The Expansion Box Set Read online

  “Aw, man,” Jamie Paterson said as he craned his neck against the restraints to see out of the small window. “Would you look at that.”

  Jake and Leslie tried to look, but only Paterson’s above-average height allowed him to see the lunar docks. Leslie looked at Jake and tried to convey her annoyance through the visor of her helmet. The suit’s software had mirrored the glass against exposure to sunlight and all he could see was his own helmet’s image reflected back at him.

  “Home for the next sixteen months,” she said. The armor distorted her normally toneless voice into a tinny sound coming out of the speakers. It was barely audible over the noise of the UNPF lunar transport shuttle, but that internal vibration was nothing compared to the noise it made breaking atmosphere before the five-and-a-half-hour journey to the Moon. The tour for their unit, all one hundred and ten of them, was eighteen months. But for Jake, Jamie and Leslie, who had first met when they walked into basic training in Cuba a little over three and a half years ago, it would be less. Their assigned service was due to end before their deployment did.

  Signing their lives away, for five years at least, had been a monumental moment in each of their lives before they were inducted, hazed, bullied, trained and molded into the capable men and women of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force of the American Territories.

  When they passed through their intensive training course and waited to find out where they would be scattered to, none of them would have guessed that they would have stayed together the whole time. The three were all given the same assignments until their unit was rotated out of UNPF and into CTSF, the Combined Territories Security Forces, for their overseas tour.

  Overseas, in this case, referred to through space. Sixteen months patrolling, searching and monitoring the almost forty thousand people living and working on the Moon’s surface.

  “And I bet the food is every bit as shitty as we’ve heard,” Jake Santana answered drily, his own suit speakers sounding just as tinny but managing to convey his boredom. A young man with simple needs, Santana had left home after high school to make things easier on his mom, who had his younger siblings to feed and look after. For him, as professional and capable as he was, it was all about the food.

  “Cut the chatter, shitbirds,” Master Petty Officer Kip Carter growled at them, the speakers on his armor turned up to make his voice carry.

  He cut over two junior officers and two less senior NCOs to deliver the reprimand, and all four of those men and women kept their heads facing forward or looked down at the deck. The only signs marking them as different were the white flashes or simple stars painted over their right shoulders. They all wore the same regulation armor with their visored helmets on. The commander had ordered the entire unit to keep their armor and helmets secured and pressurized, after a transport ship from the African territory suffered a pressure loss recently. That incident had killed half a unit, along with their senior Non-Comm. The commander didn’t want to take any chances, so his men and women split over two ships had to spend the entire journey closed down inside their rigs, which was uncomfortable and claustrophobic, to say the least.

  They cut their chatter, each finding their own thoughts or trying to steal a glance out of the few windows, hoping to see the series of rigid geometric domes that provided most of the livable atmosphere on the Moon.

  Their ship, the lead of the two containing the unit and their supplies, swung in and settled horizontally to rotate its back end around on a central axis and reverse slowly on its maneuvering thrusters. It docked into one of the twelve wide hangars sprouting out of the large dome, which was the main space port.

  The light through the small windows darkened, and was replaced by the dull blinks of the emergency lighting inside the vast space. Both ships could easily have fit inside there, but safety protocols dictated that incoming flights had to be one ship per landing area. Anything to avoid another preventable but massive loss of life. The commander himself was on their ship, which might have sounded daunting to anyone new to the unit but was the far better option. The command chief, the unit’s most senior non-commissioned officer, would be travelling in charge of the other ship, and he was not a man to upset.

  With a clank and a hiss from outside the hull—sound carrying once more was evidence that they were back in atmosphere—the struts of the ship flexed under the weight of the ungainly and lumpy transport bird as it settled down. The sounds faded as though everything was powering down, and the loudspeaker on the commander’s suit barked loudly into life.

  “Welcome to Lunar Port. Now get your shit together and prepare to work.”

  “Look,” Jake said as he dumped his kit bag on the bottom bunk of his rack, “all I’m saying is that it’s worth it for the money alone, not to mention all the other stuff.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Paterson answered. “Sixteen long, cold, boring months and I’m going back home to get my degree.”

  The others rolled their eyes. They had heard this before. Paterson had talked about nothing else for the entire time they had known him, to the point where they probably knew his career and life goals better than the man himself. He’d finished high school, graduating in the top twelve percent in the territory for grade scores, but since he was from a poor family with no political or military connections, he had no chance of paying for his higher education.

  He wasn’t genius enough to get a scholarship—those had been handed out to ten-year-olds occupying the top one percent—so he did the only thing he could to realize his dream: he joined the UNPF to get sponsorship for his education. He was clever, annoyingly clever in fact, and he loved to point out just how smart he was to anyone who would tolerate him. In spite of this, he fit in with the others and wasn’t always a dick. His brains came in handy in basic training when their problem-solving tests, usually involving some horrendous weather condition or other mortal peril, were rapidly solved by his keen intellect.

  “Well, both of your dumb asses are wrong,” Leslie Brandt said from atop the next bunk over, “because you’re both missing the bigger picture.”

  It was Jake and Jamie’s turn to roll their eyes.

  “Yeah, yeah, we know,” Jake said to try and stem the wave of propaganda he knew that she was about to spew out. “There’s more to life than our own selfish desires, think about the planet as a whole, what we can do for humanity, yadda yadda…” He paused as he saw Brandt’s eyes narrow at him.

  “I’m just saying that you two should think about it,” she said flatly. “There’s nothing wasted about a life spent in service.”

  “So, what?” Jamie asked her. “You’re going to spend a year and a half on this frozen rock, then go home and sign on the dotted line again? For good? Forever?”

  “Maybe,” she said hesitantly. “It’s the only way to get fast-tracked.”

  Jake rested his face in his hands, although slowly and surreptitiously so as not to invite her wrath. She had been drunk on the UNPF’s propaganda ever since she’d earned the single white stripe over her right shoulder during their long training period. Although she still ate, slept and trained with the rest of the squad, they knew that she had designs far above the lowly rank of petty officer class two.

  Fast-track meant that she would have to undergo a program of high-stress testing, would have each of her mission and training progress reports picked apart and would have to jump through a dozen other hoops before they accepted her. If they did, if by some miracle she made it through, then she would have signed her entire life into service with the UNPF in return for a speedy promotion course to the rank of commander. She wouldn’t get the same perks that the others did, wouldn’t get the additional pay bump to be received tax-free when they got back to Earth after an overseas tour with CTSF off-world, but she would be rewarded with a grueling training program which would see her rise through the officer ranks quickly.

  “Alright, assholes,” the harsh voice of Master Petty Officer Carter announced as he stalked into the room. His word
s had the desired effect, as though someone had bawled for them to stand to attention. The two squads lined up at the foot of their bunks.

  He walked tall, still wearing his armor, only minus the helmet now, whereas most of the squad members had at least stripped off the heavy chest and back plates.

  “Guard and Recon,” Carter said, addressing them by their unofficial names dictated by their specialized roles.

  Jake, Jamie and Leslie’s was the Recon squad, and they were trained for exactly that, whereas the Guard squad was more into heavy weapons. The other six squads of their unit, numbered three to eight, would be doubled-up in identical barracks on the same gray corridor in the same dull barracks that seemed to be designed the same way no matter the location in the inhabited galaxy.

  “PO2s and ensigns by the door as usual. Don’t screw about and in return I promise I won’t make it my personal mission to rearrange your internals. Rectally.” Carter paused to eyeball the nearest seaman, daring him to hold the contact. “Mission briefing in thirty, so strip and stow your gear.” With that, he turned to stalk out of the room. The young lieutenant hot on his heels was too scared of the man to offer confrontational confirmation that he outranked him.

  A chorus of ‘aye, aye,’ echoed after them before the normal buzz of chatter resumed.

  The lieutenants, each in charge of a pair of ten-man squads, would have separate quarters. They would be sharing, as would the petty officer class one ranks, but from there on up, rank held the privilege of privacy. The master POs, usually called ‘Boss’ by the seamen under their command—calling someone master had a number of different and often awkward connotations to it—would have their own small quarters. Those ranks had the responsibility of over half of the unit each and reported to the two men who really ran the show.

  The unit’s commander, a man named Dassiova, was a hard-bitten soldier who was the veteran of a number of Earth conflicts and was widely renowned as one of the best. Rumor had it that he had been offered promotion back to Earth half a dozen times, going back to an elevated command position or an admiralship or else to take charge of training at one of the biggest academies, and each time he had refused. Dassiova preferred to stay at the sharp edge of UNPF service. This was his third lunar tour, his first since returning from another stint on the Close Protection teams, UNPF’s elite Special Operations teams. Although he was one of the most highly respected UNPF unit commanders there was, their command chief and senior NCO was all that and then some.

  “Fast-track or not,” Jake said when the room had returned to normal, “I’ll be glad to get back home and not have to trust domes and shield units to stop my eyeballs from being sucked out into space while my body flash-freezes.”

  He turned, slapping a hand twice on his shoulder for Paterson to unclip the heavy armor. The equipment had been designed to be put on and taken off by the user alone, but that user had to be double-jointed to do it without injuring themselves.

  Brandt said nothing as she stowed her own armor in the locker. The lockers must have been specifically and intentionally designed to be only ninety percent big enough to hold their gear.

  She pulled on her uniform jacket, brushing out the creases caused by being rolled up in her bag on the journey up from Earth, and clipped on the duty belt with its empty sidearm holster and pouches. Fully armored or not, none of them would be carrying a weapon until issued with them by the lunar armory master petty officer.

  “Ready in fifteen,” she said, raising her voice for her squad of ten seamen to mutter their aye, ayes.

  “Isn’t that the wheel’s job?” Jake asked her, his voice just loud enough for the sixteen-year-old ensign to hear.

  They were called ‘wheels’ by everyone after an old saying about something useless being the fifth wheel. However, seeing as all of their vehicles were at least six-wheeled the saying had lost its meaning. The wheel himself, Kyle Torres, pretended not to hear the seaman’s slight at his expense and carried on unpacking his gear. The top bunk he had been relegated to, the one nearest the door so that he could supposedly keep an eye on the comings and goings of his squad, seemed too high for him to reach without clambering up the end of the frame like a child.

  “Can it, Santana,” Brandt told Jake, trying not to smile.

  2

  UNPF barracks, Lunar Base

  “The terrorism threat level remains at severe,” Commander Dassiova growled from the dais, “but we are not here as an overt armed force. Our task is to patrol, engage, gather any relevant intelligence and pass that back up the chain of command. Full battle armor will be maintained at all times but stowed in barracks, and only sidearms and stun batons will be issued. Now, for the sake of not doing too many goddamned administrative duties, these weapons will be personal issue and will not be recalled at the end of duty shifts, but,” he paused to glare at the entire assembled unit, “if anyone, and I mean anyone decides to misuse, misplace one or in any way cause me to hear your name in a sentence that involves anything other than your sterling effort and gleaming hard work, then I will personally guarantee you will find yourselves walking back to Earth at the end of your tour. And that is if you’re lucky. Chief?”

  The commander stepped back, taking his small sheaf of paperwork and looking just as pissed off as everyone else was to be babysitting a boring-but-potentially-hostile environment. He’d rather be fully armored and tooled-up ready for anything. The command chief petty officer was a bull of a man standing at a flat six feet tall, and with more presence than should be humanly possible. He was a legend in the UNPF and had been one of the NCOs traded between territories a decade earlier as part of the cross-training plans to standardize the Earth’s security forces.

  Originally from Nigeria, Afamefuna Onyilogwu found it much easier to go by his title of ‘Chief’ and was rumored to have issued a significant amount of punishment to those junior ranks who attempted to pronounce his surname and failed. Those junior ranks included, if rumor was to be believed, a number of lieutenant commanders.

  “Listen up, people,” he snapped. “We will do this by the numbers. Squad lieutenants have your duty rotations and areas of responsibility. All of you will eventually learn these areas as well as those on either side of your own. Our standard of interaction is to be friendly and courteous, and only to resort to force if verbal commands are not obeyed.” He looked around the assembled squad, somehow managing to eyeball every one of the eighty seamen, fourteen NCOs and fourteen officers deemed to be under the level of himself and the commander. “This I will repeat, just in case any of you are feeling a little hard of hearing: We do not use force unless we have to, and nobody will discharge their sidearm unless they are being shot at, is that clear?”

  A loud collective shout of aye, aye blasted the room and Chief waited for silence once more.

  “And one last thing, anyone caught using the stun batons on one another in the barracks will personally answer to me.”

  The quiet threat sucked the oxygen out of the room as quickly as if a seal had cracked on the large dome they were under.

  Squad by squad, they filed out of the briefing area in reverse order, leaving the Recon squad last out. They waited for their turn to shuffle toward the armory and be given their standard issue 6mm Universal Service Pistols as well as the stun batons. They were more excited about the batons in the childish and mischievous way Chief had expected. There was a running bet going around each squad as to who would be the first to mess up and shock themselves, and Chief’s warning underlined the fact that walls had ears.

  Their use of firearms was heavily limited because almost half of the lunar colony was still protected from the vacuum of space by physical double-skinned domes and not the new large forcefields generated by the latest generation of singularity energy sources. These forcefield domes could withstand a heavy supersonic round from their 12mm Squad Support Weapons, but the physical domes were at risk from anything bigger than the 6mm subsonic ammunition. Their main weapon, the imaginatively na
med Universal Service Rifle was a bullpup carbine firing the same caliber of ammunition as the pistols but with an option to increase the charge and fire the round supersonically. Those rounds could, in theory, penetrate the dome, which is why their guns remained locked up tightly.

  “What area have we got, Les?” Jake asked.

  “Pipe down and get a grip,” she told him. “You’ll find out when you find out.”

  Paterson caught Jake’s eye and the two exchanged a knowing look.

  Get a grip? She doesn’t know either.

  They waited, their lieutenant calling them calmly to wait in line to scan their hands against the greasy tablet in exchange for a stubby sidearm, three spare magazines, and lastly, their telescopic baton. They had to stand inside a marked safety area and draw it to make sure it crackled into life, before demonstrating that they could safely collapse it and stop the flow of sixty thousand volts. After that, they went down the line to the loading area where they loaded their three magazines, and placed one into the weapon ahead of the pistol grip. Next, they pointed them into the heavy rubber curtains in front of the big drums filled with the dust from the Moon’s surface meant to smother any errant discharge. They applied their safety catches, showed the petty officer in charge of the station, and holstered the guns.

  Jake, unique among his squad and often mocked for being left handed, quickly went through the practiced process of breaking down the weapon to switch the ejection port from right to left, before replacing the top slide and loading his weapon.

  Getting back to their barracks and looking around to make sure nobody senior was present, they drew their stun batons and pushed their luck as far as they dared by feigning tasering each other.

  “Officer on deck!” barked the petty officer class one in charge of the two squads in the barrack room. As one, they snapped to attention, running to stand by the end of their beds and pretend they weren’t playing with their newly issued weaponry. The lieutenant walked in, no doubt having sent the NCO ahead to make sure that nobody was witnessed disobeying Chief’s standing orders, then called for the ensigns and NCOs from each squad to form on him.