The War for Profit Series Omnibus (46 page)

Long Shot: War for Profit Part Three

by

Gideon Fleisher

Copyright © 2012 Gideon Fleisher

Kindle Edition

All rights reserved.

Colonel Galen Raper, commander of the Jasmine Panzer Brigade, woke from his sedation and looked to his right. Karen was still out, slumped over on his right shoulder. They sat in the cockpit of the command jump ship in the row of seats behind the pilot and co-pilot.

The co-pilot/loadmaster, a Chief in his mid-thirties, turned toward Galen and said, “Welcome back, sir.”

Galen said, “Where are we?”

“We’re inbound to Ostreich.”

“I was out that long?”

“More than an hour, through two jumps. Those are some good drugs you two used knock yourselves out.”

Galen said, “The sedatives are a medical necessity. We’re sleepers; we’re part of that one thousandth of a percent of people who can’t be conscious when we pass through a jump point because it locks us in an eternal darkness and could make us crazy. You know that.”

The co-pilot said, “I know, but I’m at a point in my life where I’d like to have some time to do nothing but just ponder for a very long time.”

Galen said, “It was over six years ago but I remember it like it was yesterday. I suppose there was a good side to it, a chance to sort things out. Like being born again, but born with some life experience and the wisdom that comes with eons of deep thought. But it gets boring too, and then scary. It lasts forever, it seems. I thought I might have been dead. I sure as hell won’t do it again, once is more than enough.”

Karen stirred and sat up. She undid her lap belt and stood and stretched. “Where are we?”

The pilot, a Master Sergeant with a head covered in short gray hair said, “Burning in to Ostreich at one G. Half an hour until we land.”

“I’m going to the head, be right back.” Karen left the cockpit.

The co-pilot said, “If you don’t mind me saying, sir, that is one fine woman you got there.”

Galen said, “You’re talking about your Brigade Logistics Officer, a Lieutenant Colonel. But yeah, she’s a fine woman.”

“So when’s the wedding?”

Galen said, “We’re not officially engaged yet. We have to meet my mother first. Tradition, you know.”

The pilot said, “Are you planning a traditional wedding?”

Galen touched the Colonel rank pinned to the collar of his combat coveralls, pinned over the dark, un-faded patch of uniform material that still had a few loose threads in the holes surrounding it, the spot that had Command Sergeant Major rank sewn on it just a few hours ago. “Guess I have to now. Who ever heard of a Colonel not having a traditional wedding?”

The co-pilot said, “Well who ever heard of a twenty nine year old Colonel before? Anyway, she’ll look good, her olive skin contrasting her white wedding dress. And those big brown eyes looking out above that white lacy veil covering that flat little nose on that round face; it’ll be a sight to see.”

“A white dress? I thought—” the pilot cut himself off, looked back at Galen, his eyes wide, his mouth closed.

Galen said, “I know all about that, mister pilot. But it’s a white dress to symbolize purity of spirit, her past forgiven, a clean slate, that sort of thing.”

The pilot smiled and faced forward towards his instruments. “I didn’t think you liked small breasts.”

Galen lightly poked the pilot on the back of his head. “Shut up and drive.”

“Yessir.”

Karen returned and Galen stood to give her a hug. The top of her head came to just below his nose, something Galen liked. Hard for a man who was two hundred and ten centimeters tall to find a woman tall enough for him. He briefly enjoyed the scent of her dark brown hair, and then she leaned back and gazed into his blue eyes and ran her left hand through his close-cropped light brown hair, and then he released his hug and he sat back down and fastened his lap belt. She took the seat next to him.

“Zero G,” said the pilot. He turned off the ionic propulsion nacelles and retracted them into the belly of the drop ship. Weightless, he rotated the ship to face the planet below. “Welcome home, boss.”

Karen looked out the forward cockpit window. “It’s beautiful.”

Terraformed more than two millennia ago by privateering space pirates for use as a hidden base of operations, Ostreich was now a well-developed industrial planet that had factories producing the Galaxy’s finest weapons of land warfare and the Galaxy’s finest soldiers, mercenaries serving in professional units for hire. The oceans were green and blue, blue being the deep parts. The southern hemisphere held the majority of the land mass in three continents, but it was the smaller fourth continent in the northern hemisphere that held the capitol city of
Ostwind, and the several factories and cities around the factories, and the training areas for the mercenary academies and mercenary units. The great variety of terrain and climate of the planet’s smallest continent offered the best training opportunities. An elongated landmass extending from the arctic to the tropics, with mountains and valleys and coastlines, truly, a unit could train in every type of terrain and climate known to support human life, all within the same ten-day training exercise. And with its gravity of one point two Gs, Ostreich grew strong people.

The pilot sent registration to the
Ostwind City spaceport and received clearance and a flight path. He tilted the nose down and lined up with the path before engaging the thrusters to push the ship into the outermost layers of the atmosphere. Galen felt the gravity take hold, then the thrust of the ship as it began powered atmospheric flight. The wings extended to their mach two increment, then after a few minutes the pilot decelerated to below mach one and extended the wings fully. The city was visible ahead, the landing strip of the spaceport growing larger as they approached. The pilot made a few minor course corrections, slowed to a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour, lowered the landing gear and set the ship down. It trundled along, thrust deflectors reducing its forward speed to twenty kilometers per hour. Then the pilot stopped the ship, rotated it, and then backed into a hangar. Stopped, the pilot lowered the rear cargo ramp and shut down the ship’s flight systems, leaving the Auxiliary Power Unit engaged to power the ship’s minor subsystems.

The co-pilot said, “Thank you for flying with Jasmine Space Lines.”

Karen said, “As small as this ship is, why isn’t it called a boat like all the other spacecraft this size?”

The pilot said, “Size doesn’t matter. To be a ship, a spacecraft has to be capable of unassisted interstellar travel. Anything less is just a boat.”

Karen stood and stretched. “So anything with a jump drive is a ship.”

“Well,” said the pilot, “Supraluminal and Faster Than Light drive counts too, if it’s capable of reaching the next star. Just better hope there’s nothing but blank space between you and your destination, using that old junk.”

Galen gripped Karen’s shoulders and faced her toward the door and gave a gentle push and said, “Pilot, you’re boring the lady. We’re out of here, have a nice day and thanks for the ride.”

The pilot said, “Yessir. See you next week. Call me when you’re ready to leave, we can take off with as little as four hours notice.”

Galen looked over his shoulder as he left the cockpit, “In seven days we’ll be on our way to Mandarin. Until then, enjoy Ostreich.”

Karen and Galen walked along the catwalk that ran along the length of the jump drive generator, climbed down the ladder at the end, checked their cabins one last time and walked down the cargo ramp to exit the rear of the ship. They walked to the back of the hangar and exited there to wait for the spaceport tram to come take them to the passenger terminal. Galen checked his wrist chronometer: 14:22 hours local time. When the tram arrived, Galen realized he had no coins to pay for the ride. The only other passenger was an elderly man wearing a business smock. He handed a coin to each of them so they could get on.

“Thank you,” said Karen.

“Think nothing of it. Someone did the same for me in the past, and some day you’ll help someone else. You just get here?”

“I just got back from a contract. I’m going to see my mother and introduce my girlfriend.”

The passenger pointed at Galen’s and Karen’s brand new rank pins. “Looks like you did pretty well on that contract; it looks like you just got pinned.”

“Oh yes,” said Galen. “We did just fine.”

“This is my stop.” The passenger got off.

“Nic guy,” said Karen.

Galen placed his right hand on his side arm. “There are some nice people here. Most everyone is armed, and most everyone has military experience; I guess that makes most everyone more polite. I just need to remember to get some coins.” When the tram passed terminal fifteen Galen pressed the ‘next stop’ button and he and Karen got off at terminal fourteen.

The terminal was little more than a walkway four meters wide, brightly lit, with a polished concrete floor, benches along each side, sparse metal framing, a sturdy metal roof above and floor to ceiling windows and docking gates for drop boats about every fifty meters along the right side. At one gate, half a dozen passengers waited. A medium-sized drop boat was pulling up. Galen walked briskly along, Karen keeping pace. The terminal ended and they passed through the automated customs checkpoint and walked into the main passenger greeting area of the spaceport. Not too crowded, but still, hundreds of people. Some milling around the large open area, browsing shops, lined up to reserve flights, seated on benches, or just waiting to greet arriving passengers.

Someone shouted, “Hey Killer!”

Galen heard the familiar voice, loud, to his right and looked. A tall middle aged woman with wheat straw colored shoulder-length hair framing a ruddy face, broad shoulders and large breasts and wide hips, dressed in a dark blue dress that reached from her ankles to her neck, a five centimeter wide black glossy belt cinching in her waist, with a sidearm holstered on the right side, a black jacket worn open over that, and a thick gold chain necklace hanging outside her dress.

Galen walked briskly toward her and said, “Mom!”

She held her arms out and Galen walked into her and they embraced, Galen patting her back. After a moment they stopped hugging and stepped apart.

“Welcome home, son!”

“Mom,” Galen continued to smile.

His mother said, “Look here, this is Robert.”

Galen noticed the man standing next to his mother, a man near her age, with a full beard and dark slacks and a black leather jacket worn over a dark green flannel shirt. His graying hair was still mostly black. Galen shook his hand.

Robert grinned with a perfect set of white teeth. “Hello and congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Galen gestured toward Karen. “This is Karen Mitchell. We’re a couple.”

Mom shook Karen’s hand, and then Robert said, “I’ll go get the car,” and walked away.

Galen and Karen followed Mom across the terminal to the exit. They waited outside for Robert. There was a bit of a chill in the air as they waited, standing on the curb of the broad sidewalk. The metal roof four meters above channeled a breeze, making it just chilly enough Galen wished he had a jacket.

“No luggage?” said Mom.

“No,” said Karen. “We flew straight here from Juventud. My name’s Karen, by the way.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I was just so glad to see my son, I was distracted. My name’s Nancy but you should call me
Nan.” Nan extended her hand and shook with Karen.

Galen said, “Is that him?”

An air car approached; a nice one. Glossy black with chrome trim, windows tinted so dark they looked black, a long sliding door along the side. The air car stopped and settled to the ground and the door slid open. Galen got in first, followed by Karen and then Nan. Robert was seated in the back.

Galen said, “Who’s driving?”

“Nobody,” Robert grinned. “Home, James.”

The door slid shut and the air car rose to ten centimeters off the street and drove away from the spaceport.

Nan said, “Robert is an engineer. He designed this car. I, however, had to cut through the red tape to get it licensed.”

Robert said, “
Nan’s a real treasure. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“Ah,” said Karen, “What’s your specialty?”

“Proteum,” Robert winked, “but I’ve also been dabbling in reverse engineering and compressed micro-data recovery.”

Karen said, “That sounds like an interesting job.”

Robert leaned back, looked left and right, eyes wide. “Job? Who said anything about a job?”

Nan
said, “Oh stop playing, Robert. He’s retired from working thirty years at Gravatech. Now he just messes around in his workshop as a hobby.”

Galen said, “Making things like this car that drives itself.”

Robert said, “No, this car doesn’t drive itself, it can’t drive. That would be illegal. I’m driving it, or rather, I drove home from the spaceport before and it’s just following the same route, and all the safety devices are connected and coordinated to ensure the vehicle has a safe trip. It’s like that one feature that takes control of the car if the driver falls asleep, and the other feature that prevents collisions, and so on and so forth, all taking turns controlling the car for brief periods of time. It’s like a safety feature that makes the car not wreck if the driver decides to sit in the back and have a conversation instead of driving. But a car that drives itself, that would be illegal.”