4

Journal #294

            "The very rich, " someone once said, "are not like you and me. " Someone wiser than he knew replied to this, "Yes, they have more money. " My employer was very rich, and in that fact lies much of the secret of his success.

            Where other commanding officers might have had many of the ideas that allowed Captain Phule to turn his Legionnaire company into an elite unit-housing them in first-class accommodations, giving them training facilities of the newest and finest quality, serving them meals of which a four-star restaurant would not be ashamed-only a very rich man would have had the ability to put those ideas into action without concerning himself with the military bean counters' objections. A man who can wave a Dilithium Express card and say "Put it on my account" can accomplish many extraordinary things.

            So when a junior hotel clerk, making a routine charge against the card, was told that there was a problem with the credit, it threatened to bring down the entire structure my employer had so carefully erected. Worse yet, it suggested that someone very powerful indeed had entered the field against him...