Chapter 1: Home Away From Home

The deck beneath my feet shook as the shuttle’s engines pushed it up through the atmosphere, the troop bay lit only by warning strips along the ceiling and the glow of the flames that licked at the craft’s stubby nose, bleeding in through the small portholes. Two dozen other recruits occupied the rows of crash couches that were lined up against the walls, buffeted by the turbulence as they clung to the armrests of their seats with white knuckles. Their eyes darted about nervously, their faces lit by the orange glare, all clad in matching uniforms in a shade of Navy blue.

I reached down and checked that my safety harness was secure, tugging it a little tighter around my chest and ensuring that the buckle was properly fastened. This wasn’t my first trip into space, but I hadn’t had time to get used to it yet. I was still ‘muddy’, as the Marines and the well-traveled of Earth’s upper echelons referred to those who had spent most of their lives planetside, in reference to the terrestrial soil and dirt that they liked to imagine still caked our boots. Personally, I hadn’t seen Earth in months, I had been spending my days hopping between planets and stations as my fellow recruits and I were ferried to our ultimate destination.

Was I starting to regret joining the United Nations Navy? No, there was a war to be fought, and I wanted to do my part. The day that I had turned nineteen, I had dropped out of agricultural college against the wishes of my father, and I had enlisted in the Navy. Many of my friends had done the same. We had imagined forming a unit together, but before we could so much as protest, we had been sent off around the world to different boot camps. I hadn’t seen any of my comrades since, but I had successfully completed basic training, and today was the final step in my journey. I was finally going to finish my training and become a real UNN Marine.

The colony planet dwindled behind our little dropship as it broke through the upper atmosphere, the shaking abating and the flickering flames fading as the sky beyond the nearest porthole shifted from azure to a dark, velvety black. Stars twinkled, harsher and colder than they had ever looked from the ground. I thanked those stars that there was no weightlessness. That had been one of the least enjoyable parts of the training. The shuttle was equipped with an AG field, generating artificial gravity that would keep us firmly rooted to the deck.

As I looked out into space, frost crystals clinging to the edges of the glass, I saw our ride. Hanging above the curvature of the planet was the jump carrier, a vaguely bullet-shaped spacecraft painted in the traditional ocean-grey, its bulbous hull adorned with blue UNN logos and regalia. At over a thousand feet long and with a mass of a hundred thousand tons, it was one of the largest vessels that the Navy could field. As the shuttle banked, I got a better look at it, the sunlight reflecting off its surface like a beacon.

Along its belly was a forest of railguns that were mounted on flexible arms, intended for ground support and offensive roles in space. Point defense weapons and torpedo tubes were spaced out along its curved hull at intervals, its clean lines broken up by recesses where vessels could dock, like barnacles clinging to a whale. On the port and starboard sides were cavernous hangar bays, the shimmering, blue force field that prevented the atmosphere within from escaping into space visible even at a distance. I could see the glowing pinpoints of the portholes along its flanks, as well as the main bridge, situated toward the rounded nose of the craft. At the aft were the giant realspace engines, long jets of hydrogen flame spewing forth as it maneuvered into position.

The ship’s primary purpose was force projection, a fleet with one of these at its head would be able to both capture and defend entire planets. Her crew compliment included thousands of Marines who could be deployed to the ground, and it was my ultimate aspiration to be among them.

Seeing it filled my chest with a kind of pride, not only because I was finally seeing one of the behemoths in the flesh, but because I was well on the way toward serving on one of the giant spaceships.

As we drew closer, the swarms of vessels that surrounded it came into view, like a cloud of bees encircling their hive. There were transport ships resupplying the carrier, formations of fighter craft and gunships making their way toward her bays, along with a dozen other shuttles identical to our own. We were not the only recruits riding along today, hundreds of people had made their way here, and we were all heading to the same destination. The carrier was taking us to an orbital station on the frontier of known space, where our Marine training would begin.

I peered out of the window as the pilot maneuvered us toward the ship, and I watched the gaping hangar bay pass us by. We weren’t landing in the bay, then, we would be occupying one of the recesses in the hull. I sat back down in my seat, my stomach lurching as the shuttle flipped belly-side-up relative to the carrier, the thrusters along the craft’s hull flaring as we slid into one of the alcoves. I felt a rumble pass through the deck as the shuttle mated to the carrier, locking into place like a flea on the back of a giant, metal dog.

A twinge of apprehension marred my excitement as I glanced at my neighbor, his face pale, beads of cold sweat already forming on his brow. We would be jumping to superlight before long.

Another role of the carrier was to drag smaller vessels along in its wake, being one of the few classes of ship large enough to house the nuclear reactors that were required for long-range jumps. The superlight drive would drain the reactors of energy, storing it up and using it to punch a hole in reality. The carrier would then leave our paltry three dimensions of space, pulling all of the ships in its vicinity along for the ride. Faster than light travel was impossible of course, but superlight bypassed the limitations of reality by exiting it entirely, passing into an alternate dimension where there were no such constraints. Nobody really knew what happened between exit and emergence. Time might flow differently there, maybe the ship became as massless as a photon, or perhaps the two points of space somehow drew closer together. Either way, the vessel would be vomited back into reality a split second later, having crossed a distance of light years.

There was one big downside to superlight travel. Whatever higher dimension of space the vessel traversed, it was poison to the nervous system. Symptoms included but were not limited to violent muscle spasms, migraines and headaches, even blackouts and what could only be described as temporary insanity.

All of the recruits had undergone superlight jumps to get here, myself included, but none of us was especially looking forward to another one. They said that it got easier with time, some of the more experienced pilots were barely affected at all, but it certainly didn’t seem that way from where I was sitting.

After a few minutes of excruciating waiting, our fears were realized when the shuttle began to vibrate, the carrier’s superlight drive was charging up. I glanced out of the nearby porthole again, angled down toward the planet in relation to the craft, its grey hull curving away like a steel horizon. I could see a few dawdling support craft burning out of range, along with a large frigate that was floating lazily in formation beside us, preparing to ride in our superlight wake no doubt. Its hull was angular and blocky, designed for a low radar cross-section, bristling with hatches that covered torpedo tubes.

“Jump prep, two minutes,” the pilot announced over the shuttle’s intercom.

There was a flurry of movement as everyone checked their harnesses and inserted clear, plastic bits into their mouths. They were standard issue, the last thing you wanted was to regain consciousness after a jump, only to realize that you had bitten your tongue off. I reached into my pocket and secured my own bit, running my tongue over the smooth plastic as my heart began to race.

The seconds dragged on until finally, the pilot’s voice came through again with a hiss of static.

“Brace for jump!”

The vibration became a rumbling, then the rumbling became a violent shaking. I was vaguely aware of the hairs on my arms standing on end before it suddenly stopped. As did all of my senses, my perception of time, and I could swear my heartbeat. I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t experience anything at all. For a solitary second that dragged on for eternity, I was trapped in a dark grave, I was dead. Light suddenly flooded back into my eyes, my ears filling with the sounds of wailing trainees, my nerves lighting up like a switchboard. I convulsed violently, the straps on my harness digging into my flesh. I tried to open my eyes, but all I saw were blurry shapes, like looking through frosted glass. My brain was muddled, I couldn’t remember where I was, why I was hurting. Like crawling out of molasses, my mind slowly started to come together. Pieces of memories came flooding back, experiences, sensations. My vision came back into focus, and then I remembered where I was and what had happened.

I gasped, fully conscious again as the people around me moaned and struggled, a few vomiting up their breakfasts onto the metal deck. I could hear the pilot laughing at us from behind the cockpit door, amused by the chaos. This must be routine for him, but we were still novices.

I spat out my bit, hearing it clatter to the deck as I hit the clasp that would release my safety harness. I could feel the stinging welts beneath my uniform where it had dug into my skin. I must have been straining against my bonds during my unconsciousness, wracked with convulsions like I was having a seizure. My head still ached, and every muscle in my body felt like it was recovering from a nasty cramp.

The Drill Sergeants hadn’t been exaggerating to mess with us, it really was terrible. After every jump, all that I could see in my mind’s eye were the laughing faces of our instructors as they imagined us ‘getting our cherries popped’. I stood up from my seat on shaking legs, leaning on the armrest for support, and a few of my compatriots attempted to do the same. Some fell out of their chairs, one of them tumbling face-first into a pool of his own vomit, the laughter from the pilot becoming riotous.

There was a mechanical thud as the shuttle disengaged from the carrier, drifting away from it and reorienting itself in space. I looked out through the porthole to see a dozen craft just like our own detaching, as though the mothership was shedding its scales. They would have been almost invisible against the black backdrop of space was it not for the glare of a new sun, its light distinctly yellower than that of the system that we had just left.

I watched the frigate that had trailed behind us break off, the thrusters along its hull flaring with blue fire as it peeled away. The breach that the carrier had punched in reality was now little more than an expanding cloud of technicolor gas and cosmic dust, spreading out like a miniature nebula, as beautiful as it was strange. It looked like a colorful smear of paint on a black canvass, the residue sparkling in the sunlight.

The shuttle lurched as it began to burn away, and I reached up to grasp one of the handholds in the ceiling as I peered intently beyond the window. My eyes lit up as I glimpsed it for the first time. There it was, Fort Hamilton.

Its white hull was silhouetted against a gleaming, terrestrial planet that was sheathed in white clouds, its arid surface colored in shades of brown and beige. The orbiting station grew larger as we neared it, until it filled my field of view entirely. My first impression was that it looked like a giant bicycle wheel. There was a central hub that was covered in communications equipment and radar dishes, jutting out into space like antennae, which was connected to a rotating torus via long spokes. The giant, donut-shaped habitat was spinning slowly. It was far too large for artificial gravity generators, so it must be rotating to simulate gravity like a centrifuge.

There were hangar bays spaced at intervals along the thick torus. The same shimmering force fields that I had seen on the carrier were present here, albeit far more massive in scale. It was hard to estimate the size of the station with no point of reference, but there were Navy vessels floating around it like shoals of giant, grey fish. There was another carrier which was dwarfed by the structure, along with several frigates and a cruiser. Some of those bays looked large enough to house a Martian battleship.

My discomfort now forgotten, I looked on in awe as we neared the starbase. The size of the carrier had amazed me, but this was something else entirely. It looked as if half a dozen of them could have docked here at once.

Our shuttle pulled up alongside the wheel, matching velocity with its slow spin. The matte white hull rose up like the edge of a cliff, more of its features jumping out at me now that we were closer to it. There were no windows visible, but there were comms arrays everywhere, the armored tiles and tiny pressure doors adding detail to its smooth surface.

The shuttle coasted toward one of the hangars, growing wider and wider as we neared it, until it swallowed up our tiny craft like the gaping maw of some celestial beast. We passed through the thin, glowing barrier of energy that prevented the air inside the vast bay from venting into open space, and I got a clearer look at the interior.

It more resembled the mouth of an artificial cave than a hangar, everything was made from the same white material as the hull. The deck was wide enough that three or four of the one hundred and fifty-foot frigates could have docked here side by side, and when I ducked down to get a look at the ceiling through the narrow porthole, I saw that it was a good hundred feet above our heads. The walls were lined with walkways and gantries, some of them extending like the arms of a crane so that they could reach the large ships that would dock in here. Right now, the only craft occupying the deck were more transport shuttles like ours, along with a refueling vessel that looked like a row of giant golf balls contained within a skeletal frame. Fat, thick hoses snaked along the floor, leading out of view as it filled its tanks.

“Strap in, we’ll be landing in a moment,” the pilot announced. I returned to my seat, securing my harness once again, feeling the rumble of the landing gear as they extended from the belly of our little ship. We touched down with a bounce, the gear absorbing the impact. Before the pilot even had time to give the order, we were already up, waiting eagerly for the troop bay ramp to descend. We slung our heavy packs across our backs, carrying all of our gear and what few personal belongings we had elected to bring with us.

The engines powered down, and the landing ramp began to lower, a crack of bright light appearing that steadily grew. I smelled the stale, recycled air that was so common on spaceships and stations, marching down the ramp with my fellow recruits. Our boots hit the deck, our footsteps echoing in the expansive bay as though we were walking inside a cathedral. Everyone’s head was on a swivel, taking in their surroundings. I glanced back over my shoulder, feeling butterflies in my stomach as I gazed at the force field. The thin, insubstantial barrier of energy wasn’t much of a comfort, and I immediately imagined being sucked out into the freezing nothingness. The field would trap the atmosphere, but would allow solid objects to pass through it. It was best not to wander too close. The stories of people tripping and falling into space were probably exaggerated, but it was a distinct possibility if you were careless.

A Staff Sergeant was already waiting for us with a tablet computer clasped in his hand, his rank emblazoned on the breast of his Navy-blue uniform. We lined up in front of him, some of the recruits still unsteady on their feet after the jump, his expression hardening as he examined us. We stood to attention and returned a salute, some more enthusiastically than others, and he began to check our names against a database. After a short roll-call, he gestured to the hangar bay.

“Welcome to the UNN starbase Fort Hamilton, or as we like to call it, the Pinwheel. My name is Staff Sergeant Vasiliev. I see that some of you took the jump harder than others,” he muttered, eyeing a dejected trainee who had drying vomit all over his coveralls. “But you’ll quickly find that life here can be pleasant, ‘if’ you follow the rules and do as you are instructed.”

He stowed his tablet computer neatly under his arm, beginning to stride up and down the line of recruits.

“Having completed your basic training on your home planets, you will now begin your Marine training. This is a Coalition starbase, which means that we have many non-human personnel from allied worlds who you will learn to live and work with. Some of you may find this difficult,” he continued, pausing to make eye-contact with one of the trainees. “Others may find it ... undesirable, but creating cohesive units that include Coalition species is paramount to the war effort.”

Everyone knew about the Coalition. It was an alliance formed by several alien species, of which humanity was a member, with the intention of combining forces against common threats. An attack on one was an attack on all Coalition members, and our combined strength could take on any enemy that dared to test us. For twenty years now, we had been at war with the insectoid Betelgeusians, as long as I had been alive. We had ratified the Coalition treaty after, unprovoked, the Bugs had destroyed a colony ship crewed by forty thousand people. It had been humanity’s first contact with an alien species, we’d had no idea of what was waiting for us in the void. All hands had been lost, and soon after we had discovered that we were not alone in our struggle. The Coalition had made contact, inviting us to join their alliance, and the United Nations had not hesitated to accept.

The Bugs attacked any habitable planets in their path, with no regard for anything resembling rules of engagement. They bombed cities from orbit and used inhumane chemical weapons in their bid to seize territory, invading with vast fleets and armies. They were a plague, their only desire was endless expansion, and so the Earth and her colonies had been locked into a perpetual war of attrition.

Joining the military was pretty much the only way that someone of my social class would ever get into space and see the Galaxy, and although adventure had factored into my decision to enlist, seeing the damage done during the battles on the frontier worlds had filled me with resentment. I wanted to get involved, I wanted to help. Most of all, I wanted to kill Bugs. If I succeeded in becoming a Marine, then I might be amongst those deployed to defend the vulnerable colonies that bordered contested space.

“You will be forming units with trainees from two other species that have been specially selected for this program,” the Staff Sergeant continued. “You must learn to interact with them and to fight alongside them effectively in combat. You will be eating with them, training with them, bunking with them. Anyone who can’t cut it gets sent back to whatever rock they came from, is that clear?”

There was a chorus of affirmations, and then we were led out of the hangar bay and into the station proper. There were gasps of awe as we emerged onto the torus, an artificial breeze ruffling my hair and the muddled roar of a thousand conversations rising to my ears. I could have been standing on any city street back on Earth. The torus was massive, the curvature beneath my feet imperceptible, only the way that the walkway curved out of view in the distance giving it away. The ceiling was painted blue, dotted with puffy clouds to create the illusion of a sky, the large lamps that were spaced along it at intervals shining with a light and heat that approximated Sol. Buildings lined the torus to either side of us, seemingly carved out of the white hull material, their facades decorated to resemble terrestrial structures. There were molded bricks and wooden slats, windows and doors, colorful awnings over what might be stores. There were planters along the center of the walkway that housed trees and flowers, along with benches and information kiosks. They had gone all out on selling the illusion that one was standing on a planet rather than on a space station.

My senses were almost completely fooled, and I immediately felt more at ease than I ever had on any of the previous ships and stations that I had visited. I felt more like I was standing in a resort rather than a Naval base, but in the back of my mind, I knew that the feeling would fade once the hard work began.

“Welcome to the torus,” the Staff Sergeant shouted over the din. The walkways were packed with bustling crowds, civilians and military personnel alike. I could even see a few aliens, although they were too far away for me to get a good look at them. “The station is split into four quadrants. Military, tourism, residential and engineering. As trainees, you are to remain in the military quarter. You see those colored lines on the floor? If you get lost, or if you end up somewhere that you’re not supposed to be, follow them to find your way back. Now follow me, and don’t get separated. The Pinwheel is even larger than it looks.”

I stared with my mouth agape, until the impatient trainee that occupied the place in the line behind me gave me a shove, ushering me forward.

The Staff Sergeant gave us a guided tour of the quadrant, and I only became more surprised as we marched on. Not only were there barracks to house the troops, but also gyms and recreation centers, even an Olympic swimming pool. Everything was built from the same white material, but decorated with planters and other aesthetic touches that made me feel like I was back on a college campus.

Sergeant Vasiliev led us to our barracks, a large, squat building that looked as if it would house around a thousand recruits. We marched down a small pathway that was lined with trees and artificial grass, and as we entered through the main door, I saw that the building was far larger than its outward appearance would suggest. As well as the facades that protruded out onto the torus, the interior of the structures here extended deep into the station’s hull. Rather than finding exposed pipes and naked wiring, the buildings were as attractive on the inside as they were on the outside, all whitewashed corridors decorated with potted plants and UNN regalia.

Chapter 2 »