Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

We eat the hoarded food, not minding the half-stale donuts that date back to the beginning of the week, and toast each other with cold water, using our toothbrush cups as drinking vessels. With the restrictions lifted for the night, we talk and joke around like we’re in the mess hall, only with less restraint. We’ve never had a chance to talk to our platoon mates without a Drill Instructor hovering nearby, and the experience is strange after twelve weeks of social hamstringing.

Later that evening, Halley and I retreat one of the empty bunks by the back wall of the platoon bay. We have to endure some good-natured ribbing from the rest of the platoon as we fashion a sight barrier out of the scratchy issue blankets by hanging them from the frame of the top bunk. When we have finished building our privacy booth, we slip into the bottom bunk, which is now shielded from view on three sides. Our ugly issue pajamas end up in front of the bed, and we finally have some time to enjoy each other on a real mattress, instead of coupling hurriedly in the corner of the head, listening for approaching footsteps in the platoon bay. There are some cat calls and comments from our platoon mates, but we’re too busy with each other to pay attention, and after a while, they go back to their business and leave us to ours.

“We’ll stay in touch, right?” Halley asks later, as we lie on the thin mattress. I remember the original tenant of this bunk, a guy who washed out after three weeks for Failure to Adjust.

“Of course,” I say. “We’ll write each other on the milnet.”

“Too bad Basic isn’t about a month or two longer,” she says, and I laugh.

“I thought you were eager to get out of here.”

“Yeah, I am. But I wouldn’t mind spending some more time with you, chowderhead. I’d even put up with a few more weeks of running and quarterdecking.”

“Aww, that’s so sweet,” I reply, and we both laugh.

“Seriously,” Halley says. “I’d love for it to happen, but I don’t think there’s a chance we’ll both get posted to the same unit. I want to get mail from you every week, you hear? I want to know you didn’t get your head shot off on some crummy colony world on the ass end of the known galaxy.”

“Hey, they may not even post me to the Marines. I may end up being a supply clerk on a carrier. I’ll spend four years handing out towels and paper clips.”

“Come on,” she says. “Five hundred capital ships in the Navy, and they’re all so automated you could fly ‘em with a crew of ten. Over a hundred colonized worlds, and each requires a Marine garrison of at least company size. We’ll all end up in the Marines.”

“I don’t mind. Anything to get off Earth.”

“Hey, I’ve grown kind of fond of the place. It’s home, you know? I mean, smog and crime and all.”

“Seriously?” I say. “You mean you’d not trade this place for a chance to breathe some fresh air on a colony somewhere? I hear there are colonies so small, they have a thousand people on the entire planet. Can you even imagine?”

“Yeah, I can.” She looks down and smiles. “My uncle and his family made one of the colony ships a few years back. They won the ten-state lottery. Now they have five hundred acres on Laconia. They send pictures every now and then.”

“Maybe we can pool our bonus money when we’re out of the military.”

“And what?” she laughs. “Buy a spot on a colony ship and farm a patch of dirt on the other end of the universe?”

“Sure. Why not? What else are you going to do when your time is up? Go back home and buy lots of crap, watch the Networks until your brain rots, and put on the mask whenever there’s a bad air day?”

“Well,” Halley chuckles. “I was going to do exactly that, but now that you put it like that…”

She looks at me again, her eyes finding mine, and her expression turns serious again.

“Fifty-seven months after today, Grayson. That’s a long time. It’s a longer time still in this kind of job.”

She puts a hand against my cheek and holds it there for a moment.

“You try to make it through the next five years and we’ll see, okay?”

I know we’ll spend those five years in different corners of the universe. We both know that the military is not the place to be if you want to get or keep a mate. She’ll probably shack up with some steel-jawed officer, or a succession of them, and I’ll have my own flings. By the time our discharge date comes around, we’ll most likely only be a faint and pleasant memory to each other. But the thought is nice, and we have the events of the last few weeks fresh in our memories right now, so I take the sentiment in the spirit in which it is presented.

“I’ll see you after mustering out,” I say. “Bring your bonus, and I’ll bring mine.”

Graduation day dawns with a cloudless sky.

We’re up well before reveille, restoring the platoon bay to its sanctioned state, and polishing our boots and belt buckles to a spotless shine one more time.

We march to the chow hall for our final meal of Basic Training. After breakfast, we return to the platoon bay to shed our blue-and-greens and don the formal wear we’ve been issued just a few days ago. Sergeant Burke explained the Class A uniforms aren’t issued with the other stuff at the beginning of training because they are too expensive to waste on likely drop-outs, and that recruits lose so much weight and gain so much muscle in Basic Training that the well-fitting uniform issued at the beginning would sit on its owner like a tent after twelve weeks.

We rehearsed for the ceremony in the weeks prior to graduation. Our platoon—what’s left of it—is to march into the parade square behind the platoon guidon, and move smartly to its assigned spot in the rows of graduating platoons. Then the Commanding Officer will hold a brief speech, we will all swear the Oath of Service, and there will be recognitions and merit promotions for excellent training performances. All in all, we’ll be standing in the sun and listening to the brass talk for an hour, and then we’ll be sent back to our platoon bays one last time to pack our gear and receive our final assignments for duty. Everyone wants to know their service branch and final job description, of course, so the whole pomp and circumstance is just largely pointless torture, but we have learned to shut up and execute, so we do.

Despite the rehearsals, we’re not prepared for the sight of the main parade square as our platoon marches in, following Sergeant Burke and our platoon leader Hamilton behind the guidon.

The square is probably half a mile on each side, and it is packed with rows and rows of graduating platoons. There are hundreds and hundreds of platoon guidons flapping in the light morning breeze, making the square look like a multicolored cloth forest. We keep our pace up and our heads straight, but the sheer number of people on the square is a little shocking after twelve weeks of enforced segregation from other platoons.

We find our spot in the line, and the other two drill instructors, Sergeants Riley and Harris, are already waiting. We take our place in the formation that is comprised of hundreds of platoons. When all the graduating recruits have filed into the square and shuffled into position, there are thousands of recruits lined up in front of the podium in the center of the square. We’re all dressed in the Class A uniforms we’re going to have to return right after the ceremony, and we all look lean and sharp.

There’s a speech, of course. The Commanding Officer of the training depot addresses us for a mercifully brief period of time, talking about duty and commitment, and the challenges that await us out there among the stars. It’s all a bunch of fluffy crap, of course, and everyone knows it, but by now we know how to stand at attention and listen.