FREE STORIES 2012(13)
Ever Yours,
Cecelie
P.S. Do not let the Moms or anyone else in the Barbara Bancroft Society start another letter writing campaign! Don’t even think about it, Suleia!
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[Reposted to Tester’s Blessings on the GSN private forum.]
[November 1921]
Suleia,
Today was absolutely amazing! First you need context though: my boss is somewhat dreadful. (He’s not as bad as the Manty or pretty much any Masadan, but don’t ever let the Moms invite him to dinner.) So, I have a nasty boss, but, Sweet Petunias, my chief is wonderful! (I have taken to making up fake curses. It annoys the Manty, but I’ve found that if I don’t keep it up all the time, it is harder to remember to sprinkle them into my conversation when he’s around. It was Claire’s idea. She’s great at finding polite ways to deal with day-to-day nastiness.)
I’m in charge of the lasers, but the historical job description is ‘Gunnery Officer’. I think the department heads got together when they found out they were getting a pair of female ensigns and decided to come up with the job positions that would result in the most sexual jokes possible and gave the suggestions to the captain as a joke. And then he took them up on it and ever since they have been struggling with tight constipated looks to keep from laughing every time they call on us. I am not telling you Claire’s title. It is an acronym that sounds bad. I’ll leave it at that. Claire and I are both pretending we have no idea with the wardroom, but with our own guys we are going by Ms. Rustin and Ms. Lecroix to avoid having to charge anyone with misconduct towards a superior officer. But, whatever, the joke is on them. When we can’t get stuff done in Blackbird because the maintenance guys are rolling around chortling about the Gunnery Officer, the department heads are the ones who have to explain to the captain that the part wasn’t there. So, the repairs weren’t done. And so, we can’t depart on time all because they forgot that the people outside the ship are going to be laughing it up at our expense too.
But they are going to listen now! Okay, no, they aren’t. Mostly I’m going to keep smiling and playing along with stupid jokes even when I don’t think they are funny, and finding the least repugnant people to deal with and plying them with baked goods from the Moms to keep my division’s supplies of spare parts flowing. I do not, I might add, share those nutty brownies with anyone but Claire. We claim the best of the care packages for ourselves. The second tier of food goes to the most helpful people on Blackbird most of whom are Claire’s contacts from her year working there. I’ve lost another 2 kilos on this cruise, because I keep missing meals when watches don’t line up right and the stuff on mid rations is too disgusting to eat. So don’t stop sending nutty brownies or any of the rest. Your care packages are defending the star system. (I am only partially kidding about that.)
Anyway, those supply runs and Claire’s contacts really paid off. We had backups for our backups. It was getting time for our laser qualifications, and Chief explained to me all the stuff that messes up the targeting. The lasers are fired in the corona of Yeltsin’s Star for the test because in combat if we ever actually had to use them there would be erratic bursts of radiation everywhere from the battle. Simulating a battle with actual munitions is rather expensive, so we use the star. Apparently the targeting computer autocompensator has to add in this ton of minor variables to make micro adjustments for everything. Well, as the Gunnery Officer, I go to the scheduling meetings with all the department heads when I have a major activity that needs to get fitted into the ship’s schedule. Do you remember how I had all those free electives during senior form at Saganami Island, because I had tested out of a bunch of the early astro-nav classes? Well if you don’t remember, I did, and so I did. I took both of the heliophysics classes because the name sounded impressive and they turned out to be all about exo-atmospheric weather, which is mostly completely irrelevant to warfare, but for this particular test, is exactly what those autocomps are working so hard to correct for. But, even the autocomps can’t correct for everything completely perfectly. Stuff changes continually, and the models are designed for much smaller radiation source points from weapons so a star is a real challenge. When we actually shoot at something, we’ll shoot a lot and the number that hit will have more to do with volume of fire, ranges, shielding, and enemy countermeasures. But when every ship in the fleet goes and does the annual laser qualification, everyone shoots the same number of shots from exactly the same ranges. You get to pick your day as long as some other ship hasn’t gotten it first. If all your maintenance is perfect, you get your ship in the top quarter of the fleet.