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

falls to the ground, still folded into its tight triangle.
    “You can take that and stick it up your ass,” he tells Captain Lopez. Then he turns to Jackson and takes the case holding his son’s medals out of her hands.
    “I will have those,” he tells her. “But I have no use for that rag. Or for you. Now get the hell out of here and leave us with our son.”
    Jackson knows this is deep, desperate grief talking. She knows the man doesn’t hate her personally, that his hate is aimed at the uniform she wears. Still, she feels a surge of shame and anger. She liked the kid, served with him for over a year, tutored him, shared meals and played cards with him. She doesn’t deserve this loathing directed at her. But there’s no point saying any of it to this grieving and angry man who is no longer a father thanks to some overconfident desk pilots at Battalion. The TA didn’t kill his son, but they put him in front of the gun that did.
    Next to her, Captain Lopez bends over to pick up the NAC flag Mr. Stratton tossed at him. Jackson turns and walks out of the cemetery vault without waiting for her company commander. There is nothing more to say or do here. Maybe someday she can come back here and talk to the Strattons, tell them about the anger she will always feel for failing their son and surviving the battle when he didn’t, but today is not it.
    On the way back to Shughart, she doesn’t speak another word to the Captain, and he doesn’t ask her anything else, which is good because she won’t have to tell him to go fuck himself. She considers telling him anyway, though. Thirty days in the brig seem like a good start at penance.
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Six
    Mazes
     
     
     
    When the First Sergeant walks into the squad bay, Jackson is by herself, sorting out her kit and checking for defects.
    He waves her off as she snaps to attention.
    “As you were. Come over here and have a seat.”
    She obeys and sits down at the table with the First Sergeant, who is the only person in the battalion that scares her as almost much as Sergeant Fallon.
    “I need a squad leader,” the First Sergeant says. “After that clusterfuck last week, I’m short a few heads. You up for padding a squad with the rest of your guys?”
    “What’s the drop?” she asks.
    He looks at her and purses his lips.
    “Charlie Company is doing a public safety sweep assist in Detroit-22. Fifth-gen PRC.”
    Jackson feels a unsettling tightening in her chest.
    Fifth-gen PRC. Good God.
    “I’ll take a squad in Charlie,” she says. “Just keep my boys off the line for a few more days.”
     
    The first-and second-generation PRCs were old school traditional thinking. High rises, none taller than twenty floors, laid out along wide streets, with parks and stuff in between. They meant to give it a regular neighborhood look and feel. All the oldest PRCs are first- or second-gen. They didn’t have to tear down the old cities, just clear blocks piecemeal for new high rises. They worked okay, for a while anyway.
    The third-and fourth-gen PRCs were much the same, only they tacked ten more floors onto the maximum for the high rises and clustered them all together like small cities. Twenty to a cluster. Most of the worst shitholes are third- or fourth-gen, because they’re difficult to manage in a centralized manner. Too many people spread out over too many acres.
    The fifth-generation PRCs—now those are something else entirely. The Commonwealth’s crowning achievement in efficient people storage. All the latest thinking in crowd control, food distribution, security, and space utilization.
    Residence towers a hundred floors high. Built around a hollow core, for convection cooling and to let daylight in. Each tower with its own fusion plant, medic station, security office. A hundred floors, a hundred apartments per floor, average occupancy two. Those are the units. Four towers put together in a square, the spaces between them walled off