The War for Profit Series Omnibus (74 page)

My skimmer was tied down in the cargo area of the first drop boat to land on Mandarin. I was buckled into the Vehicle Commander’s seat, Emily in the Driver’s seat and Major D was in the back seat. The boat touched down and taxied and stopped, lowered its cargo ramp. I dismounted and removed the tie-downs and looked behind. The Command Post Carrier and the Stallion tank and the IFV that followed were ready to roll. I got back in the skimmer and gave Major D a thumbs-up. He popped the hatch and stood behind the turret rail gun. He dropped back down and grabbed his duffle bag from the cargo area and laid it across the back seat and stood on it, stood back up in the hatch. Standing tall he put on his helmet and said, “Let’s go, driver.”

We moved off the boat and across the marshalling yard to the vehicle gate and then down the street toward the Brigade headquarters area. In the quadrangle between the corporate HQ and the unit HQ buildings, block formations of the troops of the other Battalions in the Brigade faced us and came to attention and saluted as we passed by. Behind the four vehicles of my group came the cargo trucks, pallets of zinc coffins holding our fallen brothers and sisters, an oversized Brigade Guidon draped over each pallet. Then the units followed, the tanks and IFVs and recovery vehicles, various types of combat support, with the chuck wagons—I mean, mobile kitchen vehicles—at the very end.

The column split at the next intersection and the vehicles returned to either the Stallion Battalion or Mechanized Infantry Battalion motor pools. The cargo trucks with the coffins continued on to the stadium. Emily parked the skimmer in its designated spot in the Mechanized Infantry motor pool and powered down. Major D dismounted and said, “Thirteen hundred, stadium, dress uniform.”

Emily said, “Roger, Sir.”

He turned and strode toward the walk-through gate, rucksack on his back and duffle bag slung on his left shoulder.

I said, “Emily?”

“Yes?”

“You have somebody here?”

She shrugged. “Like a boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Nope.” She looked into my eyes.

“We get two weeks off starting tomorrow. We should go somewhere, together.”

She smiled. “Like a honeymoon?”

“Sure. Like a honeymoon.”

She opened the cargo area hatch and handed out our bags, turned to face me. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

“Well. I mean, not today. It’s a funeral day. But if I asked you tomorrow, what would you say?”

She squinted. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

I said, “Hell no.” Her face went blank. “You’re a grown woman, handsome and sexy.”

She turned away and picked up her bags. She spoke as she walked away. “Ask me tomorrow. And do me a favor; secure the vehicle before you leave. I’m not coming back here today. I’ll be at the stadium…”

Her voice faded as she walked farther away, to where I couldn’t hear. I secured the vehicle and carried my bags to my barracks room, cleaned myself up, had lunch at the snack stand, back to my room to put on my dress uniform and then to the stadium.

Coffins draped in Brigade Guidons sat on gurneys, arranged in a neat formation on the playing field of the stadium, five meters between each coffin. Mourners stood by the coffins of their loved ones. Groups of twenty or more by some, other coffins stood alone. I walked past and saw that each had a white ceramic headstone with a picture of the deceased carved into it, along with name and rank and unit below that, with date of birth and death on the bottom line. A group, three stooped-over old men and two old ladies, made their way to each coffin to place a fresh-cut white lily atop each. Beyond the coffins were fold-up chairs with velvet slipcovers, the chairs facing the stage ahead of that. An usher, a Troop from the Hercules Heavy Tank Battalion, handed me a program and said, “Right this way, Sergeant Slaughter.”

I followed him and he sat me next to Emily. She looked particularly handsome in her dress uniform, modified to have a black gauze veil hanging from the brim of her hat. I noticed no service stripe on the cuff of her left sleeve; still on her first enlistment. I had two service stripes, would get my next one in a couple of years. I’d been in for over twelve. Eight years to retirement.

On the stage, Stallion Six’s coffin lay in state. Two guards stood, one at the head and one at the foot, facing each other. On a raised platform behind the coffin was a podium where the Brigade Chaplain stood, robes of office showing his Master Sergeant rank on the sleeves. I read the program. The names of all the dead were listed. A few minutes later the Chaplain spoke, his voice carried by the sound system.

“Today we honor the fallen. We honor Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Camacho and the brave men and women who died in battle, serving this Brigade on the planet Tumbler. And their passing is a tragedy certainly, so much potential lost, so many more lives disrupted. But today is about grieving and acceptance and moving on. To those who grieve I say this: the pain will pass, your lives will go on. But grieve as long as you need to grieve, there is no shame in that.”

He bowed his head, silent for a full minute. The he looked up and said, “Colonel Raper will now say a few words.”

The Chaplain stepped back and to the left. The Brigade Commander, Colonel Raper, took his place at the podium. He was tall with light brown hair, square face, cleft chin, square shoulders, face bronzed from being outdoors most of his life.

“What can I say about Lieutenant Colonel Camacho that hasn’t already been said about other mercenaries, to grant justice to the supreme sacrifice that he made in combat? The aphorism that the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of hundreds a statistic, will not suffice. This old quote of dubious origin misses the mark when it comes to battle. In this violent profession, the death of a brave professional fighter is so commonplace that its fundamental heartbreak is often lost to the impersonal and statistical big picture. Telling the tale of the fallen mercenary, emphasizing the dreams unrealized and the potentials unfulfilled, then, helps us appreciate the sacrifice all the more. Guillermo Camacho was nearing the end of his career, preparing for a long, happy retirement with his fiancé, a fiancé who died in that same battle on that same hill. I heard him speak of a ten hectare hobby farm on Ostreich, of children and grandchildren. His dreams were not too different from most of us here today. We were a lot alike, him and you and me. We are mercenaries. We fight for money, politics be damned. But do we really? We enlist for money and we choose this profession for the pay and benefits certainly. But when we fight, we fight to support the mercenaries around us and we fight to meet the obligations of our contracts. And when the fight is over we have no enemies. We fight with honor, for honor. And I knew no more honorable a mercenary than Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Camacho.”

Colonel Raper swallowed hard. His voce was louder, unsteady. “He will be missed.”

Then he stepped back and the Chaplin stepped up. “Burial will take place at fifteen hundred at the Silent Saber Cemetery. That is all.”

An hour and a half. The cemetery was a fifteen minute walk away. I stood. “Emily?”

She looked up at me, looked back down at her feet.

“Emily, I have to swing by the museum. Come with me?”

“Sure.” She stood.

The crowd dispersed slowly, many people going back to stand by the coffins of the people they knew. I thought about trying to find the coffin of the one troop I’d pulled from school for that contract but I couldn’t remember her name. Some troops browsed around, stopping at several coffins for a moment. They’d lost several friends.

The pall bearers, six Troops from the Hercules Battalion, came and took Stallion Six’s coffin and placed it on the cargo bed of an open-topped skimmer and took their seats inside along with Colonel Raper and the Chaplain and rode off to the cemetery.

Emily walked with me to the museum and the curator met us at the door. He was a retired Captain, an original member of the Brigade when it had first been chartered as an independent Battalion Combat Team more than forty years earlier. He waved us in and led us to the display and said, “What do you think?”

“Awesome.” It was a life-size statue of Stallion Six carved from marble, standing in full war gear. On the wall behind his statue was the tattered, battered Guidon of the Stallion Battalion, brought back from Tumbler. Eight framed pictures flanked each side. The pictures showed him getting commissioned, getting promoted, getting a medal pinned on his chest. Another picture showed him posed in formal wear with Captain Fiaco at a dance, she holding her left hand out to show the engagement ring he had just given her. More pictures: him in the cupola of a Stallion tank, him in field uniform firing a rifle from the prone position. In one picture he stood with his brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and in-laws and nieces and nephews, a group the size of a platoon. They wore bright summer civilian clothes and a grill cooked meat in the background.

The curator said, “Do you have that data I asked for?”

“Yessir.” I pulled a data stick from my personal communicator. As much info as I could piece together about what happened from the time we left Mandarin to the time we got back, special emphasis on details about Lieutenant Colonel Camacho. “It’s a rough draft now. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks to answer any questions you might have, discuss any changes we should make.”

He nodded. “Thank you, Sergeant. This will cap off the official biography. I appreciate this.”

Emily tugged at my sleeve. I said, “We must be going, Sir.”

He nodded, we left.

We arrived at the cemetery a little early and stood a hundred meters back. Seats were set up at graveside, the chair at the front left reserved for Guillermo Camacho’s sister. She sat dressed in black, a round wide-brimmed hat with a black gauze veil obscuring her face. Emily said, “What about the other troops who died?”

I said, “Most of the coffins are shipping out for burial on the home worlds of the troops. Others, from local recruits, are going out to civilian cemeteries on Mandarin. A few more burial ceremonies take place here tomorrow. Better to wait, so that this one doesn’t overshadow them.”

Emily said, “What about Captain Fiaco?”

“Tomorrow. She’s getting buried right next to him.”

“Okay.”

We approached the grave site and stood in the group of other uniformed mercenaries. The pall bearers dismounted with their Eliminator shotguns and marched to twenty five meters Northeast of the grave and stacked arms, marched back to the skimmer and pulled the coffin off, carried it to the grave and sat it on the lowering device, then marched back to un-stack arms. The Chaplain moved to stand at the head of the coffin and sprinkled Holy Water on it, read a prayer, quoted a passage from the Bible and stepped away. Colonel Raper nodded at the pall bearers, stepped forward and took his place at the head of the coffin.

The funeral team NCOIC gave commands in a low but firm voice.

“With blank ammunition, load.”

The firers inserted blank rounds into their shotguns.

“Ready.” They worked the action, to chamber a round.

“Aim.” They pointed the shotguns up at a four hundred mil angle.

“Fire.” The Eliminator shotguns fired. Loud. Most of the mourners flinched. I did too, jumped nearly an inch off the ground.

“Ready.”

“Aim.”

“Fire.” The second volley. The sister of the deceased let out a single sob.

“Ready.”

“Aim.”

“Fire.” She broke into tears. She leaned into the man next to her, her brother. His eyes leaked tears too. He put his arm around her, offered a tissue. She took it and wiped her nose.

“Present Arms.”

The firers held their shotguns straight up and down, the muzzles even with the tips of their noses, fifteen centimeters away. All the uniformed military personnel present held proper hand salutes. A bugler played taps. The song ended

“Order Arms.” We dropped our salutes.

The firers stacked arms and marched back, three on each side of the coffin. With practiced precision, they reached down to grip the edge of the Guidon and lifted it with a snap so that it was a perfectly flat suspended plane. They then folded it lengthwise in half by bringing the edges together, the three Troops on one side holding on, the three on the other side lowering their hands to grip the fold. Then they pulled it level with a snap, folded lengthwise again. Then starting at the feet, the troops folded the Guideon into a triangle, passing the task on to the next and then to the end, where a five centimeter flip remained. Colonel Raper reached into his pocket and pulled out three expended shotgun waddings brought back from Tumbler, Hill Three. He shoved them deep into the folds of the Guidon and then made the final fold, pushing the last flap of cloth into the tight triangle the folds had formed. He rotated the Guidon and inspected each corner for tightness, looked to see that only blue showed, that no part of the red, no part of the white embroidered white crossed sabers showed. He then nodded to the pall bearers and they marched off to retrieve their weapons.

Colonel Raper turned to the sister and knelt, said to her in a low voice, “This Guidon is presented, on behalf of a grateful organization, as a token of appreciation for the honorable and faithful service of your brother.”