Terms of Enlistment

Chapter 8

Two weeks after my arrival, we have a combat deployment. My boots aren’t even close to worn in yet.

“Don’t bother packing spare socks,” Sergeant Fallon says as we get geared up in our squad rooms. “We’re going light. Basic load only. We’ll probably be home for dinner.”

“Where are we headed, Sarge?” Stratton asks.

“Some milk run to the Balkans. Someone’s declared independence again, and they’ve aligned with the Sino-Russians. We’re just dashing over there in the drop ships to do an embassy evac.”

“Back for dinner,” Stratton says. “I don’t mind a milk run for a change.”

“We go skids up in forty-five minutes,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Put on your party clothes, grab your guns from the armory, and hop on the bus. You know the drill, so let’s get busy.”

We help each other into our battle armor, and check our latches and seals. Then we go downstairs to the company armory, where the sergeant-at-arms and his helpers are standing by to hand us our weapons. There are other squads lined up in front of the armory already, but the armory staff is efficient, and nobody spends more than ten seconds trading rack tags for issue weapons. When we’re all armed, we file out of the building to the waiting bus that will take us to the drop ships.

Our autonomous regiment has a squadron of Hornet attack drop ships. They’re not the space-going version the Marines use, only atmosphere craft, but they carry more armor plating and weapons than the Marine version, because they don’t need to dedicate any space or weight allowance to all the junk needed for space flight. Each drop ship can carry an entire platoon of troops, or a single battle tank. On this mission, we go light—command has determined that we won’t need heavy armor, so we’ll only use four out of twelve ships, and load them up with one of the battalion’s light infantry companies—Bravo Company.

Four platoons of TA soldiers carry a lot of firepower, even without the tanks and artillery. The Hornet drop ships don’t just ferry us into battle, they serve as close air support and command & control units as well. When we pull up to the airfield, the four ships are already lined up, engines running, navigation lights flashing, and rear cargo ramps extended. They’re squat and mean-looking craft, all angles and edges, with stubby wings that hold lots of fuel tanks and ordnance.

“Let’s go for a ride,” Sergeant Fallon says as she gets out of her seat, and everybody on the bus whoops and hollers like we’re about to ride out to the stadium for a Commonwealth League football game.

The ride is a bit bumpy. Military drop ships skimp on the creature comforts. There are two rows of seats along the sides of the hull in the cargo bay, and they’re merely fabric nets with lap belts that look like they were installed as an afterthought.

Somewhere over the eastern Mediterranean, the platoon sergeant gets out of his seat and starts handing out ammunition containers to the squad leaders. Sergeant Fallon grabs two of the containers and brings them back to us. She pops the airtight seal on the crates, and the lid comes open to reveal neatly stacked rows of M-66 magazines and grenades.

“Five rifle mags per head,” she says to us, undoubtedly for my benefit. “Four in the mag pouches, one in the rifle. Don’t work that charging handle until we’re on the ground, and I give the go-ahead.”

Two of my squad mates also receive a pair of launcher tubes. I recognize them from Basic—they’re Sarissa anti-armor missiles. Everybody takes turns reaching into the ammo crate and filling up the magazine pouches and grenade loops attached to their battle armor, and I follow suit.

“Put on your helmets, and we’ll check the TacLink. Mission briefing in five.”

“What if we get into a mess and need more ammo?” I ask. Sergeant Fallon merely points to the front of the cargo bay.

“Drop ship has extra ammo storage. We get stranded somewhere, we have enough ordnance with us to keep us shooting for days.”

We don our helmets, and lower the eye pieces. The tactical uplink activates, and I see the familiar diamond-shaped symbols marking individual squad and platoon members in my field of vision.

“Commo check,” Sergeant Fallon says on the squad channel. We all check in by squad. Today, I’m Alpha-4, fourth member of fire team Alpha. Each squad is split into two fire teams of four soldiers each. Our squad leader is tied into the platoon channel, and the platoon leaders in turn are tied into the company channel. That way, the higher level channels aren’t cluttered with the battle chatter of every soldier in the company.

“Here’s the scoop,” our platoon leader says as our computers bring up little overhead maps of the target area.

“We’re doing an embassy evacuation of NAC personnel. They got their eviction notice via rocket-propelled grenades this morning. Local defense crew is holding out, but they could really use some hardcore grunts on the ground.”

One of the maps resolves into a three-dimensional representation of the embassy complex, and our platoon leader overlays deployment vectors as he continues.

“Once the ships are on the ground, First and Second Platoons will establish a perimeter defense to augment the embassy security team. First Platoon gets the front gate and the East Wall. The guys from Second Platoon will cover the West Wall and the back. They have two hundred personnel and civilian refugees to be flown out, so we’ll have to ferry them in two trips with the drop ships. Third and Fourth Platoons are riding herd on the civvies. The drop ships come back, we load up the second batch of civilians, we do an orderly exfil, and then meet up with the other half of Bravo Company at the destination. We hang around until the transports come to pick up the civvies, and then we’ll hop back into the drop ships and head home. Should be a cakewalk.”

“Ain’t it always,” my seat neighbor murmurs.

“You heard the man,” Sergeant Fallon takes over. “We’re covering the front gate, together with Second Squad. Third and Fourth Squads cover the East Wall. If the natives get restless, the shit will probably hit the fan at the gate, so we’re the trip wire for the rest of the platoon.”

“Rules of engagement?” Corporal Jackson asks. She looks sinister in her gray battle armor, her helmet covering everything but the tattooed area around her eyes.

“Anyone who points a weapon at us or tries to enter the embassy grounds is fair game. Lethal force is authorized. Use your judgment, as always.”

“Copy that,” Jackson says.

“Remember, the embassy is sovereign NAC territory by international law. Anyone shoots at us from the outside, light ‘em up. Now let’s go over the map for a second and straighten out the fire team deployment.”

“Buckle in, folks,” we hear over the ship com channel a half hour later. “Descending into target area, ETA ten minutes. We’re doing a combat landing, so hold on to your lunches, boys and girls.”

My platoon mates groan at this, and I raise a questioning eyebrow at Stratton, who sits to my right.

“Combat landing. Corkscrew descent at high speed, to throw off targeting solutions. They go in at full throttle and hit the brakes, like, five seconds before the skids touch down.”

He buckles in and tightens his seat belt firmly before placing his rifle into the holding clamps by the side of his seat. I quickly follow suit.

The engines of the drop ship increase power, and then the ship banks to the left and starts sinking at a rather alarming rate. My seat is on the left side, so the tight left-hand turn has me pressed back against the armor liner of the hull. Across the cargo bay, the members of Third and Fourth Squad are hanging in their seats, only restrained by their lap belts. I briefly wonder what will happen if the lap belt of the soldier directly across the bay from me breaks, and two hundred and fifty pounds of armored trooper come hurtling across the bay toward me.

The descent is harrowing, but mercifully brief. When the ship straightens itself out for the final descent into the target area, I’m only moderately nauseated. The drop ship has no windows in the side of the hull, so we can’t see what we’re getting into until the skids touch down and the cargo ramp lowers. The drop ship settles on the ground almost gently, and the squad leaders are out of their seats before the ramp is even a quarter of the way down.

“Lock and load,” Sergeant Fallon shouts.

We get up and charge our weapons. The bolt of my rifle slams home, shoving a live flechette round into the chamber. This is not the first time I’ve loaded real ammunition, but it’s the first time I may be shooting those flechettes at people instead of gel-filled polymer silhouettes.

The ramp hits the ground. Outside, I see a manicured lawn, and a collection of low buildings beyond.

“Let’s go, people!”

We exit the drop ship at a run, weapons at the ready. Our tactical displays show us the deployment vectors for the individual squads, so we don’t need anyone to lead the way. Stratton is ahead of me, and I follow him across the lawn toward the front gate of the complex. Behind me, First and Second Squads follow, sixteen little blue diamond carets on the tactical map overlaid into my field of vision by the helmet display.

“Fire Team Alpha, let’s find some cover by those planters on the left side of that gate,” Corporal Baker says over the team channel.

There are two embassy guards in riot gear hunkered down by the guardhouse on the traffic island in front of the gate. The gate itself is a cast iron latticework, intended more for decoration than for use as a real barrier. I chuckle when I see that the guards have lowered the red and white arms of the traffic barriers as well, as if those ceremonial pieces of striped plastic will offer some additional resistance if someone decides to break through the gate.

We take up position behind the heavy concrete planters fifty yards behind the guardhouse, and the guards come rushing over, running with their heads drawn in like a pair of turtles. They wear impact plates, but those are nothing like our battle armor, just chest and back plates joined by quick-release fasteners. They’re armed with short-barreled PDWs, little automatic submachine guns that are better than a pistol, but nowhere near as useful as a rifle.

“Glad to see you guys,” one of the guardsmen says. “We’re ready to get the hell out of here.”

“Any trouble with the locals?” Corporal Baker asks.

“You could say that. We got some grenade fire into the central building this morning, and ever since then, it’s been small-arms fire here and there. The locals must have raided an armory, or something. We keep getting drive-bys. Thank God they can’t shoot. They just sort of drive up and spray a magazine into our general direction.”

“Well, the next round is on us,” Baker says. “You guys stay in the back a bit.”

“No argument,” the other guardsman says, and both of them rush off to find cover somewhere.

“Bravo One-One, first fire team is in position,” Baker says into his helmet mike.

“I know, nimrod. We’re thirty yards to your right. I can see you,” Sergeant Fallon’s reply comes back over the squad channel, and we all chuckle.

“Listen to that shit,” Hansen says. There’s a steady crackling of gunfire coming from the city beyond the gates of the embassy. I can see empty streets, illuminated by yellow streetlights. The area around the embassy looks like a business zone, shuttered shops and deactivated marquees. “Wonder if they have any good bars around here,” I say.

“Wanna go out and look for one? I got my universal credit card right here.” Stratton hefts his rifle.

I open my mouth for a smart-ass reply, but now we hear engine sounds from the end of the street beyond the embassy gate, and everybody gets back to the business of finding cover. This sounds like an old combustion engine, the kind they used to put on heavy equipment. I can feel the pavement vibrate with the low drumming of the far-off engine.

“This can’t be good,” Hansen says.

“The drop ships are loading up the civilians right now,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Anything comes around that corner that looks more dangerous than a street sweeper, you take it the fuck out.”

There’s activity at the far end of the street. The blunt snout of an armored vehicle appears, and we watch as it turns the corner, taking out a trash container and a shop marquee in the process. It’s a battle tank, one of the old models that run on tracks. It stands much higher than a modern tank, and instead of a modular weapons mount, it has a round armored turret that looks like a frying pan turned upside down, and a cannon that’s almost as long as the tank itself. It’s a rolling antique, but if they have ammo for that big gun, it can still dish out a world of hurt.

“Fuck me,” Baker says. “Get out of line of sight, people.”

We don’t need the encouragement. The planters are good protection against small-arms fire, but not against a tank cannon.

“Priest, get the anti-armor missiles up here.”

There’s more engine noise coming from the end of the street. Another tank turns the corner in a cloud of diesel smoke. A third one follows, and it has soldiers in uniforms and body armor following in its wake. The tanks fan out in a line across the width of the street, and then a fourth tank rumbles around the corner and takes its place in the formation.

“Super, a whole freakin’ tank platoon. Sarge, we need some more AT guys up here.”

“On the way,” Sergeant Fallon says.

Priest swaps his rifle for the anti-armor launcher and takes the dust caps off his launcher tube.

“Grayson, cover Priest. Make me some scrap metal.”

Priest dashes off to the front wall, and I follow, rifle at the ready. He follows the protection of the wall until he’s at the gate, and then peers around the corner to gauge the advance of the hostile armor platoon. As his computer parses the information, we see four red icons on our map overlays where Priest spots the enemy tanks.

Priest flicks the launch button cover with his thumb, and winks at me. Then he steps back from the wall, and aims the launcher tube into the air. There’s a muffled “pop” as the expeller charge ejects the missile from the tube, and then the missile’s own motor kicks in with an undramatic hiss that sounds like Priest is firing a really big bottle rocket. The missile shoots up into the night sky.

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi…” Priest says, and then there’s an earth-shattering bang on the other side of the wall. One of the red tank icons on my screen blinks out of existence. Priest peeks around the corner again, and hastily pulls his head back.

“Uh-oh. That pissed ‘em off, I think.”

The tanks open up with machine guns. There are chips of concrete flying as their bullets hit the corner where Priest fired his missile, and we retreat along the wall, away from the gate.

We’re twenty yards from the gate when the wall of the embassy shakes, and part of it comes bursting into the compound in a cloud of concrete dust. The earphones in my helmet automatically filter the sound of the explosion, but even with the electronic noise filter, the explosion is almost deafening. When I look over my shoulder, there’s a hole in the wall that’s only slightly smaller than a garage door.

“Figures that we get here just before the shit hits the fan,” I shout to Priest, who laughs as he readies his second anti-armor rocket.

“That’s what we do, man. We’re the fire brigade.”

Then he fires his second missile into the sky, and a few heartbeats later, there’s another explosion, this one closer than the first one. Another red tank icon flashes and disappears from the tactical map. A few hundred feet to our right, where Bravo Team and Sergeant Fallon have taken up position, someone fires another missile. I watch as the missile, barely longer than my arm, swiftly rises into the sky on a thin jet of brightly burning propellant.

A third tank explodes with a thunderclap. This explosion is practically on the other side of the wall now. The fourth tank guns its engine, and I can see its headlights illuminating the pavement on our side of the gate.

“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.

We both step away from the wall to give our launcher muzzles some clearance, and then line up the launcher sights with the red diamond marker showing the enemy sniper’s location.

“Fire in the hole!” Hansen shouts, and we both pull our triggers.

The recoil from the launcher is brisk, and I have to take a quick step back to keep my balance. The report from the launcher is muffled, like hitting a pillow with a wooden bat. Our grenades arc over the wall and toward the sniper’s position.

Hansen’s grenade hits first. It kicks up dust and debris as the HE warhead of the grenade goes off. Then my grenade follows, landing just inside the broken shop window.

The explosion from my grenade is only very slightly less noisy than the detonation of the flashbang earlier. The entire front of the store erupts into the street, and a moment later, the front of the building collapses with a roar.

There’s a moment of shocked silence, and then a few of the Second Squad troopers whoop in triumph. Next to me, Stratton laughs.

“That’s one way to do it, I suppose. Sniper down.”

“You’re supposed to save those thermobaric grenades for special occasions,” Baker says to me over the team channel. “Those are expensive.”

“Save ’em for what? I’m a few weeks out of Basic,” I reply. “Snipers shooting at me is a pretty special occasion right now.”

It’s only when my whole squad erupts into laughter that I realize I toggled my response into the squad channel.

The rest of the mission is rather anticlimactic. The drop ships return empty, and Second Platoon loads up the last of the civilians while First Platoon stands watch. The indigenous revolutionaries have apparently lost the nerve for another brawl after the mauling they received in front of the embassy gates, because we don’t see another living soul out on the street for the remainder of our brief stay.

Then the drop ships are ready to dust off, and First Platoon retreats to the embassy gardens in bounding overwatch, one half of the platoon covering the asses of the other half at all times. This is the most vulnerable phase of the mission, and any tactician worth his salt would have waited until now to bring in the heavy armor to shoot at the fully loaded drop ships, but the locals seem to have used up all their courage, and we board the drop ships and depart unscathed.

Soon after takeoff, the drop ships bank and circle back around. I can feel the thumping of an ordnance release, and a few moments later, the drop ship is buffeted by the shock wave from a series of explosions on the ground.

“Did we just bomb our own embassy?” I ask Sergeant Fallon, who is sitting two seats away.

“Yep,” she confirms. “We’re going to be out a few million bucks, we might as well blow it up ourselves, right?”

“Right,” I say. “Kind of a waste, though, isn’t it?”

She looks at me with an amused expression.

“War’s a waste, you know. We just broke a shitload of property down there. Never mind the poor slobs we killed. Just keep in mind that they started the shit. I would have been just as happy to stay home tonight and have a beer at the NCO club.”

Bravo Company suffered no casualties. One of the troopers from Second Squad, Harrison, got knocked on his ass by the first round from the sniper, but his armor stopped the .50-caliber round. That kind of round is powerful enough to go through the visors of our helmets, and if the sniper had aimed about eight inches higher, Harrison would have been dead instantly. As things stand, he only has a bruise on his sternum, and the sniper is now finely dispersed organic matter.

There’s no guesswork in modern warfare, no chance for anyone to talk up their exploits and claim imaginary accomplishments. The TacLink computers recorded the battle from the perspective of every single soldier in the company, tallied the kills, and analyzed our performance. Sergeant Fallon goes through the squad’s kill sheet, and it shows that I shot three enemy soldiers with my rifle, in addition to the sniper I’ve flushed out with the thermobaric grenade from my launcher. The credit for the sniper is split 25/75 between Hansen and me, according to the damage estimates of the computer. Once more, killing real people boils down to a number on a tally sheet, but these kills won’t dust themselves off and take a turn at defense next round. Tonight, I have ended the lives of four people, added a final period to their life stories with a pull of the trigger.

I guess I should be dwelling on that fact, and wonder how much those enemy soldiers were like me—trying to survive their service time to collect their money in the end—but I don’t. They came to kill us, and we killed them instead, and I don’t feel any remorse about that. In a way, it was a business transaction—nothing personal, just two groups of employees doing their jobs. I don’t feel anger, or hate, or sadness towards those soldiers. All I feel is a kind of exhilaration. We went up against someone else’s varsity team, and gave them a drumming. I am still breathing, and a day closer to my discharge date, and that’s not bad at all.