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Chapter Seven
The Day was indeed long. The first thing on his schedule was a second visit to the doctors, who pulled him to the private area and ran baselines on the other forms he had aquired. This took almost two hours. after that, he went back over to the Lt. Colonel's office, and got his flight re-qualification schedule. THis called for some more class time for an additional de-brief with the rest of his squadmates in addition to some simulator time. After that was a lunch break, and then an appointment with Capt. Ortiz to discuss the replacement fighter. Robert already had an idea which machine he'd be assigned to, as there were only three replacement fighters on board at the moment. After that another classroom session, and then there was another "session" with one of the other five percenters. The name was not listed on the schedule book, nor was the room number: just the words "Physical thereapy" was listed. The doctors already told him that the thereaphy was to take place in room 55, so Robert knew this was a coded message for him. It was a three hour block, so Robert knew he was going to be in for something.
The squad de-brief was very instructive to everyone. One of the tech from maintainence sat in for input on what had gone wrong on their end with one of the fighters, and Robert took away a few new tactics to use the next time a sensor arrray failed on the fighter he was in. Then came the "Free for all" at the end of the session, which Robert almost always dreaded. Usually one of the three people that normally occupied the top spaces on the Hotel Serreia list gave him hell over something or other, but he had no idea what they would say this time. Not that he cared what they thought, but in his mind he thought that it was unprofessional. This time, no one gave him any crap at all, which he found very strange. Possibly because he was at the top of the Hot S--t list, or the fact that he survived what was mostly likely a fatal collision and crash. The guys did give each other the usual stuff about every little thing, but that was to be expected. They all came out of the same area, so they pretty much knew each other fairly well. The three ladies on the squad also formed their own cliche, which did not surprise Robert either. Anderhall was the 2nd in command of the squad, so he remain slightly aloof mostly because he hung out with The Lt. Colonel often. Ed Ortega sometimes hung out with the remaining three guys: Butler, Hicks, and Lt. Wayne "Cowboy" Reamer, but he often kept to himself as well. In any case, Robert only had to endure tens minutes of the back and forth before they were dismissed. Robert was last out the door as usual, and went up to the Mess hall for lunch. While he was in there in line, He noticed Capt. Ortiz sitting at a table with the rest of her staff. He grabbed a tray of food and went over there. Ortiz saw him coming over and made a motion for him to sit down at the table with them. "Hello. I figured we could possibly start a little early with our meeting over lunch?" Ortiz chuckled. "Not really. We need to fit you to a new lifepod, and that's never something to be done over a lunch break." The rest of the staff laughed a bit at this. "I see. Was there anything else?" Ortiz's reply was immediate. "You'll like the replacement fighter. Your old one was a SAF-45A buzzsaw. It was also the last 'A' class of those fighters that we had one board. The one we are putting you into is a SAF-45G. The handling and charecteristics are much better then the 'A' series, and the AI is a bit more intellegent." Robert acted slightly offended. "But my old AI was just fine! We had a great working relationship! I cussed at her, she spat back three reasons why she could'nt do what I wanted, and I cussed at her more until she did it!" This had the rest of the techs and Ortiz in spasms. Robert looked around the table for a second and chuckled. "OK, maybe I exaggerated a bit. Seriously though, the older AIs had some interesting personalities that the newer ones lack." Ortiz finally got over her fit of giggles and asumed something resembling a straight face. "Then you'll like the fact that your AI made a backup Gstalt about two minutes before impact onto a flash card that just happened to be left in there by a maintainence tech. We managed to salvage that, and we've spent the last two weeks loading your new ship's AI hardware with it. Some of the newer hardware gave her fits, but we got it all working. He just hope we didn't damage that excellent working relationship you and her have." This got Robert chuckling.
One of Ortiz's tech spoke up. "I'm trying to figure out just why the hell the designers gave the AI a female persona." Grinning, Robert answered. "Oh, that's easy. Partly it was because a of some study that people in general will react better to a female voice in times of stress then a male one-" This got several groans around the table, as almost the entire team was female- "and also because the voice is that of the AI's designer." Ortiz looked at me. "How did you know that?" Robert had his mouth full of food, so he made a hand motion indicating such. They all waited patentily until he finished. "Easy. The designer lives about three door down from where I grew up. She was the one who inspired me to become a pilot." Ortiz shook her head. "I call bullshit." Robert shook his head. "I can prove it, if the General will allow a voice call." he pulled out an organizer, and located the designer's number. "Later, perhaps." ORtiz's response indicated that this would be settled later. The rest of the meal was filled with chat about this and that, and soon the entire team was riding the lift down the the repair shop. Ortiz told the rest of the crew that she would handle this part, and to look at the next ship on the repair list. The rest of the team went to the starboard drydock, while Ortiz and Robert went to the port drydock. Once inside, she activated the privacy screens. "There's a two fold reason why we are doing this alone. One, none of my team knows about the two of us." Robert looked at her in an amused way. "Meaning that they don't know about us cuddling last night?" He ducked the blow he knew was coming. "No, you goof. None of them know about our talents. Hell, half the ship probably knows about us cuddling by now, the way rumors travels." Robert smiled at this. "And the second is?" It was ortiz's turn to smile. "Well, We are slowly retrofitting the fighters with the same Mark IV lifepods that the tornado bombers use. And one has to be naked in those for it to properly work." Robert glared at her. "You're kidding, right?" In response, she hit the release latch for the 'pod's access hatch. "Have a look for yourself, pilot." Robert groaned. This is going to suck, he thought.
RObert sat in the second classroom uncomfortably. At least he had gotten a change to prove that he knew the designer of the buzzsaw's AI personally. She was glad to hear from him, not so glad to hear that he was flying one of those "Evil deathtraps". Ortiz promised him that the soreness from the pod's fitting would go away after a few minutes, but still he fidgeted. Butler took full advantage of this. "What's wrong, Bob? something crawl up your ass?" Robert was not terribly please with how he was being addressed, but he couldn't do anything because Butler was a major and technically outranked him. Anderhall at least noticed the barb and decided to intercede. "Capt. Corlo was fitted for his new lifepod today. Some of you may remember being briefed on the lifepods used in the Tornados. The Fleet is currently in process of retrofitting all fighters to use the mark IV lifepod. Corlo was our first retrofit, as he is currently grounded until he is re-qualified by the Lt. Colonel. The rest of you will be scheduled to be fitted to your pods on a scheduled basis while we are on standby by Capt. Ortiz, who is in charge of the retrofitting project for this ship." This had the net affect of shutting up the Gang of Three, who now wore horrifying looks on their faces. Ortiz would probably put cayene pepper or something on their tube initally, if he told her about the hazing. They had met up four months ago when he insisted on talking to the head of the maintainence team about a problem with his fighter's plasma reacter, which operated fine in the confines of the drydock, but had a habit of acting up when he was out on patrol. Since Ortiz was flight qualified, he wanted to ask her in person to observe in a shuttle while he took it out for a test flight. That conversation damn near came to blows, but resulted in the techs and pilots working together to make the fighters work better. Somehow romance had bloomed, and although they had differing schedules, the few times that they both had free time overlap was spent just talking. Sometimes these talks almost resulted in them beating on each other, but they still found that they enjoyed each other's presence.
Fortunately, the class was shorter then the de-briefing, as it was mostly about the new lifepods and when everyone was scheduled to be fitted to them, so Robert was actually excused early. He killed some additional time in his bunk catching up on the messages that had accumulated in his absense, and five minutes before his next appointment, he took the lift up to Deck three. No one was in the corridor, so he walked over to Room 55 and pressed the signal.
(1738/1667)
The Day was indeed long. The first thing on his schedule was a second visit to the doctors, who pulled him to the private area and ran baselines on the other forms he had aquired. This took almost two hours. after that, he went back over to the Lt. Colonel's office, and got his flight re-qualification schedule. THis called for some more class time for an additional de-brief with the rest of his squadmates in addition to some simulator time. After that was a lunch break, and then an appointment with Capt. Ortiz to discuss the replacement fighter. Robert already had an idea which machine he'd be assigned to, as there were only three replacement fighters on board at the moment. After that another classroom session, and then there was another "session" with one of the other five percenters. The name was not listed on the schedule book, nor was the room number: just the words "Physical thereapy" was listed. The doctors already told him that the thereaphy was to take place in room 55, so Robert knew this was a coded message for him. It was a three hour block, so Robert knew he was going to be in for something.
The squad de-brief was very instructive to everyone. One of the tech from maintainence sat in for input on what had gone wrong on their end with one of the fighters, and Robert took away a few new tactics to use the next time a sensor arrray failed on the fighter he was in. Then came the "Free for all" at the end of the session, which Robert almost always dreaded. Usually one of the three people that normally occupied the top spaces on the Hotel Serreia list gave him hell over something or other, but he had no idea what they would say this time. Not that he cared what they thought, but in his mind he thought that it was unprofessional. This time, no one gave him any crap at all, which he found very strange. Possibly because he was at the top of the Hot S--t list, or the fact that he survived what was mostly likely a fatal collision and crash. The guys did give each other the usual stuff about every little thing, but that was to be expected. They all came out of the same area, so they pretty much knew each other fairly well. The three ladies on the squad also formed their own cliche, which did not surprise Robert either. Anderhall was the 2nd in command of the squad, so he remain slightly aloof mostly because he hung out with The Lt. Colonel often. Ed Ortega sometimes hung out with the remaining three guys: Butler, Hicks, and Lt. Wayne "Cowboy" Reamer, but he often kept to himself as well. In any case, Robert only had to endure tens minutes of the back and forth before they were dismissed. Robert was last out the door as usual, and went up to the Mess hall for lunch. While he was in there in line, He noticed Capt. Ortiz sitting at a table with the rest of her staff. He grabbed a tray of food and went over there. Ortiz saw him coming over and made a motion for him to sit down at the table with them. "Hello. I figured we could possibly start a little early with our meeting over lunch?" Ortiz chuckled. "Not really. We need to fit you to a new lifepod, and that's never something to be done over a lunch break." The rest of the staff laughed a bit at this. "I see. Was there anything else?" Ortiz's reply was immediate. "You'll like the replacement fighter. Your old one was a SAF-45A buzzsaw. It was also the last 'A' class of those fighters that we had one board. The one we are putting you into is a SAF-45G. The handling and charecteristics are much better then the 'A' series, and the AI is a bit more intellegent." Robert acted slightly offended. "But my old AI was just fine! We had a great working relationship! I cussed at her, she spat back three reasons why she could'nt do what I wanted, and I cussed at her more until she did it!" This had the rest of the techs and Ortiz in spasms. Robert looked around the table for a second and chuckled. "OK, maybe I exaggerated a bit. Seriously though, the older AIs had some interesting personalities that the newer ones lack." Ortiz finally got over her fit of giggles and asumed something resembling a straight face. "Then you'll like the fact that your AI made a backup Gstalt about two minutes before impact onto a flash card that just happened to be left in there by a maintainence tech. We managed to salvage that, and we've spent the last two weeks loading your new ship's AI hardware with it. Some of the newer hardware gave her fits, but we got it all working. He just hope we didn't damage that excellent working relationship you and her have." This got Robert chuckling.
One of Ortiz's tech spoke up. "I'm trying to figure out just why the hell the designers gave the AI a female persona." Grinning, Robert answered. "Oh, that's easy. Partly it was because a of some study that people in general will react better to a female voice in times of stress then a male one-" This got several groans around the table, as almost the entire team was female- "and also because the voice is that of the AI's designer." Ortiz looked at me. "How did you know that?" Robert had his mouth full of food, so he made a hand motion indicating such. They all waited patentily until he finished. "Easy. The designer lives about three door down from where I grew up. She was the one who inspired me to become a pilot." Ortiz shook her head. "I call bullshit." Robert shook his head. "I can prove it, if the General will allow a voice call." he pulled out an organizer, and located the designer's number. "Later, perhaps." ORtiz's response indicated that this would be settled later. The rest of the meal was filled with chat about this and that, and soon the entire team was riding the lift down the the repair shop. Ortiz told the rest of the crew that she would handle this part, and to look at the next ship on the repair list. The rest of the team went to the starboard drydock, while Ortiz and Robert went to the port drydock. Once inside, she activated the privacy screens. "There's a two fold reason why we are doing this alone. One, none of my team knows about the two of us." Robert looked at her in an amused way. "Meaning that they don't know about us cuddling last night?" He ducked the blow he knew was coming. "No, you goof. None of them know about our talents. Hell, half the ship probably knows about us cuddling by now, the way rumors travels." Robert smiled at this. "And the second is?" It was ortiz's turn to smile. "Well, We are slowly retrofitting the fighters with the same Mark IV lifepods that the tornado bombers use. And one has to be naked in those for it to properly work." Robert glared at her. "You're kidding, right?" In response, she hit the release latch for the 'pod's access hatch. "Have a look for yourself, pilot." Robert groaned. This is going to suck, he thought.
RObert sat in the second classroom uncomfortably. At least he had gotten a change to prove that he knew the designer of the buzzsaw's AI personally. She was glad to hear from him, not so glad to hear that he was flying one of those "Evil deathtraps". Ortiz promised him that the soreness from the pod's fitting would go away after a few minutes, but still he fidgeted. Butler took full advantage of this. "What's wrong, Bob? something crawl up your ass?" Robert was not terribly please with how he was being addressed, but he couldn't do anything because Butler was a major and technically outranked him. Anderhall at least noticed the barb and decided to intercede. "Capt. Corlo was fitted for his new lifepod today. Some of you may remember being briefed on the lifepods used in the Tornados. The Fleet is currently in process of retrofitting all fighters to use the mark IV lifepod. Corlo was our first retrofit, as he is currently grounded until he is re-qualified by the Lt. Colonel. The rest of you will be scheduled to be fitted to your pods on a scheduled basis while we are on standby by Capt. Ortiz, who is in charge of the retrofitting project for this ship." This had the net affect of shutting up the Gang of Three, who now wore horrifying looks on their faces. Ortiz would probably put cayene pepper or something on their tube initally, if he told her about the hazing. They had met up four months ago when he insisted on talking to the head of the maintainence team about a problem with his fighter's plasma reacter, which operated fine in the confines of the drydock, but had a habit of acting up when he was out on patrol. Since Ortiz was flight qualified, he wanted to ask her in person to observe in a shuttle while he took it out for a test flight. That conversation damn near came to blows, but resulted in the techs and pilots working together to make the fighters work better. Somehow romance had bloomed, and although they had differing schedules, the few times that they both had free time overlap was spent just talking. Sometimes these talks almost resulted in them beating on each other, but they still found that they enjoyed each other's presence.
Fortunately, the class was shorter then the de-briefing, as it was mostly about the new lifepods and when everyone was scheduled to be fitted to them, so Robert was actually excused early. He killed some additional time in his bunk catching up on the messages that had accumulated in his absense, and five minutes before his next appointment, he took the lift up to Deck three. No one was in the corridor, so he walked over to Room 55 and pressed the signal.
(1738/1667)