The War for Profit Series Omnibus

by Gideon Fleisher

Galen laughed, “Nice try. Because of the idiosyncrasies of the local times and calendars, by the time we reach Hobart, the time will have passed. In case you have forgotten, mister, it has to be within a day and it has to be within ten kilometers of where the challenge was issued.”

  Mr. Bun smiled. “Very well, tomorrow morning at dawn, right out there on the grass of your quadrangle. The publicity will do wonders for your unit’s reputation. This is your last chance to call off this duel.”

  Galen said, “Tomorrow at dawn.” Galen waved his hand dismissively toward the Commander’s Entrance door. “Tad, escort this…this… thing to the gate.”

  ***

  It was first light on the quadrangle, the yellow glow of the street lights and walkway lights competing with the pink glow of the eastern sky. Along the wide sidewalk along the south side of the quadrangle stood a group of spectators, watchers, interested third parties who wished to see the duel. Karen was there, of course, along with the Brigade staff, and most every field grade officer of the Brigade, and some senior NCOs, and some troops. And some other early-risers who had no idea there would be a duel, but just stopped by to see why the crowd had gathered. For the sake of safety, they were kept seventy five meters away, well beyond the maximum effective range of the dueling pistols.

  Tad held the case containing the weapons while Spike set up the folding table. Tad then placed the case on the table and opened it, then walked away to join the crowd on the sidewalk. Inside the case was a matched pair of flintlock smoothbore .69 caliber dueling pistols, reproductions manufactured to match the specifications of pistols from the earliest recorded days of dueling with firearms. There was also a black powder flask, two lead balls and a single ramrod and a wooden mallet.

  Galen stood at one end of the table, Mr. Bun at the other. Spike remained, serving as Galen’s Second. Mr. Bun’s attorney stood at his side, his Second. Bun’s attorney whispered in his ear.

  Mr. Bun said, “On the advice of my attorney, I offer you this chance to withdraw your challenge.”

  Galen balled his left fist, raised it so the back of his hand faced Bun, and then extended his middle finger. Spike looked at his wrist chronometer. “If you would please, Mr. Bun, choose your weapon.”

  Bun picked up the pistol closest him. Galen picked up the other.

  Bun’s attorney said, “Gentlemen, charge your weapons.”

  Bun cocked his hammer half way, opened the primer tray, put some powder in the priming tray, closed the primer tray, stood the pistol on end with the muzzle straight up, put a measure of powder down the barrel, inserted the lead ball, pushed it down with the ram rod, then tapped the ram rod with the wooden mallet to seat the ball. Galen repeated the process with his own pistol, tapping the ramrod a couple more times, and a little harder.

  The attorney, Bun’s Second, spoke, “This is a good time to call this off. This is not the best way to settle your differences, gentlemen.”

  Galen said, “You don’t collect much of a fee this way, do you Counselor.”

  Spike pointed at a spot on the ground and said, “Stand back to back right over here, gentlemen. I will drop my handkerchief. When it touches the ground, you will both take fives paces, face about and fire. Any questions?”

  Galen and Mr. Bun shook their heads and cocked their pistols all the way.

  Spike pulled a plain white silk handkerchief from his pocket, shook the folds out of it, held it straight out to his front, and then dropped it.

  Galen stepped forward. On his fourth step he heard Bun’s pistol fire. Galen ignored the sound, focused on performing the task at hand. As soon as his foot touched the ground for the fifth step he executed a ‘rear march’ maneuver and extended the pistol to fire, found that he faced Bun and had both hands on the grip of the pistol and raised it just a bit to aim at the center of Bun’s chest. Bun stood still, both hands down at his sides, pistol dangling from his right hand. A cloud of smoke was to his left. Certain of his aim, half a breath in his lungs, Galen squeezed the trigger. The flint held in the hammer struck the frizzen, making a ball of white sparks, opening the primer pan as it came down. A yellow flame shot out from the primer pan eight centimeters, then after a moment the pistol fired. Galen saw the bright yellow flash from the muzzle, the red sparks after that, his view of Bun completely obscured by the smoke.

  Galen held his pistol at his side and realized that Bun must have fired his pistol early, before he had turned. Reflex bred from practice had made Galen focus, had made him follow through all the way regardless. And he was glad. The smoke cleared and Galen saw Bun lying on the ground, propped up to a sitting position by his Second, clutching the right side of his chest, both hands over the wound unable to stop the flow of blood. Galen walked over to him and knelt.

  Galen raised his left hand. “Medic!”

  Bun smiled. “Thank you.”

  Bun’s attorney said, “Don’t thank this monster, he tried to kill you.”

  The medic arrived and began work on the wound, a sucking chest wound. When the medic prepared an injector to sedate Bun he said, “Just a moment, I have something to say. Colonel, this is a new day for me.”

  Galen said, “I know what you’re trying to say. All your life you played it safe and never took a chance. You’ve never taken a risk, never risked it all to achieve something, and as a result you’ve not achieved a damn thing.”

  Bun nodded and coughed.

  Galen said, “Congratulations, you are now a man.”

  The medic offered the injector again. Bun waved it off and said, “How did you know you’d win?”

  Galen said, “Simple logic. When you came here, you had no honor. You were here to win some money, but if you killed me you’d get nothing. I, on the other hand, was here to defend my honor. Now that you’ve learned to fight for what you want, have learned to stand up for yourself even when the risk is great, you have planted the first seeds of having your own honor. And believe me, mister, when you have honor you’ll gladly risk your life to keep it.”

  The medic stabbed the injector into Bun’s shoulder.

  As he drifted off Bun said, “My honor is my life.”

  “Damn right.” Galen collected up the pistols and put them back in their case.

  The crowd moved in as Bun was carried off on a stretcher, his lawyer walking along beside him.

  Karen came to Galen’s side. “Please, don’t ever do that again.”

  Galen said, “It’s my job. And as much as I love you, this was for the unit, not for you. What kind of commander lets little weasels come in here and extort money to keep secrets? That’s just bad business. By the way, are there any more people from your past I need to shoot?”

  Karen bared her teeth. “In the future I’ll fight my own duels, thank you very much.” She executed an about face and stomped off at a quick time march.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Galen pushed away his breakfast plate and tilted his head all the way up to get the last drop of coffee out of his cup. Karen grabbed the dishes from the breakfast bar and set them in the washer. She said, “It’ll be fun.”

  Galen shrugged. “If you say so. Tad and Spike both told me to take the day off, and you’ve been bugging me about going to your lake house all week. I guess that makes today the day.”

  “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

  Galen sat on the couch and picked up his eBook reader. Based on past experience, he thought he’d have enough time to read a novel before she’d actually be ready to go. He’d read half a page when she said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “All right.” Galen stood and walked out of the apartment with her. They took the elevator to the ground floor and went out the side door into the privately-owned vehicle lot and got in Karen’s civilian skimmer, a small two-seater red convertible with a black top. She got in and powered up the systems and began retracting the top. Galen waited until the top was all the way down and then got in. Even with the passenger seat all the way back, his knees rubbed the dashboard.
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br />   Karen left the Brigade garrison compound’s side gate and took the paved tank trail that led past some of the small-arms training ranges. Just before the paved tank trail ended and became a soft pack of fine powdered dust, she turned left at a new-equipment de-processing station and took a street down hill for a hundred meters. After passing garrison troop housing, she came to the drive-through gate. Sensors recognized her skimmer and the barricade swung up. The guard on duty, facing the incoming lane of the gate, looked over his shoulder and then turned and saluted as Galen and Karen went by. Three kilometers past the gate, Karen turned left onto a narrow gravel driveway that led to the back porch of an A-frame house fifteen meters high at its peak, and fifteen meters wide at its base. Galen looked at his wrist chronometer. The trip had taken seven and a half minutes.

  Karen set the vehicle down and stepped out. “Here we are.”

  She and Galen stepped up onto the back porch. The metal construction was sturdy and would last for a thousand years at least, but it had a hand-made feel to it. Karen held her right hand to the identity pad. Then she wiped it with her left forearm sleeve, breathed fog on it from her breath, wiped and tried again. Nothing.

  “I know. I have to turn the power back on.” She stepped off the porch and waded through waist-high grass to a row of mulberry trees, the branches drooping to the ground, burdened with ripe berries. Galen picked and ate a berry as he followed her past the trees and saw the single-floor tin pole barn on the other side. Karen reached above the door frame and found a ceramic key and held it against the lock. It opened. Inside the building stood a half meter wide fusion bottle on a brick pedestal and a row of converters and inverters, thick wires coming out of the ground into junction boxes. Beyond that was some machinery.

  “What’s all this?” said Galen.

  “My father called it his forge. It’s for extrusion and smelting and things like that. He’d crush rocks and heat them and make metal, and gravel, and dirt. For the garden. All the metal to make the house was extruded here, cast in sand molds made from the rocks he crushed. I don’t understand all of it. He was a very hard working man.”

  Karen opened the front cover of the power distribution box and pushed up on a red lever. She then closed the cover, stepped out of the shed, and after Galen stepped out she closed the door and put the key back up along the door frame.

  “You know your way around here pretty well,” said Galen.

  “I grew up here. It was my home until I was fourteen, that’s when…when I moved into the city.”

  They went back to the A-frame house. She placed her hand on the identity pad and an audible click came from the lock of the back door. She stepped inside and opened the alarm panel and punched a code. “Place your hand on the identity pad outside.” Galen did. “Now you can get in too.”

  Inside was a door to the left. Galen opened it and looked.

  “The den, or office,” said Karen. Farther along on the left was another door, the bathroom. On the right was the kitchen, open to the rest of the first floor. Except for the den and the bathroom, the entire first floor was all one room. The three meter high ceiling above the kitchen and den area ended and the great room ahead was open all the way to the inside peak of the A-frame. The front wall was framed glass, floor to ceiling. Great curtains blocked the view until Karen pressed a button by the kitchen counter. The curtains drew back and the view showed a wide yard, overgrown waist high, trees on the left and a barn off to the right, and off center to the right a boat house and a dock built on the edge of the lake. Across the lake, the shore half a kilometer distant and a series of low wooded hills beyond.

  Three large couches faced the window, a coffee table in front of each, a large rug covering all but half a meter of the polished concrete floor all the way around the great room. A spiral staircase led up to the loft. They climbed up. The railed walkway was open to the great room on one side, a wall with three doors on the other, a door for each bedroom. There was also a ladder, leading to a balcony and door above, centered on the roof’s peak. The bedroom in the center was the master suite, with an oversized bed and a bathroom of its own.

  Galen smile. “Nice.”

  Karen gave him a hug. “I want to live here.”

  “Who’s stopping you?”

  “I mean, after our wedding. We’ll come here for our honeymoon, and live here together. I want to raise my kids here.”

  Galen looked out at the lake. “How big is it?”

  “Two hundred and seventy square meters.”

  Galen said, “I meant the property.”

  “Thirty eight hectares. Will your dream fit here?”

  Galen stepped back. He smiled and said, “It’s not really a dream any more, now is it?”

  Karen said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “My dream has come true; it’s no longer a dream. That’s what I meant.”

  Karen smiled, “Come check this out.” She hurried down the stairs and out through the front sliding glass doors into the front yard and ran past the barn and stopped under a corrugated metal roof supported at each corner above a concrete slab by metal poles. A solid storage locker was rooted to the slab. Karen spun its combination knob three times and opened its door. Inside were two pistols and a child-size rifle. “Our own shooting range. A hundred meters out is a slab, a bullet stop ten meters high and twenty meters wide. Beyond that, a finger of the lake.”

  “Hard to see with all the brush grown up.”

  Karen laughed, “You have a lot of work to do around here, mister.”

  “It’ll give me something to do while you take care of all that dust in the house.”

  They drew the pistols from the locker and took a few shots down range.

  Karen put the guns away and grabbed Galen’s hand and led him off to the side through some more waist-high grass. She showed him a five meter square building with a garage door on the front. She raised the door. “We just walked across the garden and in front of you are all the gardening tools you will ever need.”

  There was a garden tractor taking up most of the right side of the floor, a small hay-baler implement parked to its left. Tools and implements hung along the walls and on the far wall a set of cabinets which Galen recognized as a seed bank. And a grow light, and a shelf below it for germinating seeds indoors.

  Galen stepped back and said, “It’s beautiful. Plenty of work for me indeed.”

  Karen showed him the barn, a hay loft above with stalls for four animals, suitable for horses. Built on to the side of the barn was a workshop that had never been used. Galen stepped back into the barn and looked around and realized it had not been used either. Karen was still in the workshop; her hands pressed against the wall, her forehead leaned against the wall too.

  Galen stood next to her. “Karen?”

  “He…”

  Galen left the barn and waited out side. After a few minutes Karen came out, her eyes red and puffy, her cheeks moist. Galen hugged her, patted her back slowly.

  Karen took him by the hand and led him away, back toward the house, beyond it, past the building with the generator, just the other side of it. Karen held back some drooping mimosa tree branches and pulled Galen inside the area enclosed by them. At the base of the mimosa tree’s trunk there was a granite grave stone inscribed, “Harry Mitchell. Centurion, Sixth Legion of Langston. A man of honor.”

  Karen said, “He always talked about getting me a pony.”

  Galen said nothing. He patted her shoulder then went to wait for her by the skimmer.

  She came out after a half hour. “So what do you think?”

  “We can clean this place up and have it ready to live in before the wedding. It’s another five weeks yet.”

  Karen said, “Hire some people?”

  Galen said, “No, not for my work. It’s mostly work I want to do. You can hire people if you want, but I’m doing the outside work.”

  “No, you’re right. We’ll do it ourselves, together. But we need time to
plan the wedding.”

  Galen shrugged. “It’s standard data, a military wedding. There’s a field manual for it and everything. The Brigade Chaplain has it all worked out. All we have to do is follow a few simple instructions.”

  Karen sat on the back porch said, “Perfect.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Galen entered the corporate board room of the Jasmine Panzer Brigade wearing his garrison duty uniform, stood at attention, saluted the chairman of the board and said, “Sir, Colonel Raper reports.”

  The table had been moved, so that its length ran side to side, and all the board members were on the other side of the table from Galen. Also, the chair provided for him was two meters away from the table, directly in front of the Chairman. The Chairman nodded and said, “Take a seat and relax, Colonel.”

  Galen glanced over his left shoulder to locate the chair, took a half step back and sat. After a moment he relaxed his posture a little, letting his left hand slip to the outside of his left thigh. This setup of the board room was better; Galen could more easily address individual board members, and see their reactions all at once.

  The Chairman said, “It looks like you’ve had a very successful quarter, Colonel. Your bold, adventurous risk-taking has paid off.”

  Galen said, “Yes sir it has. But I want to slow things down for the next year.”

  “Not planning to shoot any more of Karen’s ex-boyfriends, I hope.”

  The board members chuckled and laughed.

  Galen said, “Only if they bring themselves to my attention, but I don’t expect that to be much of a problem from here on out. I think I sent a strong message.”

  The chairman smiled. “So you’d like to slow things down. Any particular reason?”

  “We lost a lot of good people on Grinder, and some good equipment too. Financially, we could take the entire next year off and still be in excellent financial shape, but I do want to take some smaller contracts. To keep our people experienced, to develop leadership and combat skills at lower levels.”

  “I agree,” said the chairman. “How do you plan to go about this?”