Gideon Fleisher
THE WAR FOR PROFIT SERIES OMNIBUS
Dedicated to those who served
Foreword
The first novel in this series began as fodder for writing classes, to meet the assignment requirements to produce a chapter or short story for review and criticism by the instructor and the classmates every couple of weeks. Later, in a class called ‘creative writing: the novel,’ I had to complete a novel. In one semester. And I did.
Originally entitled War for Profit, that first book sat in a box for nearly fifteen years. I was busy doing Army stuff and didn’t have time to seek out a publisher. Then I retired and ebooks came about and I scanned the manuscript in as text and made it into an ebook and loaded it up for the entire world to read. It was more successful than I’d hoped and I was inspired to make the story into a series. I changed the title to First Contract in one edition and First Enlistment in another. I then spent the next two years producing the next five novels of the series and a prequel novella as well.
The inspiration for the series was various military science fiction stories. The books that first sparked my interest in that genre were David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers. I was handed a tattered paperback copy of a Slammers book by a battle buddy while deployed to Operation Desert Shield and I read and enjoyed. The book was therapeutic and enlightening. The world made more sense and I became a better Soldier because of it.
And then there was more, and I read through Drake’s entire body of work over the next year and I was inspired. I became an avid reader of Military Science Fiction. But then I ran out of things I wanted to read and decided it was time to write, to give something back to the genre. And I wrote, and took writing classes, and I’m happy with the results.
However, comparing my work to Hammer’s Slammers is completely unfair, to Mr. Drake. First of all, I had the benefit of reading his stories long before I wrote mine. Secondly, the passage of time has made criticism of the technology of the Slammers too easy, unfairly easy. I’m sure my own fiction will suffer the same fate in a few decades, but for now it’s based on known scientific principles. Third, I had a word processor when I wrote.
Another advantage I had was my decades of military service, serving in an all-volunteer military that had no technological equal on this planet. Truly professional, and sometimes criticized as damned near mercenary. The enforcer for a global banking cartel that runs this world, perhaps. Maybe. And then maybe we’re relieved to know that someone is actually running this world and it’s a group as benign and as predictable as the bankers. Pay your bills and keep your word and you’ll be fine. Similar to how a Bonding Commission would control this galaxy in the distant future, perhaps.
And now I humbly submit for you approval, the War for Profit series.
Enjoy!
This edition includes the entire series complete, consisting of:
The prequel novella for the novels of the War for Profit series.
Two millennia in the future it’s graduation day at the Ostwind Armor Academy on the planet Ostreich. Follow the actions of Cadet Galen Raper as he gets his final transcripts, graduates, has a graduation party and then goes to find a job the next day.
A hard science fiction novel set well into the future, where professional space mercenary units dominate the battlefield. Follow the adventures of a young mercenary through the events of his first enlistment with an armored brigade.
In need of a rebuilding year, the Jasmine Panzer Brigade takes a garrison contract on a backwater world. Hoping for a chance to get the unit more organized, the commander finds himself beset with one crisis after another, everything from relationship troubles to civil unrest to corporate malfeasance.
The third novel of the War for Profit series. For the Grinder contract, Colonel Raper brings the entire Brigade: a battalion each of Hercules heavy tanks, Stallion medium tanks, Hornet light tanks, the Mechanized infantry battalion, the Cavalry battalion, the Light infantry battalion, half a dozen Interceptor aerospace craft, the Reconnaissance company and a self-propelled heavy artillery battery and a specialized artillery section, plus a dozen helos, and of course the Brigade support battalion.
The Stallion Tank and Mechanized Infantry battalions are sent on a contract to help pacify and then re-locate the indigenous population of a backwater planet so that it can be further terraformed to more closely match Terra itself.
Two countries on a backwater world go to war and one hires the Jasmine Panzer Brigade to end it for them. Fairgotten is a planet that was abandoned for a thousand years when the Terran Empire collapsed. Fairgotten is then brought back into the interstellar community as a collection of colonies of various planets looking for a place to dump their excess population. Three hundred years later, Fairgotten rebelled to become an independent planet governed by several independent countries. And now, from time to time, those countries settle their differences through force of arms.
The Jasmine Panzer Brigade fights the good fight against long odds during large-scale land warfare of strategic proportions.
About the author:
Gideon Fleisher served 24 years in the military, on three continents and two peninsulas.
ARMOR ACADEMY SPACE CADET
Prologue
Halfway between the center of the Milky Way galaxy and its outer edge was the Prussia star system, and on its fourth planet, Ostreich, was its capital city of Ostwind. The city was home to the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission, housed in the largest building on the planet. Standing four hundred meters tall and a hundred meters square at its base, the titanium-alloy-framed and transparent-armor-covered building was filled to capacity with the agents and associates and staff that managed the planet’s largest industry: Mercenaries. Nine centuries before, Ostreich was little more than an operational base for space pirates picking at the carcass of the collapsed Terran Empire. As more planets became inhabited, Ostreich grew to be the economic and professional center of the Galaxy’s mercenary industry. Above the building’s main entrance doors, in bronze letters three meters high, were the words “LEAVE WAR TO PROFESSIONALS.”
Chapter I
It was the morning of graduation day at the Ostwind Armor Academy on Ostreich and Cadets lined the hallway outside several office doors waiting to get their final out-briefs from their academic advisors.
“Next!”
Cadet Galen Raper entered the office of his academic advisor and stood at perfect attention, center front a meter before the desk.
The academic advisor was a sturdy woman of indeterminate ethnic origin, delicate features except for a beak of a nose in a coal-black face with green eyes and a cleft chin, her Brandywine hair pulled back in a high and tight pony tail. Those who didn’t know better would think she had shoulder pads squaring her dress uniform jacket, dark blue and double-breasted, with a row of awards and ribbons above her heart extending all the way up to the epaulette on her shoulder, the epaulette displaying the Academy crest, its gold piping showing her status as the senior instructor.