The Recruitment: Rise of the Free Fleet (24 page)

“In two days’ time we’ll be dropping onto Planet 3247. We’ve been tasked with taking the power stations on the planet. Our forces will be compromised of the battalion of humans currently in service, with support from the shuttle craft and the fleet” The planet expanded showing power stations highlighted on the planet as well as population centres usually hundreds of kilometres away.

***

He had my full attention, my annoyance at Yasu’s cold stare forgotten as my mind was working.

Twenty thousand humans are in the Mecha corps.
 
We need to ramp up training with rifles and swords then. Squad, Platoon and even Company drills and methods to attack the enemy on flat terrain.
 
I thought as he continued to talk.

“You will be armed, but remember your commanders will have a kill switch on them, any attempt on their life will mean you and your mate will die.” Drask said in a bored tone.

Great if I died the ice mistress was going to follow me into hell
. Putting that chilling thought to the back of my head pulled out a data pad sending messages to a few of the names on my data pad as a rough group of four hundred got messages and stayed behind as the rest of the Mechas left. The Sarenmenti stared at us for a few minutes before shaking their heads, probably putting it down to a human quirk, even if a Kuruvian was beside me facing the u-shape that the others had taken.

Waiting till they left I started talking.

“We need to ramp up training, as you can see we have minimal time to get our people ready.”

“What made you boss?” One man asked.

“He’s Salchar you idiot.” Another barked, the other man chastised as he looked at me with wide eyes.

“Well because needs must, if any of you think you can do a better job, please take over.” I said opening my arms open.

Oddly no one put their hands up.

“No one could.” Henry said, nods coming from around the U.

“Well you’re all smarter than me, that’s for sure.” I said glumly as they chuckled good naturedly.

“Anyone with something that will help us in this specific task bring it to your commanders. Also anyone that has been involved with intelligence gathering, hacking, and computer systems or had good technical, engineering or trade skills is to meet me in armoury four.”

“Henry is the organization table satisfactory?”

“Yes sir. Wish we had more than just our ship and that of Bok Soo and Rick.”

“We’ll just have to manage.” I shrugged as he nodded.

“That table is how things will remain until later. Make sure that there are clear lines of authority if someone goes down.” Henry nodded soberly.

“Yes commander.”

“Also I’m going to have a video setup in one of the maintenance hubs, all squads are to see it. It makes a few things make more sense.” I gave them a look that I hoped instilled the importance of the documentary they were about to see that Eddie had scrambled together. When are we going to show them the video?” Instead of first aid I’m going to have you run your squads into the maintenance hubs I showed you and watch it. Answer any questions they have and direct them to the locked forums for question. Make sure they don’t discuss what they saw with others, as they might not have watched it already. Anything else?”

They nodded that there wasn’t.

“Alright then see to your squads.” I gave them the two finger lazy salute. I don’t know how it had come to be, but that and head bowing were how respect was shown, instead of the rigid salutes of the military back on Earth.

I guessed it made us look as if we were playing soldiers, I didn’t care.

“Well that was interesting.” Shrift said as I entered the armoury.

“Yes and it also means you’re going to have a lot of people using Mecha’s to run through weapons drills.”

He sighed in annoyance, “I wish we had those simulation units but only spec ops get those.” He groaned as he unlocked the racks of Mechas.

I pulled the universal jack from the data pad connecting it to my internal port on my neck. I downloaded all of the video and audio from myself I’d got in the meeting and with my own people before sending it through the chat room to Bok Soo and Rick.

The forum and chat room piggybacked the signals of the dreadnought out to the other nine ships updating on every connected human owned data pad. Resilient had flashed a message the first time she made contact with the data pads once I’d come back from the boarding action. A few had signed in with their name, ship and armoury. A few had ignored it, but more and more were joining the network, solving our communication issues.

Shrift had told me that the Kuruvians used similar systems to transmit information and talk to their family members on other ships as such all of them were in the loop.

I looked up as a small group entered the armoury, heading towards me.

“Uhh excuse me but what are we here for?” A man asked as I sat there sending a message to Henry’s data pad.

“Well you’re here to organize them, good initiative.” I said with a smile looking up from my data pad, the man obviously wishing he didn’t speak now as he looked at the others in the room now looking at him expectantly.

“What do you need us to do Commander?” He asked after a few moments of collecting himself.

“What’s your name?”

“Felix.” I pulled the data pads cord out of my neck, a few looking away as the cable retracted into the data pad.

“Felix I need the engineering associated people and those who know computers and intelligence gathering in two separate groups, in say five minutes. If you don’t get this done in five minutes I’ll have someone replace you.” I said with a happy smile as I went back to my data pad.

With a lot of shouting and moving Felix had the group broken into two in three minutes.

“Good now there are four squads that will be coming through here in,” I consulted my data pad which contained the training schedule of the ship. “Four minutes. Felix who are your leaders?”

“Min Hae will be in charge of the intelligence group. I will be in charge of the engineering group.”

Most of the people that had been taken from the Earth had been from Korea, Japan, China, and the west coast of America and Canada. It was where the training station had been when their collectors had dropped down, recruiting, us.

They needed people, they didn’t care where they came from.

Thankfully with the implanted translators the language barrier had been negated and most things had been hammered out with what I thought to be the best of all the cultures coming together.

Anything like problems like being annoyed someone that wasn’t from your area in the world was in charge of you had disappeared, there was no time to worry about things like that when we were all just trying to survive. Prejudice would usually result with a boot to the head and someone telling you to pull your head out of your ass. It was work together, or die.

“Alright, Shrift.” I wrote a message on my data pad holding it to him as he shook his head in the negative and I continued.

“First we’re going to watch a little movie, follow me.”

I took them through to the maintenance hub. I hooked in my data pad and began playing the video documentary as I secured the hatches and doors. The people in the room looked at me in question as I took a seat and watched the movie with them. At first a younger Eddie appeared.

“Hello there, I am the chief Engineer of the Resilient, known to you possibly as the Golden Refuge. Now hold onto your manipulators less they fly off.” He said as he began with the history that we had all been taught, then he continued with videos, files he’d scrounged up that depicted the battles as the Syndicate attacked the PDF. Eventually leading to the rise of the Syndicate as well as the destruction of so much technology and information, which seemed to be the largest thing Eddie focuses on. He was only Kuruvian after all.

Then he continued on with how the PDF started to expand to fill its menial roles. How it took the barely cave dwelling Sarenmenti and forced them into the warriors that they were. How they’d done the same with the Kuruvians, all of them told the same lie. Making all of the ‘recruits’ all but slaves in name. He talked on how the races were matched together in an attempt for them to mate, then they would have their children taken away only to be trained from birth to be a member of the PDF, making the later generations of recruits fanatics for the group that had given them a home and filled their minds with propaganda.

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.