The War for Profit Series Omnibus (12 page)

“I’ll just be glad when this field cycle is over for us. I think that being a student at the Panzer Brigade Platoon Leader School will suit me just fine.”

“The PBS,” said Spike.

“The what?”

“The Panzer Brigade School.”

“The PBS. Got it.”

The last of the prisoners were processed. The Mandarin truck drivers started their engines and began pulling away. A final prisoner, still hog-tied and unconscious, was thrown into the bed of the last truck by two unkempt policemen. The vehicle immediately drove off.

“All right, dumbasses! Mount up! We’re leaving!”

The mercenaries boarded their APCs and rode in convoy for three hours before reaching the Panzer Brigade compound. They parked in a motor pool near the welcome center. All the other vehicles Galen had seen that afternoon were parked in the compound and Galen noticed three more motor pools filled with wheeled and tracked vehicles. Mortinson was standing in front of the vehicles.

“Fall in, anti-armor platoon.” The mercenaries lined up facing their Chief.

“You guys that ain’t been here before, follow the guys that have. Talk to the broke-dick on duty at the barracks front desk and he’ll assign you a bunk. Sleep well. Battalion formation is in front of the barracks at zero nine thirty. Take a shower and wear a clean uniform. Any questions, ask your buddy. I’m going to bed. Dismissed!”

Galen raised his left wrist and checked his communicator. Seven hours of rest was better than nothing. The next morning the weather was clear and refreshingly cool. Galen felt much better after a night in a real bunk. Being clean and fresh felt good. The company was massed, not broken down by platoon but formed up in a block of a hundred and twenty mercenaries. The other two companies of the mechanized infantry battalion were also formed up on the parade field. At zero nine thirty the battalion commander marched out front, turned to the companies and ordered, “Bring your units to attention.”

The company commanders faced their units and ordered them to attention starting with the company on the right and ending with Galen’s company. The company commanders then faced the battalion commander.

“Report!” demanded the battalion commander.

“Rifle Company, all fit for duty present.”

“Mechanized Company, all fit tor duty present.”

“Cavalry Company, all fit for duty present.”

“At ease. I’m Captain Vought, your battalion commander. I’ll be a Major soon enough. I’m here to train up for promotion just like the rest of you. But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m here to tell you is, you did a great job. Everything I asked you to do, you got it done. I love you guys. What we pulled off yesterday and last night was nothing short of a miracle. I hate to play favorites but the cavalry troop deserves special praise. I also have to single out the anti-armor platoon. Their actions were critical to setting the stage for the opportunity we took advantage of last night. They defeated a full company of tanks. Not many grunt platoons can pull that off and live to tell about it. Let’s have a big round of applause for the anti-armor platoon.”

To Galen’s surprise, the rest of the battalion cheered. The cheering and applauses sounded genuine, not the false sort of clapping and hooraying he heard so often at the military academy back on Ostreich. A real unit, with a real mission. Real applause.

“I know you’re mercenaries, so I’ll add a little cash value to the praise. Cav Troop gets a bonus of two weeks pay. Anti-armor platoon gets an additional week’s pay on top of that.” The mercenaries of the other companies cheered again, this time without any prompting from the Captain. Galen wondered how much money he would get. Judging from the murmured comments of the seasoned mercenaries around him, it would be a decent wad of money.

“Now for the good news. Everybody gets an extra half month’s pay bonus for quelling the riot. Not only do you get the money, you get the time to spend it. I cut a deal with the Mandarins. A crack unit from their regular space marines will watch our sector for the next two weeks. So our sector should still be clear when we get back. I will see you right here in this formation, at zero seven thirty, thirteen days from now. Until then…”

The Captain paused for a full five seconds, “Dismissed!”

Galen, Tad and Spike walked away from the formation area, talked as they went.

“What now?” asked Tad.

Galen shrugged, “Follow the Captain’s orders and go goof off for a couple of weeks.”

“What’s there to do on this rock?”

“I’m sure our money’s good enough for some locals to find ways to entertain us.”

“We could hit the ‘ville and party right outside the gate for a couple of weeks. Those people know what we like, some better than us,” said Spike.

“That’s a good way to spend a couple of days. Any complaints, Tad?”

“No.”

“Good. We’ll change into civvies and hit the ‘ville.”

The three friends, dressed in civilian clothes, approached the bank machine. Galen placed his right hand on the screen, waited, then stared with confusion at the teller machine.

“Just shove your ID card into the slot,” said Spike.

“Oh how primitive.” Galen pushed his Jasmine Panzer Brigade ID card into the slot beside the screen. The machine sucked the card inside.

“Enter your code,” said the machine.

“Last five digits from your contract number,” said Tad.

“What?”

“Don’t you have a copy of your contract with you?”

“Enter your code,” the machine said.

“No, I left it in the barracks.”

“If you lose it, maybe the unit will conveniently lose their copy,” said Spike.

“Wait here while I go get it.”

“Your contract number is one less than mine and one more than Spike’s. They’re sequential.”

“Enter your code,” said the machine. Tad punched in the number for Galen.

“Audio on or off, Sergeant Raper?”

“Off.”

“Audio on or off, Sergeant Raper?”

Tad reached over and pushed the ‘Off’ key. “You got to press the keys, Galen. These machines can’t hear.”

“Okay, I got it now.” He pushed the keys, responding to the prompts and questions printed on the machine’s monitor. “What’s a credit worth?”

“I’m not sure,” said Tad.

“Well, I have about eighteen thousand of them. I’ll withdraw a hundred. That should do me for a couple days.”

“No!” said Spike.

The machine made a grinding sound, then very evenly spaced whirs and clicks, with a rustle of paper after each click.

The prompt came up for Galen to “Please remove your money.”

Tad opened the door below the monitor. The space behind the opened door was ten centimeters wide, ten centimeters deep and five centimeters high. The whole space was stuffed with cash, the local currency, in denominations of one thousand czan.

“What’s this?” asked Galen.

Spike said, “The interplanetary credit is very strong against the local currency. The czan is probably the weakest currency in the known universe. That’s more money than most Mandarins make in a year.”

“So maybe I’ll put some of it back?”

“We’d have to go to the main bank and see a teller to make a deposit. Maybe we’ll just divvy it up between the three of us, and me and Tad can pay you back later.”

“You both owe me thirty five credits, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. Help me pry this cash out of here.”

The three men stuffed their pockets and walked to the compound main gate.

“Halt!” said the gate guard, his pistol drawn. His partner in the guard shack leveled his submachine gun at the three friends. Galen heard footfalls behind him. Five troops approached from behind, submachine guns at the ready. The gate guard nodded to the troops. Three of them slung their weapons and began to frisk the detainees. The troops pulled everything from their pockets and threw the items on the ground. The money they handed into a bag held by the gate guard.

“Pick up your stuff. What unit are you snappers with?”

“Anti-armor.” Galen picked up his wallet and pocketknife. “Why’d you take my money?”

“These guys are as stupid as they look,” said the guard with the pistol. “Should we turn them in or let them go?”

“Turn us in for what?”

“You can’t take this much money off the compound. Who knows what you might buy? And maybe you’ll ruin the local economy and cause rampant inflation.”

Galen started to understand. The cash machine was positioned so the gate guards could watch it and stop mercenaries from taking too much money down town.

“Aw, let ‘em go, Chief,” said the guard in the booth. “After all, they’re from the Cav troop.”

“All right. Take your cash back to the bank where it belongs. Not more than ten thousand czan per day per trooper leaves the compound. And don’t forget to return my bag. Today.”

“Thanks, Chief,” said Galen.

“Don’t thank me, thank your agent.”

Four hours later the three friends walked along the streets of the town of Xongxong. The crowd of short, black-haired citizens barely made a gap wide enough for the mercenaries to pass through them in single file. Galen led.

“Present arms!” said Tad.

Galen and Spike reflexively obeyed the command. Galen stopped, dropped his salute and looked around. “What was that for?”

“There,” Tad pointed at a life-size statue of an old man in front of a restaurant. “The Colonel.”

Galen and Spike gave him confused looks.

“The Kentucky Colonel, Colonel Sanders, the man who invented the secret recipe for fried chicken back on Terra, more than two thousand years ago.”

“So?”

“Good Terran-style food. Let’s eat!” Tad pushed his way through the street crowd, followed by Spike and Galen. They took seats at a flimsy table in the dining area. The menu was a plastic card taped to the wall beside the table. A waitress came to the table. She wore an orange cap and apron over her white dress. She must have been sixty years old at least, thought Galen.

“I’ll take a chicken.”

“Me too,” said Spike.

“I’ll have the drumstick dinner,” Tad looked around. “Extra crispy and a large cola for each of us.”

When the waitress left Spike asked, “How come I never heard of this Colonel?”

“You two aren’t from Terra. I am. Everybody there knows about Colonel Sanders, the Kentucky Colonel.”

“What’s a Kentucky? A special kind of regiment?”

“No. It’s a state, a commonwealth of the Earth Federation.”

“So you’re from Kentucky,” stated Galen.

“You wanna fight?”

“No.”

“It was a rhetorical question. I’m not from Kentucky.”

The waitress wheeled a dinner cart over to their table. She had two platters containing two full roasted chickens and sat one in front of Galen and one in front of Spike. The platter for Tad had four drumsticks, a bowl of mashed potatoes covered with gravy, and a scoop of coleslaw. The waitress then put plastic flatware and sodas in plastic cups beside each of the three men. Before she could state the price, Tad handed her a one thousand czan bill.

“Keep the change.”

The waitress smiled, then pushed the dinner cart ahead of her as she left.

“How much of a tip was that?”

“About two hundred czan.”

Galen still wasn’t sure how many czans were in a credit, or how many Ostreich Kroners a credit was worth.

“How many czan in a kroner?”

Tad thought a moment. “About sixty.”

“So our dinner costs only seventeen kroner?”

“About that, I’m not exactly sure,” said Tad.

“For us to eat like this back on Ostreich would cost about a hundred kroner each.”

“So,” said Spike, “our money buys twenty times as much here?”

“At restaurants, anyway.” Tad chewed a drumstick and gulped his cola.

Spike and Galen tore pieces of flesh from their whole chickens as best they could with their fingers. They weren’t familiar with eating real chicken and followed Tad’s example of not using flatware. They dispensed with conversation until they finished the meal.

“We all done?” Tad pulled his cloth napkin from his lap and carefully wiped his hands.

“Sure.” Spike wiped his hands on the tablecloth, then the napkin.

Galan nodded as he finished his cola and wiped the chicken grease from his hands and mouth. The three off-duty mercenaries pushed their way back into the street crowd and moved further away from the compound. They hadn’t gone fifteen meters when a relatively tall Mandarin man bumped into Galen. The stranger wore a brown leather jacket, a yellow derby-style cap and faded Mandarin regular army dungaree pants.

“Hey sahjee, you like girls?”

Galen continued to walk. The stranger walked beside him, opening a binder with pictures of nude girls taped to its inside. He held the pictures in Galen’s face.

“Get away from me, you pervert!” Galen smacked the binder and shoved the man. Looking indignant, the Mandarin pimp snapped the binder shut and started to walk away.

Then he turned and shouted, “Funny man! No like girls!”

The pimp melted into the crowd.

“Why’d you do that?” Spike said. “I could use a piece.”

“They were really young,” Galen suddenly remembered Trooper Harover… Inger. “Sorry Spike, I got to go back to the compound. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Spike and Tad continued away from the compound.

Galen found the garrison personnel’s barracks right behind the welcome center. He found building 36O9 and buzzed the main door.

“I’m here to see Inger.”

A woman’s voice came from a speaker built into the frame of the door, “Hold on.”

Galen waited a few seconds, wondering if he were doing the right thing.

“Who is it?” Inger’s voice came from the speaker.

“Galen Raper, Sergeant Raper. We met a couple of weeks ago. You made my ID card.”

“Uh, okay. Come on up to room three oh two.”

The speaker made a buzz. Galen pulled the door open. The lobby area was empty. No furniture, nothing but a door in the center of the wall to the front. The walls were painted battleship grey. The dark brown tiled floor was as shiny as glass, except where a few footfalls marred the surface with streaks from combat boot soles. The steel door was black and had no handle. Galen pushed it inward. Beyond it was the stairwell, the steps wide enough for three people to ascend them abreast. Galen counted seven steps to the first landing, eight to the next, a total of thirteen steps between each floor. Galen climbed the steps to the third floor landing and pushed the door open. He walked down the hallway and found room 3O2. He knocked, getting nervous. His pulse quickened and he felt warmer.

The door opened.

“Come on in,” Inger wore a bathrobe and her hair was wrapped in a towel on her head, looked like a turban. Galen took two steps into the room. Inger motioned him to sit on the two-seater couch. He did.

“So Sergeant, some problem with your ID card?”

Galen’s heart sank and seemed to beat slower. He felt cold. “You don’t remember me.”

Inger paused, “Oh, I’m sorry. I truly am.”

Galen thought she looked older. No makeup, no tight uniform, no body-shaping undergarment. A different woman from what he remembered from the ID card office. He heard the sound of a toilet flushing and running water from the bathroom. A man came out wearing a bath towel wrapped around his waist.

“Please leave,” said Inger.

Galen left. He went back to his barracks and lay on his cot. The other mercenaries were gone, out enjoying their vacation somewhere else. Only Galen and his two friends were still checked into the bay. He felt jealous of the man in the bath towel. He felt angry with Inger, not only for being a whore but also for being a ragged-out old girl when Galen thought she was young and beautiful and interested in him.

But mostly he was upset with himself for feeling the way he did about Inger. He created his own Inger, one that had little resemblance to the real one. Finally he undressed and crawled into bed, wondering why he had to live in an open-bay barracks with no personal space beyond a foot locker under a bunk while the garrison soldiers had apartments of their own. Galen slept.