Mercenary by Mack Reynolds

In a far away past, Kingston had once been the capital of the United States. For a short time, when Washington's men were in flight after the debacle of their defeat in New York City, the government of the United Colonies had held session in this Hudson River town. It had been its one moment of historic glory, and afterward Kingston had slipped back into being a minor city on the edge of the Catskills, approximately halfway between New York and Albany.

Of most recent years, it had become one of the two recruiting centers which bordered the Catskill Military Reservation, which in turn was one of the score or so population-cleared areas throughout the continent where rival corporations or unions could meet and settle their differences in combat -- given permission of the Military Category Department of the government. And permission was becoming ever easier to acquire.