The CHANGI BULLET

Chapter 3 - Training

For the last seventy years, the world's most popular sport was badminton. It was massive, and its top players were idolized like Gods. The world's two best players, at the time, happened to be from Portugal, and they were about to play their semi-finals in the World Championships against a Swede and a Finnish-Russian, respectively.

Batavia's indoor National Stadium was holding the Finals, with 100,000 manic spectators present, and a television audience estimated to be in the billions. The majority of the crowd were Indonesian, and they were currently doing a Brazilian wave, lifting their arms at the right time to make it look like a ripple was going around the arena. As it came around, Ari Octavian, Inggrid Kurniawan and Petrik Prastiwara laughed heartily as their section all went up in unison.

There was an Asian pop group singing, or lip-syncing, down on the court. Exhibition matches had just finished and the crowd were being built up for the main event. Inggrid was quite petite, wearing a white body suit and gold hijab, and also sporting a pair of goggles, as was everyone else, in order to bring the action up into the stands. She was sitting protectively between Ari and Petrik, two handsome young men in their early twenties. All of them loved Araf Yusni, Indonesia's number one player, but it was not to be his year. Not to worry – they had their snacks and they were having a great time.

A roar went up as Indonesia's most famous and glamourous TV couple came out to do the build-up and the player introductions. Inggrid could hardly sit still, she was so excited.

'Oh, look at Muhammad's suit,' gushed a thrilled Ari. 'And Sabrina looks great, too.'

Petrik was less of a fame groupie. He loved the sport of badminton but could probably do without all the razzamatazz. Nevertheless, he grinned and buffeted shoulders with Inggrid.

Ari realized that he was receiving a message on his phone. He swore silently at the untimely interruption, but bent forward to read it away from the panning searchlights and the noise. Then, wide-eyed with surprise, he forced Inggrid and Petrik to pay attention to him. His mouth was dry.

'What is it?' begged Inggrid.

'The Izzati crew are scrubbed. We're bumped up.'

Lunch turned out to be a varied choice of noodle dishes, much to Roach's foul-mouthed ire.

Ezra was sitting with Cerys, who thought the food to be excellent. He watched her closely, taking in her beauty, and watching her mannerisms, such as the way she tweaked her nose or pushed imaginary strands of hairs off her forehead.

'Good, huh?' he asked, indicating the noodles.

'Out of this world.'

She guffawed at her own joke.

After being encouraged by her, Ezra was explaining his responsibilities aboard Izzati.

'You're not making notes,' he pointed out. 'You must have a huge intellect.'

'I do. So, after lunch, we are doing gunnery training, I believe? As with running in space, I can't see that I'm ever going to have to repel boarders.'

'Well, just treat it as a bit of fun. We've got the exact caliber weapon to play with. There are three on the Izzati, as you know, two on the shoulders just behind the cockpit, and one underneath. The Australian will man the one down under. Did you see what I did there?'

'Yes, very witty. I'll use that in copy. Are we expecting trouble, then, out there in the far reaches of space?'

'No, I don't think so. But we've never gone this far before. Who knows what we might encounter?'

She paused from the spicy noodle dish, assessed him while tapping her mouth with a napkin. 'What if we encounter something while in the early hibernation part of the journey?'