by John Ringo
“You should have more fully scouted the encampment,” his instructor said, handing him a flagon.
Herzer took the water and drank gratefully, then got to his feet. “I know that. Now. The demon was a bit unfair.”
“Life is unfair,” the avatar replied. It was a very high-end program, not fully AI but smarter than most standard systems, and it had a mass of proverbs and quips to draw upon. “You have to be more unfair. What should you have done?”
“As it was, I’m not sure,” Herzer replied. “I couldn’t take the demon. Not by myself.”
“What about the shaman?” the trainer asked.
“Hmmm…” Herzer called up the schematic of the recent battle and nodded. “I couldn’t have made it through the orcs to kill him before he completed the enchantment. So… take off most of the armor, climb the cliffs, reconnoiter. Wait for a good time and kill the shaman with the bow. That way I’d know about the troll, too. Maybe try to kill both from long range, and some of the orcs. They would have eventually come out, but I would have been fighting them from the top of the slope, not the bottom. But I’d have to get the shaman first, or else he’d summon the demon and I’d have to fight it anyway.”
“It was the shaman who was the primary threat, but it seemed, at first, to be just a bunch of orcs,” the trainer said. “Your failure to properly reconnoiter the objective was your undoing. Your enemy will attempt to deceive you. He will attempt to appear less capable than he is. Remember that. Know your enemy and know thyself. All else will become clear if you know both.”
“Herzer, playing wargames?” Dionys’ head had popped into existence over the shoulder of the avatar. The avatar did not seem to notice.
“Just finished,” Herzer replied, finishing the water.
“We’re having a bit of a party over at Sean’s, something fun,” the older man said. “Why don’t you come along.” It was a statement, not a question.
Herzer was mentally drained if not physically, but he didn’t want to lose Dionys’ good grace. “Just let me clean up a bit,” he said. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
“Great,” McCanoc said with a toothy smile. “We’ll be waiting.”
“Gotta go,” Herzer said, tossing the cup to the trainer.
“Remember, young Herzer, know thyself,” the avatar said as he left.
* * *
Edmund hammered the glowing sword blade and turned it over on the anvil, trying to determine how much more work it would take. He looked up with a nod as Myron Raeburn walked into the forge.
“I need you to beat a couple of those into plowshares,” Myron said with a grin.
“Very funny,” Talbot growled in reply. “What can I do for you, Myron?”
“You don’t seem particularly happy this morning,” the farmer said, cocking his head to the side.
“Even paradise has its thorns,” Edmund replied obliquely. “What sort of plowshares do you need?”
“Dionys still giving you trouble?” Myron pursued, taking a seat on a smaller anvil. The weather computers had allowed a late-season cold front through to the east coast and the warmth of the forge was pleasant after the cold walk from his fields.
“No, Dionys hasn’t tried any tricks since our little discussion,” the smith admitted. “That is part of it. Other things as well. I don’t particularly want to talk about it.”
“Gotcha,” the farmer replied. “Well the reason I came down is that I managed to secure a vintage water-powered threshing machine,” he continued with a grin.
“Going to install it by the mill?” Edmund frowned. “It’s not period; the period Nazis are going to go ape.” He thought about that for a moment then grinned. “Need help?”
“I can get it set up myself,” Raeburn replied with a matching grin. “But the millennia have not been kind to it, for all it was well kept. A couple of the spave arms need serious work…”
“You can replicate those,” Edmund argued shaking his head. “It makes no sense for me to just beat them out.”
“Edmund,” the farmer replied, spreading his hands, “I know that but… I mean I use a horse drawn plow, for Ghu’s sake. I’m willing to replicate the building, there’s no other way short of waiting for Faire and hoping I can get some people to help me erect it. But…”
“I’ll do it,” Edmund sighed then chuckled. “Chisto I’m glad we don’t really live in the thirteenth century.”
“Me too. Indoor plumbing.”
“Medical nannites.”
“Insulation.”
“Dwarves!” said a gravelly, accented voice from the door.
The visitor was short, just below five feet, and nearly as broad as he was tall. He wore furs against the weather over chain mail and leather. He had a broad double-headed axe over his shoulder and a round half helm on his head. And he was wearing a broad, toothy grin surrounded by a beard that hung nearly to the floor.
“Angus!” Talbot said, striding over and grabbing the dwarf around his broad shoulders. “You could have sent a rider ahead!”
“No dwarf will ride a horse if their own legs, or a wagon, will carry them,” the dwarf said, leaning his axe on the wall. “Bloody cold weather to travel, though. Glad I am for the warmth of thy forge.”
Two centuries before Angus Peterka had gotten so enraptured by the traditional image of dwarves that he had Changed and started his own dwarf colony in the Steel Hills of Sylva. The hills had been mined out millennia before, but in the last half a millennia most of the materials had been reimplanted under a long-term ecological rebuilding program or through dumping into the hollowed out mines. He had added materials that were not original to the mountains, streams of silver, various jewels, gold and, deep, deep in the mountain a nanotech-based material that he had decided met the conditions for adamantine. All of the material was put in with a semirandom generator and for the last two centuries he’d been trying to find it all. He referred to it as “proper mining,” his friends referred to it as “the world’s largest scavenger hunt.” Other “dwarves” came and went, but Angus stayed on, propping shafts, finding veins and quaffing beer.
As a hobby, Edmund thought that it ran to obsession. On the other hand, his own obsessions had driven away more lady friends than he cared to count, including the only one he had ever truly loved. He wasn’t one to cast stones.
“I’ve your steel load,” Angus said, walking over to the forge to warm his hands. “And I’ve finally found a vein of bloody adamantine. I’d be happy for your opinion.” He held out a hand-sized bar of a dull gray material.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Edmund replied, tossing it in the air. Strangely, when he threw it it seemed to have almost no weight, but when it smacked into his palm the impact was palpable. “Nannite enhanced?”
“Enhanced, yes, but they aren’t in it, ya see,” Angus said. “It was developed in… hmmm… the twenty-third century or so as a reactive material for powered body armor. So it’s legal for nonpowered unlimited armor tourneys!”
“Ah,” Myron said. “Doesn’t matter, nobody else will like it as ugly as it is.”
“It changes appearance when you final treat it,” Angus said, taking the bar and tossing it in the forge. “You can’t just heat it; no fire you can make in a forge, even a multistage one, will affect it. It’s rated to stay intact in a photosphere; you have to use nannites and electromagnetic fields to form it. But, oh, when you do work it!” He drew his belt knife and flourished the blade. “Behold! Adamantine!”
The knife blade was bright silver with a rainbow shimmer running through it. Edmund took the knife and ran his finger against it, drawing back a cut callus. Then he took up the sword blade he had been working on and scratched the knife blade against it. Instead of leaving a streak or a small cut it sliced deeply into the metal.
“Bloody hell,” Myron said.
“Did I mention it will form a monomolecular edge?” Angus said with another beard-shrouded grin.
“Strange feel,” Talbot said thou
ghtfully, tossing the knife up and down. After a couple of tosses he threw it to stick in the door. The knife sank up to its hilt. “Nonperiod metals. The Council won’t permit it for tourney.”
“Not regular tourneys, no,” Angus said with a shrug. “But unlimited nonpowered, yes.”
“Yah,” Edmund said. “How did you say you form it?” he asked, plucking the material out of the fire. He tested it with a wetted finger but as he half expected it was not even warm. “Strange stuff.”
“Molecularly it’s even stranger. Basically for the first run you set up a molecular lattice using nannites. After it’s formed the first time, it’s easier to work with. But on subsequent formings you have to convince it it’s ready to be worked.”
“Explains a lot,” Edward grinned. “I can look it up you know.”
“Go ahead then,” Angus replied with a broad smile through his beard. “One of the things the original researchers missed is that there’s a way to make it from other ores. Naturally occurring ones.”
“It’s still not useable in tourney,” Talbot said. “And it’s not the best material available for unlimited combats. So it’s cute, but that’s about it.”
“Not quite,” Angus replied, pointing at his mail. “Genie, disengage personal protection field. Now, Edmund, take a whack at me.”
“No way,” Edmund said, glancing around the forge. “I don’t have a finished blade.”
“Use my axe,” Angus argued. “Go ahead. It won’t hurt.”
“The axe will cut through the bloody armor, you idiot!”
“Nah, try it.”
“It looks like steel,” Talbot temporized, picking up the axe.
“You can make it look that way,” Peterka said. “Strike!”
“Shit,” Edmund said, drawing back the blade. “You asked for it.” He swung hard, aiming though the dwarf. Even in mail, even if the alloy held which, in all honesty it probably would, the impact was bound to at least crack a rib. At the very least, it would be painful as hell. But any damage he would do, the nannites would fix quickly enough.
The axe struck the mail and rebounded as if it had hit a wall of steel. He dropped it with a grimace at the harmonics.
“Bloody hell!”
Angus had been knocked backwards by the blow but he grinned nonetheless.
“When two pieces of the material in contact are subjected to lateral motion, basically when they experience friction, they form temporary carbon to carbon covalent bonds. I said it was designed as reactive armor. When you hit it, it turns into plate. Diamond plate.”
“Now that’s interesting,” Edmund said, poking at the now supple mail. One of the buggers about using plate was that it didn’t flex. A person wearing it was locked into the form of the armor, sometimes uncomfortably. “What about when you’re moving, bending arms, stuff like that?”
“The energy isn’t high enough to matter. It’s a tad less flexible than standard mail, but not much.”
“Interesting,” Talbot muttered. “How do you work it?”
“It’s a proprietary program,” Peterka said. “But since you’re such a good friend…” he added with a grin.
“You’re going to go off playing with this and not work on my thresher, aren’t you?” Myron said.
“Nah, I can do both. Bring me over the pieces you need repaired and the specs and I’ll do them for you.”
“Right, that’s settled,” Angus said. “Now let’s go get us a drink and celebrate my finding the first vein.”
“How much of this is there?” Myron asked.
“Not that much in the first vein, but there’s more,” the dwarf replied. “We’ll find the rest. It’s bloody deep, though. We’re at a depth that period pumps don’t handle well.”
“There’s period and there’s period,” Edmund said. “Buy me a drink, and what’s more important get me some of this stuff to play with, and I’ll fill you in on some aspects you might not have considered.”
“Deal.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Deal,” Daneh sighed, terminating the call.
The job was not her favorite; a person wanted an “original” Transfer into something very much like a manta ray. But it was for a worthy cause — the form was a deep-diver and the person wanted to do deep sea research “on site” — and there weren’t any serious problems like Herzer’s to work on.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Azure lift up and shake himself, heading for Rachel’s room, which probably meant that she was back. Thinking about it, Daneh didn’t think she’d seen her daughter in a couple of days.
“Rachel?” Daneh called, and her voice was automatically transferred to the girl’s room.
“Yes, Mother?”
“Where have you been?”
There was a pause that caused Daneh to sit up and override whatever answer she was going to get. “Come in here for a moment, will you?”
“Yes, Mother,” Rachel replied with a sigh that was faithfully replicated by the transmission system.
As soon as the girl walked into the room, Daneh’s stomach sank. She’d already been feeling depressed about not having any projects to test her mettle. And now this.
“Rachel, I thought we had agreed no body sculpting?”
There wasn’t much, but to her expert eye it stood out like a lightbulb. Rachel’s eyebrows had been curved, her cheekbones sharpened and her nose slightly thinned. Furthermore, she had had her breasts reduced and her butt tucked even more than for Marguerite’s party.
“I didn’t agree, you agreed,” Rachel answered hotly.
“I’m your parent, it’s my decision,” Daneh replied coldly. “Where did you have it done?”
“I don’t have to tell you that,” the girl said, crossing her arms. “I… I don’t have to say.”
“You could have gotten it off the Net,” Daneh said, tilting her head to the side. “It’s the sort of generic junk you can find there,” she added with professional disdain. “But the Net has my specific prohibition against it. So how did you get it done?”
“I Don’t Have To Say,” Rachel repeated. “And it’s not generic junk!”
“Well, it’s very poorly constructed,” Daneh said, coldly. “Give me the benefit of my expertise here, daughter. The eyebrows are badly balanced, the cheekbones detract from the nose and the combination makes you look like a short-beaked bird. I mean, it’s not well done.”
“Well, you wouldn’t let me get a well-done job, Mother,” she spat, furiously. Then she slumped shaking her head. “But… you’re right. It does look awful, doesn’t it?”
“Not awful,” Daneh said, tightly. “But it’s neither fashionable, not that I like the current fashions, they’re very unhealthy, nor is it particularly good looking on you. Face it, dear, unless or until you get a complete body and face sculpt, and end up looking like your friend Marguerite and all the other kids who were stamped out of the exact same genetic modeling kit, there’s not much you can do to look like current fashions. You’re too…” Daneh paused, searching for the right words.
“Fat,” Rachel said.
“Not fat, womanly,” Daneh replied. “Nobody these days is fat. Fat is when you have flabby bits hanging…” She looked at her stomach and arms and shrugged. “You’ve seen pictures. You’re beautiful dear. You know very well that at times you would have been considered beyond beautiful,” she added with a sigh.
“Sure, Mom, but these days guys don’t think in terms of women who are built to survive minor famines.”
“You’re not exactly a Reubens model,” Daneh replied. “Do you want it undone? Or do you want to keep it until you can get a proper bod-sculpt? I know some people who do very good work.”
“When?” Rachel asked, surprised.
“When you turn eighteen,” Daneh replied. “In the meantime, you’re grounded indefinitely. If you can’t keep a promise like this one, I’m not sure what promises you will keep.”
“Mother!”
“Don’t ‘mother’ m
e,” Daneh said. “The proof that you aren’t old enough to make the decision is that you went behind my back to do it and then got it done badly.”
“Oooo… I… I…” Rachel worked her jaw furiously and then spun on her heel and stalked out of the room.
“Genie, I’m serious about the grounding. Remind me of it in a week.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the program responded.
Daneh sighed and rubbed her temples. “What a day.”
* * *
Dionys’ surprise turned out to be… a girl. Or, Herzer thought much more likely, a homunculus. She, and about a half dozen of McCanoc’s usual hangers on, were in a wooded glen. She was small and fragile looking with a short black hair and an elfin face. And she looked frightened.
“Is that a homunculus?” he asked, just to be sure. Normally the homunculus would have been wearing a rather simple smile. This one looked downright terrified. Just to be sure, he sent a mental query to the Net and was assured that it was, in fact, a homunculus. Not a terrified preteen girl.
“Oh yes,” Dionys replied with a sardonic grin. “But a very special one. She has been programmed to fear sex. So much more… interesting.”
“I thought they were illegal?” Herzer said, breathlessly. His face and hands felt hot.
“Not… illegal so much as restricted,” Dionys said with another grin. “It helps to have friends in high places.”
Herzer was not a virgin, at least with homunculi. There was some debate about whether that counted but with the onset of the worst of his symptoms, making friends, especially girlfriends, had been tough. So homunculi were the only route open to his developing teenage libido short of using his hand. And he always cast himself in the role of the hero, the pure paladin on the white charger. But…
He knew the allure. The desire not just to be in a woman, be one with one, but to control her and dominate. To take instead of negotiate or, in the case of normal homunculi, be given freely. It was a secret he normally kept deep inside and one that he didn’t discuss. Ever. There was no one to talk to about it. No one who would… understand. He’d heard rumors about homunculi being abused, some of them even having to be recycled and replaced. Now he understood why.