We Are All Enlisted

by Michael A. Hooten

  Except of course they don’t have fire hoses in space. Instead of making a mess on the floor or the wall, his golden shower just bounced around, and he laughed at me while I tried to dodge it. A couple of times I got hit, and it absorbed into my coveralls pretty quick. And the little cockroach left, still laughing at me, so I had to clean it all up by myself. It’s not that fun cleaning up spills in zero-g’s most of the time, but chasing those little yellow blobs with the vacuum was worse.

  I didn’t say anything to anyone, mostly because I didn't know if this was just garden variety hazing or what. Someone must have seen, though.

  The next night I expected another confrontation, and Cooper looked like he was just itching to do something. He had that kind of rat-faced smirk that schemers get, and he followed me pretty closely all through the meal. Midnight rations is generally a pretty sparse affair, with only five or so people actually eating at any given time, but the closer it gets to 0045, the less there are. I had seen it be completely dead in the last twenty minutes or so, and Cooper’s attitude was one of waiting for the witnesses to leave. I had kind of expected him to try something, and I had length of steel pipe in my pocket. I hoped it would be enough to defend myself.

  He did wait until the chow line had officially closed, though, and then he closed the hatches into the space while I was picking up trash. I looked up to find him in my face, and the glint in his eyes was close to pure rage, even though he was smiling. “You and I are going to have a little fun now,” he said. I backed away from him, but he stalked me. “Just the two of us, and ain’t nobody going to interfere.”

  Even as I reached into my pocket for my pipe, I saw the handle on the door behind him start to slowly rise. I started talking to cover it. “Listen, Coop, I don’t know why you don’t like me—”

  “Don’t call me Coop!” he yelled. Behind him I saw ten guys file in. Turnbull was in front, and I recognized Smitty, Farooq, and MS3 Silver, too. They moved quietly, fanning out.

  “Cooper,” I said. “I’m not sure what you think you’re going to do, but you shouldn’t.”

  “And what’re you going to do to stop me?” he said. He grabbed my coveralls and pulled me close. “Little bitch.”

  His eyes widened when three sets of hands pulled him off me. Silver said, “Well, well, what have we here.”

  “This ain’t your business, Cookie,” Cooper said.

  “I know what you say, but actually, I own the mess decks as well as the galley,” Silver said. “So yeah, it’s my business.”

  “And Wright is in my workcenter,” Turnbull said. “You mess with him, you mess with all of us.”

  Cooper seemed to realize finally how many guys had come in. He went from menacing to sniveling in a heartbeat. “Aw, c’mon, guys,” he said. “I was just having a little fun with the pollywog.”

  “He’s my pollywog,” Turnbull said. “And you don’t get to mess with him unless I say so.”

  “Okay, that’s fine,” Cooper said. “Now, it’s late, and Wright and I need to finish up, so…”

  “Wright’s done for tonight,” Silver said. Turning to me, he added, “You should probably hit your pit.”

  “Um…” I said intelligently.

  Smitty grabbed my elbow and steered me towards the door. “You need to go,” he said. “You want to be able to say you have no idea what happened, and make it sound convincing.”

  “What is going to happen?” I asked as he pushed me into the passage.

  “Nothing,” Smitty answered. “But you’re not going to have any more trouble with Cooper. I can garun-damn-tee you of that.” Then he slammed the door shut and pulled down the handle.

  I had one more day of cranking, but Turnbull woke me at 0900 and said, “Time to go to work.”

  “I get to sleep in,” I said. “Late shift.”

  “Not anymore,” he said. “You’re in the workcenter officially as of today. Right now, in fact. So let’s go. We’ve got to get you squared away.”

  Of course, I did find out what happened to Cooper. Ships aren’t that big. But nobody ever confessed to stripping him naked and duct taping him to the overhead, with only his eyes and mouth showing. And Cooper wouldn’t say, even when they pulled the tape off his crotch. He avoided me after that, though, and never even tried to get revenge.

  Chapter 7

  So the next day I joined my workcenter. There were only five of us: Turnbull, Smitty, Farooq, Johnston, and me. I don’t know why Turnbull and Johnston didn’t have nicknames, but everyone just called them by their last names. Well, Johnston got called Johnson sometimes, but only when he was being a dick, which wasn’t often. We got along okay, though Turnbull rode us all when he thought anyone in the chain of command was watching. He volunteered Johnston to show me how to get to the turret, which was basically to take every ladder well down until we got to level 0, which was fairly quiet even in the middle of the morning.

  We headed aft until we saw a hatch in the floor. “It’s through there, dude.”

  I spun the wheel and pulled it open. I went down feet first through a ladder well that seemed twice as long as the rest. Johnston said, “We’re going through the hull right now. This tube is a true airlock, and don’t you forget it. If you lose pressure in your space, this hatch locks from the inside.”

  “Is the hull really this thick?” I said.

  “Of course. All that keeps us separated from the cold nothingness outside.”

  We got to another hatch, and I pulled it open, and went through feet first. But instead of finding myself upright like I expected, I found myself upside down instead. I oriented myself, marveled at how easy it was to do and get used to in zero G’s and looked around.

  The turret looked like a workshop. I could see two 3D printers, a workbench, six cabinets marked with tags like “Spares” and “Hardware”. The hatch I had come through was on the forward side, and a ladder on the aft end of the room led up to the dome.

  Johnston was just kind of hanging out at the hatch, with only his head and shoulders showing. “So what’s the deal?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just a little freaky, that’s all. Knowing that space is just on the other side of some glass.”

  “Okay…” I looked around. “What’s all the equipment for?”

  “This thing was designed originally as a scientific observatory,” he said. “Some admiral somewhere had the brilliant idea of turning it into a gun turret, but they left all the other stuff, and just added guns on the outside. But the whole thing is self-contained. You’ve got a mini-reactor under the floor, and air and water scrubbers. You could live here for a few months without going into the main ship at all.”

  I walked over to the ladder. “You ever been up there?”

  “Not while we’re underway,” he said.

  I looked up. The ladder went up a good twenty feet, but I could see the dome at the top, and the stars were visible even though everything was well lit. “What am I supposed to do during GQ?”

  “Sit in here with your headset on. Dial in Weapons net on one ear, Fleet net on the other. Make sure nothing breaks.”

  “Do I fire the guns?”

  “Of course not,” Johnston said. “A gunny will do that. You just make sure everything is working right.”

  “Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

  “Look, I’m going back to the workcenter. You coming?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and followed him back inside. Once he felt safe, he started telling me about duty rotation, the maintenance schedule, and how much of an asshole Turnbull could be. I just let him ramble on. I was thinking about the stars I had seen.

  That evening at chow, I heard singing before I got onto the mess deck. I was with Smitty and Farooq, who just rolled their eyes. “Big Mike is at again,” the cook said as he doled out our meal.

  “What set him off this time?” Farooq asked.

  The cook shrugged. “Some seaman complaining about life, I’m guessing.”

 
We walked through the door and the words became clear:

  “We are all enlisted ‘til the conflict is o’er!

  “Happy are we! Happy are we!

  “Sailors in the Navy, there’s a bright crown in store!

  “We shall win and wear it by and by!”

  Big Mike was standing and singing with gusto, and everyone around him had their heads down or was looking away. The door to the chief’s mess cracked open, and a chief I didn’t recognize stuck his head in. “Do you mind, petty officer? We can hear that in here.”

  “They can probably hear it on Mars,” Smitty muttered.

  Big Mike grinned even wider. “No problem, chief. Just needed to cheer up some of these pessimistic pollywogs.”

  The chief shook his head and disappeared, closing the door with a loud click. We took an empty booth on the port side, and I said, “Does Big Mike sing a lot?”

  “Three or four times a week,” Farooq said, as we slid into a booth.

  “And always some Mormon hymn,” Smitty said.

  “That was a hymn?”

  “Yah, I know, he makes it sound like some kind of old military march, but it’s a hymn.” Smitty stuffed a veggie cube in his mouth. “Most of ‘em are more preachy.”

  I shrugged. “I can’t say much. He got Cooper off me that first day.”

  “Don't get us wrong,” Farooq said. “We all like Big Mike, and he’s a good man to have on your side.”

  “And the wrong person to piss off,” Smitty said.

  “Right,” Farooq agreed. “But the singing is… annoying.”

  “It’s fucking retarded,” Smitty said. “His whole Mormon schtick gets really old, really fast.”

  “Is he the only Mormon on board?” I asked.

  “Affirmative,” Smitty said. “And he hates anyone to point it out, but a lot of the rebelling miners are Mormon, too.”

  Two days later, I had my first General Quarters drill. It was a full on emergency drill, where we had to get into our steel suits and everything, and despite being the newest sailor on board, I still wasn’t the last to get to my station, even in my division. Of course, I had more room to maneuver than most people. But I had my headset on and was checking in within five minutes of the start of the drill, which is pretty good. But I still hadn’t gone up the ladder yet.

  “Wrong Way, how are you doing down there on the bottom of the ship?” Turnbull said on the weapons net.

  “Bottom? I’m on the top of the world!” I said.

  “Oh yeah?” Smitty said, and I could see his snarky grin in my mind. “You sitting in the hot seat?”

  “Up in the dome?” I asked. “Do I really have to be up there?”

  “Aye that,” Turnbull said. “That’s where you sit and monitor all your systems.”

  “Okay then,” I said. I pulled myself up the ladder, and discovered a few things. First, the hot seat and dome were only about ten feet wide, about half of the workshop below, with a nice comfy chair and all kinds of monitors and controls that made it feel even cozier. Also, the hot seat portion with its ladder well was really the only thing sticking above the hull. The guns on either side seemed very long, and the hull seemed to stretch away forever.

  But none of that mattered. The millions of stars shining left me awestruck.

  “Wright! Are you there?”

  I keyed the mic. “Here, chief.”

  “You strapped in up there?” FCC Stanley said.

  I clicked the harness into place. “All set, chief.”

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “No worries,” I said.

  He grunted. “There’s a manual you can call up. Study it while we’re at GQ. I want you knowing that thing inside and out by the time we reach Juno.”

  “Copy that, chief.”

  Smitty said, “You’re really sitting up there? Under that glass?”

  “I think it’s a polycarbonate sheet,” Farooq said. “Lots stronger than glass, and engineered to have low refraction.”

  “What does that even mean?” asked someone I didn't recognize.

  “It means it’s super clear and super strong,” Farooq said.

  “We’re all impressed with your knowledge,” Chief Stanley said. “Now cut the chatter while we wait for the stragglers to check in.”

  My console started beeping, and when I hit the blinking key, a face I didn't know came up on the left most of my four screens. “Hey, new guy,” he said. “I’m GM2 Clifton, and I’ll be controlling your guns during GQ.”

  “FC2 Wright,” I said. “Do I need to do anything special?”

  “Naw,” he said. “When it’s time to position the guns, my system will override yours, but until then, feel free to do what you like.”

  “Do I get any warning?”

  “Sure. It’s called GQ.”

  I grimaced. “Got it.”

  “Hey, if you can sit up there at all, everything else should be cake,” Clifton said. “If you want, you can take a look at the rock we’re going to use as target practice in a couple of days.”

  “Where is it?” He sent me coordinates, and when I punched them into the fire control computer, the turret turned about five degrees, and the rail guns dipped slightly. I couldn’t see it out the window, but it appeared on one of my minotors.

  “Nice,” Clifton said. “Looks like you’re locked on already. Leave that in there for now, even though we’re totally out of range. When GQ is over, hit the disengage button, and you’ll return to neutral position.”

  “Can I put in multiple targets?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Couple of hundred is the limit, I think. Your whole purpose in this man’s navy is to make sure those are good targets.”

  “Good?”

  “Stuff we want to blow up.” Clifton grinned. “My whole purpose is to get the ordinance to the target, and blow ‘em up nice and hard.”

  “Roger that.”

  He looked away, and I saw him hit his headset key. “Copy that, chief.” Looking back at me, he said, “Gotta go. Talk at you later.”

  The screen went dark, and I stared at the little chunk of rock on the screen. A button on the screen was marked “Heads Up”, so I touched it, and my window lit up with a green dot showing where the rock was, and all kinds of information about it, the ship’s trajectory, and fire control data. I realized with its size (about a half mile in diameter), the closest we were going to get still wouldn’t allow me to see it raw. But even from this distance, the turret sensors gave me plenty of info, and I could zoom in to see individual craters and crags. It wasn’t anything special. Just a chunk floating through space.

  On the weapons net, I heard Smitty say, “Is chief still on?”

  “Naw,” said someone else. “He’s switched over to command net.”

  “Awesome,” Smitty said. He immediately starting ragging on the supply officer, and others joined in. For the next two hours we talked and joked, with occasional radio checks and other tasks that we were assigned. I mostly listened, trying to get a feel for everyone and everything going on.

  Then came the call the stand down. I took off my steel suit and got it stowed away, then made my way back to the work center. The other guys also started drifting in, and Turnbull said, “Okay, Wrong Way, time to get you squared away.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was lacking, but he pulled out his tablet and punched a few things. “I’m putting you on the work schedule, and giving you access to all the equipment logs and manuals. There’s also the stuff you need to get you your rocket pin, and a checklist for all the people you’ll need to talk to.”

  “What’s a rocket pin?” I asked.

  Smitty pointed to his chest. “Right there,” he said. “It’s the Space Warfare Specialist pin, and it means you know your ship inside and out.”

  “At least the ship you got it on,” Johnston said.

  “Well, sure,” Turnbull said. “But it means you’re special. You want to be special, don’t you Wrong Way?”

  Right t
hen, with all those guys I barely knew looking at me, all I wanted to be was back in my turret. “Of course.”

  Chapter 8

  Over the next couple of days, I got my wish more than I expected. Turnbull had given me the maintenance of everything in the turret, so I spent a lot of time catching up on the things none of them wanted to do. None of it was very hard, but a lot of stuff had gotten put off, so I got to turn everything on at least once to verify it worked, and if it didn’t (like the larger 3D printer), I got to repair it (bad fan on the extruder nozzle, no big). And we went to GQ four times.

  The last was the best. It was going to be our closest pass to the rock Clifton had had me target, and we intended to unload a bunch of ordinance on it. We started with the top guns, and they used explosive shells which made the rock visible for a few seconds at a time, and altered its course quite a bit. Then it was my turn, and Clifton had me target the edge of one of the craters the big guns had left.

  “Okay, boyo,” he said once I was locked on. “Those pop guns are designed to be able to hit the same spot over and over, so we’re going to shoot out calibrating rounds. Get ready, and… fire.”

  The rail guns didn’t have much sound, but I felt the vibration rumble up my spine. First the port gun fired, then the starboard. I was watching the targeted area with a scope, otherwise there wouldn’t have been anything to see. No big flash-bang. Just a puff of red paint, then a puff of green. It looked like a Venn diagram, but I was impressed. “Half a meter off at twenty thousand miles,” I said.

  “Yeah, we can do better,” Clifton said. He made some adjustments on his end, and said, “Pick another target on the other side of the crater.”

  I found a flat patch on the rim, and he said, “That’ll do. Fire round two.”

  This time the starboard gun shot first, but if I hadn’t been watching closely, I wouldn't have known it. The red paint almost completely obscured the green, with only a fingernail of it peeking around one side. “Damn,” I said.

  “Now we’re calibrated,” Clifton said. “Simple enough.”