Theogony 1: Janissaries Read Online Free Page B

General Joseph Simms, who
was sitting next to the CNO. The air force had fought hard to be the branch of
the military selected to man the spaceship, although the navy had been chosen.
The chief of staff’s hand went up.
    “If I may,” he said, “the air force has come up with a
variety of manning solutions that we would be happy to implement.” The chief of
staff’s tone of voice always sounded whiney to the president and grated on his
nerves. Especially when he was more interested in jockeying for position than
solving the problem at hand.
    “Damn it, general, we have been over this!” said the
president, raising his voice. “The decision has been made to use the navy to man
the ship. Don’t waste my time on your inter-service rivalry!” The president
wanted to squash this early, or it would linger throughout the meeting. While
all of the services had worked together well during the Sino-American War,
things were rapidly going back to the way they were before it.
     “Well, we still have those solutions, if anyone wants to
look at them,” General Simms muttered.
    “Anyway,” said the CNO, “we have decided that it is better
to use the crew of a ship so that they have unit cohesion. Space is too
unforgiving to do otherwise.” He looked around, but no one disagreed this time.
“It looks like we can use the crew of the USS Vella Gulf ,” he said. “The
ship is about to make its last deployment before being decommissioned. There
are about 35 officers and 350 enlisted on the Vella Gulf , putting it
right at the target number the Psiclopes said was necessary to run their ship
effectively.”
    “Won’t people miss a ship like that?” asked the president.
    “We’ve already begun working on a cover story that will
help,” answered the CNO. “Instead of deploying with the carrier battle group,
it will deploy for independent anti-piracy operations. Before they deploy, the
ship will have a communications failure that will prevent the crew from having
internet access while on deployment. That way, families won’t expect to be in
contact with them on a daily basis. We’ll work out the rest of the deception
plan as we go along.”
    “Sounds good,” said the president.
    “Moving on to the air wing,” continued the CNO, “we have
come up with several options. For the same reasons listed previously, it is
better to take a squadron, or part of a squadron, and keep it together for the
ship’s deployment. As we really don’t know much about the fighter craft that
the Psiclopes have, well, nothing really, we thought that the best solution
would be to pull one of the Hornet squadrons that just got back from cruise.
They are used to flying with each other and their re-deployment won’t affect
any of our long-term plans.”
    “As I understand it, Lieutenant Hobbs squadron was just
about to go on cruise, not come back from it. Isn’t that correct?” asked
the president.
    “Well, yes, sir, that is correct,” said the CNO. “That
squadron, the Blue Blasters of VFA-34, is due to go on cruise in a couple of
months. Pulling them from the deployment schedule now would cause a huge
disruption to our rotation, so I thought it would be better to use a different
squadron.”
    “ IS NO ONE LISTENING TO WHAT I AM SAYING? ” roared the
president. He was a big man with a big voice, and he used every decibel he had
at his disposal. He took off a few decibels as he continued, “There is a race
of cannibals that may be coming this way. They are technologically way ahead of us. We need to do everything possible to get ready to meet this
challenge. The only thing that we have going for us is a group of three aliens
who need our help. These aliens have only asked for a couple of things, one of
which is to have Lieutenant Hobbs’ group be part of the manning for this
mission. I don’t know why they want this group, but damn it, that group is
going to be part of this mission! Am I clear on this? ”
    “Yes sir!” said a