We Are All Enlisted by Hooten Michael A

Author:Hooten, Michael A. [Hooten, Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2016-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

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.

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