Read Online Terms of Enlistment 01.2: Measures of Absolution by Marko Kloos - Free Book Online

underwear that aren’t the ones she put on when she left for this fucked-up drop. Both her ankles are tied together with polyplast restraints, and there’s a strand of it connecting her shackles to the bed frame. At the far end of the room, there’s a steel door, but Jackson doesn’t even have to try to know that her tether is just long enough for her to use the toilet, but too short to let her reach that door.
    She sits up, ignoring the pain that shoots up her side, and clears her throat. There’s nothing in the room she can use as a weapon, and without a good knife, she can’t get rid of the plastic shackles that keep her feet together.
    She clears her throat again. Her mouth is so dry that it feels like she’s gargling with wood splinters.
    “Hey,” she shouts toward the door. Then again, louder. “ Hey !”
    She doesn’t have to wait long. On the other side of the steel door, there’s shuffling, someone getting out of a chair maybe. Then the door opens, and a surly civvie in combat fatigues looks at her without expression. He doesn’t say anything, just studies her for a moment. Then he closes the door again.
    Jackson sits and waits.
    Two minutes later, the door opens again, and someone else walks in.
    The man who steps into the room is tall and lean. His skin is almost as brown as Jackson’s. He wears his hair in a military cut, shorn close to the skull on the sides and left just a little longer on top. From his bearing, the economy of his movements, Jackson knows that this man is a combat trooper.
    “Good evening, Corporal,” he says to her, and it’s the same voice she heard over the security feed in the residence tower before things went all to shit. It’s silky and sonorous, and it carries the air of authority.
    The man carries a plastic cup. He walks up to the bed and hands it to her, along with a handful of pills. She takes them without taking her eyes off his face. He has a closely cropped beard and mustache, shaved so thin it’s barely more than a black circle around his mouth.
    She takes a sip from the cup. It’s water—warm and with a slightly rusty smell to it, but liquid to get the tissues in her mouth and throat back into speaking shape. Jackson downs the contents of the cup briskly.
    “Where’s my squad?” she asks him.
    He regards her with a faint smile.
    “No ‘where am I’, no ‘who are you’, or ‘how long have I been under.’ Just concern for your troopers. I appreciate a combat leader with her priorities in the right order.”
    She doesn’t reply, just looks at him without expression. She has already sized him up to see if she can take him down, and concluded that she can’t. He has stepped back just enough out of reach that she won’t be able to launch a surprise attack, as if he doesn’t even want to tempt her into trying. Jackson can tell that this man is as tightly wound as a steel spring underneath his clean fatigues. He radiates a sort of latent, barely restrained energy that reminds her of Sergeant Fallon, who looks like she’s always half a second away from unleashing violence.
    “Your squad fought well, but they got the short end of the stick in the exchange,” her visitor continues. “Five were killed in action. The other three should be back with their unit right now.”
    “Bullshit,” Jackson says flatly.
    “We took their guns and gear and let them go,” he says. His clinical, calm tone tells her that he doesn’t give a shit whether she believes him or not.
    “Why would you do that?” she asks. “Let them go when you know they’ll be back with new guns soon.”
    “Because we don’t kill people unless we have to, and because I have no interest in going into the prison business. Too many mouths to feed around here as it is.”
    Five dead , Jackson thinks. Because I told them to fight, and they listened.
    “What about the rest of the platoon?”
    “A mixed bag,” her visitor says. “Most were let go. A few of them accepted our invitation to