“Thank you, Specialist.”
I step away from the counter and shoulder my furlough bag again. It’s 1540 hours right now, which gives me over an hour to fight my way across Gateway to personnel lock A39. Mom’s scheduled MilNet access day is not until the weekend, and I have no other way to get in touch with her to let her know I’m coming down to Earth early, but I have her new address, and I can use all transportation networks free of charge. It’s been five years since I last set foot on my homeworld, but I very much doubt that it has changed so much that I can’t find my way around without an escort.
Between the time I step off the shuttle at Cape Cod HDAS and the time I arrive at South Station in the middle of the Boston metroplex, I get stopped four times by various military police patrols. Every time, they scan my ID to verify my “ON LEAVE” status. The military presence is dense, even in the civvie section of the transit system. There are armed MPs at just about every entrance and intersection, and in every train along the way. Five years ago, the MP venturing out into the civilian world carried electric crowd-control sticks and nanoflex handcuffs. Now they carry those and sidearms and submachine guns besides. The magazines of the submachine guns are made of translucent plastic, and the rounds stacked up inside of them are standard infantry issue: armor-piercing, dual-purpose antipersonnel rounds.
“You guys expecting Chinese infiltrators?” I ask of the leader of the fourth patrol to stop me for my ID, and nod at the PDW slung across his chest. He’s a stocky staff sergeant whose buzz cut is turning gray at the roots. He opens his mouth for what I can already tell will be a humor-free reply. Then he looks at the unit flashes on the upper arms of my smock, and exchanges a look with the corporal next to him.
“Fleet Arm, huh? Been a while since you’ve been Earthside?”
“Five years,” I say.
“Place ain’t what it was five years ago,” he says. “Not even close. Where you headed, anyway?”
“PRC Boston-Seven. Going to visit my mother.”
“You’re going to walk into a PRC in a Class A uniform?”
“Don’t have any civvie threads left. Why?”
“Oh, boy.” He exchanges another look with his corporal and scratches the back of his head, pushing up his green HD beret.
“Tell you what, Sergeant. You’re just twenty minutes from the Cape. If I were you, I’d head back to the base and see if they can dig you up some civvie clothes. Uniforms aren’t too popular in the PRC right now.”
“I grew up in there. I know where the bad spots are. I’ll be fine.”
He snorts a humorless little chuckle.
“It’s all bad spots now.”
Mom’s new address is in a pretty good spot, as far as desirable real estate in a tenement cluster goes. She’s only two blocks away from the civil administration center, which is surrounded by the safest and cleanest section of the neighborhood.
I’ve been through this station many times when I still lived here, but when I walk up to the surface from the underground platform, my first impulse is to turn around and get back on the train, because it feels like I’ve gotten off at the wrong stop. The transit station looks completely unfamiliar to me. The Columbia Station I knew was a dingy 150-year-old building with water spots on the walls and paint flaking off exposed ceiling beams. The Columbia Station I step into is a new structure, stark-naked concrete everywhere. There are no water stains or flaking paint, but somehow the old, dilapidated structure looked more inviting. The new station looks like a concrete bunker, and that impression is enhanced by the scores of armed police I see all over the place. When I left this place five years ago, city cops didn’t even wear helmets; now their outfits aren’t much less advanced than the battle armor I wore in the Territorial Army. The cops are standing around in clusters of three and four in the entrance hall of the station, not bothering to move for the civilians that are streaming around them. I notice that the people walking past the cops keep a healthy distance. As I walk past a group of police officers, one of them glances at my uniform and gives me a semicourteous nod. I take the opportunity to stop for some information.
“Whatever happened to the old station?”
“Burned to the ground two years ago,” the cop who nodded at me replies. “They torched it. Killed twenty-six officers that night, too.”
“Welfare riot?”
“No, they were just peacefully assembling,” the cop says, with ironic weight on the last two words. “I’m sure those flaming bottles were just an accident.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Haven’t been able to stay on top of things up there. They don’t let us watch the Networks much, and the news is always a month out of date at least.”