Officer-Cadet Page 3

  He looked at his watch just as he crossed the mile marker—before he started to slow down. “Damn,” he muttered. He had not even broken four minutes. Way too slow. He put his hands on his hips as he slowed to a trot for a final half lap. He put in five minutes on the rings to exercise his arms and upper body, then moved to a machine that allowed him to alternate weight work with his arms and legs. By the time he got up from that apparatus, his arms and legs were trembling. He was covered in sweat, and about ready to collapse for a long rest.

  But he did not stop. He forced himself through several minutes of light work to cool off, then headed for the swimming pool. Stopping just long enough to strip off his shoes and socks, he dove into the pool, welcoming the shock of cool water. He took fifteen minutes for ten laps of the pool, resting for a few seconds after each lap, not pushing himself to his limits in the water. Then he flipped over onto his back and floated for a few minutes, kicking gently through wide circles around the center of the pool. He stayed in the water until he felt as if he were nearly relaxed enough to fall asleep where he was. Then he paddled lazily to the edge and got out. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 1630 hours.

  “Still plenty of time before supper,” Lon muttered. Everyone seemed to be overly anxious that he not miss meals, and that puzzled him. He was not underweight, and certainly not malnourished or anemic. He took a towel from a rack, dried off, then picked up his shoes and socks and headed for the locker room. He took a shower, first so hot that it turned his skin pink, then icy cold, raising gooseflesh. By the time he was ready to leave the gymnasium, it was time to head for the mess hall.

  Dirigent City was adjacent to the main base of the DMC. The city and the base had grown together over the past five centuries. For most of that time the commander of the Dirigent Mercenary Corps, the General (there was only one general at a time in the DMC, the head of the Council of Regiments, elected by that council from its own members), had also been— ex officio —head of the planetary government. Together, the base and the city accounted for two thirds of the world’s population. Most of the rest could be found within a two-hundred-mile radius. That was an unusual concentration for a world that had been settled as long as Dirigent—more than six centuries—but Dirigent was an unusual world, still almost entirely dependent on a single industry. Most colony worlds became more diversified within three or four generations of their founding.

  Although Dirigent City was, overwhelmingly, an army town, there was one important distinction from army towns on other worlds. The civilian area immediately bordering the main gate was not given over to businesses designed to service soldiers and separate them from their pay. The blocks nearest the main gate, and along the route between it and the spaceport across town, were maintained to impress off-world visitors—especially potential clients. Government agencies and offices for civilian professionals were concentrated along the route that diplomats were most likely to travel. There were also factories visible from that route—at a distance, mostly, away from densely populated neighborhoods—factories that produced the weapons of war, and the supplies that soldiers needed. Dirigent exported munitions as well as men.

  The off-duty haunts of the soldiers were hidden behind the public facade, on side streets and in neighborhoods away from the showy face of the city. The nearest were close enough for a thirsty soldier to reach without too great an effort, but the fancier watering holes were farther off, along with the other establishments that dedicated themselves to the wants and needs of the soldiers—particularly the unmarried soldiers, who comprised more than 60 percent of the DMC. There were always taxis available near the gates of “The Base” to take soldiers where they wanted to go, and two bus routes had stops across the street from the main gate … for the budget-conscious.

  After a quick supper, Lon Nolan left base, alone. Most of the squad had headed for town and their favorite places an hour or more before. No one was telling them not to skip meals. Lon was in civilian clothes. Off-base, few men of the DMC wore uniforms unless they were on duty or on thirty-minute-recall alert status—part of the planetary defensive contingent.

  Despite his earlier efforts in the gym, Lon walked, passing the bus stop and cab stand without a glance. He did not plan to go too far. It was only about two thirds of a mile to the bar where he expected to find several members of the squad. It was where they usually went—at least for the first part of an evening on the town.

  It was close to sunset. Streetlights had already come on. There were plenty of people out, walking or riding. Three blocks from the main gate, Lon turned onto a side street. Past the first few doors on either side, this was where the military were welcomed. There were bars, restaurants, pawnshops, gaming parlors, and other entertainments available behind respectable facades. The city council was extremely obliging to its military contingent. It was not only that they provided a large part of the commercial life of the city, there also was not a member of the council who did not have several relatives in the DMC. Destructive drugs and physical mayhem were about the only human vices that could not be openly practiced. Crime was low in Dirigent City—on the entire planet. Military discipline was severe. Infractions were treated with draconian punishments.

  The neon signs grew larger and more ornate the farther from the main streets they were. The sounds of music were louder, coming out of almost every opening door.

  Lon found the place he wanted, the Purple Harridan. Despite the name, the garish decoration, and loud music, the Purple Harridan was usually relatively sedate. The public bar was where most of the commotion was. But there were other rooms, behind and above, and most of those were more subdued.

  The noise always stopped Nolan. The music was raucous and loud, grating to him. But the lighting of the public bar was worse. Purple lights, half of them strobing, fell on the purple and red that were the main colors. One small white light also strobed, erratically, making Lon blink every time it came on.

  He did not see any of the men of his squad in the public bar. That did not surprise him. Most of them were old enough to prefer more sedate surroundings. As soon as Lon’s eyes adjusted to the lighting, he moved toward the arch that led to the next room, and to the stairs and lift tube that led upstairs. Phip and the others might be anywhere, but Lon guessed that since they had come out without eating at the mess hall, they would be in the salon on the second floor, the restaurant.

  Lon took the stairs. As he climbed, the noise from below started to fade, absorbed by walls and ceiling, baffled by the turns. Even though there were no closed doors between the various public rooms of the Purple Harridan, each seemed to be acoustically isolated. Lon had asked about that after his first visit. Tebba Girana had given him the answer. “It’s the same technology we use to make life bearable for our tankers and artillerymen, on a different scale. Sound-deadening is important, and the military isn’t the only place it can be used.” “It’s not top secret?” Lon had asked. Girana had shook his head. “Not for the last fifty years, I guess. We even license factories on a few other planets to make it, take a royalty.”

  Phip, Dean, and Janno were sitting at a table near the bar. Although this room was called the restaurant of the Purple Harridan, it was not strictly for diners, and the same food was available in all of the rooms. The “restaurant” was nearest the kitchen and most likely owed its name to that fact.

  Lon got a beer at the bar before he headed to the table. Phip Steesen pushed out a chair for him.

  “Thought maybe you weren’t going to make it out,” Phip said. His eyes snowed that he had already done some serious drinking. He spoke slowly, taking great care with his enunciation.

  “I ate in the mess hall. It saves more money for this.” Lon raised his beer. He knew that it was a safe excuse, one that would prevent any jokes about him being cheap.

  “Tebba said you was tied up with the lieutenant,” Dean said. “Sometimes he don’t know when quitting time comes around.”

  Lon grinned and shook his head
. “He had a staff meeting at four o’clock.” Off-duty, the enlisted men of the Corps made a point of not using military time.

  “You hear anything useful, like when we might pick up a contract?” Dean asked.

  “You guys will probably hear before I do.” That was a matter of some concern to the men. Pay on contract was higher than pay in garrison, and the battalion had been at home far too long for most of them.

  “There’s been times, since I’ve been in the Corps, that they had to turn down contracts because we were all too busy,” Phip said. He shook his head, then took a long drink of beer. “Now, nothing. We were ready to ship out six months ago, had our turn at refitting and training, our time on planetary defense detail. Now we’re back at training, and pulling work details all over the place, just waiting.”

  “We are next in line, any contract calling for a battalion or more,” Janno said. Next to his two comrades, he sounded positively sober. He did not work at getting intoxicated, the way the others, especially Phip, did. “Seventh is next regiment out, and within the Seventh, we’re the first battalion due.”

  “Way our luck is running, won’t be nothing but contracts for a company or less coming in till next spring,” Phip said. “We’re way down on the company list, four or five ahead of us.”

  Lon sipped at his beer, intending to make each one last. The way the Corps scheduled who was sent on a contract was fairly simple. Rosters were maintained for regiments, battalions, and companies. The unit of the proper size that had been longest in garrison went out. Choosing units when part of the first-up outfit had been out recently got more complicated, but the idea was to be as fair as possible in the allocation of work. The DMC did accept contracts of any size, down to sending no more than a squad out. On rarer occasions a single officer might be dispatched to conduct an evaluation of a client’s own military capabilities—or problems—but that was usually just in hope of landing a more substantive contract later.

  “There’s got to be work not too far off,” Lon suggested. It’s important to me too, and not just because the pay is better on contract. He needed combat to get his commission, his lieutenant’s pips.

  “Right now, I’d even settle for a safari,” Phip said.

  “Safari?” Lon asked.

  Phip just nodded, more or less into his beer. Janno took over. “Once in a while, colonists on a new planet have serious troubles with native predators, so serious that they can’t handle it themselves. Either they’re losing people or they’re losing livestock. They need soldiers to come in and thin out the offending predators, or drive them away from the settled area.”

  “Problem is,” Dean said, almost dripping beer from his mouth in his hurry to speak, “new colonies don’t often have the money or trade goods to hire enough soldiers to do the job right. And sometimes they don’t know enough about the critters they want killed to make the job as safe as it should be.”

  “Even if they scrape up enough to pay for a platoon or so, they don’t have enough to offer bonuses,” Dean said.

  “What’s the biggest contract you guys have been on?” Lon asked. “The most men.”

  The three of them looked around at each other. “Two regiments,” Janno said. “That was almost a real war like they used to have back on Earth. The opposition even had a couple of old skybolts, fighters.”

  “That was a hairy bastard,” Phip said. Then he drained his glass and raised it, gesturing for the waitress to bring a refill. “Hairy bastard,” he repeated, muttering this time. “We lost four men in the platoon that time.”

  Dean and Janno both drained their glasses then. Lon did the same. It seemed to be expected.

  Two hours later the four men were out the street, heading for another bar that Phip insisted they visit, the Dragon Lady. Janno and Lon held the outside. They were still walking straight. They worked to contain the weaving of Phip and Dean. Those two were far gone in the booze. “Weekend,” Phip had explained before he ceased to be coherent. “Two days, no work.”

  Lon had finished four beers in the Purple Harridan. He suspected that Janno had not had many more, even though he had been out longer. Lon had not asked where the rest of the squad might be. Although nothing had ever been said, he suspected that the rest of them were more … choosy about their drinking companions. Lon was a cadet, an apprentice officer; someday he might be commanding them, might send one or more of them to his death. At his most suspicious, Lon sometimes suspected that these three included him only because Corporal Girana or Sergeant Dendrow had asked them to take care of him and see that he did not get into trouble on his own. But until proven wrong, he chose to act as if they included him for other reasons.

  Phip started singing an impossibly obscene song about Harko Bain—supposedly Dirigent’s first mercenary, back before the creation of the DMC, when young Dirigenter men sometimes went off-world to join mercenary forces. The song seemed to have an infinite number of verses, about equally divided between Bain’s military and sexual prowess … both Herculean according to the lyrics. The refrain was the mildest:

  He fought a thousand battles

  On five hundred different worlds,

  And gave ten thousand bastards

  To as many willing girls.

  Now and then, Dean would join in, but the two men’s voices did not harmonize well, and when they started trying to outdo each other, Janno shushed both of them. Too grand a show of public intoxication could bring trouble down.

  Lon paid little attention to the singing, but smiled each time the refrain came up. He had looked up Harko Bain in the library. Little was known about the real man except for his birth and death dates, and his children on Dirigent—two sons and a daughter. Other than that, there was just the comment, “Supposedly one of the first Dirigenter mercenaries.” At the time that Harko had lived, there had not been five hundred settled worlds in the galaxy. The number had been closer to two hundred. But he had left a rousing legend.

  The Dragon Lady was a smaller place than the Purple Harridan, but tried to crowd as many customers into its main bar. There was scarcely room to move between tables, and the bar was only visible if you were leaning against it. Customers were three and four deep in front of it. Lon and his companions wedged in along one wall, crowded together at the edge of the traffic flow.

  “I know why you wanted to come in here,” Lon shouted close to Phip’s head—to be heard over the commotion of the people and the loud music. “There’s enough guys in here that you couldn’t fall down if you wanted to.”

  Phip gave Lon a broad, uncomprehending grin. He had heard only part of what Lon had said, and understood none of it.

  Janno hooked an almost naked waitress—she wore nothing but a tiny apron around her waist with two pockets in it, one for tips, the other for her order pad—by grabbing her around the waist and pulling her toward him. He put his mouth right up against her ear to order beers for the four of them.

  Lon raised an eyebrow. Janno seemed to be taking an awfully long time to say, “Four beers.”

  The waitress giggled as she freed herself from Janno’s grasp and headed toward the end of the bar reserved for waitresses. Lon expected a long wait, but she was back in only a couple of minutes. After the beers had been distributed and paid for—Janno paid for all of them, it was his turn—he grabbed the waitress again to whisper something else in her ear. She giggled and nodded, and when she left the group this time, Janno was still attached to her waist.

  “What’s that all … ” Lon started to ask, but then he shut up as it penetrated. Liquor was not the only thing for sale in the Dragon Lady. He watched as Janno and the waitress went toward a narrow stairway at the back of the room and went up. Okay, now I know what it was about, Lon thought, smiling to himself. The waitress had not been bad-looking. Nor were the other ones that he could see, and all of them were dressed the same way.

  When Janno returned a half hour later, he seemed to be whistling, but Lon could not hear anything over the general din of t
he Dragon Lady.

  “That was a nasty trick, leaving me with these drunks while you get laid,” Lon accused, fighting to keep from laughing.

  “Hey, I bought the drinks first. Anyway, it’s your turn, if you want it,” Janno said, grinning. “That’s the only reason I let Phip talk us into coming here. Some of the best girls in town.”

  “I thought you were engaged.”

  “I am. That was her.”

  For a second, Lon felt stunned. He was not certain that Janno was joking with him. Then he decided that Belzer was on the level. “Are you serious?” Lon asked.

  Janno nodded happily. “She makes five times the money I do, maybe more, and she knows every way in the universe of making me happy in bed—and everywhere else as well. We’ll have a hell of a time when we get married.”

  When the four of them finally left the Dragon Lady, Phip and Dean were out in front, occasionally steered in the right direction by Lon or Janno.

  “You looked shocked before,” Janno said after they had walked about six blocks. “About Mary, my fiancée.”

  “Startled, perhaps,” Lon said. “You caught me by surprise.”

  “Because I plan to marry a whore?”

  Lon hesitated before he admitted, “Well, yes. But, remember, there’s still a lot I don’t know about Dirigent.”

  “There’s really no difference at all between Mary and us, Lon,” Janno said very softly. “We all make our living selling our bodies. Her profession is just as honorable as ours.”

  Not on Earth, it wouldn’t be, Lon thought, but what he said was, “I’ve still got a lot to learn, Janno.”

  “That’s why I told you,” he replied. “Saves embarrassing situations later. I mean, if you had gone off with Mary and then found out later that she’s my fiancée, you might have had trouble coping. This way you’ll know, and, no, it doesn’t matter. I recommend her to all my friends. I’m proud of her. She’s damned good at what she does.”