Atk. Butterfly - Rust Bucket

Because the captain put his own regular people onto the bridge, I went back to hydroponics instead of being an alternate navigator. Frank was our only group member still on the bridge, but he wasn’t an officer. That meant that everyone of the other nine Pennyweight personnel looked up to me to keep them informed as to what was happening. I relied on Frank to fill me in on things that weren’t covered in the daily staff meeting that I attended. I, in turn, used the shower schedule to pass the word on to two others of our group. They passed the information on to the others. At least, our group usually knew what was going on, despite the captain’s usual inept performance in keeping his crew informed so that they could still perform the mission in case of an emergency. At any rate, we didn’t ever let our ship down.

One week out of Beulah, we went into our first action. It was almost as bad as Three Star started to become. Actually, it was worse than Three Star because our squadron did retreat when we had equal odds against the aliens. I wasn’t ashamed of my ship, but I was ashamed of my Navy for allowing such ineptitude to exist within itself. We only lost one ship and didn’t destroy, let alone damage, any enemy ships. But the worst part of the shame was that the ship we lost, we lost while running with our tails tucked between our legs. I wondered why I wanted to become a part of the Navy in the first place. Regardless, I continued to refer to my textdisks to keep myself fresh on current naval doctrine, some of which was outdated compared to what could be done with a few ships in the right place at the right time, no matter how much it sickened me. About the only thing that was good to come out of that lost battle was that the Commander in charge of our ships was forced to resign. Another of the inept captains from the eleven remaining ships became the new squadron commander. It wasn’t an improvement.

We ran from our next battle, even though we outnumbered the enemy eleven to eight. About the only good things were that we didn’t lose any ships and we did lose another commander. My own captain was given the title of commander and the first officer moved up to become the captain. He wasn’t any better, though he at least knew the names of most of the crew. That was my first opportunity to move back up onto the bridge, but he preferred to work short-handed rather than trust a former civilian officer to know how to do things. It didn’t matter to him that I came with the ship. Had he done his homework, he’d have discovered that the ten of us from Pennyweight had more decorations than the rest of his crew put together. We were authorized to wear them, but we didn’t. None of us saw any reason to call attention to ourselves. We also knew the ship a lot better than he or anyone else on board.

Our third battle, if those were battles, we actually engaged with the enemy, all two ships of him. Despite outnumbering the enemy five to one, we managed to get one ship shot up while only destroying two enemy ships. The Thurman got credit for one and a half kills. The bad thing about the results of that battle was that it enhanced the reputation of our former captain. He bragged that the Thurman did so well because he had left a trained crew behind while the squadron’s success was due to his leadership. When the combat videos were reviewed, the one and a half kills were strictly by the guns that Pennyweight personnel manned.

It was at those battles that I first analyzed the enemy movements and procedures. I didn’t consider myself a genius, not even near it. However, I was a good student and I picked up on things fairly well. One thing I observed was the enemy’s apparent consternation at how our ships were fleeing. If we didn’t change our tactics soon, we were going to run into a trap fairly quickly and regret the reduction in force of two years ago in spades. Not that I felt over-confident, but I did feel at times that I could have defeated the entire squadron with only the company’s three gun ships, before any of them were upgraded, such as the Thurman had been. Against leadership like what we had, it would have been a picnic for me and a slaughterhouse for them and I was nowhere as good as Captain Marsha Marble. I felt that she could have done it with less than three ships.

Nonetheless, we kept our mouths shut and went about our jobs. Meanwhile, I insulated myself with the regular Navy personnel by knowing about all of them and making sure that some of the things that should have been done by the Captain and First Officer were taken care of. It wasn’t long after the third battle that most of the regular Navy personnel began coming to me for information.

Our fourth battle was another retreat against only eight enemy vessels. One of our ships was shot up, but managed to stay with us and went back to port for repairs. Our Squadron Commander was allowed the one mistake, so no more command reassignments were made. Meanwhile, our squadron of nine ships was sent back out on another mission.

Our fifth battle was the most disastrous of them all to that time. We lost three ships, one of whom was the Squadron Commander’s ship. The idiot decided to charge the enemy at the last minute and forgot to inform the rest of us to attack with him. There wasn’t enough of him left to pick up. The Captain who took charge saw what happened and gave the order to retreat. That was when we lost two other ships. Of the six that returned to base, only four were deemed capable of going out, one of which was the Thurman. Of all the damned luck, the Captain of our ship was given the position of Commander of the Squadron. I could only rely on our gunners to do their job in case that moron proved to be as inept as our late commander. I refreshed myself as to his class standing, finding he had been right behind the former captain. I really wondered where in hell were our better officers?

While in port, I learned from others that other squadrons were having the same problems, some of them even worse than ours. Only the fact that we actually outnumbered the aliens in total warships to begin with was keeping us alive in that war. I could see that if things kept going the way they were, we wouldn’t enjoy that advantage much longer.

I didn’t know that there were things happening quietly behind the scenes. Some of which were going to affect me greatly in the future. A few would affect me sooner than others. Most of them were good, because there were people in the higher command structure who were wondering the same as I. They wanted to know why the hell we were losing when we clearly outnumbered the enemy and had weapons and ships just as good, if not better. The war shouldn’t have lasted the four months that it already had.

While the other two ships were being repaired at breakneck speed, I got my first promotion and became a lieutenant junior grade. I was still behind most of my classmates who were already lieutenants. A few were already lieutenant commanders. One, I learned, was actually a commander and under consideration for the rank of Captain. I was still the junior officer on board the ship, but at least I had achieved something. I also knew the ship and its personnel better than any other officer. Because I was still the junior officer, I remained in hydroponics.

Because of our poor showing, I hoped that the other two ships would be repaired before we went out again, but such wasn’t to be. We left port before they were ready as a four ship squadron. Our ship was in the lead when we came across an enemy scout that we proceeded to blow to pieces. I didn’t need combat videos to know whose gun tore the scout to pieces, but I kept my mouth shut when it seemed that everyone was trying to claim credit. It was just as well for their attitude of superiority wasn’t to last long. The scout managed to get off a warning message despite the fact that we dispatched him to his grave in record time for Navy units. It was nowhere near what the company ships could do, but that was apples and oranges. Our ships should have sent a message at that time, as well, since our position was known to the enemy and given out information to our forces that might have helped.