The War for Profit Series Omnibus (61 page)

I looked at my crew. “Thirteen hundred tomorrow. You’re off until then. I’ll call you if I need anything before that.”

I left the motor pool through the walk-through gate. The Mandarin couple that ran the snack stand were closing up, the doors open, the woman hosing off the umbrella tables while the man swept the floor inside. He let me buy a bottle of ale which I drank as I walked to my barracks. I had just dropped the bottle in the trash can outside the main entrance when my communicator buzzed. The text said, “Brief. Conference room. 00:00 hours.”

I still had more than forty minutes to burn so I dragged my tired self over to the conference room and slouched in my conference room chair and took a brief nap. I woke to the clap of a single pair of hands.

“Wake up!” Captain Blythe stood at the head of the table. “We’ll get started in a minute.” He moved aside and sat at the screen controller. I looked around. The staff was there, the unit commanders as well. In various states of wakefulness, sipping coffee. I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee and sat back down.

Just then the BN XO entered and moved to stand behind his chair. Then Stallion Six entered, wearing combat coveralls. The XO said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Battalion Commander.”

We stood and presented a hand salute and held it. Six returned the gesture and said, “Take your seats.” We sat. He stood by the presentation screen and nodded at Captain Blythe. The Battalion logo showed on the screen, then an overhead view of the Milky Way Galaxy. “If you haven’t figured it out already, we’re going on a contract.”

“Hoorah.” The A company commander.

Six said, “We’ll start with a brief on geography. Major Wood, if you will?”

Major Wood stood. The screen zoomed in on a star system near the bottom center of the screen. “The planet Tumbler. From the nearest jump point it will take us at least three months to reach it at subluminal speed. I project four months, to be on the safe side. We’ll go into stasis for most of the trip to preserve combat skills and prevent boredom. But the last two weeks we’ll be up, acclimatizing. The ships atmosphere will gradually change to match that of Tumbler so that we can hit the ground ready to go to work.”

The picture changed to a view of the planet that took up most of the screen. “Tumbler’s axis is perpendicular to its star. Sort of. It keeps its orientation, so that during one point in its orbit its North Pole points nearly directly at the sun, and at the opposite end of the orbit, its South Pole points at the sun. And twice, the sun is directly above its equator. Viewed from the planet itself, the sun’s path seems to tumble, hence the name Tumbler. And its orbit takes seven hundred and forty two Terran Standard days, making it’s year more than two years. The gravity is point nine five, so…not too bad. Its rotation is eleven hours, spinning pretty fast, and its magnetic field is pretty strong. Non-linear comms will be a real headache at longer ranges.”

The picture on the screen changed to a satellite picture of a section of the planet’s surface. A large green plain, burnt desert encroaching at one end and retreating ice at the other. “What happens here is the livable zone moves with the coming and retreating of the sun. Some of these people have been here for about fifteen hundred years, sent out to settle this planet by the Terran Empire. They were largely abandoned when the empire collapsed, mostly because the jump point is so far away and because they are barely scratching out a living and have nothing to sell. They have mobile habitats and follow large herds of grazing animals, keeping up with the livable zones, following the track of the tumbling sun. They also cultivate some fast-growing fruits, grains and vegetables in limited quantities.”

Six said, “Thank you, XO. Now S-3, Major Deskavich.”

The XO sat and the S-3 stood. The screen showed a cylindrical space craft with large solar arrays extended from each end, the cylinder that made up the center rotating. At one end, several ionic propulsion nacelles were mounted to the base ring, stationary and thrusting. In the background was Tumbler. The bits of light that escaped from the thousands of tiny windows, and the relative size of the planet and stars in the background, demonstrated the immense size of the space craft.

Major Deskavich said, “Our employers. What we see here is their generation ship. They left Terra more than two thousand years ago, right after Terra came under a single government. They didn’t like that government so they built a generation ship and came here. But jump points had not yet been discovered, the existence of space fabric had not yet been proven and therefore they had an incomplete understanding of the laws of movement through space and time.” He paused to sip his coffee.

The A company commander said, “So they’re stupid.”

The S-3 glared at her. She twirled her unbound black hair and smiled at him. He smiled back.

“No, they are anything but stupid. No more stupid than the people who used hot air balloons to fly long before the existence of atoms and molecules were discovered. Back when air was thought not to exist because its existence was not yet proven. Long before the laws of thermodynamics were formulated. They set out to travel space, successfully, when space fabric was not even a concept. No, they are pretty damned smart. Now for their plan. They set out long ago with very basic data about Tumbler. Now they have arrived at Tumbler and it is their intention to slow the planet’s rotation and tilt its axis and increase the speed of its orbit. Using the energy of its rotation, taking it to…well like I said, they are pretty damned smart. Smarter than me, for sure.”

Master Sergeant Gates, The C company commander, raised his hand. The S-3 pointed at him.

He stood and said, “Well, who’s stopping them?”

“The people on the ground. When the new guys land to set up the machinery to alter the planet, the old guys interfere.”

The C company commander sat down.

Six stood and tapped the S-3 on the shoulder. “I got this.”

The S-3 sat.

Six cleared his throat. “Listen up, here’s the deal. Our employers are smart. Scientists with advanced degrees in everything you can imagine. But they are old and young at the same time. They took off from Terra and while en route they monkeyed around with near light speed and then while they were travelling learned to slip past light speed for brief periods. For them, inside their ship, time passed slowly relative to the rest of us. Instead of being a generation ship, it became a time capsule. They perceive us as more advanced and they will have plenty of questions. To them, we are advanced beings from the future.” Six smiled and winked. “I don’t want you to look stupid so I’ll explain the basics.” The image on the screen changed to a schematic of a jumpship generator. Six pointed at it. “I don’t understand none of that, but I do understand the basic principle. Anybody knows what happens to an aircraft when it passes from subsonic to supersonic?”

Captain Blythe said, “The flight controls are reversed?”

“Right. So when we go from subluminal to superluminal, the controls are reversed. When we pass through a jump point, the flow of time stops outside our ship and we instantly appear at a far point. Now, who knows what governs our destination when we jump?” Silence. Six smiled. “That’s right, nobody knows. We just know that entering a point at just the right angle always brings us out at the same point on the other end. And inversely, to get back to the first point. Establishing jump points is a crap shoot, but once established, they’re predictable. Now on to the next item. Our language.”

Six took a sip of his coffee. “Can anybody explain the origins of Standard?”

Captain Stovall, the Bravo company commander, said, “It’s derived from English.”

“And can you explain why?”

“Well, it was recorded. Written down. And it incorporated words and phrases from other languages.”

“Right. And what else?”

“Well,” Stovall squinted. “Entertainment at the beginning of the digital age. All the entertainment, the vids, the games, the literature, was all in English for the most part. Anyone who wanted to understand it, enjoy it, had to learn English.”

“Right. They tried Common, a fused language taking grammar and vocabulary from all languages, but it never caught on because it meant everything would have to be translated into it and then everyone would have to learn the new language. And the language Trade, that was strictly for business, but was so convoluted with lawyer-speak, no contract composed in Trade would hold up in any court. Then a stroke of genius amongst the linguists. They took English and re-named it Standard. Common just sounded so common, Trade sounded so greedy, but Standard… everybody wants to meet a standard; Standard was the language that facilitated Terra’s first recognized global government. Changing the name from English to Standard made accepting it easier, took away any political stigma. And in the databases, the overwhelming majority of information was already in Standard. That’s why today, right here and right now, we can read this:” Six pointed at the screen.

Captain Blythe changed the image to a page of printed text.

He pointed at me. “Read that.”

I said, “In the Beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth…”

Blythe changed the image.

I said, “Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny…”

“And this:”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be…”

“Okay,” Six said. “I think we all get the point. But our employers were adamantly against the formation of a world government on Terra. That’s why they built a ship and took off, and that’s why they speak French.”

The A company commander said, “They came from France?”

“No. They came from
Canada. So they speak their own kind of French. But they also have a working knowledge of Standard, which they think of as English. We’ll be able to talk.”

I asked, “What about the indigs, the people on the ground?”

Six said, “They speak Standard, which is good. I can explain things to them in no uncertain terms. Three, your turn.”

Six moved to his seat and the S-3 took his place beside the screen. The image changed to rolling grassland and panned around to show vehicles and mobile shelters and a herd of grazing animals off in the distance. “They scratch out an existence chasing large herds of Beefalos around. They go out ahead and seed grass and veggies and stuff into the ground as the snow and ice pack recedes, and chase the herds away from the encroaching heat at the other end. They generally trek twenty five thousand kilometers either side of the equator, over a period of about two Standard years. They operate in several confederated groups or enclaves and generally get along with each other. But make no mistake, they do have military capability. Occasionally they settle their differences through force of arms in limited exchanges that emphasize conservation of forces.”

Six stood, the staff stood. “We’ll talk about that later. For now, all you need to know is we leave here in four days. Starting tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours, we’re in field uniform. Our mission is we’re tied down on those drop boats and we blast out of here no later than sixteen hundred hours Friday.”

He looked around the room, eye contact with everyone there. He came to attention and said, “Hundred Percent!”

The staff saluted and said, “Hundred Percent!”

Six returned the gesture and strode out of the room.

I spent that next afternoon at my desk deciding which troops I had to pull out of schools, which ones I could leave in. It could have been a very easy task. All I had to do was pull them all out. Notification of a contract takes precedence over schools, after all. But I’m not that kind of person. I looked at the assigned duty positions of the people I had in school, looked across the Brigade for troops qualified to re-fill those slots, made requests. I couldn’t look through the Mechanized Infantry Battalion’s roster, of course, because they were going to Tumbler with us. Contacted the individual troops first to see if they wanted to do it, then contacted their Battalion commanders for approval, ran the whole mess through Brigade. Swapping out troops, trading mine for theirs so that the individual troops could complete whatever leadership or skill training they were taking. When the sun set and the work day ended, I’d only had to pull one troop from school. She was a former Stallion gunner who was training to make a lateral job skill change to medical technician. I assured her she would be put right back in school after the Battalion returned. She didn’t seem to mind. She even said the main reason she’d wanted to change over to being a medic was because it meant going on more contracts, so that worked out just fine. But I had to put her in Alpha Company and she clearly had a Type B personality.

Next morning I went to the motor pool with my crew and prepped my two tanks for load-out. Double checked everything, every nut and bolt, every gizmo and widget, ran built-in tests and hooked up the diagnostic machine and tested everything. And we replaced a road wheel, the left inner road wheel number three. It was out of round, slightly egg-shaped. Not really a problem for training but for combat, not acceptable. Finally I grabbed a mechanic to help drive and we lined the two tanks up at the paint booth and got sprayed to match the terrain of Tumbler’s habitable areas. A dull, non-reflective green. With the vehicles parked in the staging area by the spaceport, I called it a day and released my troops and went to eat at the chow hall and went to my room. 19:24 hours. Not a bad day. I spent a couple of hours packing my bags and then went to sleep.

***

Friday came and I humped my bags half a klick down to my vehicle and stowed them in the bustle rack. Trooper
Caldwell was already there in the driver seat of ORF-1, Cpl Parks in the hatch of ORF-2 behind me, a mechanic driving. I took my seat and put on my helmet and connected the commo cord. “Parks, you got me?”

“Roger, Sergeant. Not much longer.”

The cargo truck in front of us pulled away, out the gate of the staging area and across the tarmac of the spaceport. We followed. I looked at all the drop boats lined up along the tarmac. One for each platoon, approximately. For two battalions plus support, plus supplies. I guessed there must be forty of them. Certainly less than sixty, the maximum number of drop boats the transport ship could carry. Soon the truck drove up into the back end of a landing boat. (They call them boats because, to be classified as a ship, a space craft has to be capable of unassisted interstellar travel.) There were four pallets of supplies and two cargo trucks already on board. A loadmaster was there and ground-guided me into position inside the aerospacecraft. ORF-2 parked right beside me and then the cargo ramp folded up into the overhead. I dismounted and helped Parks tie down the tank, the loadmaster came and checked the tie-down and gave a thumbs-up and then I got back in the tank and shut the hatch and buckled myself in. That was what we all did; it was SOP.

The drop boat taxied out to the runway, trundled along, lifted off the ground. I heard the landing gear come up, the boat tilted up at a 400 mil angle and accelerated. Then I heard the wings retract, then hard acceleration through mach one. And again, the wings retract a little more, then mach two, and then three, the wings all the way in, mach four and beyond. Then the sensation of weightlessness.

Then the call from the boat’s load master, “We are docked. At this time, move to the transport ship.”

I popped my hatch and shoved off toward the front door. I pulled myself up through the stairwell past the boat’s crew quarters and through the docking collar, into the transport ship. I made my way through the corridor past the ship’s crew quarters and beyond the mess and recreation areas, past the training simulators and arrived at my assigned stasis pod compartment. My driver and gunner and four cooks and about half the mechanics of the HHS Company support platoon arrived. I watched as the ship technicians sealed one troop after the next into the coffin-like stasis pods. Being the senior ranking troop in that compartment meant I verified each pod after it was sealed, and then I was sealed in last. I lay in my pod and a technician gave me a shot in the left deltoid and I felt numb all over and drifted off and barely noticed as they closed the lid.

***

“Wake up, sunshine.”

The sound was warbly, like it was coming through water. I looked through blurry eyes. It was Stallion Six. I was coming out of stasis, I remembered. I sat up. “Morning, sir.”

He extended his hand and helped me out. “I’m going around to each chamber. Get up, you’ll rouse all the troops here. Briefing in the mess hall, nineteen hundred hours.”

I stood, barely. “Gravity?”

“We’re braking in at half a G. You’re fine. See you soon.”

“Yessir.”

He turned and left. I went around and put each pod in ‘resuscitate’ mode, went back around and woke up each troop when the lid slid aside. I helped them to their feet and told them about the brief at 1900 in the chow hall. Then I went to the berthing area assigned for HHS Company and looked for my name on a door. Finally I found it, in the last place I looked. All the way at the end of the hall I found my room. It was tiny, a cube, each side the length of the bed, but it was a single room at least and had its own bathroom and body cleaner. Or head, I guess that’s what they call it on a space ship. I checked my wrist chronometer and saw I had time. I went to my vehicle and grabbed my rucksack and took it back to my room and unpacked it, put the clothes in the compartment under the mattress and put my hygiene gear in the bathroom. I went to the chow hall and took a tray and ate. Cpl Parks saw me and sat down.

“Hey, Sergeant Slaughter.”

“Hey yourself. Not hungry?”

“Already ate. Waiting for the meeting.”

I checked the time. Ten minutes. Captain Blythe was already checking his vid gear on the screen at the front. There were smaller screens around the chow hall, all showing the same thing, the Battalion logo. His voice resonated throughout the hall. “Check, check.”

I gave him a thumbs-up, he waved back.

More troops crowded in, standing room only, the walls lined. Then Stallion Six entered. Captain Blythe stood and said, “At Ease!”

The mess hall became silent. Stallion Six bellowed, “Carry on,” and made his way from the entrance to the table by the screen where Captain Blythe sat. “Welcome back to the world of the living. You’ve been asleep for ninety three days, so I’m sure you’re well rested.”

Subdued chuckles came from the crowd. “Okay, listen up. Here’s the deal. I’m Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Camacho, and I’m in overall command of this contract. Two weeks from now we hit the dirt. Starting now the atmosphere and gravity on board will gradually change to match that of the planet Tumbler, where we will conduct operations for a period of not less than six months. During these next two weeks we will train up for our new primary dismount weapon, specifically designed to counter the threat posed by the indigenous peoples on Tumbler. But you’ll get plenty about that later. May I now introduce to you the commander of the Mechanized Infantry Battalion, Major Delagiacoma.”

(Pronounced Day La Jack Uh Moe.) He was a little more than a meter and a half tall, a round olive face with coal black eyes, a thick black mustache covering his upper lip, his thick black hair short enough for regulations but combed with a noticeable part on the left side. The Major eased forward to take Six’s place, the vid showing him in the center of the screen. “Okay, I command the infantry on this mission. We’ve supported armor before and I see many familiar faces here wearing Tanker coveralls, so I don’t think there will be a whole lot of coordination problems.”

Six came forward again, Major D stepped aside. “Make no mistake, he is the Mech commander and my second in command. Anything he tells you to do, it’s just like I said it. Now for our schedule. We’ve split into shifts by company, rotating through skill training in the simulators and the fitness center. Do what you like otherwise, but don’t be absent from your appointed place and time of duty. The schedule is lax, so pay attention and do what you need to do. Any questions?”

Nothing.

“Okay. Company Commanders, take charge of your units.”

Infantry Company Commanders yelled out their unit call signs and locations.

“Regulators, Fitness center!”

“Bulldawgs, forward rec room!”

“Cobras, out the door and to the right, down the hall to the end!”

“Apaches, follow me to the lounge!”

The tankers stayed in the chow hall and formed four groups, each facing their respective commander. I stood with the group facing Captain Thews, the HHS Company Commander. She was lean and tall and had her yellow hair pulled back in a bun. Her green eyes were set wide in her broad, square face that seemed a bit too big for her body.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our schedule is as follows: Stand-to in full war gear at zero four hundred, chow, then simulator training. After that, you’re released until fifteen hundred hours. Be at the fitness center in athletic attire for an hour of physical fitness training. Other than that, your time is yours.” She stepped aside and Master Sergeant Jones, the HHS Executive Officer took her place.

He was tow-headed and broad shouldered and barrel-chested and his hips were as wide as his shoulders, above thick legs. And he was just over two meters tall. He ran a large, meaty hand over the buzz-cut hair on his scalp. “Okay. You got a lot of free time. Unless you miss your training. I get bored easy, so please do me the favor of missing some training so I can spend my free time messing with you. Give me something to do. Any volunteers? Anyone want to spend their free time amusing me?” He ran his gaze over the troops. “I think we understand each other but I’ll make it more clear. Miss any training at all and you’ll report to me and I’ll make your life miserable.”

Captain Thews stepped up on his right side. “All right. Dismissed.”

I wandered out of the chow hall toward my room. I was thoroughly confused. I was the Tasking, Training, Movement and Schools NCO for the Battalion. There was a lot of training going on and I had nothing to do with setting it up. As I approached my room I saw a Sergeant in infantry coveralls standing outside my door. She had dark brown hair worn loose to frame her face. Light brown eyes, a small nose, a soft curved chin. Pleasant smile as I approached, her coverall zipper down to the middle of her chest, the nude-tone t-shirt underneath covering the naughty bits but the neck hole itself stretched over time now showed the upper third of the boobs. Good ones, not too big, round and firm…

“Sergeant Slaughter,” she spoke.

I smiled. Couldn’t help it. “Who are you?”

“Your counterpart. I’m the training NCO for the Mech Battalion.”

“That explains a lot.” The top of her head came to about the same height as my eyebrows. I deliberately kept my eyes on her face. I noticed that her ears stuck out through her hair, just a little. Not too much. I smelled Honeysuckle.

“I came out of stasis three days ago and developed the training plan. I need to coordinate initial movement with you, for when we hit the ground.” She stepped close to me. “Everybody wants to be the first one down. The Commander wants us to work it out but nobody else needs to know we’re the ones making the drop plan. Kind of secret.”

“I understand.” Order of battle for the landing. There were practical concerns dictated by doctrine, of course. But there was also the matter of bragging rights. The first troop, squad, tank crew, which unit or company… they would be talking big smack for a long time. They’d be able to say for the rest of their lives, that on the Tumbler contract they were first in. And maybe last out, if it worked out that way. A huge thing best left to ethical disinterested third parties. Training NCOs. We training NCOs were lonely individuals with few friends, isolated individuals awash in a sea of disingenuous opportunist trying to solicit advantage and favor. For someone so closely monitored by the Commander personally, it would be career suicide to grant even the tiniest favor. I felt closeness to her, sympathy, someone who understood. I opened my door. “Let’s talk.”

She stepped into my room and sat on the bed and pulled out her communicator and connected it to the wall screen. I closed the door and sat next to her. Before I could read her name tag she shrugged off the top of her coveralls and tied the sleeves loosely around her waist. I did the same.

She pointed at the screen. “The manifest. The boats can’t be moved or reloaded so we only have these eight at the front to choose from.”

I read. “Easy. The third platoon of your Cobra Company.”

“We drop in pairs. Pick one of your tank platoons.”

I studied the manifest. Three to choose from, all from HHS. Only one of them had tanks, my tanks. But with only one crew, my crew. Not sound doctrine at all. Another held four ground-mobile anti-aircraft guns. Lightly armored wheeled vehicles. But with infantry support they would be safe and they had extended sensor range and superior communications gear. I chose them.