The War for Profit Series Omnibus

by Gideon Fleisher

  “Not quite crazy,” said Galen. “I’ve done it once, that’s enough. I knock myself out with an auto-injector for the jump so it doesn’t affect me.”

  The pilot looked over his shoulder at Galen, peered into his face and studied his eyes.

  Galen said, “It was five years ago.”

  Karen said, “This will be my first jump. Is there a test or something to see if I’m a sleeper?”

  Galen looked at her, studied her eyes. “No. Now look directly into my eyes and believe what I tell you. This is real. If you find yourself stuck in an eternity of darkness, remember this. It will end. You will come back. Do not forget, this is real.”

  The pilot called the tower and got clearance to taxi to the end of the tarmac, moving slowly past the long line of drop boats. At the end of the tarmac he turned the ship and took his position at the end of a longer runway and waited. After the tower gave him clearance, he trundled down the runway, slow at first, but picked up immense speed, just barely below the speed of sound. When the landing gear left the ground he retracted it, then angled the nose of the dropship straight up and slammed the throttle to full. The dropship pushed with three Gs of force, the wings retracting incrementally after the dropship pushed through one sound barrier after another. Finally the dropship tore free of the atmosphere and continued to accelerate as it left he gravity well of Mandarin. The pilot then let the dropship coast as he extended the ionic propulsion nacelles from the belly of the craft, tilted it so that the jump point would be directly above, and then set the propulsion nacelles to give a thrust of one G.

  The pilot then said, “Feel free to move about the cabin. We’ll reach the turnaround point in forty six minutes, and then I’ll flip the ship around and decelerate at one G to the jump point. Any questions?”

  Galen said, “Just give us a buzz before the zero-G of the turnaround so we can hold on to something.”

  “Not a problem,” said the pilot.

  Galen undid his seatbelt and said, “Hey, where’s my tank crew?”

  The pilot said, “They stay in their cabin, usually.” He checked a status screen. “They’re in there now.”

  Galen went back down to the cabin area and knocked on the door directly across the hall from his. “Hello?”

  The door opened. Corporal Slaughter, the short but stocky command tank gunner said, “Problem, Smaj?”

  “I just want to see how you guys are doing.”

  “Come on in.”

  Galen entered and sat on Park’s bunk. Trooper Parks could have been Slaughter’s twin, but with brown hair instead of black. He sat at the desk, paused his video game and swiveled the chair to face Galen.

  “So, you guys have been on a few contracts before. This is how you handle space travel?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major,” Trooper Parks said.

  “And you’ve been in this job for three years, and Corporal Slaughter has been at it for four years, correct?”

  Parks said, “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  “Well, keep up the good work.” Galen stood. “One more thing…”

  Slaughter said, “What’s that?”

  “Have you thought about doing something else? After this contract, when we get back to Mandarin, I mean.”

  Parks said, “Not really. I could do a whole twenty years of this. It’s a sweet job.”

  Galen said, “You know, there’re three more seats in the cockpit. You can ride up there if you want.”

  Slaughter shrugged. “I used to, but this is okay.”

  “All right. Enjoy the ride.” Galen went to his cabin a stretched out on his bunk. He heard Karen’s door open and then close, and heard her footfalls as she paced in her own cabin. Galen got up and knocked on her door.

  After a moment she opened the door. “Hello, Smaj.”

  “Hello yourself. Is something bothering you?”

  “I’m just worried about the jump.” She stepped closer to Galen.

  He took a half step back. “Let’s go talk it over with the pilots; they can explain the whole process. I’d like to hear about it from an expert myself, I hardly understand it.”

  “Okay.”

  She followed him to the cockpit and took the seat behind the co-pilot. Galen sat behind the pilot and said, “Hey, how does this jump drive work?”

  The co-pilot swiveled his chair to face Galen. “Well, it’s not really a drive so much as a generator.”

  Karen said, “Well I’m more interested in the jump travel concept more than the engine or whatever it is.”

  The co-pilot thought for a moment. “It’s like a fold in space. We generate a direct connection with another point, from a know point here. Then we pass through, ceasing to exist here as we pass through the plane of the connection, and beginning to exist on the other side of that plane, at the destination.”

  Galen scratched his head. “So how do we know where we’ll be?”

  The co-pilot said, “The jump points have to be set up ahead of time, through trial and error. A ship is sent through from a known point, and then after it determines its position it comes back and reports where it was. Usually. Sometimes the jumpship doesn’t come back.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There could be something blocking it. The destination might be inside an object, or there might be too much matter in the space of the destination. Doesn’t take much. Something the size of my fist could screw up the jump point exploration by shifting the ship’s position relative to the jump point just enough, when it comes back it goes to a point different from where it started from. Another problem, the exploring ship could end up so far away it can’t determine its position so it just keeps on trying to figure it out and won’t return until it does.”

  Karen said, “Sounds dangerous.”

  “When they try to establish jump points, they don’t send crews. The exploratory jumpships are automated. But it’s a process, establishing jump points. There is no way to predict how they’ll turn out, but they do always connect the same two points, once they’re established, provided the subsequent jumpships follow the exact same angle and point of entry.”

  “So the angle is just as important as the coordinate.” Karen leaned forward in her chair.

  “Yes. Changing the angle at which the connection is made changes the destination, but not correlatively. Meaning, the destination could be anywhere. Just because a ship passes through angled slightly to the left, it doesn’t mean it will travel to a point to the left.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I don’t know, and I doubt anyone else does either, or they would have found a way to use that knowledge by now.” The co-pilot swiveled his seat back to forward and then fastened his seat belt. “Zero G coming up.”

  The pilot shut off the ionic propulsion drives, rotated the ship so that its belly faced directly toward the jump point, waited for just the right moment, and turned the ionic propulsion engines on again, to decelerate toward the jump point with a force of one G.

  Karen said, “Zero G gives me butterflies in my stomach.”

  Galen said, “You’ll get used to it. Pilot, when we get there, I want to be able to sit back at a distance and watch the other ships jump through first.”

  “Not a problem.” The pilot made a tiny course correction. “We’ll be there in about forty minutes. I’ll park so we can watch them go through from the side.”

  ***

  “Here they come.” The pilot rotated the command drop ship to the right about forty mils so that Galen could view the two approaching transport ships. Their hulls were covered with attached drop boats, docked to catch a ride to the jump point on the larger ship. The jumpship, a cylinder, blunt at each end, rotating slowly for axial stability waited at the jump point, its two kilometers of outer hull space clear at the moment. The two transport ships stopped alongside at opposite sides, matched the slow rotation of the jump ship so as to be stationary relative to the hull of the jump ship, and docked to the jump ship at the same moment.

>   Galen watched as a ish opaque cube shimmered into existence in front of the jump ship. “So, they drive into that cube?”

  The pilot said, “It’s not really a cube, it’s a flat plain but it appears to us as a cube because of an optical illusion, the result of space-time warping caused when the two points of space are connected.”

  The jumpship moved forward slowly, its forward section disappearing as it entered the jump point. Galen winced at the sight of his cargo ships and attached drop boats vanishing along a straight plane as they passed through the jump point. Viewing the jump point from the side, it looked as though the entire jumpship and the ships and boats attached to it were simply going away and ceasing to exist. Vanishing. After the jumpship was completely gone, the opaque cube illusion of the jump point shimmered as it, too, vanished.

  “Wow, that was disturbing,” said Karen.

  “Our turn,” said the pilot. He moved the dropship into position in front of the jump point, double checked the calculations against the co-pilot’s calculations, set the space craft into a slow spin, checked the numbers again and then activated the jump point. Viewed head-on, the jump point looked like a flat grey square, less opaque, that filled the cockpit window. The pilot then eased the craft forward, approaching the jump point slowly.

  Galen withdrew an auto-injector from his pocket and removed the protective cap and injected himself in the thigh with a powerful sedative. After a moment, he was unconscious.

  Chapter Four

  Galen came-to and shook his head, still a little groggy from the sedative. “How long was I out?”

  The pilot said, “About an hour. We already passed the turnaround point and we’re decelerating toward Juventud.”

  Galen unbuckled his seat harness. “Where’s Karen?”

  “We took her to her cabin during the zero-g at the turnaround. She passed out during the jump.”

  “Not really passed out,” said the co-pilot. “She screamed, then went limp, and slumped in her seat when we accelerated. We waited for the zero-g at the turnaround to take her to her cabin, to make it easier to move her.”

  Galen stood. “I’m going to check on her.”

  It was dark in her cabin, a small red light the only illumination, so Galen left the door open half way to allow light from the hallway to get in. Karen was strapped to her bunk with a couple of elastic cords. She was on her back, breathing slowly, a blank look on her face except for the faint hint of a smile. Galen removed the cords, swiveled her desk chair and sat next to the right side of her bed. He placed his left palm on her forehead for a moment, and then brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. He held her right hand in his and noticed she squeezed his fingers gently. He placed his left hand on her right shoulder and shook it gently.

  Her eyes stayed closed, but Galen noticed the eyes moving under the lids, and her cheeks pulled up on her face and her mouth opened a bit as she smiled. She breathed deep and then let out a long sigh. She squeezed Galen’s hand hard and then released it, then grabbed it again, held it gently.

  Galen said, “Welcome back.”

  She opened her eyes and turned her face toward Galen. “Life is love. Love is life.”

  Even in the dim light and despite Karen’s olive skin, Galen could see that her cheeks were flush. And her lips a little puffy, and her eyes. Her eyes, open, dilated, the usually dark color of her irises more brown than ever, the bottom lids pushed up a bit by the cheeks, her entire face one big smile.

  Galen now knew she was a sleeper like him, and knew what it was like. He just hoped she’d be okay. For lack of anything better to say he simply said, “Yes.”

  She said, “I thought about you.”

  Galen released her hand as she sat up. She stood and stretched her arms over her head, facing Galen. He couldn’t help but to admire her trim figure, evident even through her combat coveralls. Feeling conscientious about sitting with his face about the same height as her hips, especially since the fabric of her coveralls was tight up against her crotch, he stood. She stepped closer to him and said, “I thought about what you said, about how this was real and I’d come back. That really helped me. That helped me so much.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. He hugged her, arms around her shoulders. Her hair tickled his nose until she tilted her face up to look into his eyes. Her lips parted. Galen used his right foot to kick the cabin door closed, then cupped the back of her neck gently in his left hand and kissed her full on the lips. The kiss held for half a minute, then she stepped back and sat on her bunk, smiling into Galen’s eyes as she took off her boots.

  ***

  Karen sat next to Galen in the seats behind the co-pilot, her head leaned against Galen’s shoulder. The co-pilot said, “You okay? I’ve heard stories about you sleepers.”

  Karen smiled. “Never felt better. Where are we anyway?”

  The pilot rotated the dropship so that the planet showed through the front viewport. “We’re parked above Juventud. The two transport ships won’t be here for a little while. We got ahead of them because they needed time to de-couple from the jump ship.”

  “Lovely,” said Karen.

  The pilot rotated the ship back to its original view.

  Galen was starting to enjoy zero-G. “What are we looking at now?”

  “That’s the direction the transport ships will come from.” The co-pilot pointed at two tiny white dots. “That’s them.”

  The transport ships came in backwards, their thrust slowing them down as they approached their destination. The first one went into a stationary orbit half a hemisphere away from being above the crater where its drop boats would land. The second transport took up a position beside Galen’s command drop ship, waiting its turn to unload.

  The dropship pilot rotated to give Galen a view of the first transport ship. Drop boats detached from its hull and formed up in a column four boats abreast to make their landing. The side to side spacing was more than four hundred meters, the interval from nose to tail between the landing boats nearly two kilometers. With the boats detached, the cargo ship moved away and took up a position near Galen’s drop ship. Galen flipped the small flat screen up from his armrest and opened a channel with the landing leader, Master Sergeant Sevin.

  “Hey Sevin, you ready?”

  “Roger, Smaj. Just need to let the planet rotate just a little more and we’ll be spot-on. Just a moment more.”

  “Good luck,” said Galen.

  “Luck is for amateurs.” The column of drop boats began their decent toward Juventud. The first four boats descended sharply while the rest of the column stayed just above the atmosphere to circle around the planet one time before making their landing. The first four dropped sharply and then leveled off at an altitude of one hundred meters, dropping to ten meters as they passed over the rim of the crater. At the site selected for the space port, the drop boats leveled off at ten meters above ground and opened their cargo doors and extended their cargo ramps. Sevin’s light tank, a Hornet, slid out the back on a drop pallet. The straps holding the tank to the pallet broke and the tank sped along at top speed. Then a tank slid out of each drop boat, followed by infantry fighting vehicles and finally, four engineering vehicles, Hellcat tank chassis fitted with dozer blades on the front, a short gun barrel in the turret and a crane rig on the back.

  The drop boats angled up sharply and blasted themselves back into space. The vehicles on the ground stopped and then spread out in a rectangular perimeter five kilometers long and two kilometers wide. The engineering vehicles ran end to end of the new landing strip, smoothing the surface. After making four passes, they moved to the center left side, just outside the perimeter and shoved dirt into a mound ten meters high. Then they parked on-line in front of the mound, facing the landing strip. Sevin parked his tank on top of the mound and popped the hatch and stood tall and looked around.

  “All right, we’re ready. Come on down.” Sevin sounded happy.

  The rest of the column fini
shed its circumnavigation of the planet and the drop boats came in and skid dropped their cargo. Each platoon of the mechanized infantry battalion took up places in the perimeter, making a solid rectangle around the landing strip. The last four drop boats unloaded the final sixteen vehicles of the engineer platoon.

  Finished, the drop boats re-attached to the first cargo ship. The first cargo ship then left, headed back to the jump point. Their job complete, they were now the property of the Ostreich Free Fleet Transport Company.

  The engineers went back over the landing strip a few times, first collecting up all the drop skids, then softening the ground, then spraying a liquid into the soft earth, then spreading that mixture of earth and liquid with dozer blades, and then finally smoothing the landing strip with heavy rollers. The roller vehicles went over the landing strip again, spraying a hardening agent to make the surface solid. After allowing the surface to dry for an hour, the chief engineer walked across the landing strip, testing a couple of samples as he went.

  Satisfied, he gave Sevin a thumbs-up.

  “Hey Samj,” called Sevin. “We’re done here.”

  “Roger.” Galen used his drop ship sensors to look over the landing field. “Second cargo ship, you can let my people go.”

  The Captain of the second cargo ship called back and said, “Roger.”

  Galen called Sevin. “Sevin, how is it down there?”

  “It’s all right. The thinner air meant the boats had to come in faster but the reduced gravity meant the impact of the skid-drop was less. But you need to get a whiff of this air. It’s sweet. I really do feel younger.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  Galen let Sevin have the last word.

  Chapter Five

  Galen went to his cabin and slept. Karen stayed in the cockpit and monitored the landing, unloading and return of the drop boats. She then officially released the cargo ship and its docked drop boats from its obligations to the Brigade and sent it on its way.

  Then she awoke Galen. “Hey sleepy head, the fleet is gone.”