“I’m not sure,” said Tad.
“Well, I have about eighteen thousand of them. I’ll withdraw a hundred. That should do me for a couple days.”
“No!” said Spike.
The machine made a grinding sound, then very evenly spaced whirs and clicks, with a rustle of paper after each click.
The prompt came up for Galen to “Please remove your money.”
Tad opened the door below the monitor. The space behind the opened door was ten centimeters wide, ten centimeters deep and five centimeters high. The whole space was stuffed with cash, the local currency, in denominations of one thousand czan.
“What’s this?” asked Galen.
Spike said, “The interplanetary credit is very strong against the local currency. The czan is probably the weakest currency in the known universe. That’s more money than most Mandarins make in a year.”
“So maybe I’ll put some of it back?”
“We’d have to go to the main bank and see a teller to make a deposit. Maybe we’ll just divvy it up between the three of us, and me and Tad can pay you back later.”
“You both owe me thirty five credits, right?”
“Right.”
“Good. Help me pry this cash out of here.”
The three men stuffed their pockets and walked to the compound main gate.
“Halt!” said the gate guard, his pistol drawn. His partner in the guard shack leveled his submachine gun at the three friends. Galen heard footfalls behind him. Five troops approached from behind, submachine guns at the ready. The gate guard nodded to the troops. Three of them slung their weapons and began to frisk the detainees. The troops pulled everything from their pockets and threw the items on the ground. The money they handed into a bag held by the gate guard.
“Pick up your stuff. What unit are you snappers with?”
“Anti-armor.” Galen picked up his wallet and pocketknife. “Why’d you take my money?”
“These guys are as stupid as they look,” said the guard with the pistol. “Should we turn them in or let them go?”
“Turn us in for what?”
“You can’t take this much money off the compound. Who knows what you might buy? And maybe you’ll ruin the local economy and cause rampant inflation.”
Galen started to understand. The cash machine was positioned so the gate guards could watch it and stop mercenaries from taking too much money down town.
“Aw, let ‘em go, Chief,” said the guard in the booth. “After all, they’re from the Cav troop.”
“All right. Take your cash back to the bank where it belongs. Not more than ten thousand czan per day per trooper leaves the compound. And don’t forget to return my bag. Today.”
“Thanks, Chief,” said Galen.
“Don’t thank me, thank your agent.”
Four hours later the three friends walked along the streets of the town of Xongxong. The crowd of short, black-haired citizens barely made a gap wide enough for the mercenaries to pass through them in single file. Galen led.
“Present arms!” said Tad.
Galen and Spike reflexively obeyed the command. Galen stopped, dropped his salute and looked around. “What was that for?”
“There,” Tad pointed at a life-size statue of an old man in front of a restaurant. “The Colonel.”
Galen and Spike gave him confused looks.
“The Kentucky Colonel, Colonel Sanders, the man who invented the secret recipe for fried chicken back on Terra, more than two thousand years ago.”
“So?”
“Good Terran-style food. Let’s eat!” Tad pushed his way through the street crowd, followed by Spike and Galen. They took seats at a flimsy table in the dining area. The menu was a plastic card taped to the wall beside the table. A waitress came to the table. She wore an orange cap and apron over her white dress. She must have been sixty years old at least, thought Galen.
“I’ll take a chicken.”
“Me too,” said Spike.
“I’ll have the drumstick dinner,” Tad looked around. “Extra crispy and a large cola for each of us.”
When the waitress left Spike asked, “How come I never heard of this Colonel?”
“You two aren’t from Terra. I am. Everybody there knows about Colonel Sanders, the Kentucky Colonel.”
“What’s a Kentucky? A special kind of regiment?”
“No. It’s a state, a commonwealth of the Earth Federation.”
“So you’re from Kentucky,” stated Galen.
“You wanna fight?”
“No.”
“It was a rhetorical question. I’m not from Kentucky.”
The waitress wheeled a dinner cart over to their table. She had two platters containing two full roasted chickens and sat one in front of Galen and one in front of Spike. The platter for Tad had four drumsticks, a bowl of mashed potatoes covered with gravy, and a scoop of coleslaw. The waitress then put plastic flatware and sodas in plastic cups beside each of the three men. Before she could state the price, Tad handed her a one thousand czan bill.
“Keep the change.”
The waitress smiled, then pushed the dinner cart ahead of her as she left.
“How much of a tip was that?”
“About two hundred czan.”
Galen still wasn’t sure how many czans were in a credit, or how many Ostreich Kroners a credit was worth.
“How many czan in a kroner?”
Tad thought a moment. “About sixty.”
“So our dinner costs only seventeen kroner?”
“About that, I’m not exactly sure,” said Tad.
“For us to eat like this back on Ostreich would cost about a hundred kroner each.”
“So,” said Spike, “our money buys twenty times as much here?”
“At restaurants, anyway.” Tad chewed a drumstick and gulped his cola.
Spike and Galen tore pieces of flesh from their whole chickens as best they could with their fingers. They weren’t familiar with eating real chicken and followed Tad’s example of not using flatware. They dispensed with conversation until they finished the meal.
“We all done?” Tad pulled his cloth napkin from his lap and carefully wiped his hands.
“Sure.” Spike wiped his hands on the tablecloth, then the napkin.
Galan nodded as he finished his cola and wiped the chicken grease from his hands and mouth. The three off-duty mercenaries pushed their way back into the street crowd and moved further away from the compound. They hadn’t gone fifteen meters when a relatively tall Mandarin man bumped into Galen. The stranger wore a brown leather jacket, a yellow derby-style cap and faded Mandarin regular army dungaree pants.
“Hey sahjee, you like girls?”
Galen continued to walk. The stranger walked beside him, opening a binder with pictures of nude girls taped to its inside. He held the pictures in Galen’s face.
“Get away from me, you pervert!” Galen smacked the binder and shoved the man. Looking indignant, the Mandarin pimp snapped the binder shut and started to walk away.
Then he turned and shouted, “Funny man! No like girls!”
The pimp melted into the crowd.
“Why’d you do that?” Spike said. “I could use a piece.”
“They were really young,” Galen suddenly remembered Trooper Harover… Inger. “Sorry Spike, I got to go back to the compound. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Spike and Tad continued away from the compound.
Galen found the garrison personnel’s barracks right behind the welcome center. He found building 36O9 and buzzed the main door.
“I’m here to see Inger.”
A woman’s voice came from a speaker built into the frame of the door, “Hold on.”
Galen waited a few seconds, wondering if he were doing the right thing.
“Who is it?” Inger’s voice came from the speaker.
“Galen Raper, Sergeant Raper. We met a couple of weeks ago. You made my ID card.”
“Uh,
okay. Come on up to room three oh two.”
The speaker made a buzz. Galen pulled the door open. The lobby area was empty. No furniture, nothing but a door in the center of the wall to the front. The walls were painted battleship grey. The dark brown tiled floor was as shiny as glass, except where a few footfalls marred the surface with streaks from combat boot soles. The steel door was black and had no handle. Galen pushed it inward. Beyond it was the stairwell, the steps wide enough for three people to ascend them abreast. Galen counted seven steps to the first landing, eight to the next, a total of thirteen steps between each floor. Galen climbed the steps to the third floor landing and pushed the door open. He walked down the hallway and found room 3O2. He knocked, getting nervous. His pulse quickened and he felt warmer.
The door opened.
“Come on in,” Inger wore a bathrobe and her hair was wrapped in a towel on her head, looked like a turban. Galen took two steps into the room. Inger motioned him to sit on the two-seater couch. He did.
“So Sergeant, some problem with your ID card?”
Galen’s heart sank and seemed to beat slower. He felt cold. “You don’t remember me.”
Inger paused, “Oh, I’m sorry. I truly am.”
Galen thought she looked older. No makeup, no tight uniform, no body-shaping undergarment. A different woman from what he remembered from the ID card office. He heard the sound of a toilet flushing and running water from the bathroom. A man came out wearing a bath towel wrapped around his waist.
“Please leave,” said Inger.
Galen left. He went back to his barracks and lay on his cot. The other mercenaries were gone, out enjoying their vacation somewhere else. Only Galen and his two friends were still checked into the bay. He felt jealous of the man in the bath towel. He felt angry with Inger, not only for being a whore but also for being a ragged-out old girl when Galen thought she was young and beautiful and interested in him.
But mostly he was upset with himself for feeling the way he did about Inger. He created his own Inger, one that had little resemblance to the real one. Finally he undressed and crawled into bed, wondering why he had to live in an open-bay barracks with no personal space beyond a foot locker under a bunk while the garrison soldiers had apartments of their own. Galen slept.
Chapter Eleven
Six hours later the automatically-timed bright lights of the bay came on and woke Galen. He sat up and placed his bare feet on the cold wooden floor. A cord hung around his neck with a key dangling from it. He slid the foot locker from under the cot and removed the cord from around his neck and used the key to open the lock of the foot locker. He took out his unit-issued athletic shorts and t-shirt and a pair of running shoes and dressed and left the barracks. It took him ten minutes to walk to the five kilometer jogging trail and he found the exercise stations under the pavilion at the starting point. Galen stretched his legs, did fifty pushups, fifty sit-ups and twenty chin-ups. The cool morning air was refreshing. He strode onto the jogging track and started running.
It was a month at least since the last time he ran. Field duty and combat had been physically demanding and had given him more strength in his muscles, but running was a different kind of exercise. After a kilometer he was sweating and had a hard time getting enough air. He slowed his pace, caught his breath and let the pain in his side dissipate. Soon he felt fine and broke into a sprint. His knee started to hurt and he tried to block the pain mentally but that didn’t work. He slowed to a moderate run, but that didn’t help either. At the four kilometer marker he had to walk. His knee was still sore when he reached the end of the jogging trail so he sat on a bench and relaxed, let his body cool down.
At the academy, less than a month ago, he ran ten kilometers three times a week. His knee never bothered him before. He never felt that tired before. But, he’d never gone so long without sleep before, and never went on tactical foot marches of such long duration before. He never traveled in space before, and never went into combat as a grunt before. And he’d never killed anyone before.
A runner went past, taking long strides and moving fast. Some gravel the runner kicked up bounced over to hit Galen’s foot. Galen wanted to chase after the runner, catch up and then pass her, but he knew he was not in good enough shape. But he would be, he thought. He would be. After his knee felt better and his heart slowed to its resting rate, he decided to walk back to the barracks. The mess hall was open for breakfast so Galen went inside. A Mandarin woman was seated at a desk by the entrance.
“Sorry, you can’t come in here dressed like that.”
“What?” said Galen.
“You can’t wear exercise clothing in here. You can wear civilian clothes, but no shorts and no t-shirts and your clothes must be clean and have no holes or tears. Sorry.”
“No problem,” Galen went to his barracks, showered and put on his only set of civilian clothes. He was putting the lock back on his foot locker when Tad and Spike came into the bay.
“Out all night, guys?” said Galen.
Tad sat on Galen’s bunk. “Oh yeah. You should have stayed with us. Had a great time.”
Spike stretched out on his bunk and started snoring.
“So what have you been up to, barracks rat?”
“I got a good night’s sleep and went jogging. What’s wrong with Spike?”
“He drank too much. I met this awesome chick, a waitress at the Outlander Bar,”
“Outlander?”
“Yeah. That’s what they call us people from off-planet. Anyway, it’s a good bar. And that waitress, I think she likes me. When she got off work, me and Spike went to her apartment. Her roommate got drunk with Spike, but me and her, we sat and talked and watched some vids.”
“Didn’t score?”
“Hey, with decent girls these things take time.”
“What’s her name?” said Galen.
“Who?”
“The awesome waitress you love so much.”
Tad thought a moment. “I have a reason to see her again, so I can get her name.”
Galen said, “Yeah, right.”
“Come with us tonight. You’ll like this bar.”
“Okay, but only if you go to breakfast with me.”
“I’m starving, let’s go.”
Tad and Galen entered the mess hall. They showed their military ID cards to the Mandarin woman at the front and she waved them through. They walked down the cordoned-off aisle through the center of the dining area to the opposite wall. There were metal trays and flatware at the beginning of the serving area.
“What you like eggs?” asked the Mandarin cook. He was young, probably fifteen. He wore white coveralls.
“Scrambled,” said Galen. The cook took the lid off a warming pot and used a big spoon to dig out a serving of scrambled eggs.
“Fried,” said Tad. The cook cracked three eggs into a bowl, spread some grease on the grill and then poured the eggs on it.
“What else you want?”
“Bacon and toast.”
The cook put bacon on the plate, “You make own toast, over there.”
Galen took his plate and went to the toast machine. He made four slices and grabbed a handful of grape jelly packages. Then he went to the milk dispenser and filled three glasses. The mess hall was built to hold about five hundred people, but barely a dozen mercenaries were there. Galen chose a table near the exit. The table was round, made of solid steel, and was surrounded by eight chairs.
“Good, correct, terran-style food,” said Tad. He sat down across from Galen. Tad’s tray was heaped with food. Pancakes, French toast, deep-fried potato patties, toast and butter and jelly.
“You must be hungry.”
“Real food, Galen. Not field rations, not synthetic garbage, but real food! Makes me more confident about my career choice.”
“I appreciate a good meal but I’m not fanatic about it.”
Tad shoved breakfast into his mouth, ignoring Galen. Galen ate his food sensibly, chewing each bite. But he
still finished eating before Tad. Galen got a cup of coffee and sipped it while Tad finished eating. “So what do you think we’ll be doing for our first mission?” Galen hoped Tad was done eating. All the food was gone from his tray.
Tad said, “I don’t know. Anyway, you’ll love this bar. It’s awesome.”
Galen had hoped the subject wouldn’t come up. “Sure, I’ll see for myself tonight. What cycle are we in after this break?”
“I think we got school. I heard Mortinson say we’d do one cycle at the armor platoon leader course, then ship out.”
“I thought we’d be here a year.”
“No, we’ll get promoted to Chief and then go out to the fleet. The old man won’t waste too much time training us, we’re academy graduates.”
“I’d almost forgotten that.” Galen finished his coffee.
“Yeah. We ought to be going to officer school. But I guess they have enough officers.”
Galen leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers behind his head. “You know what? The garrison troops have nice barracks.”
“They live here. We’re transient.”
“Yeah I know. They just seem more like government troops instead of mercenaries.” Galen realized he was feeling hostility toward Inger and all the rest of the garrison soldiers because of her. He tried to let it go.
“Somebody has to do the paper shuffle. Anyhow, there isn’t more than a platoon of them. It can’t cost too much to give them decent housing.”
A garrison soldier was walking by and stopped to interrupt the conversation. “Gentlemen, the Colonel doesn’t give us our housing, we rent those apartments. The rent comes out of our pay. Your accommodations are free.”
Tad glared at him. “Shut the hell up!”
The garrison soldier walked away quickly.
“See what I mean? They act like host-planet regulars.”
“Sure, Galen. Host-planet regulars, What does that mean?”
“Well, most governments maintain their support, supply, service, police and administrative military units as part of their regular military and part-time militia.”
“Rear-echelon pukes.” Tad looked out the window.
The War for Profit Series Omnibus Page 12
