The War for Profit Series Omnibus

by Gideon Fleisher

  Galen walked to the command center, entered and knocked on the door of Tad’s office. “Come in.”

  Galen opened the door and stepped inside. “Good morning, Tad.” Galen sat on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table.

  Tad closed the lid of his desk terminal and said, “What brings you down here this fine morning?”

  “Does a good governor need a reason to take an interest in the toils of his peasants?”

  Tad laughed. “Let me tell you what we’ve been working on. As you may or may not be aware, this planet is far enough along in its orbit that the jump point is now on the opposite side of the sun. This condition will persist for three more days.”

  Galen said, “So what?”

  “Last night, the unscheduled arrival of a jump ship was detected. We’re monitoring to see what comes around the sun. We should have been able to see it by now, if it had taken the most efficient route, but it’s not. It’s using the sun to mask its movement for as long as possible.”

  “You tell Sevin already?”

  “Yes. We’re not committed to a course of action yet, it could be days before they arrive. We don’t know enough to decide how to react. So far we’re testing the space shield and conducting crew drills on the heavy guns and space lasers. Sevin has a live-fire exercise scheduled for this afternoon.”

  “That’s always fun. So how soon could the unknown ship be here?”

  “As little as four hours. Regardless of whether they show up here or not, we’ll have a probe in position to take a look at them by then.”

  Galen said, “Okay, stay on top of it. I’ll come back after lunch.”

  “Later,” said Tad.

  Galen said, “I need to borrow your skimmer.”

  “Sure. The driver’s out front.”

  Galen left the office and found Tad’s driver, an average troop, male, brown hair, brown eyes, light skinned, square faced, broad shouldered. The troop sat at a terminal and was using it to play a vid game where an avatar used a long stick with a lump on the end to hit a three centimeter ball that lay on the ground. The apparent objective was to make the ball travel as far and as accurately as possible. Galen laid his hand on the driver’s left shoulder.

  “When you’re ready, I need a ride.” The driver took one last swing that caused the ball to roll a couple of meters into a recessed hole in the grass, a hole that was about twice as wide as the ball. Then he saved his progress and placed the terminal in stand by mode.

  “Roger, Sergeant Major. Where too?”

  “Down to the academy construction site; I need to talk to somebody.”

  The skimmer was parked right by the stairwell of the parking garage, the wall in front of it emblazoned with the Brigade logo and the text “Reserved for S-3” printed below that, at what would be eye-level for the driver of a moving air vehicle or a wheeled sedan. Galen sat beside the driver and looked behind as the driver backed out of the parking slot. He noticed that the laser swivel mount was retracted and assumed the laser was stowed in the locked compartment under the back seat. The ride down the road that wrapped around the mountain gave Galen a good view of the surrounding lake, and the drive across the bridge was more interesting than usual because half a dozen paddle boats moved around in the lake near the recreation area. The thought of people having leisure time made Galen feel better. The skimmer passed through downtown, the spaceport terminal on the left. Just past the troop billet area on the right, construction was under way. A flimsy fence made of bright orange plastic strung between meter-high poles surrounded the work are, a shipping container converted into an office standing just inside the wide break in the fence.

  “Park there.” Galen pointed just outside the fence; he didn’t want the skimmer blowing up too much dust. He dismounted and walked up to the construction site office and knocked on the door. The door swung outward slowly, opened by an older Mandarin man, his hair grey, his face darkened like leather, and wrinkled to a degree.

  “Sergeant Major, come on in.” The manager of Myung Jin’s construction division swept his left arm palm open toward the couch in front of his desk. Galen sat and the manger took a disposable cup out of the cabinet beside the refrigerator, filled the cup with water and handed it to Galen. After the manager sat down, Galen drank the water, all of it, in one long chug. That was the tradition for people who came to see the manger.

  Galen sat the cup down and said, “Mister Han, how would you like to be a teacher?”

  Han smiled and laughed, head tilted down, left hand up palm forward. “No I’m not a teacher.”

  Galen said, “Well what I need is for someone to train build crews. Construction companies made up of people from this planet, operating the same sorts of equipment you use. Can we establish a school of engineering that can train people from here to work and build the way your people do?”

  Han rubbed both hands over his face and exhaled heavily. “I don’t know. That could take a very long time. People here are stupid.”

  “Years?”

  “Ten years, a hundred years. You need a university first, and then educated people to learn there. Imagine it as wondering how long it takes a child to grow up with good education, all the way to an advanced degree, and that person is just the beginning. That person would be the first teacher, for the next generation.”

  Galen said, “I understand. After this project, would you be interested in another contract?”

  Han said, “I have been away from home for a very long time, and my people want to go home too. We will return to our families, we promised them. We can’t stay beyond the current project.”

  “Can you improve the road between here and City Six and make it a solid, eighteen meter wide smooth surface with lane markings for two lanes each direction?”

  Han slid open his center top desk drawer and stared into it for a moment, closed it, got up and moved to the back wall of the office and consulted a work schedule calendar with magnetic-strip name and equipment placards stuck to it, all around it. Then he sat back down and said, “We can do that, my road surface people aren’t too busy. They are waiting for the academy buildings to go up before they put in the parking lots and streets. They can build your highway now.”

  “And how much will that cost?”

  “Forget about that, I have made more than enough from your original contract. I’m glad to have something for those lazy butts to do. I’m paying them to do nothing right now and it’s making the other workers angry.”

  Galen understood. The manager expected direct, discreet, personal compensation. A really nice, small, expensive gift; off the books, of course. Galen stood. “I understand. Thank you.”

  Han shook his hand and opened the door for Galen to leave and waved at him as he walked away.

  Galen got back in the skimmer. “Back up top, driver.”

  ***

  Galen went into the command center and sat in the chair to the right of Tad, who was seated in the command chair. The image on the main screen was a scale display of an orb that reached from top to bottom of the display, dark in the middle, and fuzz around the edge as it phased into the white background. A few black specks of different sizes showed in the white, sprinkled randomly.

  Galen said, “What are we looking at?”

  “That’s our sun, in reverse monochrome.” Tad stared intently at the screen.

  “And why are we looking at it?”

  Tad moved a control in the arm of his chair to box a portion of the display and resized it to fill the screen. “That. It’s a disruption in the corona. Somebody is sneaking up on us.”

  Galen said, “I don’t like that. Any ideas?”

  “Well, there are two of these. If it were just one, I’d write it off as some scientific stuff and hand it off to the egg heads. But the two of them are moving in concert and they’re sneaking up on us.”

  Galen rubbed his chin and checked his wrist chronometer: 1117 hrs. His real reason for coming to the command center was to eat lunch with
Tad, but the anomaly on the screen meant lunch might not happen at all. “Can we kill them?”

  Tad said, “Whoever that is, they are flying very close to the sun. That means they have some hard core shields. Our weapons would have little effect at this range.”

  Galen said, “Have you sent them a message?”

  “No. As close as they are to the sun, they’d never receive it.”

  “That makes them blind too. High noon.”

  Tad looked at Galen. “High noon? What’s that mean?”

  “Okay. We get our heavy lasers to fire at them at high noon, when they’ll be firing through the least amount of atmosphere. They’ll never see it coming.”

  Tad said, “Well the clock is a little off this time of year, and we’re north of the equator, and the tilt of this season—”

  Galen cut him off. “You know what I mean. When our planet is rotated just right to afford a shot when we’re firing through the least amount of atmosphere, we take a shot. We fire a spread, to the left and right and above and below and in front of both ships. Start a few seconds early, then keep up the shooting until the lasers need to cool off. We have eight guns in the crater and four up top at the tunnel entrance. That should get their attention.”

  Tad squirmed in his chair. “At this range, with the distortion of light bending around the gravity of the star, the interference, we know their shields are strong because they can navigate that close to a star, I’m not so sure it would work. Besides, we don’t know who they are or what they want.”

  “They are cowards who want to sneak up on us. As for their shields, I think they are maxed out. Our lasers are light energy, so the gravity will affect them the same as the image coming from them. Now what I see is two ships tiptoeing along a ledge like a thief in the night. I think that hitting them with our lasers would be like poking a person standing on a ledge, just enough force to push them over the edge, and they’d never see it coming.”

  Tad poked at his controls and zoomed in even more on the anomalies. “Hey guns, can you hit that?”

  The technician at the fire control terminal said, “Roger, but I’ll have to do a spread.”

  Galen said, “What’s your sustained fire rate at maximum charge?”

  The technician said, “I can do three shots in two minutes from each gun, then have to let them cool for a half hour. I’ll also have to shunt energy away from the space shield reserve, and I’ll have to fill the diodes for the lasers ten minutes prior to the first volley. And I’ll need a time to fire, the diodes bleed power at full charge so I’ll have to use it right away or lose it.”

  Tad said, “I’m on it, calculating the optimum time to fire. Got it. 1157 hours.”

  The guns technician punched at his terminal keys and worked some controls. Galen looked at his wrist chronometer: 1142 hours. It matched the time now displayed at the top of the main screen. The two distortions were easier to see, the spectrums enhanced by the optics put through the targeting filters chosen by the guns technician.

  The technician said, “I can tighten the spread.”

  “Do it,” said Galen. “By the way, Tad, who noticed this problem in the first place?”

  Tad slumped forward in his chair and exhaled as he spoke. “Sevin. He saw it through the sensor array of the comms satellite, using the tunnel defense control room up top.”

  “That man needs a vacation.”

  The clock at the top of the main screen became a countdown clock, TTF followed by three minutes and seconds ticking off. The display actually played audio of a faint tick with each second that went by. The choice of having the sound on the clock was likely made by the Guns technician. Galen let it go, best to humor him now. Sighting symbols appeared over both targets, circles with cross hairs in them. They were off-set from one another, showing the spread. The cross hairs showed the aim points, the size of the circles showed the range of probable inaccuracy. Time ticked down to under a minute, the circles got a little smaller.

  All eyes in the control center were on the screen. Three seconds before TTF, the technician flipped a switch then laid his right index finger on the fire control button. The lights in the control center dimmed. At zero, he pressed down hard. The firing sequence took two minutes to complete, the lasers firing in ripple, one after the other, three seconds between each shot.

  “Rounds complete.” The technician flipped a couple of switches and the lights in the command center came back up to full. The clock in the display changed to TOT followed by a countdown of just under nine minutes. A countdown clock for Time on Target.

  Galen’s personal communicator buzzed. It was Sevin. “Nice shot, Smaj.”

  “Thank you. Are you watching this from up there?”

  “Yes. Very entertaining.”

  “Well we’ll try to keep you amused. Have you given any thought to that commission?”

  Seven took a deep breath. “Yes. I hate it but I’ll do it. Out.”

  Galen heard the snap of the communicator at the other end closing hard to end the transmission. “Hey Tad, Sevin’s going to stay on.”

  Tad said, “He’s a danger to the universe now. Imagine him with Major rank.”

  “That’s funny.” Galen said that because he knew he was supposed to laugh but didn’t feel like it. Six minutes to TOT. Galen stood and stretched. “I need a drink.”

  Galen went inside Tad’s office and returned with a plastic screw-top bottle of iced tea and sat to Tad’s right and sipped at the drink and stared at the display while the countdown went to zero. Nothing happened. “What the hell?”

  Tad said, “It takes eleven minutes for the visual to come back. It’s light. It takes that long to travel that far.”

  The technician already had a countdown clock showing ten minutes and change counting down TDA, or Time to Battle Damage Assessment.

  Galen said, “Good job Guns, no matter what the outcome.”

  The technician said, “Even if I missed them, you can play it off like it was a warning shot and tell them you spared their lives. Either way, it’s a win.”

  Galen looked at the technician. Nah, the technician was not officer material at all. Too smart, too much common sense. “Guns, you stay focused on your world of true and false, right and wrong, possible and not possible. Leave the BS to me, that’s my job.”

  “Roger, Sergeant Major.”

  Tad got up and returned with an iced tea. The BDA finally came. During the two minutes of target engagement, seven probable hits were counted, the area recognized as distortions turning black for a moment for each suspected hit. After the first thirty seconds, no more indications of hits came.

  Galen said, “Guns, what do you think happened?”

  A different technician was at the control terminal, there to relieve the other one for lunch break. The technician said, “The hits quit coming because the targets were destroyed. There was nothing left to hit.”

  Tad said, “I concur.”

  “What’s that?” Galen walked up to the screen and pointed at a tiny black speck moving away from the sun.

  Tad zoomed in on it. “A third ship, cruiser size.”

  Galen faced Tad. “Can you make it clearer?”

  “It’ll get clearer as it moves farther from the sun. Less distortion.”

  “Well it’s lunch time. Guns, keep an eye on that. Tad, let’s go eat.”

  ***

  Back in the command center after lunch, Tad sat in the command chair. On the screen was a discernable view of the third ship, turned toward Juventud now. A corporate cruiser, lightly armed, its hull scorched in places. The transparent armor on the left side of the cockpit was discolored, the hull around it blackened. It reminded Galen of how a person’s eye might look after it had been punched with a fist.

  Tad said, “We’ve received a data burst, a message from that third ship. Audio only.”

  “Play it, Tad.”

  “I am Marshall Tolbert, Esquire. I represent the resolution trust and the debtors in possession in
the case of the bankruptcy filing of EugeneX Corporation. I am here to seize any and all assets due to the debt holders of said corporation. Failure to cooperate can result in--”

  Galen extended the fingers of his left hand and ran them palm-down across his throat sharply.

  Tad killed the message. “Screw that.”

  “I agree,” said Galen. “Play the rest of the message.”

  “—can result in liability on your part for the value of any assets lost to your actions or inactions. You have destroyed two full battle cruisers on hire from the Fleetwood Armed Escort Fleet and they will be informed of your actions and we will represent their plea for restitution. Any more resistance will be looked upon unfavorably by the resolution trust. In the matter of settlement, time is of the essence. I pray you will reconsider your position, upon pain of being held personally responsible for any and all losses to the trust. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

  Galen laughed out loud. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

  The troops in the command center laughed for a full minute, and Tad began coughing, his eyes watering.

  Galen stood, a smile on his face so tight he could feel his face muscles starting to cramp. His voice was a little high-pitched. “I gotta go change into my dress uniform and send a video response.” Galen looked back at a dozen smiling faces as he left the command center. As he went down the stairs he heard Tad’s voice, then another peal of laughter. He felt bad about the crews of the destroyed battle cruisers, but at least it wasn’t anyone he knew. He also knew that if the battle cruisers had been allowed to arrive, they would have bombarded the crap out of the planet, they would have beat all the money they could get out of the Brigade and GasAir corporation, and that would have been very bad for the Brigade’s reputation.

  Galen went to his suite and changed into his dress uniform and returned to the Command Center. When he entered, a female technician whistled at him. He winked back and went into Tad’s office. Tad followed him in and said, “Are you ready?”

  “Yes. But one thing to discuss first. Those three landing boats at the spaceport, the ones that used to belong to EugeneX. Do we have pilots for them, and can they be armed?”