Galen undid the strap across his chest and sat up. “Okay. Everything go well?”
“As well as planned. Tad’s got control down there. Sevin has his mechanized battalion and the recon company outside the crater looking for trouble. Nothing yet.”
“Good. This zero-G is getting old. Let’s go see the pilot.”
They went to the cockpit.
Galen said, “How soon can we land?”
The pilot looked over his shoulder. “Ready when you are.”
“Give me a minute to get in my tank.”
“Roger.”
Galen went to his tank crew’s cabin door and knocked. “You ready to do this?”
The door opened immediately. The driver pushed off and floated down the hall.
The gunner came next and said, “You got it, Smaj. This is what I live for.”
“All right.” Galen settled himself into the cupola of the tank and put on his commo helmet and attached its curly spaghetti cord. He then dropped his seat and closed the hatch. The driver and gunner settled into their crew stations and brought the tank’s systems on line.
When the comms system showed a green status light, Galen called the pilot. “Okay, take us down.”
“Roger.”
Galen switched his auxiliary status screen to a pilot’s view from the dropship. The tank was backed into the cargo bay so that it could drive out forward on the ground, but the turret was turned to the tank’s rear for transport. So, Galen sat forward in relation to the ship. He watched as the ship nosed down toward the planet and entered the atmosphere. The deceleration reminded him to put on his lap belt. The ship descended sharply for several minutes then leveled off about a hundred meters above the ground. Galen could see the rounded top of the crater’s central mountain in the distance, growing larger, off-center slightly to the left. Then the ship flew over the rim of the crater, a cliff two hundred meters to the floor. The ship dropped again to fly ten meters off the floor, aligned with the tarmac. At a speed of less than four hundred kilometers per hour the ship’s landing gear touched and then the thrust deflectors of the atmospheric propulsion engines slowed the ship to a mere thirty kilometers per hour. The dropship turned around and taxied to its designated spot at the left corner of the landing strip, then crept backward at a walking pace until it was clear of tarmac, a mosaic of metal sheets laid out on the ground for its parking spot.
The cargo ramp lowered to the ground and the upper section of the cargo door retracted into the overhead. Karen and the co-pilot undid the tie down chains of the command tank and the co-pilot signaled the driver he was clear. The Hercules command tank drove off the jumpship. As soon as there was enough room for the gun to swing, the gunner turned the turret forward and Galen popped his hatch and adjusted his seat all the way up to ride high in the cupola.
Galen spoke into his commo helmet microphone. “This air is sweet. You guys need to get a lungful of this stuff.”
The gunner opened his hatch and stood to Galen’s left. “I like this.”
The driver’s hatch opened and the driver raised his seat so that his head poked out from the neck up. Through the commo helmet speakers, Galen heard a deep breath followed by a relieved sigh. The driver, reacting to the fresh air.
“Driver, you know where we’re going?”
“Roger, Smaj. It’s marked on the nav screen.”
The tank moved along slowly, turned right, following the tracks left by other vehicles. Soon the other thirteen tanks of the heavy tank company were on the left, lined up dress-right-dress, an interval of five meters between them, their turrets turned to the rear and their guns in travel-lock. At the end of the row, Spike stood facing the approaching tank, both hands signaling the tank to keep coming forward. Then he signaled “stop” by balling his hands into fits, together, one hand in front of the other in front of his chest. Then he crossed his forearms, kept his left fist balled and pointed with his right hand, the signal for the driver to pivot-steer clockwise. Spike sidestepped to keep in front of the vehicle as it pivoted, then signaled “stop” again. After eyeballing down the right side of the tank’s hull, Spike signaled “back up” to the driver by making a pushing motion, both palms forward, facing the driver, moving his hands forward and back to indicate the speed at which the driver should drive backward. Spike occasionally stuck one hand or the other out to the side to make minor left and right adjustments to the driver’s course.
The driver paid attention to Spike but also glanced at his rear-view camera display as well. He knew Spike was responsible for the tank’s movements while he was giving the signals, but he also knew that if he hit something, it was only the driver who would get teased about it, only the driver’s name would be mentioned in the legends that would be created about the tank that hit or ran over something by accident.
Galen looked ahead and saw the tarmac fifty meters away. A construction crew was already at work building the concrete support piers for the air traffic control tower. Spike’ tank was to his right, and the three platoons of Hercules tanks were to the right of that.
Spike signaled “cut” by drawing his right hand across his throat, fingers extended and joined, thumb flat. The driver shifted to neutral and set the parking brake, the gunner swung the turret to the rear and engaged the travel lock, and Galen said, “Dismount” before removing his commo helmet.
He climbed down over the main gun and then slid off the sloped amour of the rear of the tank to land on the ground with less force than he expected. He noticed a half-meter deep trench that ran behind the row of tanks, and looked to his right and saw an engineering vehicle with an attachment on the back still digging, turning left toward a spot where a fence was going up, surrounding a small tin shack with an electrical transformer installed next to it on a concrete slab. A thick power cable lay in the ditch, and two soldiers from the engineer platoon dragged a shorter cable over, dropped into the ditch, spliced it into the main cable and laid the free end on the ground just under the command tank.
“What’s that for?” asked Galen.
“Sergeant Major, we’ll connect it to your tank’s fusion power plant, to power the camp. As soon as the grid is complete, we come back and hook up to all the Hercules tanks and put the dirt back in the trench.” The engineering Corporal pointed at a receptacle cover at the rear of the tank, right above the towing pintle. “Plenty of juice for the whole camp.”
“Carry on.” Galen walked to the front of the tank and met Spike with a handshake.
“Welcome to Juventud, Smaj!” Spike smiled. “This place is awesome. Point eight Gs and extra oxygen in the thinner air. I feel ten years younger.”
“Why the full gear?”
“We’ll stick with it until day two of position improvement is complete. The troops need to have a place to hang it before they stop wearing it.”
“Be right back.” Galen climbed back up on the tank and reached inside and got out his war gear and put it on, then climbed back down. The chin strap for his ground troop helmet needed some adjustment, it was the first time he’d worn it in over two years.
Spike pointed toward the cliff face of the crater, twenty kilometers away. “We’ll dig a tunnel there next week so we can get out of this place and trade with the natives. It won’t be long before we’ll have to give these troops some liberty and the chance to pursue happiness.”
“A month,” said Galen. “That’s how long it usually takes for the natives to start setting up a little party ville. You heard anything from Sevin yet?”
“Just regular reports. They’re only a third of the way around the outside of the crater so far.” Spike and Galen walked away from the tanks, parallel to the landing strip, toward its midpoint.
Tad approached. “Hey Smaj, come check out the ops center!”
Galen shook his hand while patting Tad’s opposite shoulder. Tad gestured toward a thirty meter square hole, excavated two meters deep. An engineer Sergeant supervised a handful of heavy tank company troops as they wir
ed together reinforcement bars. A concrete mixer ran near by.
Tad stopped to watch. “I’m using the same plan as the TOC on Alamo, except it will be completely below ground. And later, the spaceport terminal will be constructed here, right on top of it, so that it can become a hard site for spaceport defense. When the Myung Jin construction company arrives next month, we’ll build a new TOC on the mountain, emplaced with the space shield generator and controller.”
Galen looked around. “Beautiful.”
Karen caught up to the group and looped her arm through Galen’s. “Hey guys.”
Spike smiled. Tad’s mouth fell open for a moment, then he closed it.
Galen said, “We’re a couple now.” Then he said to Karen, “Not in public, or at least, not when we’re in full field gear.”
She let go and stepped back and said to Tad, “Your place or mine?”
It took Tad a moment to understand. “To the TOC vehicle, the extension is up. Chief Polar has the ALOC track extension up too, but she’s using it right now. Busy in there, we’d just get in the way.”
Tad led the group past some more construction, corrugated metal buildings getting bolted together on concrete slabs, barracks for the troops, dining facility, shower houses, storage sheds… and a fitness center, and a theater, and more. Tad gestured toward his TOC vehicle and held open one of the three overlapping flaps of the entrance vestibule that led into the domed tent attached to the back of the armored command post vehicle. Spike muscled his way in and held the inside flap of the three-curtain entrance door for Karen. Tad gripped Galen’s elbow and pulled him back, dropping the outside flap before Galen could enter.
“We need to talk,” said Tad.
“Okay.” Galen walked alongside Tad as he took a few steps away from the TOC extension.
Tad stopped and faced Galen and looked down, his voice lowered. “Do you like black women?”
Galen said, “Not all of them. Some are all right. Why?”
Tad looked up, his eyes meeting Galen’s. “Karen. What do you know about her?”
“Enough. She likes me. And make no mistake, her olive skin is no barrier to me appreciating the love of a good woman.”
“Her father died six years ago, at the hands of the Mosh. He was a Major in the Ninth Legion of Langston.” Tad folded his arms.
“And her mommy was probably Mandarin, or some other sort of Asian. So what?” Galen placed his hands on his hips.
“Her grandfather is…” Tad looked to his right. “Her maternal grandfather is the chairman of the board of directors.”
Galen took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. “Okay. Okay, here’s the deal. She’s a sleeper. But this was her first jump so we didn’t know it. She went through the eternal darkness and I was there when she came out of it, and she admitted she loved me.”
Tad blinked and stepped back.
Galen continued, “You can’t understand, but I do. I know what it’s like. And because of that, I know she loves me. That’s the whole reason she’s here, she wanted to be on this contract to be close to me, and that was before she found out she was a sleeper, before she had an eternity to think about it. She’s all right in my book, everything is fine.”
Tad smiled. “Have you told your mother?”
“It’s none of her business, not yet.”
“And have you told Karen your life-long plans? To save enough money so you don’t have to do anything for the rest of your life? You want to get a farm house on forty hectares of land and grow your own food as a hobby. Really, have you told her that? She’s in love with an up-and-coming military professional who fast-tracked right into a Brigade commander slot with a real good chance of becoming a filthy rich member of the board in less than ten years.”
Galen looked to his left and spit. “I’ll have to think about that later. Let’s go inside and get this meeting over with.”
Tad patted Galen on the shoulder. Galen strode toward the TOC extension and Tad followed him.
Inside, the tent walls were white. White glow strips that seemed a bit yellow in comparison to the white walls spanned the ceiling of the dome. A dozen fold-up chairs faced the flat screen at the end of the dome opposite the lowered assault ramp of the TOC tracked vehicle. Galen took the first seat at the front right corner of chairs and removed his helmet and placed it under the chair. Karen, Spike and Tad sat to his left. A burly sunburned man with light brown hair stood before them wearing combat coveralls, the top pulled down and tied around his waist, revealing a non-standard dark green muscle shirt. His short hair showed a tan line that indicated his hair had recently been much longer.
“Aloha, lady and gentlemen. My name is Chief Koa and for this contract I will serve as the Brigade intelligence officer.”
Spike said, “We all know who you are. How was the beach?”
“It was wonderful. Best year of my life. You ever get the chance to visit Terra, go to Hawaii. And stay ten years, one year is not enough.”
Galen leaned back in his seat and said, “Relax, gentlemen. This is an informal briefing. Continue, Chief.”
“Okay.” Chief Koa sat at the far left end of the front row of chairs and pushed a button on his remote. “This is the weather report for the next ten days. Clear and dry, not too hot, not too cold. Highs in the 20s and lows in the 15s. That’s Celsius, in case you were wondering. The weather here is controlled by the sky factories, and since this area of the planet is nearly uninhabited, they never bothered to send a lot of rain this way. But rain does come by accident, about twice a year for a couple of weeks. But not much.”
Koa brought up the next picture. It was a mountain capped by a collection of pipes and stacks and concrete buildings, with a row of a dozen stacks leaned at a 400 mil angle to the left, along the spine of the largest concrete building. A road wound around the mountain to its base, a town at the bottom, spreading outward onto the flat ground “Here we see a typical sky machine and the complex built around it, with a town of about two hundred thousand people. A highway system connects the twenty two sky factories that are located all around the surface, either side of the equator, none of them more than a thousand kilometers from the equator.”
“Impressive,” said Karen.
“Indeed.” Koa advanced to the next slide. It showed a cutaway graphic of a sky factory. “They are built on top of volcanoes, to provide the power and the basic gas materials needed to make air. There were originally twenty five factories, but over time, three of the volcanoes erupted and destroyed the factory and the town around it. The most recent disaster was three hundred and twenty six years ago.”
The next slide showed an overhead photo of a volcanic crater with lava and steam. The time stamp showed it was from three hundred and twenty six years ago. Koa continued, “The crater we are in is an ancient impact crater. The mountain in the center is the impact object itself. It hit, penetrated the crust, and then was pushed back up. The outer wall of the crater is sheer cliffs, and the floor of this crater is flat because over time, dust settled. The compacted dust is nearly thirty kilometers deep, to the original crater floor. The lake around the mountain formed when the dust was blown around and away from its base by high winds that didn’t stop until the sky factories had changed the atmosphere sufficiently to stabilize the atmosphere. And the rain that came has soaked into the dust and made it hard, and has filled in the lake.”
Koa flipped to the next picture. It showed the crater’s central mountain by itself. “This is almost entirely solid iron. There are traces of other metals of course, but mostly iron. Most of the material we remove from road building and tunnel boring will be used to construct the rest of the facilities on the mountain. We’ll cut the top off flat to have seventy hectares of useable land to emplace the EugeneX facilities, the permanent TOC, the command center and the space shield.”
Galen said, “Sounds like fun.”
“Well I’ve gotten a little off topic. Let’s get back to intelligence matters.” Koa flipped past a cou
ple of pictures and showed a video taken from the sidewalk along an urban street. Houses lined each side, and motorized two and three wheeled vehicles drove along the street. A large four-wheeled cargo truck came to a stop and blocked the camera’s view. The next picture was of a city skyline in the distance. The tallest building was perhaps forty meters tall. Discernable in the background was a sky factory atop a mountain.
“For the most part these people present no organized threat to us. The biggest threat is the little one percent of criminal-minded people that all societies have, and curious explorers who want to know what we’re up to and then decide they don’t like what we’re doing. Really, nothing we can’t handle, and dealing with that sort of thing will let some of our less experienced troops cut their teeth with some low-risk live combat.”
Tad leaned forward in his chair. “That’s more my lane. Operations. I’ll decide who will deal with it and how.”
Koa said. “I’d assumed security would fall under intelligence.”
That’s one of the things Galen liked about military organization, the rank. Petty arguments were settled before they began. “Don’t take it personal, Koa. You’re doing a fine job. Continue.”
“Right, Sergeant Major.” Koa showed a picture of another city. “There is one community that presents a unique threat. Not military so much as moral. It could cost us our charter and we could forfeit our bond if we’re not careful. The people living around Air Factory seven.”
He showed a picture taken at street level from a moving vehicle. It then became a video, the view swinging slowly from left to right, the camera mounted on a moving vehicle. The hiss of a gas-turbine engine was barely audible in the background. The median strip of the wide street was covered with refuse, litter, and the occasional trunk of a battered, dead tree poked out of the mess. Along the sides, vacant lots full of junk and trash were nestled in between neglected buildings, many boarded up, graffiti, a store with an armored front with a tiny customer service window seemed to be selling snacks and there was a line of nervous customers lined up.
The War for Profit Series Omnibus Page 29