We Are All Enlisted

by Michael A. Hooten

  “Are we going to shoot anything else?”

  “Naw,” he said. “Now we’re going to shoot it with a missile, and blow the thing all to hell. That’s why we had to go first.”

  I could just see the one missile bay door open on the port side, and then the dome went momentarily dark to save me from the flash of light as it launched. It cleared up a second later, and I could see the missile like a comet headed to the rock. My scope was still zoomed in on the paint spot, and there was a flash of light and it was gone. I zoomed out, but the all I could see was gravel and small boulders. No more half mile chunk.

  “What did we hit it with?” I asked Clifton.

  “We call it the Pulverizer,” he said. “Not much good against hardened targets, but it sure does make the rock go boom.”

  “I’ll say. Biggest thing left is what looks to be a chunk of iron about fifty meters in diameter.”

  “Gravitational core,” Clifton said. “Most of these bigger rocks have ‘em. And about all that’s left after the Pulverizer hits ‘em.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Yeah, we got a pretty cool job some days.”

  But most days were pretty dull overall. Same round of maintenance, watch, and sleep. And working on my rocket pin.

  The classes were the worst. A chief or officer usually ran them, and they were dry as toast. Even when we were talking about the weapons, they tended to drone on, putting me half to sleep. And I wasn't the only one. Fortunately we had all the presentations on our tablets, so I got all the information all right. Farooq said it was a teaching method that all the senior people passed on to each other. Smitty said it was deliberate torture.

  But having to go around to the different spaces was pretty awesome. I got to see the bosun’s locker, which was almost all the way forward, the shuttle bay in the aft (empty until we got back to port), and the engine rooms at the top.

  The day I went up there, Big Mike was the only one around. I heard him before I saw him, singing about how all was well. I stopped just inside the door and listened. He didn't have a bad voice, and he was singing softer than he normally did on the mess decks.

  “And should we die before our journey’s through,

  Happy day, all is well.

  Then we’ll be free from toil and sorrow too,

  With the Saints we shall dwell.”

  The words were not only sad, but he sang it with a catch in his voice. I came around the bulkhead and saw him at the console, still singing softly, and spinning a pen in midair. I was suddenly uncomfortable, and cleared my throat loudly to let him know I was there. He spun around, and his face split in a huge grin. “Rightside! You should have let me know you were coming.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I had a couple of hours, and you’re area is one of the last I have for my rocket pin, so I thought…”

  “Glad to have you!” He stood up and stretched his back. “Been working on evals. Creative fiction, mixed with a little truth, but there it is. Come on, let me show you around.”

  There wasn’t much to see, but then he took me into what he called Engineering Central. The boards that showed the ship were pretty cool. One huge one dominated the room, translucent so that the same thing could be seen from either side. “We’ve got the whole ship on diagnostic here,” he said. He turned the view, zooming in and out, until finally we were looking at the side of the ship in cut away view.

  “I don’t see my turret,” I said.

  “The dangling dick?” he said. “Nah, that’s not my job to make sure it’s working. It’s your job. But I know every time the hatch opens when you go in or out.”

  “Are there cameras, too?”

  “Not on this class. Some of the older ships have them, though.”

  I looked around. “Where is everyone?”

  Big Mike laughed. “There’s hardly any of us here this time of day. We do most of the maintenance in the off hours.”

  I glanced at the ceiling. “Can I see the reactor?”

  “We can go up there, sure.”

  We went up a long ladder well a lot like the one leading to my turret, and I asked him about. “Oh aye, it’s an airlock hatch,” he said. “Just one of the many failsafes in the system. One thing you might want remember in case they ask you at your pin exam, these reactors are built with Admiral Rickover’s determination that they be safe above all else. You could hit the tower with a missile, and barely dent it. And in the case of a reactor problem, the whole thing can be jettisoned.”

  “What would the ship do if that happened?” I asked.

  Big Mike shrugged. “We have a tiny back up reactor that can keep life support up, and that’s about it. Kind of like what’s in your turret.”

  We came out another thick hatch, into a small space that had a chair, a few monitors, and not much else. A passage led away in each direction, but Big Mike gestured to the chair. “Take a seat,” he said.

  I did, and he leaned over me to hit a couple of keys. The main monitor showed me a cut away of the tower, similar to what I saw in Engineering Central. A few gauges appeared beside several of the systems shown, with numbers bobbing up and down slightly. “The tower is riddled with maintenance passages, and we verify everything this shows us, but this computer ties into the core more directly than anything, and even draws its power from the generator.”

  “Doesn’t the ship get its power that way, too?”

  “Only indirectly, through induction. This puppy has wires going in there, and if it won’t power up, bad things have happened.”

  I watched the monitor for a minute. “We’re just one mistake away from disaster, aren’t we?”

  “Out here? Yeah,” Big Mike said. “Most of us have lived with that attitude most our lives. Hell, even Mars is tough to live on without a lot of infrastructure. A lot different from Earth.”

  “Aye that,” I said quietly. The cold of space seemed to have settled in my bones far more than when I was in the hot seat, staring at the stars.

  Big Mike patted me on the shoulder, and sang:

  “For the beauty of the earth,

  For the beauty of the skies,

  For the love which from our birth

  Over and around us lies,

  Lord of All to thee we raise

  This our hymn of grateful praise.”

  It was soft and wistful, and surprisingly comforting. “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Why do you always sing?”

  He grinned. “Keeps my spirits up. We’re in a big tin can hurtling towards who knows what, and I’m millions of miles from my wife and kids. I sing so I don’t cry.”

  “Yeah, but hymns?” I said.

  The grin faded, and he looked at me closely with two eyes that were darker than his skin. “Just because I’m living out in the middle of the great emptiness of outer space doesn’t mean I don’t need God.”

  “But man created space travel,” I said. “Invented everything needed for us to get through it from planet to asteroid, or wherever.”

  Big Mike shrugged. “Man also invented the wheel. But who inspires the inventors? I think it’s a Heavenly Father that loves us. Some think it’s just a collection of biological systems working to fend off its own death. I know which gives me hope, and makes we want to keep going.”

  We sat there for a few minutes. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and Big Mike didn’t seem inclined to continue further. Before it got too awkward, though, he said, “Have you been to hydroponics yet?”

  “I think that’s next on my list.”

  “Let me know what you think of the smell,” he said. “Most of us spacers hate it.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it was clearly a dismissal. We went back down into the ship, and I headed down towards the center of the ship.

  Hydroponics was smelly, but not in an unpleasant way. I mean, the plants were all healthy, and any soil present was tightly contained, but it smelled like dirt, fertilizer,, and
tomato plants. It was strange seeing them growing horizontally, but when I asked GN2 Horowitz about it, he said, “Dude, zero g’s. We can grow them any way we like. But the tomatoes are vines to begin with, so you could grow them this way even on Earth, if you wanted.”

  I looked down the lab, the longest space inside the shape except for the shuttle bay. Twenty long vines stretched most of the 15 meter length, in five rows four high, and there looked to be space for more. “Is tomatoes all you grow?”

  “Negative. We got melons and cukes too. See those three on the end? Pie pumpkins. When they come ripe, one of the cooks will actually make a pie with some. The rest go into the hopper for veggie cubes.”

  I looked at my tablet. “And there’s another lab like this one back aft?”

  “They get all the short plants, like broccoli and peppers. They also have the recyclers.”

  I scrolled through the presentation, but I don’t see that anywhere. “Okay, I had a training session with GN1 Bossco, but that’s not in his notes, and I swear he didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Yeah, that’s Boss Man,” Horowtiz said. “Every class, he leaves out something different, trying to make sure people are paying attention. Never works, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we think he’s an asshole, and make sure you guys know everything you need.” Horowitz looked at me funny. “You haven’t complained about the smell.”

  “I’m earthborn,” I said. “This doesn’t smell bad to me.”

  “Damn,” he said. “You want a tomato?”

  “Sure.”

  He walked down the nearest row about half way, and plucked a perfectly round, red tomato. He came back and handed it to me. It was too big to eat in one bite, but I had been in space long enough to be careful. So I popped the skin with my teeth, sucked out as much of the juice and seeds as I could, swallowed, and then ate the rest. Horowitz watched me the entire time like I was some kind of exotic animal, and while chewing the last bit I said, “What?”

  He shrugged. “I just never seen a sailor that wasn’t a Gardening Engineer eat one of those without processing first.”

  “My Grampa always had a little garden in his backyard,” I said. “I used to go out and eat them right off the vine all the time.”

  “That’s got to be weird,” Horowitz said.

  It was my turn to shrug. “I guess it depends on what you’re used to. This all seems weird to me.”

  “That’s okay,” he said with a grin. “Seems weird to most of the other sailors, too. They think food just appears in the chow line somehow, maybe by magic.”

  Chapter 9

  A couple of days later, I heard Big Mike singing on the mess decks again. It was that same song about being enlisted, and happy, and I looked at Farooq, who was behind me. “What do you think it is this time?”

  “With Big Mike there’s no telling,” he said. “Could just be that he’s in a good mood.”

  “Nah,” MS1 Silver, who was serving said. “We just got informed we’re going to be stopping for liberty.”

  “Serious?” Farooq said. “Hell, that makes me want to sing.”

  Silver just grinned.

  “So where are we stopping?” I asked as we got onto the mess deck.

  “No clue,” Farooq said. “But it’s off this freaking ship, so that’s always good.”

  The scuttlebutt said that the captain had really resisted stopping, but that the Admiral had insisted. There were two theories about why: either he really thought about the needs of the crew, and having a few days of down time before we got to Juno, or else he wanted to avoid giving us our beer ration, which happened anytime we were underway more than 90 days straight. Both seemed plausible to me, but it gave us something to talk about that was different.

  We docked two days later at Port Farragut, which was a space station orbiting a small irregular asteroid. I looked it up on a standard chart, and it was listed as M-2373. But when I looked on the official Navy charts, it was listed as Farragut-2373. The chart also told me that it had a high metal content suitable for mining.

  The port still appeared to be under construction, and was the oddest shaped station I had seen yet. Smitty said it was a warship dock, so it looked like a jelly fish, with a big bulbous top and a couple of long tentacles hanging down. Those were the piers. We went to GQ for the docking procedure, which allowed me to see it up close. After we defragged, a tug line was deployed and pulled us into position. There was a three man crew doing some welding a few levels below me, and we were close enough that they noticed me and waved. I waved back. Several tubes snaked out from the station and locked onto our ports. The officer of the deck called the all clear, and I went up for our division muster.

  Weapons division was mostly gunners and fire controlmen, with a few EOD types thrown in. Ensign Abercrombie looked us over and said, “Standard liberty rules, gentlemen. Buddy up, make sure you know when you have duty, and above all, don’t get in trouble. The Captain wants this to be short and sweet, and if he has to hold a mast, he will be rather upset. It’s bad for me when he gets upset, and I will make it bad for you. Understood?”

  We said, “Yes, sir.”

  He smiled. “And steel suits are to be worn throughout the station, except in designated areas. They’re still building this thing, and you don’t want to get caught in a compartment with a voided atmosphere and no way to get back in.” We all made affirmative noises, and he said, “Wright, I need to talk to you. Everyone else, dismissed.”

  Everyone else filed out, and I must have looked concerned, because he said, “No worries, Wright, you’re not in trouble. But I haven’t had a chance to talk to you much since you came on board, and I want to see how things are going.”

  “Fine, I guess, sir.”

  “Good, good,” the ensign said. “Do you know your duty rotation, and have you got a buddy?”

  “I’ll be on duty today,” I said. “And Farooq said he’d be my buddy tomorrow.”

  “Farooq, huh? Let me know how that works out for you.” He seemed amused by the prospect.

  “I will, sir,” I said, and then he dismissed me.

  When I got to the workcenter, the only one there was Smitty, who gave me a big grin. “Still got your ass intact?”

  “Roger that,” I said. “Div O just wanted to see how I was, and if I had a buddy for liberty. Seemed surprised it was Farooq.”

  “Yah, well, Farooq is a good guy, but he’s Muslim, you know?”

  I just shrugged. “Okay, so?”

  “He doesn’t drink,” Smitty said. “Also goes to mosque if there’s one available.”

  “And I have to go with him?”

  “Sort of. He actually likes non-Muslims to wait outside for him.”

  I frowned. “Doesn’t that break the whole buddy system?”

  “Not as long as you don’t go anywhere,” Smitty said. “So make sure you have some games or books on your tablet.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” I said.

  “Don’t say I never gave you nothing.”

  The door opened up, and FC2 Callahan, who was in the computer workcenter popped his head in. “You ready to go, Smitty?” he said.

  “Affirmative.” He started out the door, and patted me on the shoulder as he passed. “Have fun.”

  Staying on board that first day wasn’t too bad. I had the first watch, which was spending six hours in Weapons Central, which had all the displays relating to our department. I checked all the readouts, noted that one of the EM sensors in my turret had a yellow warning light on, and headed down there after GM2 Clifton relieved me.

  Because we were in port, the lights were programmed to turn off unless someone was in the space. It felt weird to pull myself out into the dark, with the only a very dim light coming from the hot seat. But the lights came up quickly, and everything looked right again.

  The electronics for the sensor were in the workshop, so I checked it, reset it (which cleared the fault), and began to putt
er about. I started hearing a knocking, and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from at first. But it got louder near the ladder up to the hot seat, and glancing up, I saw a face grinning at me from the outside. I climbed up, and was startled by seeing three men in heavy space suits laying on my dome like cats on a car. The one who I noticed first held up his tablet, which gave me the channel number so I could talk to them.

  “Hey there,” he said after I said hello. “You stay in there underway?”

  “Sure do,” I answered.

  “And they call Seabees crazy,” he said. “Tell you what, Loco. Just for having the guts to come up and talk to us, we’ll buy you a beer.”

  “It’ll have to be tomorrow,” I said. “Duty, you know.”

  “Oh, aye that.” He tapped his wrist, where I saw a tool strap. “Got my own work to do, too. How about tomorrow, 1700? We’ll be done for the day by then. Get some food to go with the booze, if you want.”

  “Sounds great,” I said. “How do I find you?”

  “Ask around for a place called Bottoms Up. Ask for Petty Officer Hernandez.” He grinned again. “They all know me real well there.”

  “Will do.”

  I watched them push off and drift back towards the station. Each had a tether, which they looped in their hands and used to pull themselves back to their workstation. I could see them talking and laughing, but I guess they had switched to a private net. I shut down the radio, and headed to chow.

  Chapter 10

  I told Farooq about Hernandez the next day at breakfast. “Do you think we can be there at 1700?” I asked.

  “I don’t see why not.” He started fidgeting, twisting the cap on his food pouch open and closed. “I found out that they have a mosque here, and I was, um, hoping that we could, ah, spend the morning there?”

  “I don’t have to go in, right?”

  “No, no,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. If you want to come and pray with me, you are welcome of course, but I don’t expect it.”

  “How does that work?” I asked. “I mean, with us being buddies and all?”

  Farooq shrugged. “There’s usually a religion center where you check in and out. As long as we go in together and come out together, it’s considered all good.”