They were rushed through a set of concrete corridors leading to a giant elevator that fit all of the guards and recruits. The elevator moved up for what must have been minutes. When it finally stopped, and its doors opened, the summer’s sunlight and warmth washed onto the recruits’ pale faces. The sun’s rays blinded Voss’ maladjusted eyes, but he didn’t mind. It felt good to finally have the sun touch his skin again after months of dark, humid, cells and classrooms
He didn’t get long to enjoy the fresh air. They were herded into an old, patched up Minoutar. Voss recognized the model. He used to own a picture book filled with surface to space crafts when he was a child. It was his prized possession until one day he foolishly showed it to a couple of the neighborhood kids and some youths saw the book and stole it from him. He still remembered how furious he had been at them. Ironically, that theft ended up saving his life. There was a Fourth Branch razzia in his neighborhood shortly after the incident. The youth who had stolen his book ended up getting convicted to serve in the mines. Apparently it had been on some list of books that residents weren’t allowed to possess. It made no sense, it was just a picture book, but such things were always arbitrary and meant to keep residents on their toes at all times. He never saw the youth again. Probably died deep below Fosfat’s crust. Being sentenced to the mines often meant being sentenced to death.
He had devoured that book as a child. He still knew all the specs of all the different model types. Normally, the sight of a real Minoutar would have made him feel elated, but he remembered it only seats sixteen, and there were thirty one of them. They were in for a very uncomfortable and sweaty ride.
‘Get your asses in there, on the double’ one of the guards yelled. Voss rushed forward and made sure he was one of the first to enter. Hoping he could get a seat. The Minoutar’s rear passenger bay door opened upwards and revealed that his hope had been in vain. All seats had been stripped from the ship in order to ensure there was enough space to transport all the recruits. There was no going back now though, he was at the front of the group and was one of the first ones forced inside. He had to stand all the way to the front of the passenger bay right behind the metal wall that separated the passengers from the cockpit. By the time the final recruits had entered the passenger bay, Voss was squashed between the wall and several of the other recruits.
The ship’s intercom started blaring. ‘This is your pilot speaking. Lift off in T minus 30 seconds. Just waiting for the passenger bay door to close properly and the airtight green light. Destination, Saltpetersburg Spaceport.’
This was it, they were finally going into space. A boyhood dream came to fruition, even if the circumstances were different than he had dreamt of when he was little.
‘This ain’t how I imagined going into space would be like’ the recruit next to him said.
‘Make that two of us’. Voss replied. ‘But I don’t think either of us had imagined it to be part of a forced labor sentence either.’
‘To be fair, how else is a resident ever getting into space? I’m just happy we’re not being trained to mine asteroids.’
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
It felt odd to finally be able to have a conversation with a fellow recruit. Voss knew the face and the name, but not much else. Just that he was one of the brighter recruits. The only other person in class that seemed to have intricate knowledge of mechanical engineering.
‘You’re Hiyo, right?’
‘Yeah, Voss, isn’t it?’
Their conversation was interrupted by the intercom. ‘Five, four, three, two, one, ignition.’
A sudden, powerful force pushed the recruits down. It would have caused Voss to collapse through his knees, but he was packed in too tightly to move in any direction, including down. The Minoutar’s jet engines must have rotated backwards because the force went from pushing them down, to pushing them backwards. Voss, being in the front of the passenger bay, now finally got some room to move. He felt sorry for the guys at the very back.
The Minoutar accelerated with incredible power. Capable of reaching the mesosphere at fifty three kilometers altitude within ten minutes. Silly facts from his childhood book that now felt very relevant.
A red light started flashing, followed by a most unwelcome intercom message from the pilot. ‘Passengers prepare for turbulence’. He’d barely spoken the sentence before the first signs of turbulence manifested themselves. It was like they were jam packed at a festival. Collectively jumping up and down in the confined space due to sudden losses of altitude followed by the Minoutar regaining stable course at the end of the drops. Things were getting worse now. The entire surface to space craft began to shake and the drops became more violent. The recruits had to outstretch their arms overhead to try and catch themselves from smashing into the roof now. The shocks were so violent that they only partially managed to do so. Voss saw several of the recruits had sustained hand, arm or head injuries. Some of them were bleeding. One was unconscious, held upright by the men surrounding him.
‘This is definitely not how I imagined going into space would be like’ Hiyo yelled at him above the ruckus.
‘They should hang this pilot and whomever trained him’ Voss yelled back.
The turbulence decreased and then disappeared. Voss figured they were now above the altitude where most turbulence occurred. The men now had a short reprieve to assess the situation. It was hard to tell what had happened exactly in the closely packed confined space, but there was some blood dripping from the passenger bay roof and there was the stench of vomit coming from the rear of the craft.
‘Poor souls’ Voss said to Hiyo. ‘They must have gotten it worse than we did’.
‘Stop worrying about them, and start worrying about us’ Hiyo replied. ‘Once we switch from accelerating to decelerating, we’ll be the poor souls who get everyone smashed into us.’
The Minoutar began to accelerate again. Signaling that it had switched from its jet engines to its void thrusters. They were at least twenty kilometers up and would really pick up the pace now. The acceleration lasted for what must have been five to six minutes. Putting the recruits under a constant three to four G pressure. Voss heard another recruit retching, followed by several other recruits angry screams.
Then the acceleration stopped. Where they had first been under high pressure, he could tell they were now starting to experience lessened gravity. It was only a minor difference for now, but would soon become more noticeable.
He hoped the transport wouldn’t take too long. Based on the force of the acceleration and the length of the acceleration, he estimated it would take them around an hour to get to the space port. It would probably take another fifteen minutes to dock. Seventy five more minutes inside this cage, not a welcoming prospect. The air was already getting increasingly hot and foul.
Chatter began to erupt in the passenger bay. It would be under these conditions that the recruits would finally get to know each other. A chance to bond through shared misery.