Read Terms of Enlistment 01.2: Measures of Absolution for Free Online

with thirty-foot concrete dams. That makes a block. The plaza between the four towers is for public services—recreation, food distribution, shops, public safety, transit station. Each block is centrally managed, its own little city. Eighty thousand people put together in a square footprint a thousand feet on each of its sides.
    Twelve of those blocks arranged in a much bigger square, four blocks on each side of the square— that’s a fifth-gen Public Residence Cluster. Forty-eight towers, split into blocks of four. Close to a million people in a fifth-gen, and that’s at designed capacity. Many hold one and a half, two times that number. In the middle of that gigantic square made up of residence blocks are the wastewater and garbage facilities, the main power plant, the food manufacturing and reprocessing stations, administration building, and the main law enforcement and detention center for the PRC. From here, the Public Housing Police can lock down blocks and quarantine them in case of public unrest, and send backup to the public safety stations in the twelve blocks. Three hundred sixty-seven acres, a little over half a square mile, and it’s a self-contained, compartmentalized, centrally managed city that houses and feeds over a million people. And the average metroplex has twenty or thirty of them.
    In theory, the fifth-gen PRCs are easier to police than the older ones, and that's mostly true. You can shut down a floor, a unit, a block, three blocks, the whole damn place, all remotely from the central law enforcement facility that sits in the middle of the PRC like a spider in the center of a web. For some reason, however, Jackson hates going into the fifth-gens. Maybe it's because she grew up in a third-gen PRC, and she's used to the warrens of high-rises clumped together. In a third-gen, you always have a place to run and hide. It's sprawling and cramped, but everything is interconnected. The fifth-gens are so compartmentalized, you have choke points everywhere. Residence towers have two main entrance halls. Blocks have one entry and exit point, toward the middle of the PRC. It's all too easy to shut down, too easy to trap people, funnel them like animals in a slaughter chute.
    They drop into PRC Detroit-22 with a full company. It's a lot of combat power, but Jackson knows that if things go to shit again, it won't be enough, not even close. The four drop ships of Charlie Company circle the towers of the target block at a safe distance. Then the lead ship swoops in and lands on the roof of the ten-story civil administration building, down on the square between the residence towers. Jackson is with Second Platoon, and their drop ship does not follow. Instead, they circle around and settle on the roof of the outermost residence tower, a hundred floors up. Then the tail ramp drops, and Second Platoon’s thirty-six troopers rush out to deploy.
    From up here, a thousand feet above the PRC, the view is actually almost beautiful, Jackson thinks. The streetlights and shop signs below illuminate the dirty night air in many colors. From up here, she can see clear across this PRC and into the next one, and the one beyond. A hundred thousand apartments, millions of people. Thousands of thefts, hundreds of assaults, dozens of murders committed right this second in her field of view. No guns allowed in public housing, but Jackson knows there are almost as many of them out there as there are people. You’d be foolish not to go armed in a place like this. Without teeth and claws, you’re food to everyone out on those streets.
    The rooftops of the residence towers are official use only. There’s a landing pad for drop ships, and the access doors are controlled by the security office down in the basement of the tower. The entrance vestibule on the rooftop leads into a service area with its own express elevator. A platoon can walk out of their drop ship, onto the elevator, and out into the atrium at ground level in less than two