main room, finding it pitch black.

  “Salchar.”

  “Yes?” I said as I grabbed the pillow she’d thrown at me as I made myself as comfortable as possible on the floor. Thankful for the battle suits internal temperature adjustment feature which kept me warm as I lay there.

  “As we are married we shall have a truce for now.” She said, looking at me as if expecting something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You said we would talk.” He expression becoming darker.

  “Ah yes, I will leave you alone. Don’t worry.” I said, feeling nervous as she looked more annoyed than happy.

  “Is that what you think of me? As a woman not worthy of you?” Is it why you have not had a minute for me? You think you bested me with your cheap trickery in the Marriage battle that I am no longer worth your time?”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “Now you show pity as if I am some feeble girl that needs to be coddled!” She was clearly furious.

  “I hope that you’re comfortable, husband.” She flopped into bed, clearly not wanting to talk any more. The way she said husband sounding more like traitor to my ears.

  Marrying your nemesis, this universe loves me.” I grumbled as I got comfortable and fell asleep. I’d wake up to the sound of any movement after training.

  Chapter Engineers territory

  Shrift entered the middle ring as it was called; it housed sections important to keeping the ship running. It was mainly controlled by engineering.

  The outer ring was filled with weapons, armour and shuttle bays. The central ring was the command centre and mostly sleeping quarters for the commanders. He walked up to an engineer working on a panel.

  “Where’s Eddie?”

  “He’s looking over reactor four.”

  “Thank you.” Shrift went off, a grin appearing on his face as he felt at home in the Mechanical areas of the ship. A small shiver ran through his exoskeleton as he rubbed his prosthetic arm.

  His thoughts of his accident melted away as he heard the tell tale calls of Eddie.

  “You! Yes you, what in the Kresh do you think you’re doing. Hey! Even I can see from here with my eyes that the plasma output is building pressure! There’s a damned kink!”

  A cowboy boot went sailing through the air.

  “OW!”

  “Well if you were dealing with the damned plasma conduit instead of staring it like a damned idiot you wouldn’t have been hit by my boot now would you!” Shrift saw the Kuruvians mouth close before they tried to argue the logic of that statement as Eddie continued on.

  “You two help him and you better be helping him not skiving off!” Eddie yelled as three engineers beat a hasty retreat running past Shrift as he walked into the room a grin on his face.

  “What are you doing here armourer.” Eddie said as he caught eye of Shrift.

  “You made me take the job!” That made the other Kuruvians move away, no doubt expecting the other cowboy boot still attached to the Chief engineers foot to come sailing through the air.

  Instead he took a seat on a chair, pointing to the other as Shrift took it.

  “So what do you think of Salchar?” He asked, as if Shrift hadn’t said anything.

  “He’s a lot more interesting than the Sarenmenti, he’s smart and he knows how to get people working together. He always has a plan, and those that follow him will succeed. I’ve seen it on the fights, and even with his first raid. He’s made to be a leader.”

  “Yes he is and we’re going to do all we can to help him.”

  “I didn’t think that you’d like him this quick.”

  “I see potential in him. Though we just need him to realize it.”

  “Realize what?”

  “That he needs to play this just like he did hi
s game. Once he realizes that, then he’ll be great.”

  “How can we help him do that?”

  “Support him; he needs to trust in others. I can see he doesn’t he’s paranoid about everything and that will wear away his ability to lead.”

  Shrift nodded his head.

  “We need to get him working with his crew, Resilient tells me that the chat forum is online but no one’s used it.”