Terms of Enlistment 01.2: Measures of Absolution Read Online Free PDF

obeys.
    In the old days, they sent dead soldiers home in caskets, big wood-and-metal troughs large enough to hold a body. They’d put flawless uniforms on the corpses, complete with all the ribbons and decorations, even if nobody ever opened the casket before the burial. That sort of waste seems obscene to Jackson—burying a good uniform with a dead soldier. Never mind the idea of burying a body whole, dedicating dozens of square feet of precious unspoiled ground to park a corpse in perpetuity, even after body and coffin are long gone.
    These days, the mortuary’s incinerators reduce a body to just a few cubic inches of fine ash, and they pack it into a stainless cylinder small enough to fit into a magazine pouch. Stratton’s cylinder is engraved with his name, rank, branch of service, and dates of birth and death. Captain Lopez carries the little capsule in white-gloved hands as they board the shuttle together the next morning. Jackson bears the flag they’ll be presenting to Stratton’s next-of-kin. It’s folded into a tight triangle, with the NAC’s star, maple leaf, and eagle exactly in the center. She also carries a small padded case with all of Stratton’s awards, which aren’t many. He had just started his second year or service. The family sent a son to Basic Training a little over a year ago, and now they’re getting back a little capsule full of ash and a few pieces of alloy and cloth ribbon worth maybe twenty dollars altogether.
    Corporal Jackson doesn’t like any of this. The stiff Class A uniform she only wears a few times a year is scratchy and smells of locker dust. The seats of the shuttle are uncomfortable, and she doesn’t like the thought of an hour-long flight alone with her company commander. But she figures that she owes Stratton at least this inconvenience. She knows that he would be itching to make fun of her in that Class A monkey suit, but that he feared her just enough to not have dared.
    Stratton was from eastern Tennessee, so the shuttle doesn’t have to go too far from Dayton. On the flight, the Captain asks her about Stratton. What was he like? Any anecdotes we should share with the family? How did he do on the ground during the drops? Did he get along with his squad mates? Jackson answers the Captain’s questions with a growing sense of disgust. She realizes that even though he didn’t know Private Stratton at all, he’ll use her information to talk to the family about their son’s accomplishments as if he has a personal connection to every member of his company. It’s all so transparent, she thinks. Trying to pretend that you gave a shit about that boy. If you had, you wouldn’t have sent him out into the middle of a riot without proper intel or air support.
     
    The funeral is the most gloomy, depressing event she has witnessed in a very long time. Not just because they’re burying a twenty-year-old kid who was her responsibility, but also because of where they lay him to rest. Stratton doesn’t even get an outside plot. They stick his capsule into a receptacle on the wall of one of the many underground cemetery vaults of the K-Town Public Cemetery. They lock and seal the compartment, and the little door is barely big enough to hold a palm-sized memorial plaque. They’re storing what’s left of the kid in a space that’s smaller than the valuables compartment of his military locker. Jackson didn’t know him very long, but well enough to know that he probably would have chosen to be scattered out of the open tail hatch of a drop ship on the way to another deployment, not locked forever in a little hole in the wall along with ten thousand others.
    Stratton’s parents are stone-faced during the whole thing. His father, tall and imposing, takes the flag from her without a word of acknowledgment. When Captain Lopez holds out his hand to offer thanks on behalf of a grateful Commonwealth, Mr. Stratton throws the folded flag at him. It smacks into the Captain’s chest and