Chapter 2: Chapter 2 Transport to a New Life

On the ship I was put in a bunk room with 3 young women and 2 men. They were all from Persia VI. Two of the young girls were drafted to the pilot school for gunships, which were basically heavy fighters. The two guys were both going to comms school, responsible for radar stations and navigation of starships. The last woman, Gwen, was going to engineering school, life support systems. She had medium tone skin and golden brown eyes. She looked a mix of Indian and Arabian descent. I was mostly Dutch and Italian with a great grandfather who was Indian. It had been 5200 years since humanity burst forth into the stars but still genealogy played a prominent role in society. The Union populace was mostly descended from Indian, Dutch, Arabian, Russian and Korean ancestry. Those nations had settled the core worlds of the Union and after centuries of wars had unified in defense.

I decided to invest some effort into getting to know Gwen. I was a shy introvert and my extent of interaction outside my family unit was through video discussion during classes and our monthly visit to the nearest city on Persia VI. Gwen was not shy. She loved to talk and even though I found her fairly attractive the verbosity of her speech made me retreat into my mental turtle shell. I just tuned her mostly out but engaged her enough to keep a possible friendship going. Gwen was in the cafeteria every meal talking to dozens of people and trying to drag me along. She was great at info gathering and I thought she should go into UID instead of life support systems. She found out the transport was bringing 5000 students to the naval academy and there were 4 sections on the transport. They were the marines, techs and pilots, officers and non military. This info allowed me to find my brother in marine country and spend some time with him. He had already formed his own clique in the marine group.

Two days later we were headed to the outer system after stopping at a water moon that grew algae made into nutrient bars on its orbiting stations. The ship had 4,910 recruits officially. We had 33 days ahead of us in transitional space as our transport didn’t have very good drives and I found out it was over a hundred years old. I will say for the most part we were left alone so far and there was a lot of sex going on. The group was mostly between 15 and 20 years old so it should have been expected. We got our personal computers. It's a computer embedded in your left arm, fused around the bone. It had a strong holographic display 35 centimeters wide by 20 centimeters high. It had voice recognition and a holographic keyboard as well. They were called PerCom for short.

I was in the first group to receive the device and laying in my bed explored the unlocked menus. It took a few minutes but my heart sank when I found my credit account. It listed a debt of 24,459 credits. Apparently I was being charged for meals, housing, transport and the PerCom. That amount was more than my parents made in a single year.

Looking at the itemized billing I found we were being charged a premium for each item so far when I searched the galactic net for average prices. When I talked to a crew officer a few hours later he explained it to me. The ship, computer and meals were contracted out. The debt I was accruing would be paid to the corporation for their services in getting me to the naval academy. I would have to pay interest while at the academy and then my wages would be garnished when I started working in the fleet until I paid the amount in full. I was speechless, angry, frustrated and helpless. He said the good thing is I would not accrue more debt at the academy, just the interest, a modest 11% annual rate.

My PerCom also allowed me access to the galactic net and all courses, even advanced courses. I found my profile blank, all my certifications were not there. A quick search and I found I would need to pass the naval equivalent to have my certifications noted and take an exam every five years to maintain certifications.

I didn’t share this info with others, they could figure it out on their own and were probably happier not knowing. I found a VR setup on the transport that cost credits to use on the ship. It was 50 credits for an 8 hour session. This was good because I checked and it had all the practical exams for certifications. So I could take the written on my personal computer (PerCom) and the practical in VR to regain all my basic engineering certifications. That was my focus for the entire trip. I needed to reference and study the naval code differences. There were sections for the more advanced tech in military ships than I had already learned and it didn’t take me long to absorb the differences. I had a near perfect memory when I focused.

I knew I was adding to my debt but if I read the navy regulations well enough I should be able to take a year off of my academy time. I should also be able to earn a grade 3 engineer rank while at the Academy which made 40,000 credits annually…well 24,000 after Union taxes. This should let me pay off my debts in two years or so if I was thrifty. Well at least I had a plan.

It only took me 23 days into our trip in sub space for me to finish regaining the life support certifications which would give me an instant engineering grade 1. There were just 5 engineering grades. Grade 1 was a basic grade, someone who could do prescribed work, general maintenance and light repairs. Grade 2 could do diagnostics and do repairs unsupervised. Grade 3 could manage and supervise a team of lesser engineers. Grade 4 was recognized as being able to do a tear down and rebuild. Grade 5 required 20,000 hours as a grade 4 and was generally the lead engineer on a combat ship. Grade 4 was a little out of reach at the academy as it required physical rebuilds of dozens of actual systems.

I even had time to regain my language certifications back as it was just a written and verbal examination that took four hours for each. Not that this mattered now with my PerCom that had a universal translator built into it.

My profile now listed my languages and my certifications. Once I enrolled in the academy I would also have, Life Support Engineer, Grade 1. I looked at the other engineering concentrations. Propulsion, FTL, Missile/Torpedo Systems, Heavy Weapons, Computer Interface, Navigation, Sensors, and Communications. So many specialties. I knew I would have 10 hours a day of coursework so I might be able to get a Grade 1 certification in two or three more specializations. What did I want…or better yet what would be best to earn more income. I dropped weapons systems immediately…I didn’t want to be on a ship that would see combat if I could help it. Propulsion made sense…Sensors made sense…and my third focus? Computer Interface was working with ship AI and computers and had quite a bit of knowledge so I should look for something that overlapped better. Navigation…tied to sensors…both I was weak in. So it came down to FTL or Communications. I should choose communications since FTL drives had so much knowledge to them. But an FTL engineer was the highest paid engineering position in the fleet.

I began looking up the list of certifications required for each to plan out a path. The sensors had 11 certifications and 5 of them looked rather easy and overlapped a lot of my current knowledge. Propulsion had 29 certifications, well 19 but then 2 more for each ship class, atmosphere fighter, space fighter, shuttle/transport, corvette, and capital ship. FTL had just 7 certifications but each of them contained so much information and the practical exam required a near perfect score to pass.

I spent our last few days during the trip to get 3 certifications in the easy sensor areas I was familiar with.

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