Chapter 3 - A View to a Life

Rather than gathering for breakfast, each family had Room Service deliver. It felt a little safer than exposing their mob to a public restaurant.

By nine in this overcast Saturday morning, they'd managed to get to the funeral home for the viewing.

The five old friends looked at their companion of many years.

"He looks so lifelike, doesn't he?" RC whispered. Even he was hushed under the influence of a funeral parlour.

"Yes, you'd almost think he was housebroken," joked Brad. "I'm going to miss our paintball games."

"I'll miss our hunting sessions," confessed Robert. "We never actually caught anything except wet, but the good time we had made up for it."

"I think he really didn't want to," Henry concluded. "Remember that trip up to Canada? To shoot ducks?"

"With a camera." Chuck smiled at the reminiscence.

Brad reached in his jacket and drew out his PDA. It was loaded with pictures - including ones from the trip to Canada, showing ducks landing, ducks swimming, ducks upended feeding, and their amused guide who wasn't used to big tough Yankees who only shot critters with cameras - and not electronic cameras at that. Every shot had been taken on single-lens-reflex cameras using 35mm photo film stock.

"Remember that guide we had? What was his name, Bill something?"

"Yeah, Sam always had a soft spot for the innocent ones, that's why he never wanted to kill the ducks, or deer or any other ruminant. The ones who wanted to kill you, though - look out." Chuck looked at the five of them. "I know you weren't all with him in the Army, but he had this reputation as one of the toughest sons of bitches going. But it was all an act. He wanted everyone in the best possible shape and trained to a knife-edge so they had the best possible chance of staying alive. The men took his crap and loved him for it. They knew where he was coming from."

Henry nodded. "You remember that old line attributed to the Duke of Wellington?"

Brad frowned and shook his head.

"In effect, the Duke said that the regimental commanders will see to it that their men eat before they do, are bedded down before they are, that their men's welfare comes ahead of the commanding officer's. 'Do that, and your men will follow you into Hell itself. Fail to do that, and I will break you in front of your own regiments.'" Henry gestured toward his old roommate, lying silent and still in the coffin. "He didn't just pay lip service to that, he lived it, every second of every hour of every day. He made sure we all lived that. And I'm certain that because of that, he had far lower casualty rates than any other, lesser commander."

"I bet he's even made arrangements to somehow get his concubines extracted," added Chuck, looking at the knot of women in the back of the room.

The five men's women were clustered around four women and two men, Sam's concubines. One of the women was his wife Betty, a second was her sister Gladys. The other four concubines were young couples.

Colin had a crackerjack mind for numbers and strategy, but not the aggressiveness to put those strategic plans into action. A former ROTC cadet, he was employed by a think-tank that analyzed tactics for the Pentagon. They'd met when Sam and Henry had been working on plans to counter the Sa'arm when and if they arrived. His wife Patty was a clerk at an insurance office. They had a four-year-old son, Connor, whom they were desperate to protect.

Tristan and his bride Elspeth brought their two girls Marilyn and Margrethe to the mix. Tristan was a high school history teacher, while Elspeth worked as a grocery store checkout clerk. Their daughters were 12 and 10 respectively, cute little redheads whose parents were desperate to get extracted. Unfortunately, while Tristan was close, his CAP score of 6.3 was just shy of volunteer status.

Fiona was asking Betty about what the future held for her, but every time she came close, Betty looked green around the gills. "Let's not talk about it right now, shall we?"

"This will be a problem, though," Mira pressed. "Imagine all those concubines who lose sponsors in battle! What must they go through?"

All everyone could do was nod.

In the corner stood the minister who would perform the service. A tall, thickly-built mountain of muscle, he looked like he could take on the entire Sa'arm himself, but the look on his face was one of pacific beatitude.

The stories at the front had continued.

"Remember when we went fishing in the Gulf of Mexico that one year?" Henry demanded.

Everybody laughed. "Who knew he could swim like a SEAL?" shrugged RC.

"And could fall overboard like a British Tar who'd spliced the mainbrace once too often?" chuckled Henry.

"Well, he HAD spliced the mainbrace once too often. Only with beer instead of rum!"

"How he's going to get along in space without a steady supply of that Foster's of his, I don't know," Brad said, feigning worry. "My daughter's messages tell me the replicated beer out there is basically horse piss without the horse."

As befits a good viewing, the laughter of the memories softened the sense of loss.