StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Hey, this looks like some good, clean, entertaining fun. If you need a warm body to move shit around or pull triggers, I'm your man. I could be an engineer-in-training, but that's probably stretching it.

Yeah, what the hell... Sign me up.

Surlethe wrote:Hey, this looks like some good, clean, entertaining fun. If you need a warm body to move shit around or pull triggers, I'm your man. I could be an engineer-in-training, but that's probably stretching it.

Congratulations, you are now my departmental LCPO. Appreciate your service Master Chief Surlethe. You are in charge of overseeing the enlisted me in the department, advising me, and helping them deal with any problems within the chain of command. Same for the JOs so they know how to deal with their enlisted sailors. Also, discipline. Feel free to treat that as more or less a blank check; most Master Chiefs do.

Allow me to share an observation that I will forever stand by - Master Chiefs are like sharks. They don't really do anything per say, they just constantly roam the ship, on patrol, looking for things that are fucked up. And when the find them, they chew the ass of the sailor who is responsible for it.

Well, if you got a place for me I can deal with most electronics and do a pretty good amount of math.

Can I be on the marine/boarding party detachment?

If not that, Master at Arms? You're gonna need someone to play cop on the boat.

Sounds good. How do you pronounce half of the stuff like CHENG or is that simply in writing and it's pronounced in full?

Shame I can't enlist here, if theres any combat with EU vessels, throw me in as a frenchie doing something.

February 15th, 0900

As the Resolute approached the Bogotá Belle , the freighter's crew was surprised to note that, at some point in between 0800 and 0900, all the frequencies on the ship were picking up a radio station called “Elliot in the Morning at DC101.” The ship’s master was frustrated at the clearly unusual atmospheric conditions that created this anomaly, but didn’t worry too much about it.

Until 0905, when one of the crew noticed a destroyer bearing down on the Bogotá Belle.

++++

“Bring us within 300 yards, just like during the drills.” Jegs said.

“Yes Sir.” LT(j.g) Collette said. She began to give orders to the Helmsman, while Jegs turned to the petty officer manning the “Bright Bridge.”

“Is ROCKFISH working?”

OS1 Nguyen looked up.

“So far so good sir. All frequencies jammed, and thanks to the Chair Force last year there aren’t enough COMSATs up for the merchies to use them. Looks like SSES is worth something after all.”

“Play nice.” Jegs admonished. He picked up the IVCS phone. “TAO, this is the captain. As soon as we close to 300 yards of contact tell SSES to clear the frequencies for Bridge-to-bridge.”

“Roger.”

++++++

“Alright guys, just like the drills.” Chief Gunnersmate Wilkins said. He was in charge of Visit, Board, Search and Seizure Team 1. Unlike the coveralls the rest of the crew wore, the VBSS teams wore grey fatigues whose cut vaguely resembled that of SG-1. The 8 men were equipped with a mix of Shotguns, pistols, MP-5s, and one M-14. “Take it safe, follow orders…we aren’t expecting more than 30 or so crew on the freighter…probably less. It’s just a coffee freighter, not a Venezuelan naval auxiliary, so don’t go picking fights if we can’t help it. We’ll board, and LT Stile will follow us with Team 2. Any questions?”

There were none. The Resolute whipped around and began to run parallel to the Bogotá Belle. The teams began to load into the RHIBs.
+++++++

“Bogotá Belle, you are hereby ordered to come to a complete stop and submit to boarding!”

There was a cackle and the Bogotá Belle’s master came over Bridge-to-bridge.

“Fuck you! We have seen CNN! You are pirates, and we do not recognize your authority!”

LT(j.g.) Collette sighed, looked at Captain Jegs(who gave an almost imperceptible nod) and spoke again.

“ Bogotá Belle, we are operating under a Letter of Marque from the US Government. Furthermore, the US is not a signatory to the Declaration of Paris, and therefore is well within it’s legal right to issue such licenses!”

The Bogotá Belle remained silently, desperately, trying to turn away from the Resolute. Jegs sighed.

“Keep sending them the warning Marina.” He picked up the IVCS phone again. “TAO, fire some warning shots with the 30mm.”

The 30mms on the Resolute had been designed to replace the ubiquitous 25mms on USN vessels several years ago, and were gyroscopically stabilized and controlled from CIC, rather than manned. The starboard 30mm fired briefly across the Bogotá Belle’s bow. The freighter kept moving.

“Fire again.”

Another burst. Still it kept moving. Jegs sighed. There was a canister round in the forward 5 inch, but he wanted to set the tone for the ship’s career, and a bloodbath wasn’t what he wanted.

“TAO, fire the 30mm at the base of the superstructure, beneath the bridge.”

“Roger.”

After the 6 round burst pelted the freighter, the Bogotá Belle’s master came across Bridge-to-bridge.

“Ceasefire! We surrender!”

++++++++++

Wilkins climbed the rope ladder up the side of the freighter, making his way aboard. There was a Columbian sailor waiting at the top.

“Take me and him,” He pointed at GM2 DeathfromtheSea[OOC: Yeah, yeah..a bit wordy] “To the ship’s Master. Take him and him,” GM2 PulpHero, FC3 Brunghart “To your ship’s armory immediately.”

“Si.” The man said, he didn’t seem too happy. After the last team member hopped on the ladder the RHIB pulled away and the second pulled up. Wilkins followed the sailor who led them to the ship’s bridge, in silence.

Upon arrival Wilkins said without preamble:

“You muster the ship’s crew on the main deck. You have 5 minutes to get them all up, excepting the nice young gentleman who is escorting my 2 men to the armory. I will also need a crew roster and weapons manifest. All before they muster.”

“Senor, that is not enough-“

“Starting now.” Wilkins took out a stopwatch

The Ship’s master(His name, it transpired, was Ramirez) started barking orders. Four minutes and thirty nine seconds the ship’s crew had mustered on the main deck. A roster and weapons inventory was in Wilkins’ hands, and the VBSS teams had zip-tied the lot of them.

“Mr. Ramirez, I see here you have 23 crewmembers listed(yourself included) and only21 crewmembers(yourself concluded) here on the main deck. Where is the extra man?”

“Ah, well…” Ramirez stammered. Wilkins’ walkie talkie chirped.

“Chief, we just got fired upon by a crewmember…he missed and shot our escort. Brunghart took him out with the MP-5. No injuries with either of us, our escort is bleeding out. Brun is on his way up to show one of the Corpsman where we are.” Hero reported.

Wilkins sighed. “Roger.” That accounted for the missing crew. He switched frequencies. “Resolute, this is GMC. We had a firefight, no injuries on our end but one of the crew got injured, the other is dead. It looks as if the crew is all accounted for, and you can probably send the engineers and Boatswains’ over.”

“Understood Wilkins. Who put that flag up?”

Wilkins frowned, then looked up at the pilothouse. Two of the Privateers waved back. Up on the mast was a Jolly Roger with SURRENDER THE BOOTY written under it.

Yaaaaaay story!

I wanna shoot/burn/be generally mean to God's Will peeps and steal/break their stuff! But I'd also want Dr. Pepper if any was available. Maybe I could steal some from somewhere. That's be awesome. Can I be in somewhere? Though it might get confusing with two people with the same last name.

I've served in quite a few Supply divisions. I could use some division officers.

We could put you in charge of stock control, S-1 division. Your job will consist of kissing the SUPPO's ass, and finding people to blame for problems caused by your own incompetence. Also, very important, when people order things from supply, make sure you keep losing the paperwork. And be sure to change the rules for shipping documents every couple of months or so, that way you can keep rejecting them for being filled improperly.

Then there's S-2, keeping everyone fed. Your job will be making sure the cooks heat up pre-made food that they pretend to have cooked themselves. While the rest of the crew eats rice and roast beef for the 90th day in a row, the cooks will provide themselves with chicken wings and burgers.

S-3 is probably the most important division in the department. Currently, all Pepsi and Mountain Dew is accounted for. You must make sure this state of affairs continues. Your people must restock anywhere from 10 to 40 vending machines daily. You also handle ship's laundry and the Barbershop. If we have barbershops. Or laundry.

S-4 is the spoon. There is no spoon. There is no S-4.

S-5 is responsible for feeding the officers and cleaning staterooms so the officers are free to harangue the enlisted men for not having clean berthings.

S-6 is for aviation, so that's really not much of anything. Do we even have aircraft onboard?

S-7 is responsible for MWR(Morale, Welfare, and Recreation). You have a bunch of old boardgames and the like that no one will ever borrow because the entire crew owns laptops or videogames. In the rare event that someone borrows a board game, they will promptly lose most of the pieces.

S-8 is responsible for loading and unloading material on the ship. While everyone else gets off work at 1500, S-8 will be lucky to get off by 1800. Also, you control most of the ship's storerooms, even the ones that are supposed to be handled by other divisions. The work is repetitive but undemanding, so most new people get sent here.

S-9 has to make sure all the safety equipment is up to standard. If the Fire Extinguishers run out, we'll smother the fire by rolling your body back and forth over it. You also have to make sure the AC works properly. If it floods a room with condensation, S-9 mans the bucket brigade.

S-10... well, I'll let the GW's official website tell the tale: S-10 provides graphic information to the Supply Officer and assistance to all divisions in process improvement based on quantitative data gathered through internal audits. The professionals of S-10 help identify problem areas and recommend timely corrective action with quality training.

In essence, a job in S-10 looks good on your resume, but is too small and obscure to actually do anything.

S-11 is the same as S-5, except you clean up after chiefs instead of officers.

S-12 is the mail guys. There won't be much to do when we're out to sea, since I assume our ship is too small for CODs, but when we're in port, you'll have to bring aboard the small mountain of mail that stacked up while we were gone.

S-1 sounds good though some of the papers may have been shredded to file the ships mascots litterbox.

If you like. Now, I need my boots to be shiny. Start licking!

Setzer wrote:
S-3 is probably the most important division in the department. Currently, all Pepsi and Mountain Dew is accounted for. You must make sure this state of affairs continues. Your people must restock anywhere from 10 to 40 vending machines daily. You also handle ship's laundry and the Barbershop. If we have barbershops. Or laundry.

Jesus Christ we only had two such machines on my ship.

I volunteer to pilot explosive motor boats (Italian style, not Jap style please) for the purpose of ambushing shipping at night and or attacking tankers at the loading terminals. Course the utility of this method of attack depends on if the US government will pay us for simply sinking shipping, or if we can only make money via capture and sale of prizes.

Lonestar wrote:

Setzer wrote:
S-3 is probably the most important division in the department. Currently, all Pepsi and Mountain Dew is accounted for. You must make sure this state of affairs continues. Your people must restock anywhere from 10 to 40 vending machines daily. You also handle ship's laundry and the Barbershop. If we have barbershops. Or laundry.

Jesus Christ we only had two such machines on my ship.

Well, mine's a carrier. I put 40 as the highest reasonable upper limit. It's probably closer to 24 or so.

Mayabird wrote:Yaaaaaay story!

I wanna shoot/burn/be generally mean to God's Will peeps and steal/break their stuff! But I'd also want Dr. Pepper if any was available. Maybe I could steal some from somewhere. That's be awesome. Can I be in somewhere? Though it might get confusing with two people with the same last name.

We'll be running into the God's Will people in the next post. Alas, at the moment, the Federal government has to turn a blind eye to most God's Will actions, less it provoke even more parts of the country, specifically the parts with the majority of the manufacturing base, to secede as well.

"Interdiction of God's Will" shipping in this context means arms smugglers.

Setzer wrote:If you like. Now, I need my boots to be shiny. Start licking!

Yes sir just as soon as you fill out the appropriate paperwork to cover such actions.

Typhonis 1 wrote:

Setzer wrote:If you like. Now, I need my boots to be shiny. Start licking!

Yes sir just as soon as you fill out the appropriate paperwork to cover such actions.

American Citizen?


Like I said, these are all "really" us, so only Americans will be serving on the Resolute. You can expect appearances by furriners down the road, though.

Hey, Lonestar, awesome update, except that Amy and I's last name is spelled Collette, with two T's.

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Hey, Lonestar, awesome update, except that Amy and I's last name is spelled Collette, with two T's.

Pff...you're damned lucky I remembered your name at all. I can barely remember a week ago.

May I be an S-10 please?

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Hey, Lonestar, awesome update, except that Amy and I's last name is spelled Collette, with two T's.

That's ok, he fucked up Brungardt's name, too.

I'm surprised you didn't go for one of the USCG's endurance Cutters rather than a DDG. A Burke seems a bit overkill but other than that, looks kind of fun Matt.

Knife wrote:I'm surprised you didn't go for one of the USCG's endurance Cutters rather than a DDG. A Burke seems a bit overkill but other than that, looks kind of fun Matt.

It's a refurbed Forrest Sherman, the "real" USN has been decimated/has serious supply problems following the battles in the North Atlantic and the continual disintegration of the United States.

February 17th, 0800

“Well? What’s the hold up?” Jegs asked, walking onto the bridge looking a bit peeved. LTJG Collette was arguing with the harbor pilot. Before she could respond Jegs asked another question. “Why the Hell is the Bogotá Belle heading in a different direction?”

“That’s it sir, apparently we are not to pull up pierside in the city of Charleston. We’re just going to drop anchor in the Cooper River…” Marina said. Jegs wheeled on the harbor pilot.

“What? Why?’

“Sir, I just execute mission orders.” The pilot said. “All I know is that your prize is going to the Columbus Street terminal while you are to drop anchor in the East channel of the Cooper River. Supposedly a rep from the Port Authority will be meeting you after you drop anchor.”

Jegs gritted his teeth and glanced around the bridge. Judging from the look on most everyone’s faces, they had all came to the same conclusion as he did on why they weren’t allowed to dock. After all, the “Welcome to GOD’S COUNTRY! NO FAGGOTS OR ATHEISTS ALLOWED!” banner dangling from the Cooper River Bridge hadn’t been exactly subtle.

“Fine. SIGWO?”

“Yes sir?” Lonestar said.

“We still have a free and clear connection to Chief Wilkins?”

“Yes sir, we..” Lonestar was holding up the walkie-talkie, then Jegs took it out of his hand.

“Chief Wilkins?”

Wilkins’ voice came back, a bit scratchy.

“Sir?”

“When you go pierside you are NOT to allow anyone other than Webb or his people board the prize. No city officials, no law enforcement. If you think it’s a special case, give me a call.”

“Yes sir.” *click*

Jegs handed the walkie-talkie back to CWO5 Lonestar and walked back outside. The tugs were turning the Resolute around so it would face back towards the sea. Lonestar could see the Yorktown at Patriot’s Point.

“We can probably drop anchor here, I reckon.” The pilot said. Marina started to give the orders.

One of the walkie-talkies clicked, it was from one of the Boatswain’s in charge of the now superfluous linehandling details.

“Bridge, looks like we got a launch heading this way. Starboard side.”

Lonestar lifted his binoculars. It was a small speedboat with two flags, the state of South Carolina and the City of Charleston. No American flag though…

Jegs walked back into the bridge.

“That must be the PA Rep. When he gets here, tell him to come up to the bridge.”

“You aren’t going to meet him at the quarterdeck?” Lonestar was surprised. Jegs just glared and stepped back outside. Lonestar looked around, some of the bridge crew was studiously staring out onto the river. LT(j.g.) Collette didn’t look like she disagreed with the Captain. Lonestar sighed.

“Boats’, send the PA rep up here when he comes aboard.”

“Roger.” Came the response. They waited for about 20 minutes as the launch came alongside, the man in the jeans and polo shirt climb up the rope ladder, and arrive on the bridge. Jegs had walked back in.

“Captain, My name is Phineas Randolph, Assistant Director of Operations here for the Port of Charleston.” You could hear the capital letters in the sentence. He held out his hand, Jegs shook it. “Perhaps we could speak in private…?”

“No, the rest of my crew wants to know why we aren’t getting any liberty as much as I do.” Jegs responded.

“Ah.” Randolph said. “Well, after checking your crew roster…something of a public record you know, with all the media attention on privateering, the city council decided that it was not in the interest of public order for your…crew to wander the city.”

“My crew is very disciplined and well behaved, Mr. Randolph.”

“I’m sure.” Randolph’s mouth quirked, ever so briefly. “But the composition of your crew is filled with…troublemakers.”

“Troublemakers? Plural? How so? As far as I know we only got one convicted felon onboard…”

Lonestar laughed but quickly shut up when Jegs glared at him.

“Troublemakers for the community, Captain Jegs. We’re good Christians…”

“…So am I.”

“…Yes, I saw your 60 Minutes interview. But some of your crew are not.”

“So?”

At that moment Randolph’s phone rang. He answered it. “Yes? Mhmm..Well, I’m onboard the Resolute right now, let’s see if I can get this resolved.” He hung up and looked at Jegs. “It seems your party on the prize are refusing to allow PA personnel onboard.”

“Astonishing!”

“I will have to ask you to let them onboard, Captain Jegs.”

“Sorry, can’t. Security concerns. Only Mr. Webb and his surveyors will be allowed aboard the Bogotá Belle. Although, were we permitted to hit the beach, I might waive those ruoles, this once.”

Randolph’s face got red. “Are you telling me that, because ye won’t let a bunch of faggots,” He pointed at Marina “and perverts in our city you will…not allow customs to perform their legal duty?”

Jegs leaned forward.

“Do not talk about my crew in that manner again.”

“Why are you defending these queers? You…”

“Warrant, escort Mr. Randolph off my ship.”

“Yessir.” Lonestar unholstered his 9mm.

“President Barr knows how to treat ‘em! He…”

“President Barr is only letting you retards act like this because so much of the country’s manufacturing base is around these parts, and so much of New England and the Upper Midwest is occupied by UA forces.”

“Fine.” Randolph started to head out of the bridge. “I did get permission to sell some fuel oil, but now I’ll make sure you won’t get any.”

“Fine. We’ll buy fuel in Wilmington or Morehead City then. Warrant, why is this man not off my ship?”

“C’mon asshole.” Lonestar said.


END PROLOGUE

I can hear the splash as he leaves the boat. Nice wee story.