We descend into Lackland an uncomfortable hour later. When the ramp of the shuttle opens, it lets in a gust of warm air that smells like aviation fuel. Halley and I unbuckle our harnesses and gather our gear bags. I’ve never been more glad to get off a military craft.
“You want to get lunch here on base before we head out into the city?” Halley asks.
It’s midafternoon, and we haven’t eaten since we left Liberty Falls this morning, but the motion sickness has killed my appetite comprehensively, and I shake my head.
“I’ll come if you want to grab something.”
“Nah,” Halley says. “It’s just going to be shit chow anyway. Let’s go see the folks. I’m pretty sure they’re planning to feed us good food tonight.”
“Last meals are usually pretty good,” I say.
Joint Base Lackland is a sprawling facility on the outskirts of San Antonio. It houses an HD air base, four battalions, a fleet spaceport, and half a dozen training commands, including one of the four NAC Defense Corps Recruit Depots. It takes us almost an hour just to get from the airfield to the main transport hub on the base, and the place is as busy as Gateway Station when half a dozen capital ships dock there at the same time.
The train ride into the city is uncomfortable. The train cars are in good shape and clean, but they are packed with people at this time of the day, and Halley and I have to stand at the back of one of the cars with our alert bags and luggage between our legs. The people streaming into the city after work on the base are half troops in uniform, half civvies, and a good portion of those civvies look like military personnel who have changed into civilian garb. Most of the troops in our car are junior enlisted, with a few sergeants here and there, and a first lieutenant sitting two rows in front of us. Ordinarily, the officer ranks on our shoulders serve to create a little respect bubble, but the train is so packed that there’s no space for that courtesy, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with privates and corporals who studiously avoid looking at the officers among them.
Halley’s parents live in the ’burbs in San Antonio’s northeast, and Joint Base Lackland is in the southwest of the city, so the ride takes almost another hour of frequent stops and the constant shuffling of passengers onto and off the train, Halley and I swaying in the human current like trapped driftwood. By the time we reach the station for Olmos Park, I am tired and even more cranky than I would normally be at the prospect of a stay at the in-laws’ place.
“Too many people,” Halley grumbles as we drag our stuff off the train and make our way up the escalator to the surface part of the station. “That was worse than chow time in the mess hall on a frigate.”
Out here, the ratio of civvies to uniformed military personnel is considerably higher than out at Lackland. There are very few people in camouflage in the crowd of well-dressed civvies. The station is clean and well lit, and I can even smell some deodorizing aerosol in the air. Olmos Park is an upscale suburb, and the station looks nothing like the public transport hubs in a PRC. Instead of vendor stalls, there are shops and restaurants with glass fronts. The floor is made of granite tiles, and the walls are clad in decorative stucco. Even the windows are glass and have decorative elements, something that wouldn’t last three minutes in a PRC transit station before getting smashed into a thousand pretty shards.
“I feel a little out of place here,” I tell Halley.
“Welcome to the club,” she says. “I’ve been feeling out of place here since I was twelve.”
We walk through the concourse and out of the transit station into bright sunshine. I notice that there is barely a security presence here—a few civilian cops with sidearms and stun sticks are standing by the door, and there’s a pair of police hydrocars parked outside in front of the station, but I see no HD troops in armor, no automatic weapons, no helmets. The civvie cops give us curt nods as we walk by with our alert packs, which contain more firepower each than the little gaggle of cops carries among them in total. San Antonio needs no riot cops, because San Antonio gets no riots. Its status as a military hub and a defense-industry center means it’s a secure enclave, separate from the Dallas and Houston metroplexes nearby. There are no PRCs dominating the city skyline. Transportation into San Antonio is screened and controlled, and no penniless PRC rat would ever get within twenty kilometers of the outer ring of suburbs. There’s a whole swath of Old Texas that’s dark territory now, but San Antonio is as firmly in ’burber hands as it was before the Exodus. If the end of the world is around the corner, you wouldn’t be able to tell from going into San Antonio.
“Here we go,” Halley murmurs when she spots her father on the plaza in front of the transit station. He spots us roughly at the same time and waves.
It’s very obvious which parent Halley takes after when it comes to looks. She’s tall like her father, their hair and eyes are the same color, and she has inherited his nose and cheekbones. Halley’s dad is a good-looking guy, trim and lean in the carefully sculpted manner of a ’burber with access to decent health care and exercise equipment. You could put a ’burber and a PRC hood rat in a lineup next to each other without clothes on, and you’d be able to tell from fifty meters away who belongs where. And Halley’s father is the stereotypical upper-middle-class ’burber, right down to the even teeth and the tan. He waves at us again as we cross the transit plaza toward him. Then he pulls an electronic key fob out of his pocket and casually points it over his shoulder.
“Hello, you two,” he says to us. He gives Halley a hug and extends his hand to me. “How was the ride down?”
“Not bad,” I say, and shake his hand.
“Terrible,” Halley says simultaneously.
“Well, you made it,” he says. “It takes a lot longer now to get up north. I have to go up to Bethesda twice a year and hate it every time.”
Behind him, a sleek and shiny hydrocar rolls up to the curb and chirps its proximity alert. Halley’s dad nods toward our bags and then toward the car that is now automatically opening its doors and trunk lid for us.