Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

“Clear,” I say into the helmet mike, and the other two members of my team come into the room, rifles at the ready.

“What the fuck ?” the second one of Halley’s troops asks, looking at his rifle in consternation.

“Musta taken a hit from that grenade,” I say.

“That’s bullshit. I was already through the door when that thing went off in the hallway.”

“Computer says you’re dead, so you’re dead,” my team mate says. “No point arguing.”

“Stop the chatter,” I say. “There’s more rooms on this floor. Let’s get busy.”

Action beats reaction most of the time. We clear the floor in pairs, going room by room, sanitizing the rooms with grenades before going in and shooting everything wearing battle armor. We lose one of our teammates, who ends up getting tagged by a “wounded” enemy who tries playing possum, but at the end of the exercise, we have Halley’s squad smoked out, with an attacking squad at only half strength. The rooms don’t have any barriers to block the simulated shrapnel from the grenades we toss in, and Halley’s squad can’t find a counter against us quickly enough as we take them down pair by pair.

“Well done,” Sergeant Burke says over the platoon channel when we have cleared the last room. “Gather your junk and form up in front of the building. Platoon, execute .”

“What have we learned this morning?” Sergeant Burke asks us when we are gathered in front of the building for our exercise critique.

We’ve learned that Recruit Ricci sucks at infantry tactics, I think, but Sergeant Burke answers his own question before I can voice that thought.

“A strong position is your friend when you’re in the defense, but it can also be turned against you,” Sergeant Burke says. “The defending squad got a little too cocky on that third run. They were trapped in their own fighting positions because they didn’t secure the back door, and because they didn’t leave themselves a way out. The attacking squad kept the initiative and used the isolation between the defenders to take them down with local fire superiority. That means, Recruit Halley, that you had more guys in the defense, but that it didn’t matter because they were split up and dispersed too much. They were isolated and neutralized by the attackers in smaller chunks, which is exactly the way it’s supposed to work when you do it right. The fight was four against ten in favor of your squad, but Recruit Grayson’s team fought the whole thing with four against two in his favor. We call that a defeat in detail . Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” Halley says.

“Well done,” Sergeant Burke says in our direction, and my team stands up a little more straight. “If Recruit Ricci had managed to grow a brain and not get his team mopped up for the third time, it would have been no contest at all. Looks like some of you aren’t completely retarded, after all.”

Ricci looks at Sergeant Burke with an impassive face, but I know there’ll be some trash talk at the dinner table tonight.

“Halley, you play attackers now. Form up your squad and move out to the staging point,” Sergeant Burke orders. “Ricci, have your squad pick defensive positions. Let’s see how you do on the defense.”

We spend the day killing each other bloodlessly.

Being on the defense is easier and more difficult at the same time. We can prepare our fighting positions, make use of cover and concealment, but we also have to wait for the other team to begin the attack on their terms. We get wiped out once, and beat the opposing team back twice, getting our revenge for our earlier defeats at the hands of Halley’s squad. At the end of the day, the score is even. One of Halley’s fire team leaders takes first place on the individual kill board, with fourteen kills to his name. To my surprise, I come in second, despite our lack of kills in the first two rounds of the day. I scored killing shots on twelve of Halley’s troops.

“Looks like you’ve found something you don’t suck at, Grayson,” Sergeant Burke remarks when he reviews the kill list with the platoon. “Just don’t think you’re a natural killing machine now. This shit ain’t real combat, you know.”

“You like that stuff too much,” Halley says back in the platoon bay head as we shower off the sweat of the day. “You were having a good time out there.”

“Maybe,” I shrug, as I try not to be too obvious about studying her shapely backside as she turns to rinse the cleaning agent out of her hair.

“You don’t watch out, they’ll mark you for the Territorial Army,” Ricci says from across the head.

“Is that why you sucked so much today?” Halley asks, and a few of the other recruits laugh.

“What do you think?” Ricci replies with a grin. “You think I want to give them a reason to mark me down as ‘Good With A Rifle’? That way lies a TA billet.”

“Well, you sucked at Land Navigation last week, too,” I say. “And I think you were near the bottom of the list in Combat Control. You waiting for the Office Management instruction to show your true skills, or what?”

“Funny,” Ricci says, and hurls a container of liquid soap in my direction. I swat it back at him, and it clatters to the floor between the two rows of showers. Ricci gives me a sour look as he walks over to the middle of the head to retrieve it. Halley lets out a mocking wolf whistle when he bends over to pick up his soap. He holds his middle finger up without looking back at her.

“What a turd,” Halley says under her breath.

I don’t do so well in the next phase of the training.

Our Air & Space week, as Sergeant Burke calls it, begins with a day of instruction on aeronautics, cockpit systems, and the basic principles of atmosphere and space flight. I can understand the theory well enough, and I manage to receive good marks on the electronic exam at the end of the classroom part of the training, but somehow my brain can’t translate that knowledge into practical ability very well. After the classroom instruction, we move on to simulator training, which takes place in a big room the size of our platoon bay. Every member of the platoon has their own sound-proofed simulator capsule. From the outside, it looks like a squashed egg with cables sticking out of its back, but when you sit in it, the inside of the shell turns into a giant display, and the seat and avionics in the capsule are exact replicas of those found in a standard Wasp-class attack drop ship. You take your seat, strap on your helmet, plug into the TacCom console, and the computer that runs the simulation does it best to make you believe you’re flying the real thing. The whole thing sits on hydraulic actuators, which can spin the capsule through three hundred sixty degrees of movement. When I do my first practice drop from orbit into atmosphere, the imagery of the planet below combines with the movements of the capsule to give me a disconcerting sensation of vertigo.

The theory is simple enough. The stick on the right side of the cockpit moves the control surfaces on the wings and tail of the ship. The throttle on the left side controls engine thrust, and the hat switch on its side fires the maneuvering thrusters for extra-atmospheric flight. Pull on the stick, the nose comes up—push on the stick, the nose goes down. Tilt it left or right, the ship tilts in the same direction. The rudder pedals under my feet control the yaw. Each control axis moves the ship around a different physical axis, and all the pilot has to do is coordinate his input on stick and throttle to move the ship where he wants it to go.

“A good drop ship pilot can thread a needle with a Wasp. A great drop ship pilot can do it with a fully loaded ship while under fire, with one engine and half a wing shot off,” Sergeant Burke says when he introduces us to the simulators.