Chapter 30 - The Advisor[]
Star Lord Class JumpShip, Project Tender 1'
New Syrtis Star System
Federated Suns
3156
[Federated Suns Light Warship program - Phase 1 Class 1....]
The discovery that the class was mobile hadn't come as much of a shock, after the first ninety days. When you spend eighty five days rebuilding a jumpship as an integral part of your training, using said Jumpship becomes the obvious extension.
Each Destination over the next year saw two things happening;
1. The class got smaller. People dropped out, or were unable to cut it on the next exam, or left.
2. Everyone in the class got used to visiting shipyards and learning more about ships than any of them thought they would ever know via a very 'hands on' approach-spending 30 to 45 days at a time as 'Apprentice labor' in the yards, working on, as Robert discovered, the very vessels they would be assigned to on graduation.
Not everyone at once, of course. Those training to specifically be engineers spent a lot more time across all the competing types, learning from the yard crews and designers how decisions about the designs had been made, and how fabrication decisions 'on the shop floor' happened. otherwise, it was sliced up and it was clear who was getting assigned to which competing vessel type, or in the case of the Talus with its three variants, types.
While some in the class were working in the yards, the rest were learning MOS-related skills, and everyone got to conduct 'exploratory contraband search' training-a yard hulk or ship under refit would be designated, and teams would be sent in to find 'the golden nugget'-a deliberately placed object, intentionally hidden, usually in places or arrangements suitable for smugglers, or other criminals with something to hide.
It wasn't JUST physical searches with sensors. sometimes, it was 'guessing games' and body-language theory, learning how to interrogate without appearing to interrogate, how to determine who was, and wasn't a suspect.
During transit times when people weren't studying, there were a constant stream of required activities necessary to keep a starship liveable, tolerable, and sane. everything from the usual cleaning and maintenance duties, to devising 'sanity break' activities and recreation.
They didn't notice it, but gradually the class became a crew, and the crew became shifts, and the shifts became tighter crews.
150 personnel on day one, had become 125 by day three sixty four, and the phase one class one cadets had traveled the width and depth of the Federated Suns.
The children of dirt farmers and miners were socially equal to the sons and daughters of Barons and Dukes, at least, among one another, with a common language littered with spacer-slang and engineering terms, pasted together with acronyms and special contractions, a grammar and dialect navy-specific, with slightly different memes and habits.
At the end of year one, they were back at New Syrtis, and going to groundside for the first time since the course began, living outside a pressure suit for the first time, walking under an open sky, for the first time in a year.
Today, at the end of Year one, the crewman cadets would be meeting the Officers and NCOs under whom they would serve for year Two.
Ninaeve met Robert at the display monitor. "So which one did you get?" she asked.
"Cutter 193, Lieutenant Tera Lukassi's crew. You?"
"I got Cutter 191, Lead boat for the squadron, and I'm reporting to Captain Boothe." she said.
"Good luck, hey?"
"Anchors up."