Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

“One coming through the gate,” I shout into the TacLink. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the muted flashes of two more missile launches from the area where Third and Fourth Squads have taken up position.

The gate comes out of its hinges with a bang as fifty tons of armor crash into it. The red-and-white traffic barrier sails through the air, tumbling end over end. The tank roars into the compound, machine gun blazing away at nothing in particular. From behind, Priest grabs my battle harness and pulls me back into cover.

“Watch out,” he says.

The tank veers slightly to the right to avoid running over the guard house and getting itself entangled. The turret starts turning in our direction.

Then a flash lights up the night sky a few hundred feet above the tank, and I can see the warheads of the incoming Sarissas streak down. They tear into the roof of the tank, right behind the turret, and the tank disintegrates.

The explosion shakes the ground beneath my boots and knocks me off my feet, back into Priest. There are chunks of armor pelting the concrete traffic barrier that serves as our cover. All over the gate plaza, I can hear bits and pieces raining down onto the pavement. The cannon of the tank bounces off the wall of a nearby building, and tumbles back onto the street with a loud metallic clatter.

When the steel rain has stopped, I peer over the top of our cover. There’s not much left of the enemy tank—just the bottom part of the chassis, a few road wheels, and a length of broken tread. Amazingly, the explosion that ripped the tank into shrapnel didn’t even scratch the road beneath.

“We have incoming infantry,” Sergeant Fallon shouts over the squad link. “To the wall, and find a cozy spot.”

My team rushes back to the hole in the wall left by the one tank shell the enemy armor column managed to get off. I go prone behind a low piece of the wall, and peer over the lip. Instantly, the TacLink updates with at least two dozen red symbols marking enemy infantry. The closest group of them is charging the gate at a run, and they’re less than twenty yards away. I raise the muzzle of my rifle, and draw a bead on the last soldier in the column.

“ Engaging .”

I press the trigger, and my rifle spits out a half dozen armor-piercing flechettes. My salvo hits the trailing soldier in the midsection, and he drops instantly. I can see little puffs of material where my flechettes tear through his outdated body armor. I shift my aim to the next soldier, but before I can pull the trigger, Priest and Hansen open up next to me with short bursts, and the enemy soldier goes down.

Then the lead group of attackers is in the dead spot to my right, where the wall blocks my line of sight as they continue toward the gate. I duck behind the concrete ledge of the broken wall as incoming fire is spraying chips of concrete into my face.

Hansen and Priest duck as well, but not before Priest takes two rounds to his battle armor that knock him off-balance. He crashes to the ground, rolls onto his back, and scrambles away from the wall opening.

“Sons of bitches can actually shoot,” he says. I can see two gray smears on the chest of his armor, where the enemy rifle rounds disintegrated on the hard shell.

Baker takes a grenade from his battle harness, pops the safety cover, and chucks the grenade through the wall opening.

“Flashbang out,” he shouts.

Flashbang grenades are not very effective against troopers in modern battle armor. The noise from the explosion gets filtered out by our helmet-mounted earphones, and the visors of our helmets automatically shield us from the flash. To troops without modern gear, however, a flashbang explosion is like looking into a nuclear detonation while getting ice picks rammed into the eardrums.

The grenade on the other side of the wall goes off with a crash that makes the firing of the tank main gun earlier sound like someone lit a wet firecracker. The flash momentarily turns the area in front of the embassy into the surface of the sun, millions of candlepower units burning out every unprotected retina in a thousand-yard radius. The firing from the enemy soldiers ceases instantly.

“Up and at ‘em,” Baker says. He steps back to the hole in the wall, raises his rifle, and starts picking off targets.

We join in.

Over at the gate, Second Squad is doing likewise. There’s an entire infantry platoon deployed in front of the embassy, but they’re mostly blind and deaf now, and we have eighteen TA troopers on the line, all networked with each other, sharing target data and threat vectors. The road in front of the embassy turns into the Seventh Circle of Hell as thousands of flechettes from computer-controlled rifles sweep it clear of any living presence. Some of the enemy soldiers are behind good shelter, parked vehicles and metal refuse containers, but a few rifle grenades turn cover and covered alike into smoking ruins.

This is not a fight, it’s a rout. The enemy soldiers are so far out of their league that it feels like we’re a bunch of professional boxers beating up a schoolyard full of asthmatic grade school kids. Behind us, two drop ships ascend into the night sky with their engines at full thrust. A few moments later, the other two ships follow.

“Drop ships are skids up,” Sergeant Fallon shouts. “The clock is ticking. Fifteen minutes round-trip.”

“We’ll try to hang on, Sarge,” Stratton replies.

After a few minutes, there’s nothing left to shoot at out there. The street is littered with bodies and wrecked vehicles. Little fires are flickering where grenades have set flammable stuff ablaze. There’s an acrid smell in the air, the burned propellant of thousands of caseless rounds.

“Cease fire, top off those rifles, and watch your zones.”

I pull the partially expended magazine out of my rifle, and check my magazine pouches for a fresh one. There are four pouches on the front of my harness, and each held a two hundred and fifty round magazine when I stepped out of the drop ship. I don’t recall reloading my rifle during the fight, but now two of my pouches are empty. I’ve blown through more than half my combat load in just five minutes of frenzied shooting, over seven hundred rounds of ammo. The hand guards of the rifle are hot to the touch.

“Fucking shooting gallery,” Priest says, rubbing the spot on his battle armor where the enemy rifle rounds left their marks. “Dumb as hell, waltzing down the road like they’re on fucking review or something.”

“I’ll take ‘em dumb,” Hansen shrugs as she reloads her rifle with a smooth and practiced motion.

I know that the soldiers we just killed had capable weapons of their own, and that any of their shots could have scored a lucky hit and switched my lights off for good. Still, the whole engagement felt little different from a range exercise, pop-up targets that just drop without a fuss when you drill them with a salvo.

The sound of a rifle shot rolls across the street, a deep boom that sounds nothing like the hoarse cough of our flechette rifles. Over by the gate, where Second Squad has taken up position, one of the TA soldiers falls. We all take cover once more.

“Sniper,” one of the guys from Second Squad calls out. “Shop window at the end of the street.”

A new tactical symbol appears on my TacLink screen. In my field of vision, I can see the red diamond shape projected onto the location of the enemy sniper, even though there’s a solid wall between us. The enemy rifle booms again, and the bullet punches a hole into the wall of the guard house, where a Second Squad trooper has taken cover.

“That’s a hell of a caliber,” Priest observes. Next to him, Hansen readies her grenade launcher, and I decide to follow suit. I open the breech of the grenade launcher, take a grenade out of my harness, and stuff it into the launcher tube.