We Are All Enlisted

by Michael A. Hooten

  “No, Chief.”

  He nodded. “Right. We’re meeting with the XO, and since this is your first offense, he’ll probably dismiss it. Just remember to be respectful and stand at attention. You’ve been to boot camp recently enough that you better not have forgotten how to do that.”

  “I haven’t, Chief.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  We filed into the room, and there were a lot of khaki coveralls. Besides the three of us, our Division officer was there, and a couple of chiefs I didn’t know. And Commander Paiz, who stood at a lectern and glared at me. He was a big guy, with slicked back hair and the bushiest moustache I had ever seen on a sailor. I stopped in front of him and snapped to attention.

  “Seaman Wright,” he said. “I understand you missed a watch?”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  He looked at his tablet, and back at me. “You’ve barely been in the Navy a year. Dropped from the nukes, picked up for Space, and now facing dereliction of duty. Hell of a way to start your career.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “That wasn’t a question!” he snapped. “I don’t want any more interruptions, is that clear?”

  It was a question, but I hesitated. Spit caught my eye and kind of shrugged with his eyebrows. “Yes sir,” I said.

  And then he proceeded to give me more of a dressing down than I had had since leaving boot camp. He questioned my intelligence, my patriotism, and my parentage. And he ended by recommending I go to Captain’s mast with a further recommendation that I get the maximum punishment.

  I felt a little shell shocked as we filed out of the room. There was another sailor there waiting to go in with his chief and section leader, and he paled a bit when he saw me, so I know that I must have looked as shaken as I felt.

  Chief Clooney steered us into a little meeting room down the passageway. Shutting the door behind him, he said, “I don’t know what the hell that was all about. Somebody before you must have really ticked him off, or else he decided to make you an example for some reason.”

  “He’s part of the Earth to Space program,” Spit said.

  “Maybe that’s it.”

  “What’s the maximum punishment, chief?” I asked.

  “Court martial,” he said. “But I’m sure it won’t come to that.”

  Spit grunted. “You also thought the XO would dismiss it here.”

  “Well, yeah,” Chief said. “He’s not usually such a hard ass.”

  “So now what?” I said.

  “We’ll get you on the CO’s schedule,” he said. “It’ll probably be in a week or so. In the meantime, you’re confined to barracks.”

  “And don’t miss any watches,” Spit said.

  So for the next ten days I was not allowed to do anything but go to chow, go to class, and stand watch. And oddly, even though that had basically been my life before, now it felt much more restrictive, because I knew I couldn't go anywhere. It didn’t help that my whole class got invited to a cotillion, complete with dress uniforms. I sat in the common area with a stupid movie on while I half-heartedly studied, and mostly wondered how it was going for everyone else. They all tumbled in around 2200, full of stories of the girls they’d met, the dates that had been arranged for the next few weeks, and the kisses that were allowed. I hated them all.

  The morning of my appearance before the CO, I polished my boondocks, made sure my coveralls were cleaned and pressed, and all my insignia were on straight. I went to morning muster with everyone else, and after it was over, amid many wishes of luck, I followed Spit up three levels into O country.

  The CO held mast in a conference room notable for its windows along the starboard side, which showed a marvelous view of the earth. That morning you could see the retreating night across the Pacific, and just make out the coast of California shining in the east. I had a moment of homesickness like a punch to the gut, but fortunately it passed.

  The conference room was set up much like a courtroom, with an elevated desk at the forward end, with a podium facing it. Then there was a railing, and five rows of seating. The first two were already filled with nervous sailors and their superiors, waiting for their turn before the CO.

  Captain Patters was tall and broad, with a scruffy salt and pepper beard, and dark leathery skin. He looked like he might be more at home on the water instead of space, and wearing a tri-corner hat and a leather vest instead of khaki coveralls. We all stood and came to attention when he entered, and he said, “At ease, and have a seat, gentlemen,” before he had even reached his desk. He went up and sat, staring down at us with a look that made me quail. I glanced at some of the others, and no one seemed comfortable.

  A yeoman stepped forward and said, “Captain’s mast is hereby commenced. Seaman Gregory, please step forward.”

  Gregory was even younger than me, and seemed more scared than anything. He was flanked on one side by his chief and his section leader, and on the other by his division officer, and the yeoman read the charges: dereliction of duty. It seemed he fell asleep in the head when he was on his regular work shift. He protested that he didn’t mean to fall asleep, and that he didn’t know how he had been in the head for thirty minutes. Captain Patters shook his head, fined him a half month’s pay, and confined him to quarters for two weeks.

  It went that way, with each sailor offering up their excuses, and being summarily shot down. The captain was not mean, not exactly, but he was stern. He didn’t accept any excuse, even the plausible ones. He seemed disappointed more than angry. And then it was Anderson’s turn.

  Anderson was in my section, a couple of weeks ahead of me. He was quick with a joke or a well-timed snarky comment, and everyone liked him. He loved the limelight, and he swaggered up to the podium with Spit on one side and Chief Clooney on the other, grinning from ear to ear. The charges were read: he had missed a watch, just like me. I perked up.

  Captain Patters looked him up and down. “What happened, sailor?” he asked.

  “It’s not my fault,” said Anderson.

  “That not what I asked,” the captain said with a frown. “I asked you to tell me about the night in question.”

  “I set my alarm, just like I always do,” Anderson said. “It just didn’t go off for some reason.”

  “Any chance you accidentally turned it off? Or slept through it?” the captain asked. I thought he was trying to give Anderson a way out, but the guy didn't know to take the hint.

  “Impossible,” he said. “I’m a much better sailor than that. A much better person.”

  “Mistakes can happen,” the captain said, and there was an edge to his voice. “Even to the best of us.”

  “Not me,” Anderson declared. “I’m telling you, there was a glitch in the program.”

  “And that’s your story?” the captain said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Yep,” Anderson said.

  “Very well,” the captain said. He swiped his tablet a few times, and then said, “Petty Officer Anderson, you are hereby sentenced to two month’s reduction in pay, and one month confined to quarters.”

  That was the maximum penalty short of a court martial. Anderson said, “That’s not fair! It wasn’t my fault!”

  “If you want to protest, you can appeal the decision. That will make sure this becomes a court martial, and I’ll send the techs to examine all the logs for that day and see what really happened.” The captain paused, and stared at Anderson while the enlisted man squirmed. “If that’s what you want.”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s what I thought. Dismissed.”

  I had never seen Anderson looking so dejected. But he kept his back straight at least as he left. Then it was my turn.

  “Seaman Wright!”

  I stepped up and took my place between Chief and Spit. I tried not to look too nervous. Hell, I tried not to act too nervous, which of course makes you that much more jittery. Captain Patters read the charges, and I could see him give a sigh.

  “Do you want to tel
l me what happened?” he said.

  “I missed my watch,” I said.

  “Yes, but what happened?”

  I shrugged. “I must have read the schedule wrong. I was supposed to have the mid watch. I thought I was supposed to have the 0400 watch. The guy I was supposed to relieve called me when I didn’t show, and I got there at half past midnight.”

  Captain Patters fixed me with his sternest look. “And why did you read the schedule incorrectly?”

  I had thought about this a lot since getting in trouble, but no one had asked me. “Because I did not pay attention to detail, sir.”

  “That’s a problem, sailor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He looked down at his screen. “You were one of the first batch from Earth. That means someone thought you had something special. Are you better than everyone else, sailor?”

  “No, sir.”

  Captain Patters leaned forward. “Then why did they send you up here?”

  I spread my hands. “I have no idea, sir. I’m just an average guy, and most of the guys in my company that were chosen I would have called average. Maybe something in our psych eval was the trigger, or maybe it was a random drawing. For all I know, my company commander thought he was doing me a favor for some reason.”

  “I see,” the captain said. He leaned back in his chair and knuckled his moustache. “Seaman Wright, I have to find you guilty of dereliction of duty. I don’t have a choice.”

  “I understand, sir,” I said, though my heart sank.

  “Your punishment is one week in quarters, and one week at half pay.” The leniency of the sentence was just starting to sink in when he added, “Suspended.”

  “Suspended, sir?”

  “That means as long as you don’t get in trouble for the rest of the time you’re here, nothing happens to you.” He leaned forward. “And if I see you before the mast again, it will be added to whatever your next punishment is. And I will make sure that one is the maximum it can be. Do I make myself clear?”

  I stood even straighter and said, “Sir, yes sir!”

  He frowned. “This isn’t the marines, son.”

  I said, “Aye aye, captain.”

  That made him smile. “I like you, Wright,” he said. “You’re the only person today who accepted responsibility for your mistake, without whining or making excuses. I’ll be keeping my eye on you, to make sure you keep up the good work. And no more missed watches, correct?”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  “Excellent. You’re dismissed.”

  We walked out of there, and Chief Clooney took us to his office three levels down. He sat us down and said, “That’s the damnedest mast I’ve ever been to.”

  “You did good, Wright,” Spit said. “I don’t know if you were trying to do the opposite of Anderson after seeing his crash and burn, or if that’s what you had planned all along, but either way, it was a good job.”

  I shrugged. “It just seemed like the right thing to do. But what does it mean that the Captain’s going to be watching me?”

  “It means you need to keep your nose clean and do the best you can in school.” Chief Clooney made a few swipes on his tablet. “Gradewise, you’re doing fine. Near the top of your class, in fact. Now you just need to make sure you don’t make any more stupid mistakes.”

  “If you need anything, come find me,” Spit said. “I can help you out in a lot of different ways, but I’ve got to know you need help.”

  I felt a bit overwhelmed. “What’s going on? Why is all this happening?”

  Clooney and Spit traded a look, but Spit was the one who spoke. “Listen, Wright, people are already watching you because of the whole Earth to Space thing. But now that Patters has expressed interest in you…”

  “He’s an officer that makes things happen,” Clooney said. “He’s just a captain, filling a billet usually reserved for a one or two star admiral. People listen to him. And plenty of people heard him express interest in you. So now it’s part of our job to make sure the Captain isn’t wrong in his faith in you. Got it?”

  “My life just got that much harder,” I said. “Got it.”

  Life continued on at Port Jefferson, with a few changes. Normally going to non-judicial punishment gets you more grief, and I did, but not in the normal way. I got scrutinized in my dress, my grades, and my general performance. I guess the chain of command liked what they saw, because eight weeks later I got my new orders. I was headed out to the USS Roosevelt Roads, a Jones class SC—Space Cruiser—that was set to join the war fleet at Juno. Everyone slapped me on the back and gave me high fives, but all I could think of was: Holy Hell, I’m going to a combat zone.

  Chapter 5

  I graduated three days after I got my orders. I also got promoted to FC3, and my Grampa even got to watch it over a good connection. I think Captain Patters had something to do with that. When I talked to my Grampa afterwards, he said that he was proud of me, even though things hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected. I told him where I was going, and he got real quiet. Even on the video screen I could see the lines on his brow deepen.

  “I know what I see on the news feeds,” he said. “And I know how to read between the lines. Be careful out there.”

  “I will be, Grampa.”

  He shook his head. “You still happy with your choice?”

  “It’s been a, ah, interesting ride so far.”

  “Send me texts when you can,” he said. “Pictures are always good too. Let’s me see how you’re holding up. I love you, boy.”

  “Love you too, Grampa.”

  I sat there staring at the blank screen for a long time after he signed off. I still wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing. Things just happened all around me, and I felt like I was just watching it happen. Getting dropped from nuke school, going to space, going to mast—I hoped that I would finally start figuring out my place in the Navy on my ship.

  But I had to get there first.

  You can’t call it interstellar travel, because we didn’t go from one star to another. But the distances between places in our own solar system are still pretty staggering, and everything is in motion. I needed to go from Port Jefferson at the Earth-Moon L4 to a ship on its way from Mars to Juno. And I needed to get there as quickly as possible. I asked my tablet to give me an ETA, and it said it would take approximately three months.

  It should have mentioned that those were under ideal circumstances.

  I went to Mars first on a fast transport. Well, not Mars, exactly, but Mars-Sun L4—Port Franklin, which was nearer than Mars when I left. Three hundred squids in special stasis to help us handle the initial acceleration and eventual deceleration. I remember climbing into the pod, and I remember climbing out. That was six weeks, and fifty million miles closer to my destination.

  Then I got on a transport to Eros which at the time was on the outside of Mars’ orbit. It was a slower transport, but we didn’t need any special anything, so it was four weeks of playing video games and reading. And standing watch, because Navy. Since I was an E4, a fire controlman, and the ship had Vulcan sensors, I got to stand watch manning a radar console. Four hours tracking all the nearby traffic, which was about six ships in the immediate area—meaning in this case, about the closest five million miles, all on the same track as us. But all I had to do was man the console, and report if any warning indicators popped up (they didn’t) and play solitaire in the corner of the screen. Still better than the seamen who spent a month painting the shuttle deck.

  Things started getting off the rails when we docked at Eros. Part of it was that there had been an attack three days before we arrived, and they were still in the process of trying to figure out who and why. Everyone assumed it was the miners, because who else would it be? And certainly all the news feeds speculated that was the cause. It didn’t help that Eros is such a popular place for both military and civilian populations—its orbit makes it such a useful chunk of rock, swinging from near Earth to outside of Mars every
two Earth years. But an explosive device can be used by a lot of people, and when I talked to my Grampa about it, he said it seemed unlikely, since the miners hadn’t used that kind of tactic before.

  I was over one hundred million miles from home at that point. The delay on the connection was obvious, and very unnerving. They say just keep talking, that everything you want to say will get through, and you’ll be able to answer anything that’s asked, but it’s a way of talking I’m still not used to. I tend to ask something, and then wait for the answer. On Eros, that was about two minutes, one for the question to get there, and one for it to get back. It was a long call.

  Since I was on the military side of things, I didn’t see quite the panic that happened in the civvy domes. But it still affected us, as every ship in the area was tagged for out bound passengers, and the Navy likes to help in these situations. So the transport I was supposed to take to Gaspra was late getting back to base, by nearly two weeks. I was assigned to temporary duty, which for me meant doing repairs on some of the damage. I had the skills, supposedly, but it was my first time putting them to use. I drove my supervisor crazy with questions, but I learned a lot, too, and he was remarkably patient with me. ET1 Gillespie. Good guy. Didn’t deserve to die the way he did, but Eros got hit a lot in those years.

  It was another four weeks to Gaspra, which is where I was supposed to meet up with the ship. Of course she wasn’t there still, but I actually hadn’t missed her by much. She had been delayed by a faulty reverse osmosis unit, and even though such an important system has triple redundancy, it’s a repair that is never put off. But she had left when I got there, and there was a flurry of traffic on what to do with me. The captain wanted me on board, but he didn’t want to get any further from the main fleet. The ship’s shuttle had been left for some repair work, but it wasn’t ready yet, and was too slow and too short range to get catch up anyways. In the end, the Roosevelt Roads came to a dead stop, and I got on a fast shuttle.