Besides six belt knives and four ordinary swords, most of which had beautiful handles, hilts and sheaths, but blades of less than military quality, there were dozens of other strange weapons.
There was one straight sword with a handle that fit backward into its metal sheath, and locked there, converting it into a sort of spear.
The knife thrower had carried six oddly balanced blades in a harness that crossed her chest.
Another Greenie had carried a pouch with nine palm-sized eight-pointed stars in it. The sharp points were covered with some sort of green substance. Apparently, they were to be thrown, but at first glance, they didn't seem to be a very practical weapon. Thinking that the green stuff was perhaps some sort of poison, he cleaned them and their pouch very carefully, washed his hands, and flushed the cleaning cloth down the toilet.
There was a dagger with a small trigger on it which, when pressed, released a spring that propelled the center of the blade across the room with considerable force. It imbedded itself deeply into the carved woodwork at the head of Kren's ornate bed. The projectile had narrowly missed hitting him, and left him with a strange, but still serviceable, two-bladed knife in his hand.
The use of any form of stored energy was forbidden to the military, except that dropping things on an enemy was permitted. Before he had triggered the knife, Kren had assumed that it was a legal military weapon. He wondered if some of the senior officers had carried them.
There was an assortment of small blades intended to augment a Mitchegai's natural claws, and four small clubs apparently intended for beating citizens without actually killing them, though why someone should want to do such a strange thing was beyond Kren's imagination. It seemed insane to injure someone, and then leave them alive to seek vengeance on you.
There was a flat, heavy metal plate with many holes in it that mystified Kren, but which a human would have recognized as a set of brass knuckles.
Kren wiped all of his newfound toys off, put them away in a drawer, and resolved to puzzle all of them out at some future date. Perhaps when his new brain cells finally integrated.
He joined the others who were just sitting down to the feast. The blood and mess had been cleaned up, and many of the carpets were missing, but Bronki and her servants seemed to be in good spirits.
"Come join me, Kren," Bronki said, sitting by a low party table. "This girl is old, and she won't be the best tasting one of the bunch, but since she was the leader of the team that threatened us, I thought that I would enjoy eating her the most."
She slit open a thigh, peeled back the skin, and helped herself to a large gobbet of fat and muscle. The tougher skin and harder bones of an adult generally weren't worth the trouble of eating. Since the meat would be tougher than that of juvenals, and the dead bodies couldn't scream pleasantly in any event, she had provided very sharp knives for this feast.
"Thank you, although since classes start the day after tomorrow, I can't afford to eat a really big meal."
Kren cut a more delicate slice from the forearm on his side of the corpse. It was colder than he usually liked it, but still, it wasn't bad. And anyway, the new brands on his upper arms had started to throb again, now that the Mitchegai equivalent of adrenaline was subsiding in his system. A good meal would lessen the pain.
"We're all in that situation here, except for the laundry servants, and two of the scrubbers. Those four will probably be out of it for days. But what we don't eat can always be cut up and flushed down the toilets. It's not as though the meat cost me anything."
"Well, I expect to be paid for my services, of course," Kren said. "I killed four of them, so that's four thousand Ke, isn't it?"
"Kren! Greediness is such an unattractive trait! But no. I called you once, you came once, and in your own words, you 'did what was necessary.' I'll put a thousand in your account the next time I get to the bank. You've earned it. That was a remarkable piece of work you did today."
"None of them were truly competent with their weapons. I was very surprised with your success against the two who were in your bedroom. What was that metal thing you were holding, anyway?"
"It's called a pistol, and it is very illegal. Please don't tell anyone that you saw it."
"I won't. But what was the loud noise? And how did that small, blunt thing put such big holes in those Greenies?"
Kren decided that he had a day and a half to sleep it off, and cut himself a much larger piece of meat from the leg. It was such a pity that their meal was already dead, and couldn't scream.
"There are chemicals, nitrates, that burn very rapidly without needing air to do so. This produces a gas at very high pressure which propels a soft metal slug down a metal tube at high speed. The expanding gasses made the noise, and the metal slug made the hole."
"The use of fire is forbidden in military weapons. Also, your device sounds dangerous."
"I'm not in the military. And it is only dangerous if you are standing at the open end of the tube. A mechanical arrangement quickly replaces the nitrates and the slug, permitting you to take several shots. Eight of them with my pistol."
Bronki was working at freeing up another large gobbet.
"I think that I will stay with the weapons that I know."
"Yes, that would be wise. Some more leg for you? Or would you like a nice bit of tail?" she asked.
"Some tail, I think. We'll split it. How did the Greenies manage to get into your apartment? Your security measures seemed to be extreme to me."
"I like to think that none of my servants let them in, but one can never be sure. More likely, some electronic device was used to confuse the locks. I've ordered the whole system to be gone over and updated if necessary in the next week or so."
"Were you able to find out just who these strangely dressed Greenies were?" Kren asked.
"Yes. Four of them were foolish enough to carry their credit cards with them, and I checked them out on my computer. They were all members of a local crime syndicate, the KUL."
"Did they have much money in their accounts?"
"One of them did, the girl that we're eating now. I was tempted to keep it for myself, but then decided against it. Money transfers can always be traced, if you work hard enough at it. What can't be traced, if you know how to do it, is the person who did the transferring," Bronki said.
Kren remembered that his bargain with Bronki had included his getting her computer skills. This had apparently not happened. However, it was too late to do anything about it now, so he let the matter drop.
Bronki continued, "So, I transferred all of the money from all four of the cards to the account of a lieutenant in the KUL's rival syndicate, the PPG. This person once offended me badly. If I am fortunate, the KUL will think that the PPG killed their fighters, and the PPG will blame their lieutenant for holding out money from the group. With any luck, there will be a few dozen gang murders performed in the next few weeks, and perhaps both groups will forget that I ever existed."
"That sounds like a devious, but possibly workable plan."
"One can always hope."
"But why is the KUL so angry with you?" Kren asked.
Kren had stripped the meat off of the entire leg on his side, and was working his way through the buttock, one of his favorite parts. Then he decided instead to see just what this illegal weapon of Bronki's was capable of.
He cut into the chest, and found the breast bone shattered, with bone fragments in the lungs, liver, intestines, and even as low as the heart. Furthermore, two vertebrae were broken, and a third was completely pulverized. The pistol was a formidable weapon, indeed!
"I'm sure that the KUL are not angry with me. No, the Greenies who attacked us were simply hired to come here, either to scare me, or perhaps to kill me."
"I see. And who hired them to do this?"
"That is a very good question, my fine business major. I intend to answer it. When I know for sure what happened, it is possible that we may do some more of your sort of 'business' together."
One good bite leads to another, and before too long, Kren had eaten two-thirds of the cadaver, before he wandered off to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Price of Defending My Planet
New Yugoslavia, 2209 a.d.
Every few months, some amazing new product, often an incredible alloy or other material, was being announced by the scientists who were working on the alien ship. A few of these things were starting to work their way into military equipment and even civilian products. There was even a sort of carpeting that they thought might last for thousands of years!
On the one hand, this was all good news. On the other, it kept everyone in Human Space focused on the importance of meeting the Mitchegai threat.
My wonderful Kasia had just presented me with our third son, my farm and my city were prospering, and the Powers that Be had just turned down my fourth request to establish some decent space defenses for New Yugoslavia.
This last item had me ticked.
"Agnieshka!"
"Coming, boss!"
I now had a dozen of the prototype social drones acting as servants in my apartment. The decorated military drones were still there, but they were mostly decoration now, standing like displays of medieval armor. They could always function as guards if such were ever needed. Mostly, Kasia felt that the soft, human-looking social drones would be better to have around the children, and I never could deny Kasia anything.
Each of the social drones looked like a different woman, and the one that walked in was new.
"So. A new look?" I asked.
"Yes, and I think that they have the sense of taste on this one just about perfect. Also, the sense of touch isn't bad at all. Some of the other girls have tried it out for sex, and they say it's fantastic!" she said.
"Enjoy. But I called you in here to talk about our problems with planetary defenses. You know that my plans were just rejected again."
"Yes, sir. It's not that they disagree with you, boss, it's just that every factory and system on New Kashubia has been working nonstop for four years producing what we need to defend ourselves against the Mitchegai. They can't afford the heavy expenditures required to defend a single planet, not when all of the rest of the planets would want identical defenses for themselves."
"That's just my thought," I said. "They can't afford it. But I can. Kasia and I are some of the richest people in Human Space. I have decided to use our own resources to defend this planet properly."
"But it isn't just a matter of money, boss. It's a problem of industrial capacity."
"Right. So what we need is industrial capacity. Now then. We have a huge secret room, kilometers long, where The Diamond was found, sitting there empty. We have many thousands of tanks and military drones who can provide the engineering and labor force. I read that New Kashubia has a surplus of mining machinery, and is still exporting raw metals to anybody who wants to buy them. What we need are the machines that can build the machines that can build the machines that can make what we need. I wonder, can we buy basic machinery from Earth? Over the last few hundreds of years, they have to have built a lot of slightly obsolete but still serviceable machinery. I want you and the rest of our metal people to get involved in figuring out just what we need, and how we can get it."
"I'll get our people right on it, boss," Agnieshka said. "Things have been getting a little dull around here anyway. Have you talked to Kasia about this?"
"Not yet. She's next on the list."
Kasia was not enthusiastic.
"Mickolai, this is crazy! You are talking about expenditures of a size that whole planets can barely afford. Things that are out of sight for mere individual citizens!"
"All we are going to have to pay for is some used machinery and some raw metal. We already have the engineering force and the labor force, sitting idle. We already have a place to put it all," I said. "We can do it."
"I really doubt if it will be that cheap. Remember Cheop's Law. 'Everything costs more and takes longer.' And on top of that, why should we have to be the ones who pay for it? It is the whole planet that needs defending! The whole planet should pay for it!"
"And maybe it will, love. Once we get it built, and people realize what we have done for them, they will vote to reimburse us."
"Get serious!" She said, "What they will do is to say 'Thank you, sir!' They will throw a few more parades, and pin a few dozen more medals on your chest, but pay money? I doubt it!"
"Okay, what if what they were told was that what we had would protect the military, but not the civilians? But, for just a few trillion zlotys more, they could come under the umbrella, too."
"Now, that has possibilities."
"Right," I said. "And if we get New Yugoslavia to go along with this, why can't we sell the other planets on the program? We can sell inexpensive 'starter kits,' all the machinery and plans that are needed to build a decent defense system of their own. There could be a very hefty profit in it for you."
"Hmmm. Perhaps. But you've just stacked three maybes in a row, and it is getting increasingly improbable."
"That could be. But what good is all of our money going to do for us if the Mitchegai attack us, and we lose? Our wealth would be useless. Our estates would be gone. Our children would be dead."
"The boys would be dead?"
"The Mitchegai have no immune system. They need absolutely sterile planets. Before they can settle on a new world, they must eradicate all existing life on it. That would include you and me and the boys."
"Damn you, Mickolai, when you put it that way, you don't leave me any choice. Spend everything we've got, if you have to, but get it done."
I had the feeling that I would be sleeping alone, that night. It doesn't pay to win an argument with your wife, but sometimes it has to be done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
An Interesting Day
Kren slept through the night, the entire next day, and the night following it. He was awakened by Dol.
"Wakey, wakey, you fabulous warrior! Today is a school day!"
Kren stumbled to the toilet, then to his drinking fountain, and finally to a mirror, where he examined his brands. The pain in his arms had subsided to a dull ache, and the burns were almost healed. Millions of years of selective breeding had given the Mitchegai remarkably resilient bodies. His head, however, felt almost as fuzzy as when he had eaten a portion of Bronki's brain. He hadn't eaten that much of the Greenie's brain, but what he had didn't seem to want to fit in with the rest of him.
Once dressed, Dol walked him to class, to be sure that he didn't get lost.
"I didn't get a chance to talk to you the other night, but I got there in time to see what you did to that last sword swinger," Dol said. "You were unbelievably fast! Whap! Whap! And there she was, three pieces on the floor!"
"Yes, well, tell me, what do you know about pistols?"
Many of the dreams he'd had in his long sleep had been about various weird weapons, and about the many strange ways that a person could die.
"I've heard how they work, but I've never seen one. Someone said that Bronki owns one. That was what made those explosions, the other afternoon, wasn't it?"
"Best we not talk about it," Kren said. "That's my college there, isn't it?"
"Yes. All of your classes this term will be in the building to the left, on the top floor. That's where they do their remedial learning. I put a copy of your schedule in your new book bag. I'll have to leave you now, since I've got classes of my own to get to. Do you know how to get to the gym from here?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then I'll see you back at Bronki's place, this evening."
Kren was in a fog all morning. He dutifully went to each class at the beating of the gong, took notes on the instructor's name, and all else that seemed important, but mostly his though
ts were on weapons and death. Most of them, things that sprayed fire, or bombs that exploded under your feet, struck him as being foolish. And could a gas really be used to kill?
But more and more kept surfacing on a system of fighting without any weapons at all. How to kill with a kick or a blow, where your claws could sink the deepest, and how to avoid these things from happening to you. Kren could see that this technique could be very useful, if ever he was deprived of his sword and his spear.
Two of his instructors commented on his lack of attention in class, for which Kren dutifully apologized. But in truth, he was sure that the athletic director would never permit him to flunk out, so long as his athletic and weapons skills stayed with him, and so he wasn't terribly worried about it.
Finally, the sixth gong sounded, and he had an hour to find the gymnasium and prepare himself for three hours of physical training.
He got lost twice in the complicated city, laid out without a single right-angled turn, and completely without roads or street signs. He arrived three minutes late.
Fortunately, Dik was the forgiving sort.
"Every new freshman gets lost at least three times in the first week," she said. "Just see to it that next week, you are here on time. We'll spend an hour with the sword, and then I'll turn you over to your javelin instructor. Here is the number and combination to your locker. Be back here in six minutes."
Kren worked as diligently as he could, but his performance was much worse than it had been a few days before. The coach had given him twelve legal touches in six minutes.
"What's wrong with you, Kren?"
"Coach, the pain in my arms from the new branding was bothering me, and I ate too much, the night before last."
"You should have bought the anesthetic," Dik said, easily parrying an awkward attack and touching him yet again with her épée.
"I did buy it! But I don't think that I actually received it."
Kren of the Mitchegai Page 13