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.”