The Recruitment: Rise of the Free Fleet

by Michael Chatfield

  Throughout he played reports, had videos, transmissions and such that he had picked up over the years.

  He looked up, right at everyone in the room. “The PDF is a lie, and even if it wasn’t do you want to have your planet and children become slaves?”

  The video disappeared as shock and anger showed on nearly every face.

  “Is that real?” Min Hae asked as everyone turned to me.

  “I believe so, I pulled information from the ships that we raided. From what I read it supports what you’ve just seen. I need you and your people to go through it with a fine comb to find what’s real and not.” He nodded as I turned to Felix.

  “I need you and yours to rig every Mecha we have with auto-injector systems, and work on getting a system put in our battle suits. I put one in mine and Yasu’s to have one male and female setup Improve the design if you desire. I was doing it on the quick.” He nodded. “I also want you to work on disabling the Mecha kill switches. I was thinking of maybe using liquid nitrogen or another freezing substance to freeze it and a Mechanism to break it. That’s all up to you guys.”

  “I think we can come up with something.” Felix said.

  “Have you showed the others this video?” One of the intelligence guys asked.

  “Not yet, through training I’m going to rotate people through and have they watched it. I’ve also transmitted it to the other ships for them to watch.”

  “Isn’t there the risk that someone might betray us?”

  “Betray us to the Sarenmenti, or the ship’s crew that we never see?” Someone replied, talking of the ship’s crew with more vehemence than the Sarenmenti. The man that had asked the question blushed. No one would betray another human to the other species on the ship, to each other—maybe.

  “That’s good thinking though, we need to think about keeping all of this contained, the crew and Sarenmenti can’t know what we’re doing.”

  “What about the Kuruvians?”

  “All of them are on our side, they all know the truth.”

  “If they knew the truth why haven’t they acted?” Felix asked.

  “They’ve been bred to be engineers and discoverers, the majority of them are not suited for combat. Only a few of their people are even willing to put on a Mecha and fight. They’re mostly the gunners of each ship.”

  “What are we doing this in aid of, what’s the end goal?” Min Hae asked, a few others nodding.

  “To take control of the ships in this fleet.” I said simply, I had nothing to hide, either we succeeded or failed, if we failed well I doubted I would have much time to regret my actions.

  “You are Salchar.” Min Hae said as if that was reason enough for my plan to work as looks of disbelief became shrugs of acceptance.

  “That’s why I’m going to pull people from both your groups for special positions within the ship. So give me your best and I’ll let them pick from the listings of positions first.”

  “What positions?”

  “Well I’m going to need navigators, engineers, pilots for shuttles, sensor crew and all the rest. If you know anyone that would suit those positions push it to Min Hae and Felix who can then push it to me. Though as said before; do not tell anyone what you’re doing unless you’re allowed and they know what our real situation is.

  I saw the gleam in more than one eye, it was always good to give these people some kind of goal it motivated them and I needed motivated and determined people now.

  “You know that lovely undisturbed sleep you’ve been having the past couple of days. Well you can say good bye to it as we’ll be doing sleep training from now on!” This was met with a few grumbles but even those that complained leaned forward, they wanted to learn more.

  They accepted this as the engineering groups took my suit with my initial plan on the kill switch as well as the auto injector function me and Shrift hadn’t fully ironed out. Shrift went off with them happily answering their questions about the Mecha as me and Min Hae’s group took over my couple pod and I parsed out the information I had to them all.

  The armoury door opened as Yasu glared at me. I quickly finished what I was doing and made my way to her.

  “How are the hand to hand classes going?”

  “They are willing to learn, even more so after the announcement that we will be taking a planet.” She said soberly, obviously not wanting to talk about that.

  “What are you up to Salchar?” Her eyes studying my face—there was no way I was going to be lying my way out of it. I tried to think of how best to explain it as a squad was being guided to the maintenance hub-turned presentation room.

  “Go with them.” She studied me for a second before doing so. There’s so many ways this can go wrong I realized as I was placing my trust in thousands of people. It made me want to stop doing what I was doing and bring it back to three or four people I could trust completely. As soon as I had the thought I dismissed it remembering my unknown promise to them. They deserved an equal chance to survive; it was up to all of us to

  As night cycle came around I called Min Hae, Felix, Henry and my wonderful wife into the armoury, Shrift already there.

  A few people came in bringing a gravity cart that some engineering Kuruvians had given us with drinks and food on it.

  “Thanks, guys.” I said as they were all smiles getting back to work as the cart floated between us acting as an impromptu table.

  I grabbed a bowl of goop eagerly, seeing others waiting looking at me.

  “Hurry up, don’t know when you’ll be eating next.” I said as I swallowed my food and followed it with some old energy drink tasting squeeze bottle putting it back on the cart as they took little longer than me to finish off their meals.

  “Alright starting from my left around to the right, tell me how thing are going, split into advances, problems and thoughts towards further advancement.” I pointed to Henry who started.

  “We’ve put people into two groups, those proficient with rifles and those not. Those that are we’re putting through the paces of heavy weaponry as me and my people learn more about them ourselves.

  They won’t be anywhere near as proficient as I’d like but they’ll know enough to not shoot buddy in the back. After we’re on the planet we can pick up on training. We’re going through the basics of advancing under fire, leap frogging it’s called. One group covers and the other advances, before covering the first group who advance, continuing on until they reach the objective. It’s a damn workout doing it but they’re getting better.”

  “Good, please identify those in the slower group on the command roster. Also your lessons are your own you are allowed to modify them as you wish. Talk with Yasu about tactics and strategy, teach the leaders and commanders, having them pass it down in the free time their people have and during training.” Henry nodded as he was writing on his data pad. I looked to the next person.

  “Min Hae.”

  “We’re working on making the forum and chat room easier to use. In the meantime we’ve put together a file from the ships we raided.” He took a breath. “Everything we’ve got so far points to the documentary and what the Kuruvians are saying being true.

  We’ve been able to capture messages between the ships crew which have been interesting, especially between the Captains.” His face was dark as he looked to us.

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “The conversations have also backed up the documentary.”

  “Do you have a transcript from one?”

  “Yes. This is between two low ranking bridge crew members.” He said, finding the transcript before narrating it.

  The raid on Chaleel should be good, I overhead Captain Welick talking to Captain Quiart we should be making six figures off of this.

  Yeah but we’ll be lucky to see a tenth of that.”

  At least we’re not slaves. We’ll probably lose half of them from accidents or fighting all the while they’ll be thinking that they’re killing terrorists.

  Means more
money for us. Don’t have to split with them. All we have to do is watch.

  Min Hae cleared his throat.

  “They go on for some time swapping war stories, we’ve checked them against the history we have so far and it confirms our worries.”

  “Definitively?”

  “Yes, but we’re going to need more than this to get people motivated. Even after the documentary more than one shrugged it off. These people want to survive, though with taking Chaleel we can get access to a wealth of information with that we can show the rest what is really going on and hopefully get them motivated into doing something about it.”

  I nodded my agreement.

  “Make sure that information goes to the leaders and Commanders Henry.” Henry and Min Hae leant towards one another swapping notes.

  “Very well then—Felix what do you have?”

  “We think we’ve got a way to stop the kill switch.” Felix said as ears perked up looking at first to him and then me.

  “Think?” I asked, not thrilled by the use of the word.

  “Well the kill switch is a gas operated system five slugs positioned around the neck that once activated the pressurized gas will detonate the slugs effectively severing the head and then proceeding to bounce through the Mecha until it’s kinetic energy is stopped.”

  “Ouch.” I said with a grimace.

  “Yes, ouch. You can’t hack the remote switch or it goes off. Removing it or tampering with the housing it again, goes off.”

  “Why not just deactivate it when we’re not in Mechas?” Yasu asked Henry and Min Hae giving agreeing nods as well as studying glances.

  I waved to Felix, I knew the reason but he could explain it a lot better than I could.

  “If we’re in a battle situation we won’t have the time. Plus we don’t know if they will alert the Syndicates or not.”

  “When do you think we can start putting them into the mechas?”

  “Well supplies are an issue, plus fabricating all of these takes time. I suggest an excursion on 3247.” He looked at me making the statement a question.

  “Sounds good to me. We’ll keep everyone on the lookout for the necessary materials and machines. Put it on the forum as well as lists for their HUDs make sure all of the other ships know.”

  “Yes sir.” He pulled his data pad out.

  “Make sure that’s only put on after everyone’s seen the video though.”

  “How sure are we about the security of the chat network, forums and such?”

  “Well…” My pad vibrated as I pulled it out.

  It’s secure, and any work that happens inside this armoury I can cover up.

  -R

  “It’s secure, as well as all activities within this armoury, as such Felix and Min Hae I want you to keep all work inside the armoury, don’t even talk about what you’re doing unless it’s in here.”

  They nodded somberly as I looked to Yasu.

  “Yasu?”

  “I have begun with hand to hand training. It will take some time. There will be some effect by the time of planet fall but it’ll be minimal.”

  “Can we get them fighting with plasmid weaponry more?”

  “There are a few that are better suited for that than hand to hand. I will make separate classes.” She paused looking at her hands before she looked at me.

  “Would you be able to help teach them? There are not many that are advanced enough to be teaching.”

  Is she offering me a peace offering? I thought as I replied.

  “I’ll try to help out as much as possible.” I nodded as I wondered how I’d fit it in, even without needing sleep by using the wake up that Shrift had there still didn’t seem to be enough time for everything. It would be good to keep active and it looked like trying to get away from her was not going to work.

  “Alright Felix and Min Hae have you got the lists for the people and the positions they want to take?”

  They sent them to my data pad as I scanned the people and the small bio with them.

  “Alright good, here’s the sleep training trees.” I flicked them the data packets that Resilient had supplied.

  “Why are you giving them to us?” Felix asked.

  “You know your people better than I do, tell them that I’m the one running it so that you can see what they try to do when not being observed by me. It will put you in a position to see all sides of them before they start training. Plus if I die we need other copies of the sleep training floating around. Which reminds me.” I sent more training packets to Yasu and Henry.

  “That’s sleep teachings which pertain to your areas of expertise, weapons, hand to hand and machinery.”

  I didn’t tell them that I’d been on all three as soon as I’d found them. It was good to keep a few tricks up your sleeve.

  “Alright Henry, Yasu I’m going to need people that would suit tactical and sensors. So people with quick reflexes and good communication skills. Those for gunner positions should have both and amazing aiming, the ability to work in adverse conditions and can work in a three dimensional mind frame.”

  “Maybe we should start with some null gravity training?” Henry said.

  “Good thinking.” I said with a smile.

  “Basically whoever you think is best suited for the job postings I put on the forum, put them through the training.

  From this point on everyone will be doing sleep training, there’s just too much we don’t know to be asleep and not learning what could keep us alive in this cold bitch called space.” They nodded agreeing.

  “Now there will be people that will want to do other things, like someone in current engineering that will want to be a doctor and such, so work together, people are to be given equal opportunities. Suggest training to them but they have to choose. It’s up to us to guide them into the right positions based on what we know and give them a dose of reality when they need it.” They nodded seriously realizing they were partly shaping people’s futures with their decisions, decisions not to be taken lightly.

  “I’m going to pass on a report on what we’ve found to Iron Bok Soo and Rick Casterly and see what they say in reply. Also get some sleep people, and that’s an order I’m going to need you fresh for Chaleel.”

  They picked themselves up and tiredly gave their two finger salutes walking out of the armoury and back to their quarters with Yasu leading them out of the door any rage that she might’ve lost in taking it out on other people clearly not enough to stop what anger she felt toward me.

  Henry stayed behind waiting for me.

  “Might want to take your own advice once in a while boss.” He said nodding in the direction of Yasu.

  “I’m more likely to get a shiv in my side than I am to get a hello.” I said with a sigh.

  “Best to try and fix any broken fences, talk to her and air things out.”

  “You might have an idea but I’ll finish up here before I get some sleep.” I sighed as I thought of what I still had to do.

  “I’ll check on the night watches.” Henry said picking himself up and pushing the gravity cart in front of him.

  “We have watches?”

  “Yes roving in the main areas and then stand alone in place in main entry ways. The Kuruvians were quite nervous when we started going around the hangar bay. Then Eddie gave everyone a lecture that if they touch everything he was going to teach them how to fix what they’d broken, all the while he was throwing cowboy boots at them. Since then both the Kuruvians and us have been more than happy to keep to our own things and fume about his antics when he isn’t around. I wonder if he meant his lecture to bond the two groups.” He looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.

  “Sounds like Eddie alright.” Shrift said rubbing his head. “Doing two things at once but don’t doubt his teaching being the hard way.” I grinned.

  “You’ve met him before?” Henry said looking to me and Shrift

  “Yes, I should really get him in on these meetings if we have any more in the future. Could
you see about that Shrift?”

  “He probably won’t like it too much but I think I might be able to wrangle him into them every so often.”