Now, however, there was a race of intelligent beings who had witnessed and suffered through an invasion by the Mitchegai, and this forced people to take the whole thing seriously. While it would have been better if they could have been furry, cute, and cuddly, instead of looking like crabs, they nonetheless were instrumental in keeping the war effort going.
And the Tellefontu were cooperating very nicely, giving lots of press interviews and showing up regularly on talk shows.
In addition to the psychological boost, it was expected that as the new technology that the Tellefontu were giving us worked its way into the market, the economic boost would be considerable, and that would help the political situation a lot. What we had been able to learn from the Mitchegai scout ship wouldn’t hurt, either.
My uncle invited me to come to New Kashubia, so he could pin a few more medals on my chest. I respectfully declined, claiming the press of things to be done.
Actually, I still hated the bastard. I never have forgiven him for letting the courts give Kasia and me the choice of death or joining the army, all those years ago, not when they had aborted our first child in the process.
My boys were now my great joy in life. The oldest were getting to the point where I could teach them to fish, to ride horses, and to play ball. They were spending more and more of their time in the golden castle that I’d had built, but couldn’t sell, and that was good. The spirit of true knighthood was starting to grow in them.
* * *
Our machine tool industry was expanding with surprising rapidity. Our intelligent computers were keeping everything working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and without holidays. There was very little downtime. A great deal was being done very quickly.
The engineers computed that with the Disappearing Guns, and the other things that Bellor had suggested, we could produce the fallout shelters at a quarter of the price originally estimated. We would want the Guns as weapons anyway, so we built a production line to mass produce them. We also built lines to make the self-powered lighting fixtures and the power-generating air conditioners.
Kasia never mentioned these savings in her dealings with the local governments, and got full prices out of them. I took much of the extra money, and spent it on better food supplies. We would now be able to serve something a little bit better than gruel. But we didn’t tell them about that, either. It might have hurt sales on the luxury apartments.
As these new factories started to come on line, the shelters started to be dug in a hurry. One of our standard tanks, usually with a young soldier in training inside and oblivious to what his tank was really doing, could cut a tunnel eight meters across and ten meters high while traveling at eighty kilometers an hour!
It was a fast way to make floor space!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,
FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.
BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO
2000 YEARS EARLIER
For War and Profit!
After the duke started things out by cutting off a pretty little girl’s finger with a dull knife, and eating it to the applause of all present, Dol made a hit at the party by borrowing a large soldering iron from one of the repair shops in the engineering wing, putting it up one of the party snack’s cloaca, and plugging it in. It was something she had learned at one of Bronki’s parties, but it was a new innovation here. The resulting screams were outstanding!
Later, Dol told Kren that she would spend all day Saturday going over the mining machinery with Dako, but it looked as if most of it could be extremely useful. Besides the conveyor belts, there were eleven major power stations in storage here. These were high efficiency muon-exchange fusion units, capable of running for a thousand years at peak output before they needed refueling.
Dol said, “They have a massive amount of lighting fixtures, wires and cabling, and seven big tunneling machines. With them, it might prove feasible to connect the wintering centers directly to the train stations, which would greatly ease the job of collecting juvenals in the winter time. We could just run the children we want down underground tunnels to the train station and box them up there.”
Also, the duke’s engineers didn’t have nearly enough to do, and Dol expected to get a lot of free engineering help from them.
The duke came up to them and said, “Now, now, you two. No discussion of business at a party! Anyway, the entertainment is about to begin in the arena, so come along, both of you.”
They went to a small circular stadium surrounding a patch of synthetic grass two dozen yards across. At first, Kren thought that they would be in for some sort of gladiatorial event, but no, no one was killed. The duke thought too much of his troops to waste them on mere entertainment.
It was a tournament between two platoons of combat troops from two rival regiments. It was fought with weapons of full weight, but without sharp edges. The troops wore full, head-to-toe armor of a sort Kren had never seen before. The helmets were similar to what most of Dennon’s soldiers wore, except that the face was also protected. The body armor was obviously of a more advanced technology, with many dozens of intricately fitting, overlapping plates that permitted complete freedom of motion.
The first event was one-on-one fighting with sword and spear between members of the two platoons. What with the armor and the blunted weapons, no one was seriously injured, but these troops were really fighting.
Kren found it good to watch real professionals go at it, and not the stupid buffoons on Big Time Gladiators. The rules were anything goes, and the fighting continued until the slain warrior declared herself to be dead. Honor was very important to these warriors, and the thought of cheating was abhorrent to them. Once a warrior took a blow that would have killed her, had the weapon been real and she without her armor, she fell over “dead” and the crowd applauded.
They even gave an award for the “Best Death of the Evening.”
Most of the three dozen bouts lasted less than a minute.
“I’ve never seen anything like the armor they’re wearing,” Kren said.
“Actually, those are old space suits,” the duke said. “New ones would be hideously expensive, but these all had to be scrapped because they leaked air. But that’s not a problem down here, and I always buy them, when they come on the market. I’ve got eleven gross of them now, and my best units have them.”
“Those are space suits?” Kren said.
“They were. The Space Mitchegai all clip their claws very short, so we have to open up the gloves and boots to let ours out. We’ve taken the fittings for the breathing packs off, along with the heating and cooling apparatus, which wouldn’t be allowed by the rules of war, and I never bought the space helmets in the first place. After that, well, a coat of paint in my colors, and there you are.”
“I didn’t know that any of the armies were using full armor.”
“I might be the only duke with any large number of armored troops. Most of them find it cheaper to hire new troops than to armor the old ones. And in fact, I’ve never committed my armored division to combat. They’ve always been my strategic reserve, and so far, I’ve always won before they were committed to battle. But someday, I will need some real shock troops, and when that day happens, I’ll have them.”
“Conventional wisdom is that armor slows you down more than it is worth.”
“To a certain extent, it does slow a soldier down. Also, the extra weight upsets your coordination and balance. To get good in it, you pretty much have to live in the stuff, full time, which is precisely what all of these troops do. They even sleep in it, usually.”
“I’d like to try sparring in armor, sometime.”
“We can do that tomorrow, if you’d like. I just bought four new suits that haven’t been assigned to individuals yet. I think that two of them should be ready.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
When the individual matches were over, the two platoons formed up a battle line and fought a general mêlée, which left three troops standing from one side, and none from the other. The points were tallied up, and the losing side went back to their barracks. The winners got to join the party, and hobnob with the aristocracy, still in their armor, but with their helmets off so that they could eat.
The next day, a palace servant escorted Kren back to the arena, where he found Duke Dennon already putting on a suit of armor, with the help of some armored soldiers.