The War for Profit Series Omnibus (5 page)

“Talk about family, why your family...”

“Let’s drop it. I’m in no mood to fight,” said Galen. For him, discussions about family and lineage were taboo. But with a comfortably retired mother and a big chunk of money in his own account, his family heritage would be quite respectable. But not until then, not for a while longer.

“So Spike, tell us more about this spacer/mercenary complex,” said Tad.

“Oh, it’s not so hard to figure out. Being in space, weightless or in control of your gravity is kind of comfortable. The only reason they have to come down is to get us. A necessary evil they have to put up with to earn a living. And in space this ship is quite a powerful weapon, but on the ground it’s kind of vulnerable to attack, dependent on ground units for protection. So they resent us for several reasons. Then there are the crews. Now they really don’t like us, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever meet any of them. We shouldn’t, anyway.”

“Attention passengers,” the steward’s voice came over the intercom, “we will be lifting off in thirty seconds. Because of our tight schedule we will be launching faster than normal and will burn at a rate of three Gs while leaving the planet’s gravity well. Then as we approach the jump point we will decelerate at two Gs. We will, however, give you fifteen minutes of weightlessness between one G burns. I advise you to make the most of those times to prepare for the second leg of the flight. There will be no one or zero G breaks after the turnaround. That will be all.”

“How long does this flight take?”

“About six hours to the turnaround, where we coast for a
while, and then maybe four hours as we decelerate to stop at the jump point.” Galen didn’t know, he was only guessing. The primary thrusters fired, gently lifting the drop ship into the air.

“Hey, this ain’t so bad, can hardly feel the extra gravity,” said Tad.

Spike said, “Yeah, you know the deal with them spacers. They just said that to scare us.”

Galen said nothing. He sensed a gradual but steady increase in the velocity of the drop ship. It lifted smoothly, taking nearly two minutes to reach two Gs. Then BAM, the secondary thrusters fired. The ship lurched upward, vibrating and groaning for a few seconds while it tore out of the last layer of the atmosphere. The three young mercenaries didn’t talk much, not accustomed to weighing three times as much as normal.

Galen wondered how the civilian passengers fared. After all, he was a strong, physically fit young soldier and he was not feeling well at all. It took every ounce of determination and discipline he could muster to keep from slumping over into unconsciousness. He felt as though his bowels were about to explode.

“What manner of torture is this?” said Tad through clenched teeth.

Galen envied him. At least Tad had strength enough to speak. The chronometer on the weapons control panel showed only twenty minutes elapsed since the torment began. Galen knew he couldn’t take another moment of it, but what could he do? Pride made him put up a front of being able to handle the stress.

A voice, this one less cultured and more strained than the steward’s, came over the intercom, “You there at weapons station two. What in the name of God are you doing? HEY YOU, I can see you on my monitor!”

Galen looked over Spike’s shoulder and saw a large red “2” stenciled over the weapons control panel.

“You mean us?” grunted Galen.

“Yes, you. Why don’t you lay on the floor like everybody else? You keep sitting up like that and you’ll break your stupid neck. Too late for you to get out your mat, but lying on the bare floor is better than being paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of your life.”

“Aw,” said another voice in the background, “they’re them tank jockeys. I figured they’d know better. Guess not.”

“You people lay down right now or I’ll jettison your carcasses at the turnaround point.”

The three friends lay on their backs on the floor of the weapons station for the remainder of the high-G burn, grateful but embarrassed. When the acceleration finally stopped and gravity inside the drop ship became zero, Galen had an intense feeling of falling that lasted a couple of minutes. He closed his eyes for a second but had to reopen them. The sensation of falling was too intense, too real. He had to focus his attention and hold tightly to the bulkhead and deck to keep from losing his grip on reality.

Spike and Tad seemed unaffected. They went to use the restroom. When they returned, Galen was somewhat relaxed. Galen saw Spike floating and mused over how even in zero-G, he seemed to be leaning on something, totally calm. Tad, of course, was performing gymnastics and trying as quickly as possible to develop a talent for floating. When Galen left the weapons station to visit the head, Tad was altering the speed of his body’s axial rotation by extending his arms to slow down, then bringing them in to allow himself to spin faster.

When Galen got back to the weapons station the hatchway wouldn’t open. It was locked. Galen beat on the door and could hear a rude voice coming over the intercom inside, “You got ten seconds to get that gun under control or I’ll de-pressurize your cabin!” Ten seconds later, the lock disengaged. Galen opened the hatch and floated in.

“What happened while I was gone?”

“We decided to get out our high-G pads for the deceleration towards the jump point,” said Spike.

“Somehow we let them float around too much. They bumped into the panel and activated the fire control system. That guy on the bridge got pretty hot about it. Anyhow, we’ll have about two minutes of half-G to get organized before full deceleration, meaning two Gs, sets in.”

“Oh,” said Galen.

An insistent beating came at the hatchway. It was the steward. “Here. Normally we don’t give these to military passengers, usually it isn’t necessary. Read it.” He handed Galen a single-page pamphlet entitled ‘Tips on Space Travel’ before he left, closing the hatch behind him.

“Now they tell us.”

It took six hours for the drop ship to reach the turnaround point, then another four hours of constant, non-stop deceleration at two Gs for it to reach the jump point.

The rest of the passengers floated freely about the drop ship while it waited at the jump point but the ship’s steward kept the hatchway to weapon station two secured. Galen wished he knew what was going on, wished he could peer out into the endless expanse of space. The viewport of the weapons station was covered at the moment and it would require the forbidden act of powering up the fire control system to open the blast shield.

Galen couldn’t sleep without gravity. Tad floated about the chamber, legs bent into a sitting position and his arms bent at the elbows, hands forward, like a mindless undead creature reaching for something.

Spike slept on his mat, strapped flat on his back to the floor by some elastic cords he found in the stowage compartment. Galen hadn’t slept more than a few winks over the past ten hours, catching naps during the one G burns but not sleeping at all during the two G deceleration. He just couldn’t.

Finally the klaxon sounded to warn the passengers that the jump was about to take place. Galen grabbed hold of the handles at either side of his seat and braced himself. Spike remained strapped to the floor, and Tad grabbed a beam spanning the ceiling.

Spike said, “Why’d they have to wake me up for this? I’m secured right here on the floor.”

“Not everybody is as secure as you,” said Tad.

“Not everybody can sleep out here in space,” said Galen.

Moments later the ship pushed into the point created by its jump point generator. Galen watched with curiosity as his reality was compressed into nothing and then expanded to infinity. For him, time stood still and ceased to exist. He felt nausea. Then all sensation left him. He was enveloped in darkness, his body left him and he had nothing but his own thoughts. So he thought, and thought and thought some more. He wished he had something to look at, something to feel, some way of writing things down, and someone to talk to. After one eternity he fought boredom by exploring exponential growth. He multiplied two by itself again and again, reaching farther and farther each time. He thought about the meaning of life for another eternity. Next he tried to find the end of pi, finding the end of twenty two divided by seven but wished he had an accurate measure of a circumference to divide by its diameter.

On it went, an infinite amount of time to ponder, existing as mere consciousness. A lesser man might have gone insane from boredom, thought Galen, but he held on to his concept of reality. He remembered the joy and suffering of his corporal life, pondered his true purpose, and simply waited patiently, for an eternity, for his own theory of personal actual existence to be proven.

Suddenly he was blasted with sensation. Bright searing light blazed into his tightly-closed eyes. His body was racked with sensation, pain, and when he screamed for the first time in an eternity his ears hurt. His mind hurt.

“Galen, what’s wrong?” he heard someone say. Spike, he remembered. Then his mind shut down, overloaded with sensory input.

Spike and Tad carried Galen when he came out of unconsciousness, an arm draped around each of their necks as they walked him to a booth at the spaceport bar.

“What happened?” Galen said.

Spike said, “You’re one of the lucky few individuals who experience a jump space syndrome, something like that. You’ve been out for two days. The ship’s medical technicians gave us something to revive you, but because you found space travel so disagreeable we decided to leave you in the infirmary, knocked out until the ride was over.”

“You got a couple of hours to get your head together before we meet our liaison. So, drink up and celebrate!”

Galen spoke, “We do not exist to simply indulge in leisure, to imbibe in harmful elixirs simply for pleasure. We must work hard, work together to-”

Spike cut him off, “We were told you’d talk like that for awhile. Now take my advice, trust me as a friend. Drink your ale and just relax. You can’t be all wigged out when the liaison meets us. They want warriors, not philosophers.”

“Yes, life is so simple for you, when you are caught up in its complexities. My challenge to you is introspection, look--”

“Shut up,” said Tad.

“But I have so much to tell you, so much wisdom to impart. Why do you not want to hear about the meaning of life? The purpose of the cosmos?” Galen was sure his friends were hooked by his opening statement.

Spike said, “Because we don’t want to become babbling idiots. Now you just sit here and act like us, and don’t think!”

Galen sat and studied reality, enjoyed the warm comfort of companions, relished the flavor and effect of the ale. That’s why he came back from eternity. He came back to reality for camaraderie. This was home, any place with people, actually any place with life. Galen was amazed how in only a few seconds he was able to figure himself out when an eternity hadn’t been long enough. A few deep thoughts slipped away, his mind letting go of the mighty concepts it had been holding. He was back, satisfied more than ever before.

“I propose a toast,” said Galen, raising his third glass of ale.

“Only if it ain’t to some transcendental number,” said Spike.

“It’s great to be back, you don’t know how long I’ve been gone,” said Galen.

“Toast,” said Spike and Tad, downing their drinks and slamming their glasses on the table along with Galen.

“Now let’s go find that liaison,” said Galen.

They left the bar and walked down a wide corridor, passed under a large sign that said, “Welcome to Mandarin Space.” They came to a set of gates blocking the corridor. They were labeled “Mandarin Citizens, Planetary,” “Confederation Citizens, (off-planet),” “Tourists,” and several other classifications. Finally Galen noticed the one marked “Military” and headed for it. It was controlled by a government army M.P. who stopped them and said, “You have the option of going through regular civil customs or my checkpoint. However, once you consent to this gate, you can’t change your mind and go back through another gate. Are you military?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, for which branch?”

“Uh, mercenary, Colonel Thiele’s Jasmine Panzer Brigade.”

“Good. Soldier to soldier, I advise you to pass through my station.”

“Those two are with me,” Galen indicated Tad and Spike.

“All three of you, anything to declare?”

“No.”

“Pass through my scanner and then give your paperwork to the liaison.”

They did so, laying their documents on a counter just inside the gate. An M.P. Lance Corporal looked over their documents, stamped the date and time of their arrival on their contracts and told them, “Wait in the lounge here behind me. We’ll have a bus coming to take you and the rest of the soldiers to initial processing. After that you’ll get assignment orders and they’ll send you to your unit. Although you are mercenaries, you should process with our regular troops and let us take care of you and get you to your unit. You have the option at this time to split off and find your own way, but that’s complicated and will cost you money.”

“No problem,” said Galen, “We’ll go through your system. A sure thing is a sure thing.” They waited about twenty minutes in the lounge. Approximately thirty government troops wearing class B dress uniforms were in the lounge and seemed friendly enough, but the mercenaries kept to themselves. The bus drove for a couple of hours, reaching a compound in the older part of the city. The group filed into a dark and musty classroom where a Gunny Sergeant in field uniform handed out in-processing forms and stood at the front of the room telling the soldiers how to fill them out, what to write in each block and then answered questions from the soldiers.

“Uh, Sir, what do we put?” asked Galen. “We’re mercenaries.”

“Except for personal identification information, leave everything else blank. Then write ‘MERCENARY’ in big block letters diagonally across the page, from the bottom left corner to the top right. Then hand the bottom copy of your contract in with the form. We all know where you’re going, so we’ll process you first and get you on your way.”

Subdued chuckling rose and fell among the government troops. Galen didn’t know if it was because of his status or destination. Obviously, the regulars knew something he didn’t. A clerk in class B dress uniform took their paperwork and returned five minutes later with travel passes and copies of the documents. He handed the documents to their respective owners and said, “Go out the back door, straight down the hallway to the exit and board the courtesy sedan at the curb. Show the driver your travel passes, he’ll know where to take you. It’s a three hour ride, so you may want to hit the latrine on your way out. Last door on the left before the exit.”

“Thank you,” Galen told him, “you’ve all been very helpful.”

“Not a problem. Good luck,” said the clerk.

They used the latrine along the way and waited outside. It was just starting to get dark on Mandarin, the sky glowing deep orange as the sun sank below the over-industrialized horizon. The mercenaries were picked up at the curb by a military sedan. It was painted light brown and had the words “Government Vehicle” stenciled on the doors.

“Don’t see too many of these around,” said Spike as he boarded the vehicle. All three got in the back seat.

“Your passes, men.” The driver was a man in his early twenties, pudgy and heavyset, wearing a class B uniform but without the necktie, collar open.

They handed their travel passes to him while Spike said, “This is an old design, a spirit-burning internal combustion engine, and a piston engine at that.”

The driver pulled onto the street and said, “This is a pretty common kind of car on this part of Mandarin, it’s the only kind I drive. They got some hovercraft, but those are for tactical units only. Sure would like to drive one though.”

“Then transfer to a tactical unit,” said Galen.

The driver looked over his shoulder to give a dirty look, as though Galen had just shot his mother. Obviously, this particular troop was strictly rear-echelon. He had not even the slightest desire to see combat. Or hard work, for that matter. He was just a glorified cab driver, soaking up government army pay. Small wonder, thought Galen, such a populous planet had to rely on foreign mercenaries to do their fighting for them.

“So driver, what’s the engine made of?” asked Spike.

“High-temp ceramics coated with Teflon. The staple fuel is alcohol but it’ll run on everything from cough syrup to methane. Acceleration is smoothed by varying the compression ratio. That gives an efficient and clean burn of just about anything you care to put in the fuel cell.”

“Hey, it’s quite a car.” Galen knew the design was outmoded and impractical by Ostreich standards, but he let the driver go on being proud of his car. After all, it was probably one of the finest on Mandarin. An hour later the driver stopped in front of a large residential structure, a three-story house surrounded by exotic landscaping and a decorative--but deadly--security fence.

“This will only take a minute,” said the driver. He then spoke into his personal communicator. “Sir, your ride is here…very good, sir.”

About two minutes later the front door of the mansion opened. They watched as a dashing Mandarin man, about forty years old and dressed in a finely tailored dress uniform bearing Colonel rank, was kissed full on the lips by a woman half his age. She wore a blue silken nightgown with a slit up the side revealing a shapely set of legs and the better part of a ripe buttock. Her silky jet black hair framed her face and stopped at her shoulders in a neat, straight line. Her almond eyes and delicate features beckoned to Tad, but he restrained himself. Galen already knew about Tad’s weakness for Asian women, so he gripped Tad’s shoulder tightly to prevent the red-haired mercenary from springing out of the car. Galen took only a passing aesthetic interest in the woman; he personally didn’t find Asian women attractive. Most of them were too short, too small for him.

The Colonel opened his own door and slid into the front seat to sit beside the driver. He handed the driver a brown paper sack rolled tightly at the top and said, “Here you go. Take me home, Nam.”

“Thank you sir. You really didn’t have to; I still have plenty left at home.”

“A deal’s a deal.”

“Yes sir. Still, sometimes I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”

“Sometimes. Who have we got in the back seat?”

“Oh, just some mercenaries. I’m taking them out to their regiment.”

“Grunts?” said the officer, turning to face the mercenaries.

“Tankers,” said Spike.

They rode in silence for another hour. Just beyond the outskirts of the city the driver pulled into the circular drive of another luxurious mansion. The man in the officer’s uniform got out, thanked the driver, and was met on the front steps by another lovely woman, this one closer to his own age. She was dressed fit for public view and simply looped her arm around his as they ascended the stairs.

“Had to work late again, dear.” mocked Tad. The driver simply drove away.

“What do you think our first duty will be?” said Spike.

“Probably just helping out with the mechanics until they have some openings in a tank platoon for us. One thing I don’t want is some panty waste job, like protocol driver or something,” said Galen, the last sentence spoken for the benefit of the driver.

Tad looked out the window. “No, they’ll probably put us right out in the field together in a recon troop. Give us a chance to show them what we’re made of. I heard the Panzers are getting old and need some young blood to get the unit moving again.”

The driver became smug and seemed to giggle under his breath when he hit bumps and potholes. Finally the long ride was over. “Here’s where you get out, Colonel Norbert Theil’s Jasmine Panzer Brigade’s welcoming center. Good luck.” They stood in the parking lot and faced the side of the building. The driver beeped his horn and waved as he drove off.

“Let’s see what they have for us,” said Galen, leading his buddies down a sidewalk and around to the left end of the building. It was still warm, a steamy level of humidity making the heat uncomfortable. Galen checked his personal communicator: almost midnight, local time.