Prelude

“Jarle! Get your ass back here! Brandon is trying to explain quantum tunnelling to us again”.

The gruff voice of Drill Sergeant Shaw enters my ears like a bad reminder of can happen when alcohol, 80-year-old men and a funeral get together and muse about their lives. My dearest wife died a few weeks ago, and in their absolute brilliance, they decided that what I needed to get me out of my funk was a good hike in the Rocky Mountains. At the tender age of 82.

It didn’t matter to them that we are all way past the expiration date and should be sitting in a cosy chair on the porch yelling at kids on our lawn. It didn’t matter to them when I tried to remind them that we aren’t 18-year-old kids in basic training any longer. What mattered was that my wife died, and now I apparently should be next.

“Can’t a man shit in peace? For fuck sake, knock the bastard out if you can’t handle his nagging”, I yell back trying to pinch of a particularly hefty brown bean.

“It isn’t all that bad, the background noise is rather soothing I think” comes the sly voice of my former head of security. Johan Holden is one of those slippery bastards I had to either hire or kill. He is one of those people who you can’t really figure out how to handle, since he seems to have some shady knowledge of everyone. It’s a good thing the military doesn’t really like asking questions about how the intelligence branch do their magic!

“Its easy! Sometimes particles just decide “fuck it” and go through figurative walls! Its not really walls though, just bumps in energy fields. Everything is an energy field! Think about that! Imagi-“

“Can’t you just shut up?”

After wiping my decrepit gluteus maximus, I emerge from the bushes in a hurry, just to see Charles Shaw waving around a twig trying to look menacing.

It’s not working.

“Calm your tits, ladies! Is the food finished?”, I as in the general direction of Johan.

“One portion of reindeer stew coming up, o’lord and master!”

That is one thing I miss about living in Norway. It’s a lot easier to get your hands on a good reindeer steak. You find mushrooms and potatoes everywhere, but reindeer is one of those things Americans tend to not eat all that often for some reason. Its not like they don’t have the land for it up north.

Speaking of Americans!

“Shaw, remember when that ROTC kid from Arizona decided to take a leak in the woods during trident juncture?” I ask with considerable amusement in my voice while munching on a delicious piece of meat.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Shit man, don’t remind me of that! That might be the most humiliating day in my life!” Charles replies with a sad voice.

“What happened? I don’t think I have heard that story before” asks Brandon with an inquisitive voice.

“You want to tell that story, or should I?” I ask Charles with an innocent smile on my face.

“Go right ahead” he mumbles looking intensely unhappy.

You see, back in the good old days of actual warfare, we had coordinated military exercises where you basically sent a bunch of kids off into the woods trying to play soldier. One of those particular kids decided to take a leak in a bush, completely missing the poor shmuck that was out on a recon mission for the enemy team laying in that specific bush.

Granted, it was snowy, and he was wearing camouflage gear, but he should have seen the somewhat fearful eyes as he unzipped and promptly urinated on the poor bastard. Oblivious to the angry Norseman that got urinated on, he tried to get his pants on when he feels a cold barrel on his genitals.

I was in camp at that time, and I still remember the sight of a cold, wet and angry man carrying a half-dressed bewildered and gagged American into our base of operations.

That was the day I met Drill Sergeant Charles Shaw.

“It’s not like I could have left him there! He was an ROTC student! He wasn’t even supposed to be there! The training exercise hadn’t started yet!” Charles replies with an angry voice.

“You should have seen his face when he came to beg me to let the kid go!” I laugh viciously.

“Beg my ass! Doing recon before the freaking wargame had started is pushing it, but capturing one of my training lieutenants was way out of line!” he roars.

“You weren’t the one getting pissed on!” Johan weakly replies remembering the harrowing sight of a well-equipped American ruining his day.

“Recon before wargames is standard operation procedure, Shaw” I mention with an even voice, trying to keep the laughter of my face.

“It was explicitly disallowed!” he roars back.

“All is fair in love and war, baby!”

“Wait, you were the soldier in the bush, Johan?” Brandon quietly asks, probably fearing for his life if Charles hears him.

“Not one of my finer moments let me tell you. You do not want to trek through a click of forest carrying an unwilling bullet stopper” he replies with an amused look on his face as Charles gets more and more agitated.

If you were to look at our group from the outside, you would find it to be a strange assortment of human beings. Brandon Vanderbilt is a Doctor of Mathematics formerly working for DARPA, but not with a military bone in his body. We found him buried underneath a mountain of paperwork with an intense desire to do something new. That fit us perfectly since I had just opened a new branch of the company I started after retiring from the military life. I don’t know what Johan told the man, but he was practically begging to join us after the conference we first met him ended.

Charles Shaw is the stereotypical drill sergeant everyone that has gone through basic training has met. He is a hard bastard that doesn’t take any backtalk lightly, and generally keeps us in line, or tries to at least. The copious amount of ethanol he has digested of the whiskey variety at sitting at the campfire seems to have loosened him up somewhat, but I suspect that also has something to do with him starting to feel his years. All 85 of them.

Johan Holden is the slippery bastard that as previously noted seems to have something on everyone, me included. If it wasn’t for the fact that he can’t smell for shit, I would have thought that he can smell the dark deeds we have done during our lives. As the head of security of my company he has been a gift from heaven, however.

“I think it’s about time I hit the sack” Charles tells us as he stretches.

“Yeah” we all reply.

Entering the tent I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

“More trekking”, I mumble to myself as I lay down in the sleeping bag, and closes my eyes.