Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 4

  I woke much later to an insistent beeping sound coming from the door. At first I wondered what the noise was. Then I noticed the pad used to open the door was flashing in time with the beeping. When I palmed the pad the door opened to reveal Olin standing there waiting. I apologised for keeping him waiting before asking him if he could just let me change into some fresh clothing. He agreed so I quickly closed the door and changed into a fresh ship-suit before joining him in the passageway outside my quarters. On the way to the mess, I asked Olin if I would be able to learn anything about the ship, or more specifically about ships in general. I explained that I would like to be able to make myself useful if the need arose. He replied that he would ask the Captain for guidance and let me know.

  After breakfast Olin took me down to Medical so Eri could check my progress. While we were there he asked if it would be permissible for me to exercise with his soldiers. Eri agreed that it would be OK but stressed that I should not overdo it at first because I was still healing and weak. I then asked when I would be able to start learning to defend myself. Both Olin and Eri laughed before Eri told me to be patient as I was not quite strong enough for that yet. I then asked about some light weapons training. My two companions looked at each other, then, Olin replied that he would consider my request. Eri carefully examined me, both visually and with her instruments till she was able to give me a clean bill of health.

  TRAINING BEGINS

  When Eri finished with me in medical, Olin took me down to the squad bay to start me on some light physical exercise with the Troopers. We started out with some fairly easy physical exercises and I kept up as best I could but soon realised I was tiring very quickly. After a while, I noticed Olin watching me as I tried to keep up. He let me continue like this for a short while longer before calling over a female Trooper. It turned out she was the Federation equivalent of a Sergeant. He had a quiet word with her while looking at me. She came over to me and gently guided me away from the other Troopers towards a table on one side of the squad bay where she told me sit down before introducing herself to me as Ani. I remembered her from the previous day so I apologised to her for pulling her away from her normal work and exercise regime. She laughed and told me not to worry, I was her job for now.

  She sat facing me and explained how she would teach me some less physical skills while the rest of the Troopers finished their workout. She then told me to wait where I was before leaving to retrieve something from a nearby locker. When she returned, she was carrying what looked to me like an odd looking pistol. It had a fairly standard looking grip, similar in form to a Glock but a little longer and wider. The barrel was about two hundred millimetres long and had a bulge running down either side so it was about forty millimetres wide. There was another rectangular module under the barrel forward of the trigger. Ani sat next to me at the table before placing the weapon on the table and turned towards me.

  “This” she said, “is a standard shipboard weapon. It is called a Damanda. It is a compact, hand held rail gun that fires a one tak needle round.”

  She showed me a dart like projectile as she explained the various parts of the round before continuing, “ Olin told me I am to teach you how to use these in case we are ever boarded by pirates or slavers. I can’t say I disagree with his decision, they are becoming bold in this sector lately and we are near the end of our mission so the crew is tired and not as alert as they normally are. You need to pay close attention as this may save your life or perhaps someone else’s, maybe even mine.”

  I looked at the weapon, wondering what a tak was (I eventually found out that a tak is a unit of measure that equals approximately 3mm). I then looked at her and nodded in acknowledgment and understanding.

  When she saw my nod, Ani started talking again “When this weapon is fired on full power, these particular rounds can pierce internal bulkheads, they can even hole the outer hull so you need to be careful where you aim them or you may injure or kill people who you don’t intend to hurt. We also have frangible rounds available for this weapon but only use them for soft targets. Of course, the armour the pirates are likely to be using cannot stop these solid rounds so the Damanda is a very versatile and effective weapon. Once you are familiar with maintaining one, we will teach you to fire them accurately and safely.”

  She then methodically dismantled the weapon, explaining each step to me while I watched. Once the disassembly was completed, she reassembled it, again explaining each step as she went before handing it to me to disassemble and reassemble. The first time I tried, and for several attempts after that, I took quite a while getting it apart and back together again, much, much longer then Ani had taken. Of course I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I think she expected me to. She never seemed to become angry or frustrated with me, she merely commented that I need to be able to do it much faster and blindfolded before she would be completely happy. She made me repeat the process again and again until after a couple of hours she seemed to be reasonably satisfied with my progress. Along the way, she pointed out problems I should be looking for as I did the disassembly and reassembly process.

  After I’d disassembled and reassembled the weapon quite a few times, it was getting close to mealtime so Ani took the weapon from me and locked it away. After the weapon was safely locked up, she escorted me up to the mess so we could eat. As we made our way to the mess, she promised me I would be able to try some target practice the next day. I thanked her for her patience as she began teaching me about the weapon. She just smiled and told me not to worry, it was part of her job. I grew thoughtful, wondering about the care these people continued to show me. As it happened, it paid off for them later, but they couldn’t know that, not then.

  During the meal, I asked Ani about how the Federation was structured. She explained that the Federation was in fact a collection of planets spread over quite a few star systems, each of which was to all intents and purposes self-governing. The Federation itself was governed by the Federation Council which is selected by lottery, one member coming from each planet. The councilors do not directly answer to the government of the planet they represent but they are permitted to take advice from that government. Any Federation citizen may be chosen to become a Councilor, but of course only a tiny number ever do. The Federation Council is primarily responsible for promoting trade and the overall defence of the Federation. Individual planets donate ships and crew to the extent they are capable. There is a formula used to calculate what a planet should be contributing and any anomalies are almost always only minor. That formula takes into account population, Gross Domestic Product, and a number of other factors and was seen by most as the fairest way to calculate each planets contribution. While individual planets finance the ships and crews, those ships and crews are commanded and controlled by the Federation Naval hierarchy which only answers to the Federation Council.

  Of course, an important part of promoting trade is the requirement to protect the ships flying the trade routes between systems and planets. If your freighters and passenger ships are being attacked and either destroyed or taken by an enemy, then the economic and social implications will at some point, become crippling. Ani told me this ability had been breaking down in the last couple of years as the pirates seemed to be becoming bolder and more organised. At the time, this breakdown in the ability of the Federation to protect its citizens was not yet a deal breaker, but Ani told me the situation was deteriorating to the point where many people were becoming very concerned. Clearly the authorities needed to deal with the trend sooner rather than later. She admitted to me the Federation was not by any means perfect. Still she pointed out, they do have all the necessary checks and balances in place to minimise issues such as fraud and corruption. Thankfully, while the Federation was founded on quite idealistic principles, it was also set up with a clear understanding of its people’s basic nature. One of the measures the Federation’s founders took was to make sure the penalties for things such as corruption, both for the officials inv
olved, and the people who initiate it are very severe.

  After we finished eating, I asked Ani to return me to my quarters because by then I was feeling very tired and desperately needed rest. She took me back to my quarters where she left me to do as I wished. I undressed, had a shower, then lay on my bunk to think about the day. I started to wonder if I was the only human out here or if others had managed to find their way off planet before remembering what Eri told me some time before. She’d told me there were many other humans out here. Some of these were born in the Federation, or on the slaver worlds, others arrived in a manner similar to me and there were still more who’d managed to come willingly. By then, I’d been on FNS Destiny for about four months as far as I can tell. Admittedly, I was unconscious for nearly three of those months. Still, I would be far from alone out here, there were other humans for me to find and meet. As I felt myself drifting off to sleep, I decided to put those thoughts aside till I woke the next morning.

  The next morning, I was awake, dressed and waiting when Olin arrived to pick me up. As soon as I opened the door, I asked him about the laundry as I knew I would run out of clothes quickly if I didn’t wash soon. He showed me where to find the bag for them and where to take them so I could pick them up before going to bed that night. Once my laundry was taken care of, we went to breakfast before returning to the squad bay for more exercise and training. While we were eating I asked Olin about the other humans out here. He told me there were in fact quite a few. He estimated there were in fact somewhere between eighteen and twenty million within the Federation itself. His reply surprised me, particularly when he also told me he thought there were more who were slaves on the slaver worlds. I then asked how they came to be here. He told me that the wider community have known about Earth for around two hundred years now. During that time, a lot of people were abducted by the slavers or pirates then later rescued by the Federation, others met study missions that were visiting Earth and left willingly. After being rescued, or otherwise making their way to the Federation, these people paired up and had children with the end result being that most of the humans currently living in the Federation were born there.

  Olin told me a majority of the humans now residing in the Federation were born on a planet called Cambridge by its first human settlers. This planet was gifted to them by the Federation nearly sixty years ago because they’d been faithfully serving in the Federation military for many years even then. He told me some of the Federations greatest soldiers in recent years were humans. After settling there, the humans on Cambridge thrived, building a society dedicated to fairness and service. Cambridge was still classified as a Federation protectorate but there were now moves to offer them full membership. These moves to offer full membership were being sponsored by the human’s main sponsor, the Tangesha. They were pushing for this mostly because of the humans long history of service, and because they would soon have the ability to contribute to the Federation Navy in the form of a ship building capability. He continued on to tell me they were, for the most part, good citizens, certainly no worse than any other species. He also told me that at any given time, the humans had quite a large contingent, approximately 120000, within the Federation military compared to their population. This was a somewhat higher proportion of the population than most planets ever provided. He also told me interspecies compatibility within the Federation was quite variable, some species getting on better with other species but not all. He told me that in general the problems this caused were manageable simply by keeping species who could not get on with each other apart as much as possible.

  By then, we’d finished eating so we headed down to the squad bay for exercise and other training. On the way, I reflected on what he told me about the humans within the Federation before suddenly realising I’d had much this same conversation with Eri not long after I woke up in the medical bay. Admittedly though, Olin supplied a lot of background information that Eri hadn’t. When we reached the squad bay, we immediately started running through the same exercise routine we’d followed the day before. This time I felt I did a little better with the exercises but after a while Ani once again came over to take me over to the table at the side of the bay again for weapon training. As I stripped the weapon I inspected each of the parts for damage just as she’d shown me the day before. This time I found that part of the ammunition feed mechanism was binding. I mentioned this to Ani and her face took on an expression I quickly learned was one of approval. She was clearly pleased I found the problem without any prompting and told me so. I felt very happy about the praise but realised I still had a very long way to go. To this day I don’t know if the fault in the gun was a test or a genuine failure, Ani has never clarified it for me.

  Once the problem with the weapon was rectified, she took me to the small shooting range FNS Destiny carried. This range was designed to keep the Trooper’s skills current for shipboard action. It was designed with the environments as well as distances common on board a ship. Ani showed me how to hold the weapon but it was obvious I couldn’t hold it the way she did due to our different hand structures. Though I’d not had very much experience with hand guns, I’d been shown how to hold one on a number of occasions when I went to a firing range with friends back home on Earth. I showed her the grip they taught me and she agreed it would suffice. She then showed me how to make the weapon safe as well as how to vary the impact settings for the gun. If boarders were wearing armour, the highest setting and solid rounds would be needed but unarmoured people could usually be stopped with a much lower setting and with frangible rounds. Ani told me to use the lower settings whenever possible because they cause far less damage to the ship when the rounds impact the bulkheads.

  After explaining all this, she showed me how to change the power pack and magazines. She showed me the indicators intended let me know how much ammunition was left in the magazine and how much power was in the power packs. Ani explained how the ammunition came in two different types, a hardened penetrator that could be used against hardened targets such as armoured troops, and a frangible round that was better suited for use on board the ship against unarmoured targets. She also showed me how to blank the indicators because if I was somewhere dark, these same indicators could act like a beacon for the other side to aim at. As she showed me each feature she made me show her I understood what I was being taught. Finally, she showed me how to aim and fire the weapon. As she continued through the lesson, she continued to test me on previous points to make sure I really did know what she’d taught me so far and hadn’t forgotten anything. When she was satisfied I knew the basics, she guided me out to the range to see how I would go. She instructed me to set the weapon to its lowest setting and to fire at the targets. At first my rounds were landing all over the place, I missed the target I was aiming at more often than not. Through all this, Ani patiently corrected the mistakes I was making. These usually tended to be relatively minor things like having the incorrect stance, jerking the trigger and other similar errors. By the time I fired off four magazines (120 rounds) I’d reached the point where I was at least able to hit the target most of the time although I my grouping was still terrible. At this point Ani stopped me as she felt I needed a rest and it was time for me to go to Medical for a check-up anyway. We returned to the table where I checked and cleaned the weapon I’d been using. After the weapons were locked away, Ani escorted me to Medical.

  When I arrived at Medical, Eri ran some scans over me then took a blood sample which she placed into a machine to do an analysis. While this was going on, she spoke to Ani about my fitness and coordination. After looking at the test results she informed me she would like to place me on some additional medications. These would be administered via intra-venous drip every two days till the implant finished interfacing with my body. I asked what the medications were and she explained they were a type of rejuvenation technology. She told me these medications wouldn’t extend my life much and wouldn’t change my appearance at all but would help my body r
epair itself more quickly and help my brain regenerate and learn. Of course I agreed to cooperate, after all what else could I do. Eri asked me to climb onto the bed so she could start administering the medications. She told me I would need to stay in Medical overnight and the process would cause me to sleep till morning. Once I was on the bed she connected me to the drip then helped me to make myself comfortable. After she started the drip, I went to sleep very quickly. I did feel tired when I went to Medical so I don’t know if the sleep was natural or caused by the drugs, perhaps it was a combination of the two.

  Next morning, I woke to find Eri standing next to me with Olin waiting over near the door. I realised I felt completely rested and relaxed. After Eri disconnected me from the medical equipment and told me I was free to leave, Olin walked with me as we headed down towards the mess. We talked about my progress on the way as he told me he was quite pleased with my progress in the short time I’d been able to train with his Troopers. While we were eating he asked me how I felt. I told him I felt better than I had for a very long time. He nodded, seeming to be satisfied with my answer before explaining that Eri was giving me the same therapy his soldiers were given to help them heal after they were wounded or otherwise injured. He explained to me that on its own, it would not make me fit, but would make it easier for me to improve my overall fitness provided I put in the hard work. I agreed, telling him as far as I was concerned, doing the work was a good idea anyway even if only to give me something to occupy myself for a while each day. I already knew I had a very long way to go before I was even back to normal, at least my normal before my accident and arrival on FNS Destiny.