Standing just inside the entrance, Recruiting Officer Samuel J. Brown scanned the prospects available. The pickings were better than average he noted with satisfaction. Unfortunately, the job he was recruiting for made things more difficult than usual.

A blast of hot air encouraged Brown to move away from the door, He found a table where a cool stream of air-conditioned air flowed directly down, striking directly on his sweat covered forehead. He smiled at a scantily clad waitress and motioned for her to bring him a bottle of cold beer. Brown didn’t care what brand so long as it was cold.

Like so many other bars Brown frequented in his line of work, this one wasn’t much different. It was loud, filled with men of military service age, smelled of alcohol, and the few women present, whether a working girl or a waitress, were attired in clothes that didn’t leave much to the imagination. The background noise made it hard to have a conversation, a fact that didn’t bother Brown much.

Men didn’t come to bars like The Plasma Gun to talk. They came to get drunk. Drunk so they could forget what they’d done or what lay ahead in the near future. Cheap sex and cheaper thrills were high on the list for these men, mostly ex-soldiers from the Alliance or the Confederation. Rare was the ex-soldier from the army of the Caliphate in a bar like The Plasma Gun. Bars that also served as employment agencies where recruiting officers like Brown came in search of mercenaries to hire.

The jobs Brown had contracts for ranged from those requiring very specific skills sets to contracts that only required an able body who was willing to kill and take a chance on being killed to get a paycheck. Always on the hunt for talent and warm bodies, Brown had developed a detailed list of bars, brothels, and assorted haunts on planets and moons frequented by soldiers for hire.

The Plasma Gun was one of the best bars for his purposes and high-end mercenaries knew it. Owned by a former merc, an ex-artilleryman with a cybernetic left arm who went by the name Scrag, The Plasma Gun was known for its exclusive clientele, no civilians were allowed.

Of course, Scrag made exceptions for working girls. For a mere twenty percent surcharge, the girls were provided protection, a safe working environment, as safe at least as a place like The Plasma Gun could be, and access to clean rooms at the “no tell motel” that operated next door, also owned by Scrag. More than one mercenary’s body had been found in an alleyway as a result of breaking Scrag’s rules of how a working girl was to be treated in his joint.

Ex-military were welcome, especially ex-special forces or Space Marines. For many veterans who couldn’t adjust to civilian life after their hitch, joining a Private Military Corporation, PMC for short, seemed like a logical career option. Bars like Scrag’s were where these men would test the waters, find out if the life as a mercenary was a better fit for them than the unsatisfactory existence they’d found in the civilian world.

What you wouldn’t find at The Plasma Gun were the wannabes. Young thugs who fancied themselves to be tough guys. Idiots who watched too many vids and played too many vid games where the enemy’s weapons didn’t draw real blood or result in real injuries. Scrag had no tolerance for such fools and encouraged them to leave promptly once they made their annoying presence known. Of course, to help the fools remember not to come back, either Scrag or one of the patrons taught the thugs in question a lesson involving blackened eyes, missing teeth, and usually nothing more serious than a concussion or a few broken bones.

If someone who’d never worn the uniform of the Alliance or the Confederation but wanted to learn, so long as they were quiet and didn’t cause trouble, Scrag tolerated their presence. IF they had the sense to ask his permission first.

It was the concentration of skilled talent and experienced veterans that had made Brown spend his employer’s money to buy a ticket to the planet Endren. The Black Star Military Corporation had signed a contract, the nature of which, was going to make it hard to fill out roster of the brigade assigned to carry it out. The skills and experience Brown were looking for would make his job hard enough.

The job’s location and the mission made Brown’s task more difficult.

The clonking sound of a cold bottle of beer being set on the table got Brown’s attention. He looked up at the waitress who was waiting patiently to be paid. She was a pretty young woman, no more than twenty-four or twenty-five. Her eyes told a different story. The job had aged the girl, making her jaded and cynical. The smile on her face, like the cleverly displayed ample cleavage, was strictly to generate compliance on his and other customer’s part along with generous tips.

Brown smiled in return, held out his hand with several hard credits in his palm. The girl glanced down at the money, her well-practiced and time worn smile still in place as she calculated change.

“It’s all yours,” Brown informed the waitress. “Except what it will cost for one more beer.”

This time the smile was genuine, as genuine as was possible for the girl. Brown’s tip was large enough for her not to have to sleep with a customer that night in order to pay the rent for the tiny apartment where she and her two-year old daughter tried to live.

His first beer finished, Brown took a long pull off the second beer the waitress had brought him and stood up. The recruiter had spotted a man at the far end of the bar that he’d hoped would be there. With beer in hand, Brown carefully made his way over to the bar.

Slowly, in a manner intended to show respect, Brown took a seat next to the man he had been in hope of finding. He waited several minutes, nursing his beer before holding up two fingers to the closest bartender who nodded and brought two more cold beers down to the end of the bar and sat the bottles down in front of the two men.

“Sergeant Major Saul Jackson,” Brown said, just loud enough for the other man to hear over the din.

“What do you want, Brown?”

“I have a contract with your name on it.”

“No, you don’t. I’m done, Brown.”

Brown sat in silence, taking his time. Jackson was a hard case, one that he needed to sign to a contract before he left Endren for the next planned stop on his recruiting trip.

“I hear things got bad on P-42686.”

“You heard right.”

“Bad enough for you to take up being a civilian?”

“That has something to do with it.”

“Well, I just wanted to touch base,” Brown informed Jackson in a respectful tone. “Beers are on me.” Brown stood up as if to leave the brooding sergeant alone and then paused, speaking in his measured, respectful tone, “I’ll be around a few days. Maybe we can talk again, Sarge.” Brown raised his beer in a half salute and left, moving on to find younger, less experienced men who would be used as cannon fodder or would have no idea what the lucrative contract they had signed would truly entail.

The stories of what the Black Star mercenaries on P-42686 had suffered through were almost enough to make Brown regret approaching Jackson.

Almost, but not quite enough.