This continued for five dozen years, at which time the chancellor of the University of Dren simply went missing. Eight weeks went by while a massive, planet-wide search went on for him, but nothing was found. There wasn’t a clue as to his whereabouts, or his fate.
A joke went around suggesting that Director Kodo had eaten him.
The other directors elected Bronki to the chancellorship of the University of Dren on the first ballot. This cost her well over a billion Ke in bribes, a great deal of money for most, but a trivial amount for her.
Bronki was pleased.
One of her first actions was to invite Kren to come into her city and to clean out the criminal elements. For a modest fee, he agreed to do this, and over a one-year period, the job was done. With Bronki cracking into their computers, and providing him with times, names, and places, the population of the city fell by one sixth. Only half of these were killed by Kren and his warriors, who by now had bodies genetically identical to his own. The rest were criminals who were smart enough to get out of town.
The director of athletics was among those quietly eliminated, and Kren performed this task personally, for vengeance and the pure fun of it.
Dik, Kren’s old fencing instructor, was elected to take his place. The university’s athletic program prospered.
There were over a dozen pitched battles between Kren’s professional soldiers and the various criminal gangs that had infested the city. Kren’s troops won every one of them, despite their use of legal weapons while the criminals used everything from guns to poison gas.
The fighting spirit is always more important than the weapon used. Numbers help, too.
Once the heavy battles were over with, the underground corridors and the surface walkways were well patrolled by honest policemen, and the independent trash were slowly swept up. Citizens could walk late at night without fear, shopkeepers no longer had to pay out most of their profits for protection money, and very few individuals paid to have new, three-inch-thick steel doors put on their apartments.
Now they could spend their money on better quality food, happily provided by the Superior Food Corporation.
Bronki became a very popular politician, and let her academic career slide.
She had many disagreements with Kren over the years, but both of them were very pragmatic. They both knew that the profits were much better when the other was around. Their “friendship” continued.
* * *
Mostly because Kren enjoyed a good battle, and because, eventually, very few dukes were willing to fight him, Kren took on many more, not very profitable, contracts to clean the criminal elements out of other cities. He and his men became very proficient at it, and the planetary drug trade dwindled to nothing.
Eventually, with success, even that source of fun began to run dry.
The population, and the profits on selling them food and housing, increased. But Kren felt that things were getting dull.
* * *
Kren’s wealth and power were such that he had an automatic place on the Planetary Council. He spent a week there and left, totally bored. To him, the council was nothing but a gross of fools who thought that they could solve all of their problems by talking about them!
Finally, he said to one idiot, “Very well, then. We will put the question to the scientific method. When next it happens that you and I have a disagreement, you will resort to talk and what you are pleased to call reason. I will bring in my army and we will attack. We shall see who has the superior technique!”
Kren’s opponent left the room and wasn’t seen again.
Kren offered his chair to Bronki, but she declined it. It wasn’t because it bored her, but because she felt that it was too dangerous. The number of political assassinations was large.
Kren had noticed a few killings, but hadn’t thought it anything out of the ordinary. Certainly, no one had tried to kill him. He would have found that refreshing.
Eventually, Kren just hired an observer to look after his interests at the council, and generally ignored the whole thing. If anyone gave him difficulties, Kren resolved that he would simply kill them. Politics was not for the likes of Kren.
* * *
Dol continued with her program of running the day-to-day operations of the Superior Food Corporation, and continued her academic work on her doctorate in aerodynamic engineering. She remained absolutely loyal to Kren during all of this, but made a lot of money on the side, anyway.
The education that she had gotten from Bronki had served her well.
Eventually, over the next two thousand years, Dol obtained a total of three dozen and two earned doctorates, surpassing Bronki and all but three of the senior academics at the university. If any of this academic achievement was the result of additional vampirism, well, Dol never said, and Kren never asked.
* * *
Kren had been deadly bored for a gross of years, when, twelve years ago, the word came that a suitable new planet had been discovered on the outer periphery of Mitchegai Space, and that his planet had won the sector lottery. The most powerful individual on his planet would be selected to take his subordinates, and to conquer this new world.
There was no doubt anywhere on the planet but that this most powerful individual was Duke Kren!
An entire new planet was to be his to tame! This was something that he could sink his teeth into!
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Wealth, Power, and Danger
New Yugoslavia, 2217 a.d.
Two more of the small, spherical Mitchegai ships were found in Human Space.
Both had been single-pilot exploration ships exactly like the first that Abdul had come across.
Both had had opened fire on us, ignoring our attempts at communication. All they seemed to understand was raw violence.
Both had been destroyed, one with a bank of X-ray lasers, and the other with a Disappearing Gun.
While the second ship was simply gone, the first was yielding more data about our enemy. It had contained many more books than the original one had, and with these our intelligent computers were starting to decipher the enemy’s language, habits and thought patterns.
Everything that we could learn about them said that they were absolutely evil. They had no concept of God. They had no concept of Family. They had no concept of Justice. They were rapacious carnivores that simply didn’t care about anything or anyone but themselves.
And they really did eat their own children, to the exclusion of everything else.
One other disquieting thing was that both of these new ships had been coming from the same direction as the original one, and that both of them were on a beeline for New Yugoslavia.
* * *
With our metal ladies running the factories, our industrial strength on New Yugoslavia grew at a remarkable rate. We now had a sufficient number of picket ships built to adequately guard New Yugoslavia, and we were selling eight ships a week to the government in New Kashubia. Those mistaken individuals were still doggedly trying to defend the entirety of Human Space, and not the planets where humans actually lived.
Fortunately, well over half of the planets were disregarding the Union of Human Planets, following the lead of New Yugoslavia, and setting up their own defenses.
In another year, we would have enough sensors built to fill in the gaps between our ships, and we already had orders to sell all that we could make after that. In five years, so would a lot of other planets.
All of our picket ships and sensors were now equipped with Disappearing Guns. I’m not sure that this made much sense from a military standpoint, but our silicon ladies felt more comfortable, being armed.
We had expanded into civilian products as well, including household appliances that used the Tellefontu ambient temperature power generators, and vehicles that could use the Loway transportation network. The demand for these cars and trucks was very high, with good profits and a considerable waiting list. Kasia became richer than ever, but she didn’t seem to care about that as much anymore. Maybe, she was finally growing up.
The social drone factory was going at full capacity, and within a few months every artificial intelligence on the planet would have a drone of her own. They would each be able to go out and pass for human if they wanted to.
Soon, we would be selling social drones at cost to the ladies in the rest of the army. They could afford it, since they were getting paid, now. Often, their human observers chipped in on the cost. There was much to be said for having your beautiful friend with you in the real world. Among other things, she could do the housework.