Terms of Enlistment (15 page)

“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.