Marko Kloos - Terms of Enlistment

“We have the best fucking job in the world,” Stratton says with a grin. “Playing with guns, blowing up stuff, picking fights, and getting paid for it. They can keep the space services. I can’t even believe I ever wanted to be in the fucking Navy .”

At this point, my mind has fused the words Navy and Halley . Last night, while I was nursing a fat lip in the squad room, my data pad chirped to let me know I had an incoming message, and it was from Halley—a picture of herself in a brand new zero-g combat flight suit, ready for drop ship pilot training. There was no comment with the picture, and none was needed. She looked proud enough to burst, and just looking at the picture on my screen made my heart ache much worse than that bloody lip. If someone walked up to me right now and offered a slot in Fleet School, I’d take it without a second thought.

Nobody is going to do that, however, and I know that I’ll be a TA grunt for the duration of my enlistment. I like my buddies here, and I’ll try to be the kind of squad mate everyone wants at their side in a crunch. I’ll even pick fights to defend the honor of my new family.

Still, I’d go Navy in a flash.

“The shit has hit the fan, friends and neighbors.”

Sergeant Fallon is already clad in full battle armor when she strides into the squad room, where we’re all scrambling to get ready. The alarm is still trilling in the hallway outside, and the red light from the overhead LEDs is backlighting our squad leader ominously.

“What’s the deal, Sarge?” Hansen asks, and we all cease our noisy activities briefly to hear Sergeant Fallon’s answer.

“Welfare riot,” she says. “One of the PRCs up in Detroit.”

The mood in the room instantly goes from excitement to anxiety. It feels like a polar breeze has just entered through the open door with Sergeant Fallon.

“Fuck me,” Hansen mutters. My other squad mates murmur their assent.

I’ve seen a welfare riot before—not the riot itself, but the aftermath. When I was ten or eleven, we had one in our PRC, when an unholy alliance of street rats, hoodlums, fringe lunatics, and wannabe revolutionaries tried to torch every government installation in sight. The government did what it always does when the local police force can’t keep a lid on things. They sent in the military—two full battalions of TA, complete with armor and air support. Even with the overwhelming technological advantage of the TA soldiers, the fighting lasted for two days. My mother kept me home from school for a week, which was fantastic, and kept me from going outside for that whole week, which was less so. When I finally emerged from our apartment three days after the fighting had stopped, there were TA troopers on every street corner, and the streets had not been cleared of all the rubble and the burned vehicles yet.

“Get geared up, kids. Light combat kit. Don’t bother with the tents and toiletries—this one’s just down the road.”

Of all the metroplexes in the country, Detroit is the worst. The center of the city is ringed by no less than twenty-four PRCs, and over eighty percent of the metroplex residents are on the dole. Thirteen million people in Greater Detroit, and ten million of them are crammed into concrete shoeboxes stacked a hundred high. The place makes my old homestead look like a tropical vacation resort.

We suit up and help each other into our battle armor. There is no joking this time. Everyone seems tense and anxious.

“Been to a PRC before, Grayson?” Priest asks as I fix the quick-release locks on his battle armor for him.

“I grew up in one,” I say. “Don’t really care to go back to one.”

“Yeah, well, this time you’ll have a rifle, and a drop ship hovering overhead. It’s still a shit job, though.”

“Shittiest in the book,” Hansen agrees.

“At least they won’t have tanks,” I say.

“Yeah, well, there’s going to be a lot of ‘em, and they’ll all be pissed. If we have to start shooting, you better hope they run out of courage before we run out of ammo.”

The drop ships are warming up their engines when we get off the bus.

“Make sure you have your boarding passes ready,” the drop ship’s load master says as we trudge up the ramp.

“You’re funny as shit, Atkins,” Sergeant Fallon says from the rear of our little column. “Just remember, extra sugar, extra cream for me.”

We strap in, secure our weapons, and watch as the rest of the platoon does likewise. The summer night is hot and humid, and the air smells of fuel.

“First Platoon, listen up,” we hear over the all-platoon channel.

“We’ll only be airborne for thirty minutes, so we’re going to skip the formalities and the top-down briefings today. Our target is the Civic Administration Center in PRC Detroit-7. We’re dropping in with Second Platoon.”

The tactical displays in our helmet sights activate, and Lieutenant Weaving runs us through the specifics of our mission. The target building looks like every other Civic Center I’ve seen, a squat, five-story building with small windows and reinforced concrete walls.

“Second Platoon will land on the roof and do a top-down sweep of the building to secure it. Our mission is to drop on the outside and then establish a defensive perimeter. We’re deploying one squad on every corner of the building. The other platoons are securing other locations in the area, so it’s just Second Platoon and us. We secure the building and all government property within. Anyone tries to get near the place, you strongly discourage them.”

“What if we get mobbed, Ell-Tee?” one of the squad leaders asks.

“Take whatever self-defense measures you consider necessary,” Lieutenant Weaving says. “The drop ships will be overhead, and squad leaders are authorized to call in air support. Just don’t mow down a bunch of kids and puppies, because that makes us look bad on the evening news.”

“Ain’t no kids or puppies in a riot zone,” Corporal Jackson says. She pats the hilt of her combat knife as she says this. We all wear our knives in polymer sheaths on our left legs, but Jackson has hers attached to the harness of her battle armor, with the hilt pointing down. I’ve watched her sharpen that knife to a fine edge many times, and there’s no doubt in my mind that she knows how to use it.

She catches my gaze as I look at her from across the cargo bay of the drop ship, and amazingly, she winks at me.

The drop ship descends into Detroit the conventional way; not the white-knuckle ride of a combat landing, but an almost casual ride that feels like a landing back home at the base. The skids of the ship touch down, and the rear cargo doors folds out as we get out of our seats and gather our weapons.

The scene outside looks like something out of a disaster movie. We step out onto the big square in front of the civil administration center, and immediately lower our visors to seal our helmets against the acrid smoke of dozens of fires. The riot was probably in full swing when we arrived overhead. In the distance, we can see people running for cover, wisely yielding the square to the drop ship bristling with ordnance. They leave behind a wasteland of burning junk and torched hydrocars. The front of the administration building has scorch marks, and half the windows on the first floor have been shattered. I see shell casings from old-fashioned brass-cased ammunition everywhere.

“Let’s move out,” Sergeant Fallon says over the squad channel. “We have the northwest corner. Find some cover and watch your sectors.”

The platoon splits up as directed. First Squad moves to the front left corner of the building at a run. Overhead, Second Platoon’s drop ship makes a noisy landing on the roof of the administration building, and I can hear the hydraulic whining of the cargo ramp all the way down at street level with the enhanced audio pickup of my helmet speakers. Behind us, our drop ship disgorges the last members of Third and Fourth Squads. I look back over my shoulder as the hatch on our ship closes, and the pilot immediately goes gear-up. Drop ships are most vulnerable on the ground, where they are sitting ducks to incoming fire, and their pilots don’t like to spend one moment longer than necessary with the skids on the dirt.