Explore "Blood on my Jets" by Algis Budrys on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Mort Weidmann was the same Captain Weidmann who'd left an arm in the cockpit of a K class scoutbomber that he'd flown through a formation of Marties while he almost bled to death. He looked very military in his blue and silver uniform. It wasn't a TSN uniform, of course, but even a Transolar Express rig makes an old soldier feel better.
He was another old friend of mine, like Thorsten. The three of us had been touched by the war, each in our separate ways. Mort was the one who didn't just feel a yearning for space, who didn't just ride on a TSN uniform because it was the one available way. Mort had loved the TSN itself, with a pride in the traditions that guys like Thorsten and me hadn't quite had. He'd been a better officer because of it -- and the only one who couldn't have stayed.