Terms of Enlistment

Chapter 10

“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.

“There’s shit for cover here, Sarge,” Baker says over the team channel.

“Use those pillars over there,” Sergeant Fallon orders, and our helmet displays briefly flash a target marker overlay. The administration building has a second floor that overhangs the first one just a little. There are concrete pillars holding up the overhang in regular intervals. We hunker down behind the pillars near our assigned building corner, and scan the area for threats.

The neighborhood around a civic center is usually the cleanest and safest patch of real estate in the PRC. If that is true here in Detroit-7, then the rest of the place must be a complete dump, because the street in front of us looks worse than the nastiest part of my old neighborhood. The buildings are all dilapidated, most of the windows are boarded up, and there are gaps in the rows of houses where old buildings have been partially stripped and torn down for raw materials. Most of the street lights are out, and if it wasn’t for the infrared-enhanced feed from the sensors mounted on my helmet, I wouldn’t be able to see much in the late evening darkness.

“Where the fuck is everybody?” I ask.

“Waiting until the drop ships are out of sight,” Hansen responds tersely.

Overhead, Second Platoon’s drop ship lifts off and roars into the dirty night sky. There’s the bang of a breaching charge as Second Platoon blows the rooftop access door. Everything is going like clockwork once more.

“Uh-oh,” somebody says over the squad channel.

My tactical display lights up with hundreds of red diamond symbols as the rioters come out of cover and stream back towards the administration building. I have no idea how those back alleys and dark lots could have held so many people just out of sight, but now they’re streaming back into the street, first in pairs, then dozens, and finally hundreds. I check the tactical map, and over to our left, the same scene is repeating itself on the plaza where Fourth Squad keeps watch.

“Be advised, we have incoming,” Lieutenant Weaving says over the platoon channel. He sounds as calm as if he’s telling us that the chow hall will be serving meat loaf and mashed potatoes tonight.

“No shit,” Sergeant Fallon replies.

“Put some gas rounds into those launchers,” she orders over the squad channel.

The loops on the front of my battle armor hold a dozen grenades for my rifle’s launcher. Four of them are rubber rounds, two are buckshot rounds, and the remaining six are chemical crowd control munitions, the kind the military calls “less lethal”, which is technically a true designation. For truth in advertising, the term should be “very slightly less lethal.” They’re filled with a particularly unpleasant chemical agent that will creep through any sort of mask or filter short of a sealed battle armor. In Basic, we all had to endure ten seconds of exposure to the riot gas in the chemical warfare portion of our training, and I know that the stuff in those grenades makes anyone on the receiving end wish they had been shot with live ammunition instead.

I pluck a gas grenade from my harness, and stuff it into the grenade launcher. To my right, my squad mates are following suit. I scan the gathering crowd for weapons, and I’m unsettled to see that just about everyone out there carries something suitable for clubbing, stabbing, or shooting. A year ago, I would have been part of that mob, using the chaos as a convenient excuse to break stuff and steal things, but now I’m on the other side of the line, and I feel no guilt as I sight in on the advancing crowd.

“DO NOT APPROACH,” Sergeant Fallon bellows at the rioters. Our commo kits have a Public Address function, which we rarely ever use outside of playing pranks on platoon mates.

“DISPERSE AT ONCE, OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”

The crowd responds with angry shouts, and by now the first rioters are close enough to throw stuff at us, which they do with enthusiasm.

“Let ‘em have it,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Launchers free, riot rounds only. Live ammo only in self-defense.”

We’re nine TA troopers, and the crowd surging towards us numbers in the hundreds. We’re outnumbered fifty to one, and if they overrun our position, they’ll beat or stab us to death. That makes this event a self-defense scenario by definition in my book, but I obey and keep my finger away from the trigger of the rifle. Next to me, my squad mates are sighting in their launchers, and I join in, aiming at the middle of the advancing crowd.

The rifle bucks in my hands as I lob my gas grenade into the first row of rioters. The grenade explodes with a muffled crack, and suddenly there’s a cloud of white crowd control agent expanding from the impact point. Between our nine grenades, the entire width of the street in front of us is blanketed in white smoke. The gas barrage has stopped the momentum of the surging crowd instantly, and I watch as a hundred of their number gasp for breath on their hands and knees.

“Give ‘em another round, further back,” Baker says.

I load another grenade, and lob it over the heads of the front row of rioters, into the crowd that is now scattering to avoid the spreading cloud of noxious white gas. To our left, gunshots are crackling across the plaza in front of the administration building, where Fourth Squad is holding the line. The gunfire doesn’t sound like the hoarse, high-pitched report from our service rifles. A few moments later, Fourth Squad returns fire—first one rifle, then two, firing short bursts of flechette rounds in response. It looks like things are swiftly sliding downhill.

“Mind your sectors,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Anyone shoots live rounds, you shoot right the hell back.”

“And that concludes the non-lethal portion of tonight’s program,” Stratton says in a mock network announcer voice, and Hansen lets out a chuckle.

The crowd is now mostly in disarray, but it looks like some of them still have a fight on their minds. There’s a burst of gunfire from the edge of the riot, the sharp staccato of an automatic weapon. To my right, Baker yells as several rounds hit his battle armor. He stumbles, regains his footing, and then scurries behind cover, like a man trying to get out of a sudden hailstorm. The first burst of live fire from the crowd means that the gloves are coming off, and I flick off the safety catch in front of the rifle’s trigger with my index finger. When the shooter fires another burst, the thermal bloom from the muzzle of his weapon shows up on my helmet sight like a signal flare. I aim my rifle at the rioter and squeeze the trigger. The shooter drops in a cloud of concrete dust.

Now there are shots ringing out all over the street in front of us. Some of the rioters scatter out of the line of fire, and others regain their courage and come surging back toward us, hurling objects and shouting decidedly unfriendly words. The ones with the firearms are using the crowd as cover, which is smart, because we couldn’t shoot everyone in the street even if we wanted. I duck behind a concrete column as the bullets from the incoming fire smack into the building behind us. The overhang is the only cover in front of the administration building, but it’s also a shot trap, a box of concrete enclosed on three sides, which makes it a bad spot to be right now. Emboldened by the fact that we’re all seeking cover from the incoming fire, the crowd advances on the building once more. I peek around the corner of my cover, and the fear gives my stomach a good squeeze when I see that the first line of rioters is now just a few dozen yards from our position.

I fumble for one of the buckshot grenades on my harness, and stuff it into the launcher tube with clumsy fingers. We didn’t receive permission to use lethal grenade munitions yet, but the point will be moot in another ten seconds. To my right, Hansen and Baker extend the crowd the courtesy of warning shots, firing short bursts of rifle fire into the ground in front of the surging crowd, but the report of their rifles is all but inaudible over the roar of the crowd and the cracks of gunfire from the armed rioters. Just in front of me, one of the rioters raises an old-fashioned shotgun and aims it in my direction. From ten yards away, the muzzle of the old scattergun looks like the business end of a howitzer, and I have no desire to find out whether my helmet’s face shield can withstand whatever is about to come out of that muzzle. I level my rifle and fire the grenade launcher from the hip, touching off my own very large shotgun shell.

The launcher’s bark drowns out the crowd for a brief moment. In the confines of the building’s concrete overhang, it’s loud enough for my helmet’s audio filter to kick in and turn me temporarily deaf to save my hearing. In front of me, there’s a sudden gap in the ranks of the charging crowd. There’s nobody left standing within thirty yards of the grenade launcher’s muzzle.

I open the launcher and reload with another buckshot grenade, my fingers performing the action seemingly on autopilot. The crowd directly in front of me scatters to get out of my line of fire, streaming to the left and right, and presses in on my squad mates instead.

Hansen and Stratton follow my lead and fire buckshot grenades as well, and the street in front of us turns into a madhouse. The crowd is now close enough for the lead rioters to reach out and grab our rifles, which some of them try to do. Someone tries to seize Baker’s M-66, and gets a five-round burst in return. I watch in morbid fascination as the armor-piercing flechette rounds pass through the unlucky rioter and into the man behind him. Both of them go down, but there are more coming, and the mass of people in front of us is simply overwhelming.

To my left, a group of shouting rioters come around the concrete pillar I’m using for cover. One of them carries a clunky-looking handgun. He sees me, and raises his gun just as I bring the rifle up to my shoulder and press the trigger.

There’s a mighty shove coming from my right, and suddenly I find myself on my back and skidding across the pavement. I bring my rifle up and turn to face my attackers. Someone seizes the muzzle of my M-66. As I feel the rifle getting wrenched out of my hands, I trigger the grenade launcher with the buckshot round in it. The attacker lets go of my rifle as he catches the full blast of the grenade, four thousand spherical pieces of shrapnel that are spread out to a merely fist-sized group at this range. His midsection erupts into a bloody mush, splattering blood and tissue onto the face shield of my helmet.

Around me, there’s the stuttering of fire from multiple M-66 rifles in fully automatic mode. Next to me, three or four people are on top of Corporal Baker. One of them has seized Baker’s rifle, and he swings it around to bring the muzzle to bear on Stratton, who is struggling with his own pack of rioters a few feet away. I aim my own rifle without thinking, and shoot the rifle-wielding rioter in the back. The rest of Baker’s attackers are busy trying to pin the Corporal to the ground, and I pluck them off his back with single shots one by one. Baker scrambles to his feet, looks around, and then picks up his weapon.

“Who’s firing live rounds? Who’s firing live rounds?”

The shout comes over the all-platoon channel. It sounds like our platoon leader, who is holding down one of the not-so-busy corners on the other side of the building with Third or Fourth Squad.

“Bravo One, we need you over here,” Sergeant Fallon toggles back. “We’re getting our asses kicked, in case you haven’t noticed.”

The tactical display is lousy with red carets. We are surrounded by a few hundred very pissed-off rioters. I’m out of buckshot grenades, and the magazine in my rifle is almost empty. I eject the disposable magazine block, and pull another one out of the pouch on my harness with clumsy fingers. It takes me three tries to line up the new magazine with the well at the bottom rear of my rifle. In training, my reloads are always smooth, but right now, it feels like threading a needle with winter gloves. I slap the magazine home and smack the bolt release with my palm. The bolt of the rifle snaps forward and chambers a fresh round, and the little counter on the lower left corner of my tactical display changes from “31” to “249”. The computer keeps track of my rifle’s ammunition status, to let me know when it’s time to reload, and to tell my squad leader through the TacLink when I’m running low. What it doesn’t monitor is how scared I am, how many times my armor has been struck, how much I feel like puking, and how badly I want to be back at the base right about now.

I pick out a new target, sight my rifle, and shoot. Then again, and again. There’s no shortage of targets out there. I have stopped thinking of them as people. They’re just silhouettes in my gun sight now, one squeeze of the trigger each. Our squad is huddled together in a cluster, everybody covering a sector in front, just like in training. For a few moments, all I hear is the steady chatter of our rifles, spitting out death at a few thousand rounds per minute. We fire our rifles methodically, steadily, like we’re in a live-fire exercise at the base range at Fort Shughart.

And then the natives have had enough.

The remaining rioters must have changed their minds about the odds, because the forward surge of the crowd suddenly dissipates, and with it all the angry energy that has motivated the leading ranks to charge soldiers in modern battle armor with nothing but ancient small arms and home-made hand grenades. The formerly amorphous mass of people turns into hundreds of individuals scattering in as many different directions, anywhere but toward the muzzles of our rifles.

I take a ragged breath. It feels like I haven’t filled my lungs properly since the shooting started. I look around to see all of my squad mates still standing, weapons at the ready, and scores of bodies on the street before us. There’s a layer of white stuff in front of our position that looks like a dusting of snow on the ground, and it takes me a moment to realize that those are the discarded plastic sabots of our flechette rounds, stripped from the tungsten darts after leaving the barrels.

Ten yards to our right, the grunts from Third Squad come around the corner of the building at a run, with the platoon leader in front. Lieutenant Weaving takes one look around, and flips up the visor on his helmet.

“Holy shit, people. That’s going to look awful on the Network news.”

Sergeant Fallon starts a response on the squad channel, then catches herself, and walks over to Lieutenant Weaving. When she’s in front of him, she flips up her helmet visor as well.

“Something wrong with your TacLink, Lieutenant?”

“Negative,” he replies.

“Well, you may want to get it checked out when we get back, seeing how it failed to show you the five hundred people trying to overrun us.”

Lieutenant Weaving’s posture tenses, but then there’s a sound like a piece of hail hitting a tin roof, and he stumbles sideways and falls over. A sharp crack rolls across the street, the report of a high-powered rifle.

“Sniper,” three or four of us call out at the same time over the squad channel, and everybody ducks for cover. Sergeant Fallon bends over and grabs Lieutenant Weaving by the arm to drag him to safety.

“Little help here,” she says. I leave the relative safety of my concrete pillar, dash over to her position, and grab the lieutenant’s other arm. Together, we drag his limp bulk over to another concrete pillar.

“Ell-tee is down,” Sergeant Fallon toggles into the platoon channel. “Valkyrie Six-One, this is Bravo One-One. Get your ship down in front of the building for a medevac, pronto.”

“Valkyrie Six-One, copy. ETA two minutes,” I hear in response. Valkyrie is the call sign for our drop ship flight, and Six-One is our platoon’s ship.

“Pop me some smoke, and find that sniper,” Sergeant Fallon orders. Priest and Paterson pull smoke grenades out of their harnesses and throw them into the street in front of our position.

The distant rifle cracks again. There’s a puff of concrete dust as it smacks into the pillar in front of us.

“Shoot the fuck back already,” Sergeant Fallon says.

The smoke grenades explode with a muffled pop, covering the area in front of us in thick, white smoke. The sniper is undeterred. He fires again, and the bullet strikes one of the windows behind us with a slap. Finally, someone gets a computer fix on the most likely trajectory of the sniper’s rounds. The TacLink updates everyone’s displays, superimposing a faint target caret over the sniper’s suspected position a few hundred yards down the street, and the two squads around me open up with their rifles.

“Grayson, with me. Sergeant Ellis, mind the shop for a minute. Grayson and I are going to carry the Ell-Tee back to the square and get him onto the bird. The rest of you, cover our asses.”

“Affirmative,” Sergeant Ellis replies. He’s the squad leader of Third Squad, and nominally equal in seniority to Sergeant Fallon at this point, but our squad leader is so high in the company’s pecking order that any NCO lower than the company sergeant usually defers to her.

The lieutenant is out cold. The bullet has torn the partially raised visor from his helmet, and then nailed him in the forehead at an angle. His face is covered in blood, and his forehead looks like someone’s given him a glancing blow with an axe, but he’s still breathing, and the round doesn’t seem to have penetrated the bone. Sergeant Fallon removes his helmet, drops it on the ground next to her, and then holds out her hand.

“Give me a trauma pack, Grayson.”

I reach into the side pocket of my ICU pants and pull out a bandage packet. I pull open the plastic seal, shake out the bandage, and hand it to Sergeant Fallon. She places it on the lieutenant’s forehead. The thermal bandage instantly adheres to his wound, sealing the gash in his head.

“He’ll live to collect his Purple Heart,” Sergeant Fallon pronounces. “Help me get him over to the ship.”

We each grab one of Lieutenant Weaving’s arms to haul up his bulk, which is considerable. He’s a tall guy, a hundred and ninety pounds at least, and the battle armor weighs another thirty pounds on top of that.

“Grab his rifle, too,” the sergeant says. I stoop down to pick up the lieutenant’s M-66. I notice that he still has four full magazine pouches, and my computer informs me that his rifle is still loaded with 250 rounds.

“Valkyrie Six-One, ETA one minute,” I hear over the platoon channel. “Keep your heads low down there.”

We head to the main entrance of the building at an awkward short-step run, with Lieutenant Weaving’s inert mass hanging between us. There are still rioters all over the place, but they’re mostly busy avoiding us, now that we’ve demonstrated that we’re willing to use our live rounds.

Overhead, I hear the engines of the descending drop ship. They’re coming in at high speed, a combat landing with emphasis. As we turn the corner to the main civic plaza, I flinch at the sight of more bodies on the ground, easily twice as many as there are in front of First Squad’s position. Second Squad didn’t hold back.

“Bravo One-One, this is Bravo One-Two. We have three casualties that need to go out on your ship.”

“Copy that, Bravo One-Two. Bring ‘em up, and don’t dawdle,” Sergeant Fallon responds.

The drop ship makes a dramatic entry. It breaks out of the low clouds, banked in a tight final turn. For a moment, a primal fear grips me at the sight of that huge, lethal-looking war machine. Whoever designed the Hornet drop ship didn’t spend a moment considering aesthetics. It’s all angles and facets, bristling with multi-barreled cannons and ordnance pods. It looks like someone’s fever-induced idea of a cross between a hornet and a dragonfly, blown up to massive size and clad in laminate armor.

As I watch, the landing gear of the drop ship extends, and the ship slows down for a vertical touchdown. At the last moment, the pilot turns the Hornet to make the tail and loading ramp face the administration building, and the weapons arrays point in the direction of the threat. I can see the cannon in the nose turret swinging side to side as the gun system automatically scans for targets. Then the main gear touches down, and the Hornet settles in a low crouch. The cargo ramp at the rear opens with a hydraulic whine.

“There’s your ride,” Sergeant Fallon tells the unconscious Lieutenant Weaving.

We carry the lieutenant into the plaza. The tail of the drop ship is a few dozen yards from the building. The crew chief steps out onto the ramp formed by the lower half of the cargo door, and waves us on.

We’re thirty feet from the ramp when the thunder of heavy automatic weapons fire rolls across the plaza. I look around for a threat, thinking that the chin turret of the drop ship is engaging a target. Then I see that the tracers are coming in rather than going out.

“Hit the deck,” Sergeant Fallon shouts, and we do, taking Lieutenant Weaving down to the ground with us.

Ahead of us, there’s a noise like hail on a metal roof as the drop ship starts taking hits.

“Where the fuck is that coming from?” someone shouts over the platoon channel.

“The rooftops,” someone else replies. “They got guns on the rooftops, right and center.”

Ahead of us, the drop ship pilot gooses the engines and picks the ship off the ground. The crew chief in the hatch holds on for balance, and then retreats back into his armored ship. I wonder why the chin turret isn’t firing back. The streams of tracers come from the rooftops of two tenement buildings, one on the right side of the plaza, and one at the far side, directly opposite the civic building. Both buildings are standard welfare shoebox stacks, thirty floors high, and I realize that the gun turret of the drop ship can’t deflect that high.

The guns on the rooftops fire in bursts, maybe twenty rounds at a time. Sergeant Fallon and I are in the open, between the relative safety of the building, and that of the armored ship. The hatch of the drop ship is much closer than the concrete overhang of the civic building, but the drop ship is already three feet off the ground, and it doesn’t look like the crew feels like waiting around while their ship is getting sprayed with incoming fire.

“Where the fuck did these people get heavy machine guns?” Sergeant Fallon asks. She pulls a smoke grenade out of her harness and motions for me to do the same. We chuck our grenades out into the plaza, and a few moments later, our position is obscured in thick smoke.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sergeant Fallon suggests. We seize the still unconscious lieutenant by the arms once more and start our dash back to the building. Behind us, the machine gun rounds keep hitting the armor of the drop ship in a steady staccato.

Suddenly, the pitch of the engines changes, and I can hear right away that something essential just broke. The steady howl of the turbines turns into a tortured shriek. I look over my shoulder and see smoke pouring out of the starboard engine. Another stream of tracers comes down onto the drop ship, which is now fifty feet above the plaza. As they impact the armor, they throw up red and yellow sparks, the tell-tale signature of armor-piercing rounds hitting a hard surface.

“Don’t stop to sight-see, moron,” Sergeant Fallon yells. We finish our dash to the safety of the overhang in front of the building.

Some of the troopers from Second Squad are crouching at the edge of the overhang. They’re aiming their rifles skyward, firing bursts at the source of the tracer rounds raking our drop ship. Whoever set up those machine guns knows the capabilities of a Hornet. The ship is most vulnerable sitting on the ground, and the machine guns are high up on rooftops, out of reach of the Hornet’s chin turret and its rapid-fire cannon. The position of the guns is either incredibly fortuitous, or shrewdly planned. I set down the lieutenant, sling his rifle across my chest armor, and then check the loading status of my own weapon. The grenades in my harness are all non-lethal munitions, nothing that could do more than irritate the enemy machine gun crews. In any case, there’s nothing in my assortment of launcher munitions that can reach all the way up to the roof of a thirty-story building.

“Fuckers know what they’re doing,” Sergeant Fallon says, in a tone that’s almost respectful. We watch as the drop ship swerves to the side and swings its tail around, the pilot doing her best to keep the cockpit and the remaining good engine away from the tracers. She tries to lift her ship out of what is now a concrete shot trap, but with one engine damaged, the Hornet is slow on the ascent. The machine guns keep hammering, and the path of the tracers follows the ship. Both streams converge at the cockpit.

The drop ship is a hundred feet above the plaza when it lurches to the side with alarming suddenness. Then the pilot catches the ship, and she swings the tail around and dips the nose down to gain speed. She’s decided to abandon the vertical takeoff, and get out of the kill zone at low level. Her path takes her right past one of the machine gun nests, and the gun stops firing as the drop ship roars past well below rooftop level. The other gun never ceases its steady stream of bursts, and the tracers from the second machine gun follow the Hornet all the way out of the plaza.

Above, a squad or two from Second Platoon have taken up position on the roof of the civil administration building. I can hear the chatter of their rifles as they engage the machine gun nests on the rooftops. The civil building only has six floors, so the machine guns still have the high ground. After a few moments of getting shot at by the TA troopers on the roof above us, the people manning the heavy machine guns decide to take advantage of their position and return the favor. One of the machine guns, the one on the opposite side of the plaza, starts firing again, and this time, the streams of tracers reach out to our building.

“Bravo One, this is Valkyrie Six-One.”

Our drop ship pilot is calling the lieutenant on the platoon channel. She sounds like she’s talking through clenched teeth.

“Valkyrie Six-One, this is Bravo One-One. The Ell-Tee is down. What’s the word on the ride?” Sergeant Fallon replies.

“Ship’s busted,” the pilot says. “My right seater is dead, and I can’t raise my crew chief on comms. Right engine is shot out, and half the shit in my cockpit is blown away. I’m making for…hold on.”

In the distance, the sound from the Hornet’s remaining engine rises sharply, and then cuts out with an ominous finality.

“Valkyrie Six-One, going down,” the pilot matter-of-factly announces over the platoon channel. She sounds as calm and detached as if she’s telling us about tonight’s dinner options at the chow hall.

We can hear the crash of the ship from half a mile away. There’s no explosion, just a monstrous racket, like someone dropping a giant bag of screws and bolts onto a hard deck. After a few moments, the noise stops.

For a few heartbeats, there is dead silence on the squad and platoon channels. Even the machine guns and rifles overhead have stopped firing.

“Well, fuck,” Sergeant Fallon exclaims. Then she toggles into the platoon channel.

“We have a drop ship down, people. Valkyrie Six-One is down in the PRC.”