This Corner of the Universe by Britt Ringel Read Free Book Online

savant qualities when it came to weapons operations.  Her personnel file
indicated two weeks before her commissioning to ensign, her assignment drop scheduled
her to deploy to a command cruiser.  Aghast, she begged her academy instructors
to pull strings to get her reassigned to something smaller.  Vernay didn’t want
to be one of dozens of ensigns lost in the shuffle of a large ship.  She wanted
bridge experience and leadership opportunities.  In a rare act of capitulation,
Brevic Personnel Center relented and after serving only two years on the
command cruiser Brazen , Ensign Vernay transferred to Anelace .  Close
to two more years and one promotion later, Lieutenant Vernay had almost four
thousand hours of logged bridge experience as the head of Anelace’s weapons section and hundreds of hours of command experience as the ship’s third
officer. 
    In three
months, Vernay was due for promotion to full lieutenant and transfer from Anelace . 
She was excited for the increase in rank but still very aware that promotion to
lieutenant was but a modest accomplishment and only slightly more difficult
than the one to lieutenant, junior grade.  She had once sarcastically explained
the requirements to Ensigns Selvaggio and Truesworth, both rapidly approaching
promotion to lieutenant, jg.  “You just have to have a pulse to make jay-gee,”
she had said, “but you have to have a pulse and be able to fog a mirror
with your breath for full lieutenant.”  Vernay knew this was an exaggeration
but she also knew that future promotions past lieutenant would be much more
competitive.  Her next assignment would be flowing from Brevic Personnel Center
any week, and, although she looked forward to greater responsibility, she was sad
to leave the Anelace family.  In typical fashion, BPC had yet to assign her
replacement.
    Vernay,
along with first officer Mike Riedel, Diane Selvaggio manning navigation and
Jack Truesworth at sensors, comprised the entirety of Heskan’s bridge officers. 
Though there were separate chairs for the captain and first officer and while
they would both be on the bridge during emergencies, each normally took a different
watch for routine operations.  Anelace’s remaining two officers were the
ship’s engineers who generally stayed in the engineering compartments located
near the aft of the ship.  It was the single largest compartment both in size
and in numbers with Lieutenant Brandon Jackamore as Chief Engineer supervising twenty
enlisted personnel and Ensign Elena Antipova, the junior engineering officer.  With
their hands full keeping power and propulsion systems running smoothly, neither
officer had much opportunity or desire to stand a watch on the bridge. 
Jackamore, Anelace’s second officer by virtue of his rank, had never
commanded the bridge in all his time on board.
    Compared
to Engineering, the other organizational sections were small.  Navigation,
under Selvaggio, and Sensors, under Truesworth, had but three enlisted crewmembers
in each.  Only the crews in Weapons and Operations could come close to rivaling
Engineering’s number.  Vernay supervised eight enlisted personnel spread out among Anelace’s single mass driver and her four pulse lasers while Operations,
under Chief Brown, had eight junior enlisted personnel to cover day-to-day
operations and to act as damage control men and medics in the event of combat. 
The crew of Operations would also act as a marine contingent if the need to
board a freighter arose.
    Together,
these forty-three enlisted crewmembers and seven officers comprised the family
that was BRS Anelace .  If Anelace was a living thing,
these fifty souls were the life’s blood that flowed through the ship.  The
average age was twenty-two and, Captain Heskan notwithstanding, each crewmember
had been on Anelace for at least sixteen months.  “Ana’s a good ship,”
Lieutenant Riedel had told Heskan his first night aboard.  He was right ,
thought Heskan