Terms of Enlistment 01.2: Measures of Absolution by Marko Kloos

 
     
     
    Chapter One
    Detroit
     
     
     
    For the first time in her military life, Corporal Jackson thinks that she may not make it through to the end of her service after all.
    The mobs on the streets of Detroit have done what none of the world's third-rate militaries and insurgents have been able to do--kill or injure almost everyone in her squad. Without air cover or armor, it's just a running gun battle. They're slugging it out with ill-equipped locals, but there are many more of them than there are TA troopers on the ground tonight.
    And the locals are about to win.
    The bullets clang against her armor so frequently now that she has stopped counting the impacts. The rioters are using mostly old cartridge weapons, and few of those shoot anything powerful enough to pierce the ultra-tough laminate of military battle armor, but there's more modern stuff in the mix as well. Jackson lets the computer pick her targets, but she needs to shoot with one hand because she's carrying the crew chief of the downed drop ship they rescued a little while ago. She needs to shoot burst fire to make up for the imprecise one-handed aiming, and that wastes ammo she can't afford to burn.
    In front of her, Grayson and Priest set up a covering position on a street corner. Their rifles start chattering the moment they get sight of the intersection beyond. Corporal Jackson sees a hundred hostile icons popping up, but they start blinking out of existence on her helmet visor screen rapidly as Grayson and Priest are thinning out the rioters' numbers with ruthlessly efficient rapid fire. Dozens fall. Then the others break and run, and the intersection is clear.
    "Go, go, go!" Priest shouts and waves her along. Jackson renews her grip on the unconscious crew chief and drags him across the street into the next inadequate cover.
    Just as she lowers the crew chief to the dirty concrete of the crumbling sidewalk, there's the familiar chatter of an M-66 salvo coming from the corner of a nearby intersection. Behind her, she hears Grayson groan. When she turns around, he's on the ground next to Sergeant Fallon. Corporal Jackson brings up her rifle and looks for the source of that rifle fire. There's a small group of rioters over by that street corner. Two are armed with old cartridge guns, but the third has a military-issue M-66. Grayson is trying to pick up his rifle, but he's moving slowly, as if in a trance. Jackson puts the target reticle of her gunsight on the shooter and snaps off a three-round burst. The rioter takes all three rounds to the chest. He stumbles backwards and lands on his ass, dropping his rifle in front of him. She moves the reticle up a hair and fires another burst. This one hits him in the face. He drops backwards and doesn't move again. His buddies do an about-face and retreat into the darkness of the unlit street behind them.
    "Grayson, you okay?" Jackson calls out over the squad channel. She gets a gasping groan in reply.
    "Priest, go check on Grayson," she orders. The intersection is clear again, but she needs to make sure. She runs over to where the man she just shot is sprawled on the ground.
    When she is next to his prone figure, she can see that it’s not a he at all. The rifle next to the body is a standard TA issue M-66 flechette rifle. She can see the armory marks on the polymer shell, rack and slot numbers written down in waterproof red marker. She picks the rifle up and ejects the magazine. It's still mostly full, and she sticks it into one of the empty pouches on her armor. There's a round still in the chamber, and she aims the rifle down the road and pulls the trigger. It spits out a high-velocity flechette with a sharp little bark. All TA rifles have DNA locks coded to the individual soldier and his fellow squad members. She shouldn't have been able to fire that gun, but fire it did.
    The dead woman’s last expression looks mildly surprised, maybe even annoyed. The flechettes from Jackson’s three-round burst all