The War for Profit Series Omnibus (69 page)

“Hey!”

I looked up. Captain Blythe sat on my turret and looked down at me. I sat up. “What’s up, Sir?”

“We’re first in line for platoon services. Ten minutes, we move to the maintenance pad and run through.”

I stood. “Good deal, Sir. We can use it.”

He said, “Do we have a problem?”

“I’ll be honest. It’s a big change for me but I can handle it. You’re a fine leader and I’m not blowing smoke. I haven’t adjusted to the point where I can brown nose you yet.”

He smiled and nodded. “All that crap you gave me when I was in a line company and you were high and mighty at Battalion, all those donuts I had to lay at your feet when I was just the wee little A-3, I’m slowly deleting that from my buffer. You’re an excellent tank chief.”

I was about to extend my hand for a shake. Held back. He was the boss; it was his place to offer the handshake. He stood, extended his hand and I shook it. “Yessir.”

He gave an involuntary closed-mouth smile. I could tell he was trying to keep a blank face. He turned and climbed off my tank. I took my seat in the cupola and looked down at Parks. He was slumped over, forehead on the weapons status panel. I tapped his right shoulder with my left foot. He sat up, stretched and rubbed his eyes. I put on my helmet and hooked it up.

“
Caldwell, you awake?”

“Roger, Sergeant. Stay alert, stay alive.”

“Okay here’s the deal. When ORF-2 and A-13 come off the line, you follow them. We’re going in for platoon service.”

“Good deal.”

I heard the drive motors come on line. The other two tanks backed up fifty meters and faced toward the maintenance pad and moved toward it. Caldwell went forward and made a sharp turn to get behind them. Two Command Post Carriers took our place on the line, gunners in the hatch standing behind swivel-mounted rapid fire rail guns, same model as the one in my cupola.

Ground-guided by mechanics, we pulled into the inverted half-pipe maintenance bay tent and parked, five meters separating each tank. We removed all our bags and personal gear and stowed it in lockers off to the left side of the bay. I stripped off my war gear and put it in my locker as well, then pulled my mechanic’s coveralls out of my bag and looked around for a place to change. I heard two landing boats come in and taxi along the air strip.

Captain Blythe tapped my shoulder. I turned to face him. He said, “You won’t need the coveralls. You’re going up top with Major Deskavich.”

I scratched my head. “Sir?”

“Go see Major Deskavich; he’s in the dome.”

“Sir.”

“What?”

I took a deep breath. “This isn’t helping me adjust to being your loyal subordinate.”

He squared his shoulders. “As long as your heart’s in the right place.” He turned and walked off.

I looked at Corporal Parks. “You get to supervise services. Have fun.”

Parks had his coveralls in his left hand. “I am an expert and a professional.” Then a smirk.

I punched his shoulder. “Smartass.”

I put my coveralls away, found my soft cap and put it on. As an afterthought I separated my pistol belt from my combat vest and strapped it around my waist, moved the scabbard for the bayonet on the left back a few centimeters, checked the load on the pistol and then went to the TOC and entered the dome. Major Deskavich was there, seated at the AV control table. He looked up and waved me over.

“What’s up, Sir? Heard I was going up top.”

He smiled. “Have a seat.”

I grabbed a fold-up chair and sat in front of him.

“Sergeant Slaughter, you’re not just going up top, you’re going to the orbital habitat, with me.”

Huh. The habitat. “For how long?”

“As long as it takes. I think it’ll be about a week, maybe longer. But not more than ten days.”

“So, what are we supposed to do up there?”

Major Deskavich sighed. “We’re supposed to plead our case to our employers that they owe us four times as much money, plus damages, and an officially published apology.”

“Ha!” oops. My big mouth. “Good luck with that, Sir.”

“We have more than luck. We have full documentation. Your job will be de-scrambling a mess of data and documents into a vid presentation, and then you’ll narrate it in person. You’ll present it to the French ruling triumvirate, their highest court.”

My shoulders slumped. “Sir, I’ll do it but it’ll give me bad breath. It’s a shit sandwich.”

“You’ll have help.” Emily’s voice. She’d snuck up behind me. “I’ve already started sorting the data.”

“That’s good news.” I turned my head to the right. She walked around to stand by Major Deskavich. “We need a slant, a tone.”

She shrugged. The Major looked away.

“Okay,” I said, “We’ll begin with the losses incurred by our unit, the suffering inflicted on them by Indig atrocities, bios of some of the more loveable troops who were killed, interviews with our more severely wounded troopers, then a memorial for Stallion Six, some footage of him with his fiancé and his siblings, nieces and nephews. A real tear-jerker.”

The major nodded. “I knew you were the best choice for this job. A great opening.”

“Sure!” I stood, excited now. “Then we’ll get into the original negotiations, the terms of the contract, the expectations based on information—”

The Major raised his left hand, palm toward me. “I got that part. You just work on your opening. Ten to twelve minutes.”

“Yessir, got it. When do we blast out of here?”

“Be on the boat in half an hour. Come as you are, everything you’ll need is up there or on my communicator.”

Emily slapped my right shoulder as she walked by. “Let’s go now, get a good seat.”

We went outside. Troops who’d healed enough to return to duty came out of one boat, more supplies and repair parts and ammunition from the other. I stood by with Emily and watched as the band aids loaded wounded troops onto one boat, the wrenches loaded the stripped chassis of four flak gun carriages onto the other. We went in the boat loaded with flak gun chassis and moved to the front and climbed the ladder up to the cockpit and took seats on the left side behind the co-pilot and fastened out seatbelts.

The pilot said, “Who are you?”

Emily said, “Sergeants Dickinson and Slaughter.”

The pilot checked his manifest. “Okay.”

Major Deskavich came and took a seat in the row behind the pilot. He said, “You’re dropping us off at the habitat first.”

The pilot nodded, then typed furiously at his terminal, had the co-pilot look it over, sent a message to the transport ship, got a response. Then he turned to Major Deskavich and said, “No problem, Sir.”

The co-pilot got up and went to the cargo area, returned with the loadmaster and two aerospacecraft crew, they took their seats and buckled in, the co-pilot gave a thumbs-up to the pilot and the boat taxied to the end of the airstrip, turned, trundled along for a few seconds and then accelerated forcefully. The boat left the ground, the landing gear retracted, the boat tilted nose-up at an eight hundred mil angle and then blasted at four Gs, retracted its wings to the first increment, broke the sound barrier, retracted the wings some more, blasted through mach 2, and then 3, wings in all the way, Mach 4 and beyond. Beyond the atmosphere. Once free of Tumbler’s gravity well, the boat accelerated at a smooth one G.

Major Deskavich said, “That never gets old.”

I said, “It was a hard takeoff.”

The co-pilot said, “It’s a short air strip, and unimproved. Wait until you see what it’s like landing there. That’s rough stuff.”

The boat turned sixteen hundred mils to the right. The orbital habitat that had been the Frog’s generation ship was huge and became more huge as we approached. Seeing it for real was a spiritual experience.

“Halfway there,” said the pilot. He rotated the boat around thirty two hundred mils and began braking toward the habitat at one G.

I could no longer see the habitat but the left cockpit window showed about half of Tumbler. It was an ugly planet with an oversized white ice cap taking up most of the Northern hemisphere, a band of green, then tan desert, and a small ice cap at the South Pole. Some white and gray clouds obscured about a third of the surface. No oceans; I was able to see a couple of large lakes along the equator that looked dark brown and black.

The boat flipped back around to face the orbital habitat. All I could see was the open docking bay and some of the flat gray hull around it.

The pilot said, “We’re entering the ass-end of this thing, dead center of its ring of ionic propulsion nacelles. Zero G until you get into the rotational area.”

The boat settled near the far wall and the docking bay door closed. Eight minutes ticked by while the bay re-pressurized. Then I followed Major Deskavich and Emily out, floating to the lowered cargo ramp and then to a door ten meters away. Two Frogs were there wearing magnetic shoes and thruster packs to help us.

They sealed the door behind us and hit a switch. I looked back at the drop boat through the door’s window. It sat, the docking bay door still closed.

One Frog, I could barely understand her accent, she said, “We compress the air in the dock. Then we will the door open. Half an hour.”

“Seems inefficient.”

She said, “Your ship, does not fit. Our air locks?”

I nodded. Whatever. They showed us through a round opening eight meters wide. Past the opening, the wall on the other side rotated. Eight ladders radiated out from it like spokes of a wheel. The female Frog pointed at a ladder, indicating we should climb down it. We did. It was a long climb and gravity increased as we went down. Below, I saw green fields and narrow roads and a large town with smaller towns about five klicks away in a sloppy circle. Haze and clouds hung near the rotational center of the atmosphere. We’d climbed down at least three hundred meters when the ladder ended in a platform. It felt like about one tenth of a G, enough to walk. Carefully. There was a single metal door and Emily pressed the button next to it and the door slid open. We stepped into the elevator and Major Deskavich pressed the ‘G’ button.

It was a long ride down, ten minutes at least. I started to make small talk but the Major pressed his right index finger over his lips, pointed at a vid recorder. I nodded. It was a long ride, boring as hell.

We stepped out of the elevator and the fragrance of flowers filled my nose. The air was sweet, filled my lungs and I felt stronger. The gravity felt like about point eight G, maybe it was more but the air made me feel great. A middle-aged man in a bureaucrat suit met us and gripped the Major’s hand. “Welcome to Acadia. I’m Victor Rolph and will see you to your lodging.”

The Major shook his hand and released it after two pumps. “I’m Major Anthony Deskavich. Pleased to meet you.”

“Right this way.” Victor motioned us into the seats of an open-topped wheeled flatbed vehicle, the seats bolted to the flat bed. Like the sort of vehicles tourists might ride. Victor drove, the thing quiet. Electric motor, no doubt. Three klicks later we were at a hotel in the downtown area of the large town I’d seen earlier. Not many people, mostly middle-aged Frogs—I mean, Acadians—strutting around in business or lawyer clothes. Across the street from the hotel main entrance was what had to be the courthouse or city hall. I couldn’t read the signs, printed in French.

The architecture was Terran throwback, lots of brick and stone in the facades. The hotel lobby looked like something out of an old 2D vid. Victor led us up the grand staircase and opened the door to a suite. “Your accommodations. Three bedrooms, each with their own bath. The restaurant serves breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner and supper and you can call for room service at any time.”

We stepped in. Big room. A desk. Couches, foot tables, (or are they called coffee tables?) a vid screen. A food prep area, refrigerator and coffee maker and a food heater. Doors to bedrooms, sliding glass doors to a balcony. Sweet.

Major Deskavich said, “This is more than adequate.”

Victor stepped backward out the door and closed it.

I spread out on the couch closest to the balcony. Emily shrugged off her rucksack and took out a detector and started to sweep for bugging and surveillance devices. The Major set up his terminal at the desk and adjusted the projected display parameters to match the wall behind the desk. Having nothing to do at that time, I felt guilty for a whole ten seconds before I dozed off on the couch.

Emily shook my shoulder. “You stink.”

I sat up, looked around.

“Go to your room.” She pointed at the door furthest away. “Dinner’s in an hour.”

I stood. That nap was good, but she was right. I was getting a little stinky. I went into my room and undressed and found the bathroom. It had a running water sink and bathtub and shower combination, set up in a twenty-second century style. The clothes machine was a little funny too but I managed to get my clothes into it. I used the razors and soap and toothbrush provided by the hotel, then checked the machine. Clothes were still wet. The machine had spun them into dampness. The French instructions didn’t help as I scrolled through the menu of the display, but the cartoony picture of heat radiating from fluffy clothes look like a good choice. I selected that and then put on a hotel robe and went back out into the main room. The Major sat at the desk and picked at his terminal. The projection on the wall showed lots of text, documents, and reports.

A knock came at the door. I went and looked at the display screen by the door that showed who was there. An Indig man. I cracked the door open. “Hello?”

He stared at me. He wore brown dress shoes, brown slacks, a plain white dress shirt with the collar open, a dark brown sport coat over that. Straight black hair pulled back in a single low pony tail. It was Coyote.

He frowned. “You?”

“Yeah. What do you want?”

He handed me a data stick. “For you. Enjoy.”

“How…”

He turned and walked away. I shut the door. The Major didn’t even look up from his terminal. I went to check on my clothes and they were dry so I got dressed. I put the data stick in my pistol holster and strapped on my belt and went back out to wait. Emily came out of her room wearing an evening gown, pastel blue. Ruffles and laces at the hem and shoulders and around the low neck line. Her breasts were pushed up and together and projected forward. She wore makeup and her hair was fluffed out. I blinked.

“You look entirely different.”

She twirled around. “You like?”

“Yes.” Her butt was… it was the shoes. She wore high heels. That made her arch her back, made her butt look higher and rounder.

She looked at me. “You’re going dressed like that?”

“Yep.” I shrugged.

The Major went to his room, came out three minutes later wearing his ceremonial uniform, the whole nine yards. Saber in a scabbard, spurs, black hat with yellow tassels.

He looked at me. “You’ll be all right. If that uniform’s good enough to die in, it’s good enough to eat in.”

He led us out of the room, down the hall to the stairs, down the grand stair case, right of that and back to the restaurant. The Maitre d’ led us past the tables to an outside umbrella table and pulled the chair for Emily and pushed it back in as she sat. The Major and I then sat. The Maitre d’ disappeared. I looked at the table top and saw pictures of food with French words by them. I rubbed the image sideways and it changed. Finally I saw steak and potatoes and a glass mug full of an amber liquid topped with foam. I double-tapped that image. A server came and placed a mug of dark beer near my right hand, put a glass of white wine by Emily’s and a glass of water for the Major. Then the server said something in French and we all nodded and smiled and he left.

He returned and set an ice-cold metal plate with lettuce and stuff on it in front of each of us. I reached out with my left hand to grab some and the Major cleared his throat and pointed at the fork farthest out from the plate. Took some practice but I managed to eat all the plant stuff on my plate using the fork. The server came and took away the cold metal plates and sat our meals in front of us. The baked potato had a white sort of butter with green specks in it, but it tasted great. The Major raised an eyebrow when I used my spoon to eat the potato but I ignored him. The steak, it was great. Juicy and soft, it came apart easily with a fork, no need for a knife. Didn’t taste as good as the beefalo steak we had on Tumbler. But, no doubt the cooks were better down there, and besides, this steak was all beef. Not much chewing required.

Emily had some sort of thick brown-gravy soup with chunks of bird meat in it, and the Major ate a slab of some kind of thin breaded fish meat with a reddish sauce ladled onto it. Desert was confusing. Mine looked like a very yellow version of cheese cake, and more substantial but not as thick, with flecks of stuff in it. And it was eggs, mostly. I ate it.

The Major said, “Quiche.”

I said, “Bless you, Sir,” and kept eating.

The server came back, cleared the dishes and set teeny cups of coffee before us. I sniffed mine and it curled my nose hairs so I set it back down.

The Major sipped his and said, “Espresso.”

Emily sipped hers too. I didn’t want to look scared so I downed mine in a single gulp. Then got a head rush. Won’t do that again.

The Major said, “Slaughter, we need to get you a suit.”

I shrugged. He stood, Emily and I stood and followed him out of the hotel and to the left. We walked about a hundred meters and he led me into a tailor shop. I picked out a suit similar to what I saw Coyote wearing, except I went with black shoes, dark blue pants and jacket, and a dark gray dress shirt. I also chose a longer jacket, long enough to conceal my side arm and bayonet. We waited twenty minutes for the sewing and I put on the new outfit and carried my combat coveralls and boots in a shopping bag. The Major charged the outfit to the hotel and explained that the Acadian government paid for everything, a stipulation of our contract with them.

We window-shopped on the way back to the hotel. Back in the suite, the Major fell back under the spell of his terminal and Emily went to her room. I went to my room and took my personal communicator off my wrist and set it on the desk and turned on its holographic keyboard and adjusted the projected monitor to shine on the wall behind the desk. Then I took the data stick Coyote had given me out of my holster and attached it to the communicator. It was full of useful information which I copied to my communicator.

I started to re-sort it into folders for vid, audio, and documents. The documents were mixed, most in French and about a third in Standard. Some had both. I cranked them through the translator and even though the translation wasn’t perfect, I was able to get the general idea. I started reading; my eyes got blurry so I leaned back in my chair and started to check out the vids.

My door opened and Emily entered wearing her hotel bath robe. She closed the door behind her and locked it, stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders and said, “Your suit looks good on you. You look good in it.”

I moved my hands back from the keyboard and placed them on hers. “So, you don’t want me to take it off?”

“That’s not what I said.”

I said, “I have a lot of work to do.”

“I’ll help. Tomorrow. We have all day for the next three days.”

I stood and removed my jacket and hung it on the back of the chair and gave Emily a hug. “Your assistance in this matter will be greatly appreciated.”

She put her hands around my neck and playfully gave me a very weak choke. She pulled my face to hers and kissed me full on the mouth, broke away and dimmed the lights, dropped her robe to the floor and then pulled back the bedclothes and sat and patted the mattress with her left hand. I doffed my new clothes to the floor and joined her on the bed.

Major Deskavich knocked on the door. “Hey you two.”

Emily lay down and pulled the covers up to her neck. I put on my bath robe and opened the door. “Sir?”

“Oh. Don’t worry abut that, we’re cool. Did an Indig stop by earlier today?”

I said, “Yessir. Coyote.”

“Good. You know him. Did he drop something off?”

“Yessir.” I pulled the data stick from my communicator and gave it to him. “This.”

He smiled. “Carry on.”

I closed the door.