"I hope it'll sound good in a year, Saltario, because once you're in you
don't get out except feet first. Is that clear? I have life and death
rights over you. You owe allegiance to the Red Company and me and to no
one else. Got that? Today your best friends are the men of Rajay-Ben's
Lukanian Fourth Free Patrol, and your worst enemies are the men of
Mandasiva's Sirian O Company. Tomorrow Rajay-Ben's boys may be your
worst enemies, and Mandasiva's troops your best friends. It all depends
on the contract. A Company on the same contract is a friend, a Company
against the contract is an enemy. You'll drink with a man today, and
kill him tomorrow. Got it? If you kill a Free Companion without a
contract you go to court-martial. If you kill a citizen of the United
Galaxies except in a battle under contract I throw you to the wolves and
that means you're finished. That's the way it is."
"Yes, sir." Saltario never moved a muscle. He was rigid.
"Right," I said, "get your gear, see the Adjutant and sign the
agreement. I think you'll do."
Saltario left. I sat back in my chair and thought about how many
non-Earthmen I was taking into the Company. Maybe I should have been
thinking about this one single non-Earthman and the something he was
carrying inside him, but I didn't, and it cost the Companies thirty
thousand men we couldn't afford to lose. We can't afford to lose one
man. There are only a hundred Companies now, twenty thousand men each,
give or take a few thousand depending on how the last contract went.
Life is good in the United Galaxies now that they've disarmed and
outlawed all war again, and our breed is dying out faster than it did in
the 500 years of peace before the War of Survival. Too many of the old
Companions like me went west in the War of Survival. The Galactic
Council know they need us, know that you can't change all living
creatures into good Galactic citizens overnight, so they let us go on
fighting for anyone in the Universe who wants to take something from
someone else, or who thinks someone else wants to take something from
him. And even the mighty United Galaxies needs guards for expeditions to
the unexplored galaxies. But they don't like us and they don't want us.
They don't cut off our little fingers anymore, but we have to wear our
special black uniforms when we go into United territory under penalty of
a quick death. Humane, of course, they just put us to sleep gently and
for keeps. And they've got a stockpile of ionic bombs ready at all times
in case we get out of hand. We don't have ionic weapons, that's part of
the agreement and they watch us. They came close to using them down
there in the frozen waste of Menelaus XII, but thirty thousand of us
died without ionics. We killed each other. They liked that, even if they
didn't like what happened.
* * * * *
Do you know what it means to be lost? Really lost? I'm lost, if that
means I know I'll never go back to live on Earth. But I know that Earth
is still there to go back to, and I can dream of going home. Yuan
Saltario and the other refugees have no home to go back to. They can't
even dream. They sat in that one ship that escaped and watched their
planet turn into a lifeless ball of ice that would circle dead and
frozen forever around its burned-out star. A giant tomb that carried
under its thick ice their homes and their fields and their loves. And
they could not even hope and dream. Or I did not think they could.
Saltario had been with us a year when we got the contract to escort the
survey mission to Nova-Maurania. A private Earth commercial mining firm
looking for minerals under the frozen wastes of the dead planet.
Rajay-Ben was in on the contract. We took two battalions, one from my
Red Company, and one from Rajay-Ben's Lukanian Patrol. My Sub-Commander
was Pete Colenso, old Mike Colenso's boy. It all went fine for a week or
so, routine guard and patrol. The survey team wouldn't associate with
us, of course, but we were used to that. We kept our eyes open and our
mouths shut. That's our job, and we give value for money received. So we
were alert and ready. But it wasn't the attack that nearly got us this
time. It was the cold of the dead planet lost in absolute zero and
absolute darkness.
Nova-Maurania was nearly 40 percent uranium, and who could resist that?
A Centaurian trading unit did not resist the lure. The attack was quick
and hard. A typical Lukanian Patrol attack. My Company was pinned down
at the first volley from those damned smoky blasters of the Lukanians.
All I could see was the same shimmering lights I had learned to know so
well in the War of Survival against Lukania. Someday maybe I'll find out
how to see a Lukan, Rajay-Ben has worked with me a long time to help,
but when the attack came this time all I could do was eat ice and beam a
help call to Rajay-Ben. That Centaurian trading unit was a cheap outfit,
they had hired only one battalion of Arjay-Ben's Ninth Lukanian Free
Patrol, and Rajay-Ben flanked them right off that planet. I got my boys
on their feet and we chased Arjay's men half way back to Salaman with
Rajay-Ben laughing like a hyena the whole way.
"Dip me in mud, Red boy, I'd give a prime contract for one gander at old
Arjay-Ben's face. He's blowing a gasket!"