When people read Catch 22 they tend to come away mainly thinking about the concept that gave the book its title. And that’s fair. The idea of a regulation to get things done that keeps them from getting done, that’s bureaucracy at its finest.

Me, I read the book in high school. Like a lot of Americans, I think. But there are so many elements to that novel that stayed with me. Milo Minderbinder for one. He was the extreme example of the war profiteer. Finding ways to use his time in the army just as a get rich quick scheme. The discussions of war between Yossarian and the old Italian man were another gave me a lot to think about on the subject of war and its long term ramifications.

The book was an influence on me in many ways.

One of those ways leapt to the forefront when it came time for me to write Stealing from Pirates.

Ex-PFC Wintergreen.

Think about this guy’s rank for a moment. He actually gets promoted at least once in the course of the novel, but he’s never referred to by his current rank. It’s always by his former rank. Once in a while he is ex-Corporal Wintergreen but mainly he’s ex-PFC Wintergreen. Which means that he’s constantly getting busted down in rank.

On the grand scale of the American military machine, this guy is nothing but a tiny cog. But he is a tiny cog that just happens to be central to all military communications in the European theater. This gives him a great amount of power, and he wields it ruthlessly.

At one point he prevents a promotion to colonel. The character to receive the promotion is Major Major Major. Mind you, those are his first, middle, and last names. Which means, when you consider his rank, his full name is Major Major Major Major.

Ex-PFC Wintergreen refuses to let the Army lose its only Major Major Major Major over a little thing like a promotion.

I loved that idea. That some low level functionary could be so critical to the bureaucracy that he could wield power beyond even the upper brass.

Talk about the power behind the throne.

I just knew that the universe for Stealing from Pirates had to have its own version of ex-PFC Wintergreen.

But I didn’t stop there. When I was growing up, one of my favorite television shows was M*A*S*H. I was only a little kid, but I was struck by the way Radar O’Reilly could seem to find anything in Korea. He could get on the horn, and after maybe an hour of horse trading find things that you just wouldn’t believe he could get delivered to a MASH unit in the middle of nowhere.

Enter Staff Corporal Davidson.

Davidson isn’t whimsical or capricious, like ex-PFC Wintergreen, and his rank doesn’t shift about. He doesn’t work in communications, but in supply and logistics. And like Radar, he can find anything and send it anywhere.

Davidson has been in his current role for more than a decade, and has resisted all attempts to promote or transfer him. He has entrenched himself and solidified his power, and every once in a while he gives preference to his own ethics over the prevailing orders of the day.

Davidson is a man who makes things happen. And everyone tries to stay on his good side.

I’ve told several stories in this universe now, and while Davidson has never played a major role, he is always there in the background.

In Stealing from Pirates, Davidson is one of the movers and shakers behind the events the kickoff the story. A minor role in terms of story time, but important.

That’s one of the joys of space opera, that I can get as grand and glorious as I want to with aliens and space battles, and yet I can still spend time on the little details that make the universe work.

And for Stealing from Pirates, Staff Corporal Davidson is one of those details.

If you’d like to see some of Staff Corporal Davidson’s machinations, Stealing from Pirates is part of the Valor Military Science Fiction StoryBundle right now (you can click that link or the image below). Or if you would prefer a short story, check out “Black Phantom, Gray Op” in Fiction River Pulse Pounders: Countdown, out now.

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