Battleship Destroyer Page 2

  Unless he tried something different.

  After failing to get his older brother's (the pilot) attention and in desperation, he reached to his right and forward around the left side of his big brother’s somewhat over weight belly, to the base of the thrust lever under his brother's left hand's fingers hovering above it. Hoping his brother would not notice, Jack pulled it ever so slowly back about 10 percent until the Nav plot (he still had up on his screen), showed them impacting the ground a hundred miles beyond the port at a thousand miles an hour.

  As he pulled his hand back from the throttle he realized that it was not going to work the way he had thought.

  The main screen’s Nav plot started squealing on him for everyone to see and hear.

  His older brother suddenly looked down at the screaming Navigation Plot screen and back up at the suddenly red plot line in his heads up display. The pilot stared at the pair of diverging plot lines (the Red line showing the actual course of the ship above the Green plotted course line to the space port), for a few seconds and then pushed the throttles back up for the two lines to meet again.

  Taking a few deep breaths as his brother turned away again getting the attention of one of the female officers he was putting the moves on. Jack reached up and pulled the throttle back again.

  His brother the ship’s pilot whipped his head around as Jack’s hand slid back from the control board with a brief disbelieving, surprised, questioning look as a sneer started growing across his face. The navigation alarm started sounding for everyone on the Bridge to hear.

  Jack’s brother raised his hand off the throttle. Debating with himself whether to back hand Jack senseless now or just wait and beat his much younger stupid pain in the butt brother later and how to do it so he would not get caught while having a whole lot more fun.

  Jack smiled meekly and shrugged his shoulders trying not to shake too hard, hooking his thumb back over his shoulder at his granddad, Pop and forced out the words. "Pop. Not the mountain port…Wrong gravity gradient. Trade winds." Jack whispered in a voice that kept trying to squeak so only his brother Dan could hear.

  Jack's father in the raised Command chair behind and slightly to the right of the pilot so he could keep a close eye on both the Pilot and Navigator and was usually too busy running the rest of the ship or smoozing passengers on the Comm, to notice most things going on around the bridge, noticed. It was hard to miss the plot screen flashing with the alarm screaming as it showed them impacting the ground. In a demanding voice that would have carried across a gymnasium. "Dan! What is going on here? Get that throttle back up this instant."

  His brother's sneer disappeared, replaced with concern as he turning to the navigator seat across the navigation plot screen between them. "Pop; you want to check the plot for the lowland port. That is a nasty trade wind down there today. We don't usually have to deal with it at the high mountain Port."

  "What? There is nothing wrong with my… Oh. Nab darn it. Flat Plain’s lowland port? Damn gradient." The old man started tapping on his keyboard. "Thanks Dan. That trade wind looks nasty doesn't it?" The plot slowly curved back down to the port and into the landing pit. Then his brother started shoving the ship around, drifting back and forth like the ship was a drunken pendulum around the course plot line. It took him a half minute to finely get the ship to settle onto the new plot line.

  The whole time Jack's fingers flew over his control board, frowning each time his brother slammed his control stick from one side to the other as he kept over shooting the plot line.

  Finally the ship crept up settling onto the line and Jack was able to relax. Taking a sip of his steaming tea sitting in the holder next to him.

  "Good going Dan." Said their father from the Captain's chair behind them. "You have a sharp eye and will make a great Captain."

  Jack turned around to protest but as he opened his mouth, Dan back handed him across the side of his head. "Get your eyes back on that gravity board moron. We don't need any damaged cargo simply because you weren’t paying attention during descent."

  Jack's mouth opened and closed a few times trying to get enough courage to say what he wanted to say and then his father (the ship's Captain) spoke up as Jack started to protest.

  "You heard him Jack. Get your eyes back on your board and get that screen back onto the grav-sensor readouts. We have a lot of fragile cargo this trip, not to mention passenger's that don't tip if they get space sick. You are going to have to back off just a little on the Y vector coils rate of decay since the low land port has a shallower gravity gradient than you are used to at the other port." Taking a breath. “That also means you get 4 hours of extra duty for watching a video. I told you what I was going to do the next time I caught you. You don’t have much to do on duty but videos are not part of it. Besides it will keep you off that stupid game for a while. About time you started pulling your weight around here anyway now that you are 18. Even if it is just cleaning decks.”

  Jack turned back to his board fuming. He could run that board blindfolded with all the screens showing videos if he had to and do a better job. Besides, he had already backed off on the Y coils decay rate long ago, if his father had bothered to look. Jack had realized years before that he did a better job if he could see things going on around the ship, including what his brother was doing and anticipate what the ship was headed for. Things such as the Trade winds, strength of the magnetic and gravity waves they were approaching ahead of time, instead of just staring at the damn board like he was taught. Reacting to what the board and the auto controller finally showed him that missed half of everything he really needed. That is until it was much too late to change most settings before the ship jerked or bumped or swayed as the auto controller, late as always, tried to compensate. But then he was starting to get the idea subconsciously, that he could see things around him others could not. Impossible.

  Well, the problem was, he could see things others could not, even if he did not realize it. Like gravity and magnetic waves as well as most other radiation besides just the reflected light everyone else could see. Jack just did not see cold empty black space or a planet’s simple blue cloudless sky like everyone else. He could see the electromagnetic waves around him and the ship in much better detail than the stupid ship's sensors.

  There was no reason for him to think that everyone could not see the beautiful rainbow of energy lines crisscrossing the ship, the high energy electrical lines running through the compartments to the equipment around him and anything else that had energy or temperature. No reason to wonder if the rest of the bridge crew could gaze out the ports and see the gravity and magnetic lines arcing from the star, around planets and moons as the ship made its way into a star system. Even ships approaching the Turner Joy had their own magnetic fields as well as their weaker mass waves surrounding them that everyone certainly must see interacting with the Turner Joy's magnetic and grav fields when they got close.

  The sun sets of flaming lines of light on the horizons of planets everyone always talked about as beautiful, he had to agree was mind boggling to him with all the arches and thousands of inexpressible colors crossing the heavens as the gravity and energy waves of the different stars met the sun and horizon of the planet in a fantastic dance long after the planet's sun disappeared below the horizon taking the red and orange reflection of blinding light on the clouds above and across the horizon away to finely let the other waves brighten the display into a truly glorious fireworks show for an hour afterword’s. Though he could not understand why people would lose interest just when the show was getting its best. Nor did he understand why he kept seeing simple anemic pictures of sunsets on hundreds of planets in magazines and peoples bulkheads and photo sheets as they bragged about their beauty, when all he could see was some nice, kind of pretty but simplistic colors that fell far short of his reality. The same was for pictures of stars and planets. They always fell short of his reality looking out the bridge ports.

  In another time and place, if
he had been even a little outspoken, he would have been accused of being on drugs or crazy and stuffed into a mental asylum. But he had long ago learned not to express too much detail about what he could see, as he took it for granted that everyone around him could see what he saw and just did not want to listen to an idiot talking about the obvious. They just were not interested in anything the moron had to say about the subject or most subjects for that matter.

  That is except for his grandfather Pop, who simply smiled and grinned at his occasional strange comments about what he could see. Telling him that a Neutron star had made him special. But then Pop was just a crazy half senile old man, even if he was supposed to be a genius. Besides, special was what most planets called children born with deformities and mental handicaps. So he figured it fit. After all, his brother and parents were always telling him how stupid he was. Including his grandfather when they were arguing about some point of physics or some theory as Jack tried to understand the universe around him. Though, unlike his family and everyone else on the ship, Pop did not consider Stupid as a permanent condition or that the recipient was even wrong. Unbeknownst to others, once in a while, Pop was talking about himself when he made the statement after Jack had pointed out an idea or point of fact he had forgotten or never thought of during one of their arguments.

  One thing Jack was sure of was that he could do calculations in his head faster than most people and even the computer auto pilot sometimes. With the spatial references seeming to just pop into his head like it had just done a few minutes before after noticing a few things like the ship's speed, thrust vector, air density and the strength of gravity around and ahead of the ship. It also allowed him to run the grav board, knowing how much power to add or subtract to what wave, from what direction, where on the ship and when, to counter act the movements of the ship and the fields around it before the passengers felt the ship go bump in the sky or even sway.

  Jack took a deep breath shaking his head. What really pissed him off about getting chewed out in front of everyone was that he should have known better by now. The bridge crew was already looking at him even though it was not his mistake but they had heard him being chastised and that was enough. After all, it could not possible be Pop's mistake and they had seen Jack helping plot the course earlier, even if all he was doing was trying to learn how to navigate. "When was he, the moron, going to learn navigation or simply give up and quit causing trouble?" He had heard it all before, way too many times. Which is why he was stuck on the bridge at the Grav board during take offs and landings.

  He was 13 when the ships navigation system's main power supply and all its backups had failed during launch, (a critical piece of equipment) sending the ship out of control. Jack had seen and felt the massive waves of energy the burning power supply was giving off before it finally blew from the children's acceleration couches at school and knew that fire was disastrous aboard ship. He had left the class acceleration couch room with the instructors screaming at him to sit back down though not one followed or tried to stop him. He was half way to the bridge as the ship took a nose dive. With the bridge screaming to get the power to the navigation system back on. It only took Jack a few seconds to get to the power distribution compartment on the deck below the bridge. Then to realize that the hot slagged missing section of cable leading from the burned out power supply must be what was wrong with the navigation system everyone was yelling about. It only took a few seconds more to jerk out a cold piece of wire elsewhere and short around the burned, blown and dead mains, holding the wire in place long enough for the ship to make orbit before being found with his hands still in the 4,000 volt power panel.

  Jack never could figure out how he could have, let alone how anyone could believe, he had destroyed the hundred pound enclosed, hundred year old power supply, not to mention the already rusted, corroded, junk backups that failed to work, but they did. Though the power supplies on all the important equipment across the ship were replaced and upgraded in short order. Jack getting the jobs of hauling the old rusted junk backups out of the ship while the old working power supplies were put into storage just in case they were needed.

  To keep him out of any further trouble, his father had stuffed him in the Grav board trim station that had not had an operator sitting at it since Pop had bought the ship some 30 years before, like a jail sentence for a criminal. It was Jack reading the manuals with a lot of help from Pop that taught himself how to operate the gravcoil station just to keep from dying of boredom.

  Ever since then he had yet to miss a takeoff or landing on the bridge to keep him from destroying anything else. While the whole crew seemed to start treating him different, strangely different after that. Like he had done something terribly wrong and was now responsible for everything else that went wrong on the ship. He was still being blamed five years later and the story told with embellishments as he was pointed out to anyone new boarding the ship before they finished their first meal. He was fair game for punishment by anyone and everyone, anytime with no repercussions from his family. Especially with his brother encouraging the entire ship to participate. So he avoided everyone as much as he could. Taking refuge in playing (The Battleship Crew Simulator Game), in his cabin every chance he got.

  Jack watched the gravity waves ahead lighten and made a minor adjustment to the gravity board as they left the high mountain plateau half of the planet behind. Avoiding that little imperceptible sway in his head most people would have only vaguely notice if they noticed at all. He was even ready when the ship hit the jet stream as he made the adjustments long before the automatic controls could respond, so the passengers did not feel the ship lurch from the 300 mile an hour side wind suddenly hitting the ship. He was even ready as his brother jerked the stick over much too hard to crab into the wind a second too late. Jack making the adjustments before the autograv could. Then again when they left the stream and his brother was late again straightening the ship back up and had to waddle the ship back onto their landing plot line with enough movement, (now that they were deep inside the atmosphere), to make anyone space sick if Jack had not caught and counter acted the side to side, up and down swaying as his brother jerked the ship around. Jack had gotten very good at his job. Though no one felt or had a clue as he played the gravity board like an instrument. Looking out of the bridges viewports at the vague beautiful impressions of clouds of energy swirling around the ship in a dozen different shades and brightness's of color he had no name for that would skew the ship off course, while keeping an eye on his brother stabbing at the ships controls. He ignored the jumble of harsh comparatively black and white and off colored waves and lines on his screens in front of him showing the pilot's and autopilots control inputs and the ship's sensors attempt to represent the fields outside the ship so humans could see and understand the invisible and respond properly. To Jack, the screens were a half second to slow, even if they could have shown a fraction of everything Jack could see.

  They finally dropped down a bit hard into the pit as he flicked his fingers across the gravity board to counter act the sudden 3 gee landing gear flexing stop as they hit the concrete a little fast, straining the landing shocks. Then he faded the ships gravity into the planet's before shutting the grav board down. His cup of tea sitting on the console next to him had never even swayed let alone slopped a drop. The ships felt Gee meter had stayed pegged at 1.000 Gee the whole descent with zero side forces. Satisfied with his job, Jack leaned back and took a breath of satisfaction as he let his mind wind down for a few seconds after the strain. Already planning on getting onto The Game so he could talk to his friend that was already sitting in a pit as he rubbed his eyes and temple to relieve the tension.

  A hand slapped the back of Jack's head as his brother turned around from the Pilot’s Cockpit. “Hey I was talking to you." His brother looked at him irritated for a second then smiled. "You just work hard crap face and some day you can land a ship as good as I do." Dan chuckled. "Like you could ever pilot a ship and
pigs could fly.” Dan started laughing as he turned back to his controls while they waited for the ground crew to anchor the ship down.

  Looking forward to getting off duty and back into The Battleship Game, Jack ignored him and tried to decide what mission he wanted to volunteer for. Though he knew The Game controlled what was offered. He knew there had been growing Pirate activity in his sector for a few days now. He mussed to himself as he ignored his brother. Jack already knew he could land the ship better than his brother. He had done it a thousand times in The Game. He thought he had recognized Tom's ship as they dropped the last few thousand feet into the pit making him smile with the reassurance of his buddy being dirt side and probably waiting for him. He had talked to Tom only hours before as they approached the planet while making arrangements to meet him later to celebrate both of their recent 18th birthdays.

  All Tom could talk about for months, (each time they managed to hit a port together or close enough for the accessional game in space as the ships crossed paths), was going to some titty bar for a couple of drinks to celebrate as soon as they were 18. Jack was getting intrigued with the idea even though he was much too apprehensive (scared of getting caught or noticed and ridiculed) to ever go near one on his own. All Jack needed to do was waste a few hours now the work day was done and then when the quarter deck hatch opened for liberty after the Lobster and Steak dinner his father had been bragging about all week, join Tom for some fun.

  "Guess what you get to do now?" His brother turned around slapping Jack on his shoulder with a big smile. It wasn't what Jack wanted to hear or see at that moment. His brother’s smile always meant bad news for him.