Back home, the colony flights have stopped, which has made Earth an even more unpleasant place than it was when I joined up. These flights had two purposes: Relieve the population pressure back home, and give some sort of hope for a better future to everyone who didn’t have a ticket for the colonies yet. A slot on a colony ship was the ultimate lottery win, and as long as there was the chance of scoring one, the restless masses were not completely without prospects. Now even that remote chance is gone, and we have more welfare riots in a month than we used to have in a year. What’s worse, the perpetually cash-strapped government of the NAC is now well and truly broke.
Space colonization is a hideously expensive undertaking, and we lost trillions of dollars in equipment on the colonies the Lankies took away from us. There’s no more ore being mined on those worlds, no more raw materials coming in to offset the expense of colonization, and none of the private corporations are willing to extend loans or take on colony contracts anymore. To top it all off, the military was geared and organized to fight other militaries, and there’s no money left in the budget to refit ten marine divisions and five hundred starships to fight spacefaring eighty-foot creatures instead of Chinese or Russian marines.
Once upon a time, the military may have been a great career. Now we’re an overextended, underfunded, and unappreciated force. Behind us, we have the restless masses of our overpopulated homeworld, and in front of us, we have a new enemy who’s physically and technologically far above us. Only a nutcase would want to get into the service at this point, and you have to have a mental defect to want to stay in after your enlistment contract is up.
Naturally, when the time came for me to sign my name again or pack my things and become a civilian once more, I signed on the dotted line.
CHAPTER 1
“I solemnly swear and affirm to loyally serve the North American Commonwealth, and to bravely defend its laws and the freedom of its citizens.”
I signed my reenlistment form yesterday in the captain’s office, so my butt is already public property for the next five years, but the military likes ritual. We’re in one of the briefing rooms, and the captain and XO are standing on either side of the briefing lectern. Someone dragged out a wrinkled North American Commonwealth flag and draped it over the wall display, and I have my hand in the air as I repeat the oath of service for the second time in my military career. A corporal from the fleet news service is recording the event for whatever reason. Even with our recent troubles, the military still has a 90 percent retention rate after the first term of enlistment, so a re-up ceremony isn’t exactly an uncommon event.
“Congratulations, Staff Sergeant Grayson,” the captain says after I complete the oath. “You’re back in the fold for another five years.”
What else was I going to do, anyway? I think.
“Thank you, sir,” I say, and take the entirely ceremonial reenlistment certificate from his outstretched hand. This means a bonus in my account, which has been growing steadily since my first day of Basic five years ago, but Commonwealth currency is becoming increasingly worthless. By the time I get out, the money in my government account will probably just be enough to pay for a breakfast and a train ride home to the welfare section of Boston.
I didn’t reenlist for the money, of course. I reenlisted because I didn’t know what the hell else to do. All my professional skills revolve around blowing things up or working classified neural-network systems, which makes me pretty much useless in the civilian world. I don’t much feel like going back to Earth and claiming a welfare apartment until I die early. I haven’t been back to Terra since the day I left Navy Indoc at Great Lakes for Fleet School on Luna, but from what I hear over the MilNet, the old homeworld isn’t doing so well. Some guys who have been there on leave recently say that the worst thing we could do to the Lankies would be to let them take the place.
Earth’s population crested at thirty billion people two years ago, and three billion of them are crammed into North America. Terra is an ant hive, teeming with hungry, discontented, and antisocial ants, and I have no desire to add to the population headcount. At least the military still feeds its people, which is more than can be said for the NAC’s civil administration. Mom makes it down to the civil building for net access once a month or so, and in her last message she mentioned that the Basic Nutritional Allowance has been cut to thirteen thousand calories per person per week. It looks like they’re running out of shit and soy down there.
I didn’t need to think very long about reenlisting, that’s for sure. Of course, my girlfriend Halley also reenlisted, so I really didn’t have much of a choice.
“So it’s done,” Halley says. The video feed is a bit grainy, but I have no problem seeing the dark rings under her eyes. She’s had a long day at Combat Flight School, teaching new pilots how to dodge Chinese portable surface-to-air missiles and Lanky bio-mines. We’re in the same system for a change—my ship is part of a task force that is practicing stealth insertions on one of Saturn’s many moons, and we can both tap into the orbital relay above Mars, which has enough spare bandwidth for a few minutes of vid chat.