by Marko Kloos
We find our spot in the line, and the other two drill instructors, Sergeants Riley and Harris, are already waiting. We take our place in the formation that is comprised of hundreds of platoons. When all the graduating recruits have filed into the square and shuffled into position, there are thousands of recruits lined up in front of the podium in the center of the square. We’re all dressed in the Class A uniforms we’re going to have to return right after the ceremony, and we all look lean and sharp.
There’s a speech, of course. The Commanding Officer of the training depot addresses us for a mercifully brief period of time, talking about duty and commitment, and the challenges that await us out there among the stars. It’s all a bunch of fluffy crap, of course, and everyone knows it, but by now we know how to stand at attention and listen.
Then we swear our Oath of Service. There’s something almost mystical about a few thousand voices chanting the same words in unison.
“I solemnly swear and affirm to loyally serve the North American Commonwealth, and to bravely defend its laws and the freedom of its citizens.”
Then we’re sworn in, active soldiers in the Armed Forces of the North American Commonwealth, graduates of Basic Training, the ten-percenters that have made it through twelve weeks of endless PT, lectures, physical and mental exams, and stress-test scenarios. We’re ready to be let loose on the universe, to fight and die for the Commonwealth. There’s only one thing left to do, and that’s to find out what exactly the military has deemed to be our best use.
Back in the platoon bay, our lockers are already emptied, and our duffel bags and rucksacks packed with our gear. Our instructors are standing in the middle of the bay, and we file into the room intent on taking our usual positions of attention in front of our lockers, but Sergeant Burke waves us off.
“At ease, people. Basic Training ended thirty minutes ago. Gather ‘round to get your assignments.”
Sergeant Harris hands him a stack of printed forms, and he goes through them top to bottom. We all cluster around him in anticipation. They’ve determined our final assignments, and now we will learn where and how we will spend the next fifty-seven months of our service careers.
“Garcia—Marines. Second Battalion, Fifth Marines. You’re going to tank school after Marine Induction.”
Garcia accepts the form with a grin, and Sergeant Burke shakes his hand.
“Well done. Kennedy—Marines. First Battalion, Seventh Marines. Infantry School.”
Kennedy accepts his orders, shakes the Sergeant’s hand, and steps out of the cluster of remaining recruits to gather his junk.
“Halley—Navy.”
The rest of us cheer. Navy is the brass ring everyone’s secretly aiming for. I grin as she steps forward to receive her orders. Sergeant Burke takes out another form and puts it on top of Halley’s orders before handing her both.
“You’ll be a drop ship jock. You’re also promoted to E-2 as of this moment. You managed the highest aggregate test scores. That’s quite an accomplishment. I haven’t had a graduate get a Navy slot in three Basic Training cycles.”
“Thank you, sir,” Halley says, her face radiant with excitement. I feel a stab of envy—she’ll be reporting to Fleet School right away, and she’ll probably get to see Earth from space before the end of the week.
“Ricci—Marines. Third Battalion, Third Marines. Mobile field artillery. You’ll be a cannon cocker.”
I had expected him to react to a Marine assignment by making good on his promise and resigning his contract on the spot, but he merely takes the orders from Sergeant Burke and gives him a sharp salute before stepping out of line.
“Grayson,” Sergeant Burke says, and my stomach twists as I await the final word on my fate.
“Territorial Army. Congratulations—you’re staying Earthside.”
Twelve recruits left in Platoon 1066, and eleven of them are going into space. I’m the only one who will get to serve on Earth, doing the shittiest job in the Armed Forces: domestic garbage hauler for the NAC.
I stay impassive when I hear Sergeant Burke’s words, but my first instinct is to punch him in the face. Congratulations? I don’t think I’ve given him any reason to dislike me, at least no more or less than the other recruits, but that word makes it sound like he’s mocking me.
I gather my gear without enthusiasm, my head still spinning with the revelation that I won’t be going into space after all. Still, I made it through Basic, I want the bank account, and I don’t want to waste all the sweat I’ve put into this career already, so I suppress the urge to throw the print-out with my orders at Sergeant Fallon’s feet. The alternative is a shuttle back to the Public Residence Cluster, and whatever the TA has in store for me, there’s nothing that can be worse than that.
“Grayson,” Sergeant Burke says as I shoulder my duffel bag.
“Sir.” I slide the bag off my shoulder to stand at attention, but he waves his hand in dismissal.
“At ease. You don’t seem too happy with your assignment.”
“No, sir,” I say, trying to not look dejected.
“There’s not a thing wrong with the Territorial Army. I was TA myself before I was assigned a Drill Instructor slot.”
“I was looking forward to going into space, sir. TA gets all the shit jobs.”
Sergeant Burke looks at me and shakes his head with a snort.
“TA is the real military,” he says. “Let me tell you something about the spaceborne careers. The Navy guys spend their service mopping decks in windowless metal tubes. The Marines get to go play battle kabuki with the SRA, one company against another, arranged like a fucking sporting event. That’s not soldiering, that’s jerking off. They’re so convinced they’re the sharp tip of the spear, but you know what? Any TA company I’ve ever served with could mop the floor with any Marine company. You know why TA gets all the shit jobs? Because nobody else could handle ‘em, that’s why.
“Go and get on the bus,” he says, nodding toward the door. “Don’t listen to those future space bus drivers and garrison troops about how fucking lucky they are. They don’t know shit about shit yet, and neither do you. Now get out of here, and forget about what you were ‘looking forward to’. This is the military, and nobody gives a shit about what we want. We take what we’re served, and we ask for seconds, and that’s the way it goes.”
There’s a bus waiting to take us to the shuttle port. The ride into the base three months ago was a solitary experience, scared and anxious recruits sitting by themselves. The ride out is much more of a social event, as we take the opportunity to talk to our platoon mates one last time.
“You going to be okay?” Halley asks me as she watches me reading over my printed orders. I am to report to my Territorial Army unit at Fort Shughart in Ohio. She’ll be reporting to Navy Induction at Great Lakes.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like I was expecting five years of milk and cookies, anyway.”
“Just keep your head low, you hear? I want to get mail from you every week.”
“You’ll be on a Navy ship,” I say. “You might be out of network for weeks, you know.”
“You’ll still send those messages,” Halley says. “I’ll check the time stamps. And if you get yourself killed, you’ll be in deep shit with me.”
“Noted,” I grin. “And likewise.”
At the shuttle port, we say our final good-byes to each other. The future Marines are all on the same shuttle to Camp Puller, where all the new Marines from east of the Mississippi are trained. Halley and I are on separate shuttles.
“Take care,” she says.
“You too.”
We kiss one last time, this time more like brother and sister. I watch as she walks to her gate, duffel bag over her shoulder.
And just like that, I’m right back where I was when I boarded the shuttle at the Processing Station twelve weeks ago: alone, anxious, and clueless about what the next few days will bring.
Chapter 7
My new unit is B Com
pany, 365th Autonomous Infantry Regiment, Third Infantry Division. The 365th is stationed at Fort Shughart, a massive base on the outskirts of the Dayton metroplex. The TA seems ruthlessly efficient—I am expecting a repeat of the administrative snail trail from the first day of my service career, but I am directed to my company building, assigned to a squad, and given a locker and bunk in one of the squad rooms not thirty minutes after my arrival on the military bus from the Dayton shuttle port.
In Basic, there was one big room for the entire platoon. Here at B Company, the squads are quartered in rooms. The officers and noncoms get their private rooms, but the enlisted have to share, four troops to a room. There are two double bunk beds, four lockers, and a table with four chairs to every room. The building is old, but well-maintained—the paint is fading, and the polymer coating on the floors is worn, but everything is clean. There’s a communal head on each floor, and the toilets and showers have actual stalls built around them.
When I walk into my assigned squad room, my squad mates are gathered around the table, playing a game of cards. They all turn around to look at me, and I wave a hand in greeting. Two of my new roommates are guys, and one is a very pretty girl.
“Grayson,” I say. “Fresh out of Basic. I guess I’m your new squad mate.”
“Come on in,” one of them says. They all study me with curiosity, undoubtedly sizing me up.
“Your locker’s over there,” he points to his left, where a row of lockers stands lined up against a wall of the room. “It’s the one closest to the window.”
“Thanks.”
I walk over to the locker and open the door. There’s issue clothing already hanging on the rack, and the locker is dressed to boot camp perfection, with brand new pairs of boots neatly lined up on the bottom shelf.
“This one’s taken already,” I say, and my new squad mates chuckle in unison.
“It’s your new gear. Check the name tags. Supply got your data as soon as they assigned you to the battalion. They stock your locker for you ahead of time.”
“Well, that’s handy.”
The lockers are laid out just like the ones we had in Basic. I put my meager pile of personal clothing and gear into the only empty drawer in the locker. There’s a lockable compartment for valuables, and it contains a PDP, a much smaller and sleeker model than the one they issued in Basic. I take the PDP out and turn it on to find that it already has my personal login on the main screen. It also has options on the main screen that weren’t there before—the standard issue PDP is fully network-enabled, unlike the hobbled models in Basic that would only let us communicate with our instructors and fellow platoon members.
“We’re off duty already,” one of my squad mates says behind me. “You can take your time stowing your stuff. Chow hall is going to be open for another forty-five minutes, if you want to grab something.”
“Thanks.”
My fellow squad mates are wearing the TA version of Individual Combat Uniforms. The camouflage patterns are different for each service: the Marines have a polychromatic pattern that changes depending on the environment, and the Navy likes a blue-and-gray pattern that looks like a geometry illustration. The Territorial Army issues a digital pattern that’s black, gray, and washed-out green, the non-colors of the urban battlefield. Of all the issue patterns, it’s the most sinister and business-looking one. I change into the ICUs to match the rest of my squad. The new boots fit well, but they have the annoying squeakiness of unissued footwear. It took me the better part of twelve weeks to get my issue boots in Basic to conform to my feet, and now I have to start the process all over again.
“So where’d you go to Basic?” someone asks, and gestures to an empty chair. I walk over to the table and sit down with the rest of my roommates.
“You know what? I have no idea. They never told us, and I never asked.”
“Swampland, brushy desert, or nothing but cornfields?”
“Brushy desert,” I reply.
“NACRD Orem,” another soldier says. “I went there, too. Not too bad. You don’t have the bugs and the humidity the poor fuckers at NACRD Charleston have to deal with.”
All of my roommates have chevrons on their collars. Two of them are E-2s, with single chevrons, and the third is an E-3, a Private First Class, a chevron with a rocker underneath. People don’t usually make E-2 right out of Basic unless they were top flight in their training battalion like Halley, and E-3 promotions don’t ever happen before a year of active service.
“Am I the only new guy in this squad?” I ask.
“Yep,” one of them confirms. “Our platoon got four this cycle, I think, including you. They trickle the new guys in like that, so you can learn on the job. Grayson, is it?”
“Yeah.”
The soldier across the table from me extends his hand, and I shake it.
“I’m Baker. The cheating fuck over there trying to look at my cards is Priest, and the one with the ponytail is Hansen.”
I nod at each of them in turn.
“You’re in luck, Grayson. You’re in the squad with the best squad leader in the entire battalion.”
“In the entire brigade,” Hansen corrects. She has almond-shaped eyes and very white and even teeth, evidence of better dental care than you can get anywhere within ten miles of a Public Residence Cluster.
“Oh, yeah? What’s his name?”
“Her name.” Priest gives up his attempt to sneak a peek at Baker’s cards, and leans back in his chair. “Staff Sergeant Fallon. She used to be a First Sergeant, but they busted her down for striking an officer.”
“I thought they kicked you out of the service for hitting a superior,” I say, smelling a military fish tale.
“Oh, they do,” Hansen says. “That’s unless you’re a Medal of Honor winner. They don’t get rid of certified heroes. It would be bad PR.”
“Medal of Honor?” I ask, and the disbelief in my face makes my three roommates grin with delight. “As in, that blue ribbon with the white stars that goes on top of all the other ribbons?”
“That’s the one. She got it when the NAC did that excursion into mainland China a few years back, at the Battle of Dalian. You get the Medal, you can ask for any assignment anywhere in the Service, and she went right back to her old unit once she was out of the hospital.”
“That’s pretty wild. Is she a complete hard-ass?”
“Not at all. She’s got no patience for slackers, but as long as you pull your weight and don’t look like you’re clueless, she’s hands-off.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I say. “I was expecting…hell, I have no idea what I was expecting, actually.”
“You were expecting some sort of penal colony,” Baker says amicably. “You thought you pulled the shittiest card in the deck when they told you that you’re going TA, right?”
There’s no point denying it, so I nod.
“That’s what everyone thinks at first. We all did. But this is a good outfit. Our sergeants know their shit, and our officers mostly leave us alone. We get the job done, and we look after each other. I’ve been TA for almost two years, and I wouldn’t take a garrison post on a colony if you paid me double.”
The others at the table nod in agreement.
I’m still disappointed about not going into space, and I have no idea whether I’ll feel the same way about the TA in two years. For better or for worse, however, this place will be my home until my service time is up, so I decide that I might as well make the best of it.
“You play cards, Grayson?” Hansen asks.
“Sure,” I say, and pull my chair up to the table.
Reveille in the morning is a low-key affair. The wake-up call comes over the ceiling speakers and all the PDPs at 0545, which is almost an hour later than our wake-up call in Basic Training. At first call, I drop out of bed and grab my personal hygiene kit out of the locker to file out to the head, but my roommates don’t seem to be in a hurry.
“Take your time,” Baker says as he cl
imbs out of bed. “Nobody’ll check on us, or anything. Chow hall is open at six, and Orders are at seven. They don’t hold your hand and rush you through shit like in Basic.”
“The TA assumes that you can figure out for yourself how to get squared away in the mornings,” Priest says from the bunk above mine. “Just don’t miss Orders out in front of the building at 0700, or you’re in deep shit.”
“Got it,” I say.
It’s an odd experience to be left alone in the morning. Back home, I never got out of bed before nine or ten o’clock, but twelve weeks of boot camp have turned me into an early riser. There was no freedom in Basic Training—with twice as many recruits as sinks, toilets, and shower heads, nobody had much time for leisure in the mornings—but there was also a certain sense of purpose. You could simply turn off your brain and follow the pack, and there was comfort to the predictability of the routine. Now I have to check the clock and take charge of my schedule once more, and as much as I like being able to take my time in front of the sink or in the toilet stall, I find that I miss the rigid structure of Basic a little.
So I do what I’ve been doing since I got off the bus at NACRD Orem—I follow the pack.
My squad mates don’t seem to mind when I tag along with the group to the chow hall. I fall back a little on purpose as we enter the chow hall, so I’ll be behind the others in the breakfast line, which will spare me from having to pick a table and then ending up sitting by myself. I watch the others with one eye as load up my breakfast tray, and then follow them to their table.
There are other soldiers sitting at the table as well, people I don’t know yet, and for just a moment I consider peeling off and picking my own table after all. Then Hansen catches my eye, and she waves me over.
“Don’t be shy, now. Have a seat, and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the squad.”
She pulls out a chair, and I put my tray onto the table before sitting down.
“Guys and girls, this is Private Grayson. He’s the new guy for this quarter. Grayson, this is the whole squad. These four clowns are in the room next to ours.”