Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

In Basic, there was one big room for the entire platoon. Here at B Company, the squads are quartered in rooms. The officers and noncoms get their private rooms, but the enlisted have to share, four troops to a room. There are two double bunk beds, four lockers, and a table with four chairs to every room. The building is old, but well-maintained—the paint is fading, and the polymer coating on the floors is worn, but everything is clean. There’s a communal head on each floor, and the toilets and showers have actual stalls built around them.

When I walk into my assigned squad room, my squad mates are gathered around the table, playing a game of cards. They all turn around to look at me, and I wave a hand in greeting. Two of my new roommates are guys, and one is a very pretty girl.

“Grayson,” I say. “Fresh out of Basic. I guess I’m your new squad mate.”

“Come on in,” one of them says. They all study me with curiosity, undoubtedly sizing me up.

“Your locker’s over there,” he points to his left, where a row of lockers stands lined up against a wall of the room. “It’s the one closest to the window.”

“Thanks.”

I walk over to the locker and open the door. There’s issue clothing already hanging on the rack, and the locker is dressed to boot camp perfection, with brand new pairs of boots neatly lined up on the bottom shelf.

“This one’s taken already,” I say, and my new squad mates chuckle in unison.

“It’s your new gear. Check the name tags. Supply got your data as soon as they assigned you to the battalion. They stock your locker for you ahead of time.”

“Well, that’s handy.”

The lockers are laid out just like the ones we had in Basic. I put my meager pile of personal clothing and gear into the only empty drawer in the locker. There’s a lockable compartment for valuables, and it contains a PDP, a much smaller and sleeker model than the one they issued in Basic. I take the PDP out and turn it on to find that it already has my personal login on the main screen. It also has options on the main screen that weren’t there before—the standard issue PDP is fully network-enabled, unlike the hobbled models in Basic that would only let us communicate with our instructors and fellow platoon members.

“We’re off duty already,” one of my squad mates says behind me. “You can take your time stowing your stuff. Chow hall is going to be open for another forty-five minutes, if you want to grab something.”

“Thanks.”

My fellow squad mates are wearing the TA version of Individual Combat Uniforms. The camouflage patterns are different for each service: the Marines have a polychromatic pattern that changes depending on the environment, and the Navy likes a blue-and-gray pattern that looks like a geometry illustration. The Territorial Army issues a digital pattern that’s black, gray, and washed-out green, the non-colors of the urban battlefield. Of all the issue patterns, it’s the most sinister and business-looking one. I change into the ICUs to match the rest of my squad. The new boots fit well, but they have the annoying squeakiness of unissued footwear. It took me the better part of twelve weeks to get my issue boots in Basic to conform to my feet, and now I have to start the process all over again.

“So where’d you go to Basic?” someone asks, and gestures to an empty chair. I walk over to the table and sit down with the rest of my roommates.

“You know what? I have no idea. They never told us, and I never asked.”

“Swampland, brushy desert, or nothing but cornfields?”

“Brushy desert,” I reply.

“NACRD Orem,” another soldier says. “I went there, too. Not too bad. You don’t have the bugs and the humidity the poor fuckers at NACRD Charleston have to deal with.”

All of my roommates have chevrons on their collars. Two of them are E-2s, with single chevrons, and the third is an E-3, a Private First Class, a chevron with a rocker underneath. People don’t usually make E-2 right out of Basic unless they were top flight in their training battalion like Halley, and E-3 promotions don’t ever happen before a year of active service.

“Am I the only new guy in this squad?” I ask.

“Yep,” one of them confirms. “Our platoon got four this cycle, I think, including you. They trickle the new guys in like that, so you can learn on the job. Grayson, is it?”

“Yeah.”

The soldier across the table from me extends his hand, and I shake it.

“I’m Baker. The cheating fuck over there trying to look at my cards is Priest, and the one with the ponytail is Hansen.”

I nod at each of them in turn.

“You’re in luck, Grayson. You’re in the squad with the best squad leader in the entire battalion.”

“In the entire brigade,” Hansen corrects. She has almond-shaped eyes and very white and even teeth, evidence of better dental care than you can get anywhere within ten miles of a Public Residence Cluster.

“Oh, yeah? What’s his name?”

“ Her name.” Priest gives up his attempt to sneak a peek at Baker’s cards, and leans back in his chair. “Staff Sergeant Fallon. She used to be a First Sergeant, but they busted her down for striking an officer.”

“I thought they kicked you out of the service for hitting a superior,” I say, smelling a military fish tale.

“Oh, they do,” Hansen says. “That’s unless you’re a Medal of Honor winner. They don’t get rid of certified heroes. It would be bad PR.”

“Medal of Honor ?” I ask, and the disbelief in my face makes my three roommates grin with delight. “As in, that blue ribbon with the white stars that goes on top of all the other ribbons?”

“That’s the one. She got it when the NAC did that excursion into mainland China a few years back, at the Battle of Dalian. You get the Medal, you can ask for any assignment anywhere in the Service, and she went right back to her old unit once she was out of the hospital.”

“That’s pretty wild. Is she a complete hard-ass?”

“Not at all. She’s got no patience for slackers, but as long as you pull your weight and don’t look like you’re clueless, she’s hands-off.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I say. “I was expecting…hell, I have no idea what I was expecting, actually.”

“You were expecting some sort of penal colony,” Baker says amicably. “You thought you pulled the shittiest card in the deck when they told you that you’re going TA, right?”

There’s no point denying it, so I nod.

“That’s what everyone thinks at first. We all did. But this is a good outfit. Our sergeants know their shit, and our officers mostly leave us alone. We get the job done, and we look after each other. I’ve been TA for almost two years, and I wouldn’t take a garrison post on a colony if you paid me double.”

The others at the table nod in agreement.

I’m still disappointed about not going into space, and I have no idea whether I’ll feel the same way about the TA in two years. For better or for worse, however, this place will be my home until my service time is up, so I decide that I might as well make the best of it.

“You play cards, Grayson?” Hansen asks.

“Sure,” I say, and pull my chair up to the table.

Reveille in the morning is a low-key affair. The wake-up call comes over the ceiling speakers and all the PDPs at 0545, which is almost an hour later than our wake-up call in Basic Training. At first call, I drop out of bed and grab my personal hygiene kit out of the locker to file out to the head, but my roommates don’t seem to be in a hurry.

“Take your time,” Baker says as he climbs out of bed. “Nobody’ll check on us, or anything. Chow hall is open at six, and Orders are at seven. They don’t hold your hand and rush you through shit like in Basic.”