“Yeah,” said Tad.
“Where to?”
The young men looked at one another, then at their boarding passes. Galen dug out his contract, scanned it for the name of some place, any place. The three young mercenaries honestly didn’t know where they were going. After a long pause the barkeep broke the tension, “Oh, a classified, secret destination. I understand.”
They drank their first ales in silence, brooding over their lack of knowledge about their future. When the barkeep finally returned with another round of ale Tad asked him, “You know anything about the Panzer Brigade commanded by Colonel Theil?”
“The Jasmine Panzers. Yes, I’ve heard of them.”
“Well? Where are they?”
“Mandarin Confederation space. If you’re lucky you’ll get stationed on Cyan. Beautiful world. Or maybe Ngsien. That rock is a great big ball of ore orbiting the fourth planet of the Drago star system.”
“We didn’t say we were going to the Jasmine Panzers,” said Galen, trying to preserve some semblance of operations security.
“No, I guess you didn’t.”
They left nine empty bottles and a reasonable tip when they went back down to their boarding gate. The balding attendant was talking with a loadmaster and a ship steward. They were welcoming civilian passengers and processing their paperwork when Galen and his two buddies arrived.
“Wait over there, gentlemen,” said the steward.
They watched nearly a hundred passengers pass through the boarding gate and guessed there were about twenty more waiting to board when the loadmaster called, “There any military out there? I’m supposed to pick up three tank jockeys.”
“Right here!” said Galen.
“Come over here.”
They pushed their way through the knot of civilians. The loadmaster gave them a skeptical look and said, “Show me some identification and some orders.”
They reached in their pockets and pulled out credit markers, academy graduate I.D.s and their mercenary contracts. The loadmaster read all the documents carefully and handed them back.
“Okay, get on.”
As he walked down the boarding gantry Galen heard the loadmaster tell the other waiting passengers, “Sorry folks, my boat’s full. Better luck catching the next one.”
The steward caught up to Galen and his two buddies and told them, “We’re really packing them in this time, what with that other ship breaking down. Anyhow, you three will ride in the upper weapons blister, for two reasons. One, you’re tank jockeys, so that means you know a thing or two about weapons. But we aren’t putting you there to use the damn things, understand that right now. The reason you’re being put there instead of civilians is so that if a weapon gets discharged, we can take legal action against you. You know enough about those weapons to make absolutely sure they don’t get fired. Or damaged. Remember that. Your cabin, gentlemen.”
“Do you think they wouldn’t call us ‘gentlemen’ if we weren’t academy graduates?” said Tad.
“I guess so,” said Spike. He strapped himself into the weapons control couch.
Galen said, “That loadmaster, he probably still thinks we’re impostors. Did you see the dirty look he gave us, like we insulted the whole universe by calling ourselves military?”
“No, spacers hate mercenaries. That’s what my uncle told me. He used to work at this spaceport,” said Spike.
“No wonder you found your way around here so well, it runs in your family,” said Tad.
“Talk about family, why your family...”
“Let’s drop it. I’m in no mood to fight,” said Galen. For him, discussions about family and lineage were taboo. But with a comfortably retired mother and a big chunk of money in his own account, his family heritage would be quite respectable. But not until then, not for a while longer.
“So Spike, tell us more about this spacer/mercenary complex,” said Tad.
“Oh, it’s not so hard to figure out. Being in space, weightless or in control of your gravity is kind of comfortable. The only reason they have to come down is to get us. A necessary evil they have to put up with to earn a living. And in space this ship is quite a powerful weapon, but on the ground it’s kind of vulnerable to attack, dependent on ground units for protection. So they resent us for several reasons. Then there are the crews. Now they really don’t like us, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever meet any of them. We shouldn’t, anyway.”
“Attention passengers,” the steward’s voice came over the intercom, “we will be lifting off in thirty seconds. Because of our tight schedule we will be launching faster than normal and will burn at a rate of three Gs while leaving the planet’s gravity well. Then as we approach the jump point we will decelerate at two Gs. We will, however, give you fifteen minutes of weightlessness between one G burns. I advise you to make the most of those times to prepare for the second leg of the flight. There will be no one or zero G breaks after the turnaround. That will be all.”
“How long does this flight take?”
“About six hours to the turnaround, where we coast for a while, and then maybe four hours as we decelerate to stop at the jump point.” Galen didn’t know, he was only guessing. The primary thrusters fired, gently lifting the drop ship into the air.
“Hey, this ain’t so bad, can hardly feel the extra gravity,” said Tad.
Spike said, “Yeah, you know the deal with them spacers. They just said that to scare us.”
Chapter Two
Galen said nothing. He sensed a gradual but steady increase in the velocity of the drop ship. It lifted smoothly, taking nearly two minutes to reach two Gs. Then BAM, the secondary thrusters fired. The ship lurched upward, vibrating and groaning for a few seconds while it tore out of the last layer of the atmosphere. The three young mercenaries didn’t talk much, not accustomed to weighing three times as much as normal.
Galen wondered how the civilian passengers fared. After all, he was a strong, physically fit young soldier and he was not feeling well at all. It took every ounce of determination and discipline he could muster to keep from slumping over into unconsciousness. He felt as though his bowels were about to explode.
“What manner of torture is this?” said Tad through clenched teeth.
Galen envied him. At least Tad had strength enough to speak. The chronometer on the weapons control panel showed only twenty minutes elapsed since the torment began. Galen knew he couldn’t take another moment of it, but what could he do? Pride made him put up a front of being able to handle the stress.
A voice, this one less cultured and more strained than the steward’s, came over the intercom, “You there at weapons station two. What in the name of God are you doing? HEY YOU, I can see you on my monitor!”
Galen looked over Spike’s shoulder and saw a large red “2” stenciled over the weapons control panel.
“You mean us?” grunted Galen.
“Yes, you. Why don’t you lay on the floor like everybody else? You keep sitting up like that and you’ll break your stupid neck. Too late for you to get out your mat, but lying on the bare floor is better than being paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of your life.”
“Aw,” said another voice in the background, “they’re them tank jockeys. I figured they’d know better. Guess not.”
“You people lay down right now or I’ll jettison your carcasses at the turnaround point.”
The three friends lay on their backs on the floor of the weapons station for the remainder of the high-G burn, grateful but embarrassed. When the acceleration finally stopped and gravity inside the drop ship became zero, Galen had an intense feeling of falling that lasted a couple of minutes. He closed his eyes for a second but had to reopen them. The sensation of falling was too intense, too real. He had to focus his attention and hold tightly to the bulkhead and deck to keep from losing his grip on reality.