“Yes, my ferocious flower.” The sound of another, more prolonged kiss. Very prolonged. Ganoosh cleared his throat.
“Ah! Nadhari, it is Count Edacki Ganoosh. Count, you have met my second in command. Colonel Nadhari Kando?”
“I have,” Ganoosh said. “Though we were not formally introduced.” The woman had been glowering menacingly by the side of Delszaki Li when they had met, looking as if she would cheerfully bite off the head of anyone who so much as frowned pensively in the direction of her employer. Now, she stood naked, obviously female but extremely well muscled, behind Ikwaskwan. Ganoosh was as unmoved sexually by the sight of her as he would have been looking at any other dangerous predator. She regarded him with a long stare that made him feel as if he were the one who was undressed, or perhaps dressed in the hunting or culinary sense, then slowly she shrugged her lithe muscles into a dressing gown patterned with glittering fireworks.
“Hmm,” she said, in his direction, then muttered t Ikwaskwan, “The officers will be waiting for their briefine” and turned and left.
Ikwaskwan gave Ganoosh a rather silly grin and winked and shrugged as if to say, “Women.”
Ganoosh chuckled far more indulgently than he felt. Even hardened mercenary killers weren’t of the same caliber these days.
“General, I’ll come right to the point. As you know, our government here on Maganos has undergone a great purge of corruption and through the good works of Delszaki Li and his ward, we are finally free of the tragedy of child slavery.”
“I’ve been meaning to send my congratulations for some time, Count,” the general said dryly, “but I haven’t found just the right card to express my joy.”
“Now, now, no need to be bitter just because your people are now deprived of the income they received for delivering war orphans to our facilities from time to time. You surely must realize that while this dreadful injustice has cleansed us of moral turpitude, it has also created a great hole in the labor force of the planet’s economy.”
“I had understood you -were going to mechanize?”
“Hideously expensive, as you know. It occurred to some of us-me, for instance-that rather than giving machines skilled jobs that can be done less expensively by human beings, we should perhaps find another labor pool. Now, you have occasion from time to time to fight in wars where one side or the other is totally devastated.”
“When my troops are involved, that is inevitably the case, the general said.
“Rather than execute the wounded or allow the survivors, 11 any, to either be butchered or starved, why not bring them to us? We could reeducate them into useful professions. We’d be saving lives, really, and making the universe a better place. NO one could object to that.”
“Humph,” the general said, stroking his whiskers with the big knuckles. “The only problem with that is it would ^ certain amount of restraint and gentleness on behalf req troops. Usually by the time we finish with the losing side, , We not in any shape to work for themselves or anyone l “
“This brings me to another issue. A question really. I have heard rumors-perhaps myths-of the healing power demonstrated by the unicorn girl who was the ward of the late Mr. Li.”
“She was also the ward, remember, of Hafiz Harakamian,” the general said. “The Lady Acorna is not a being to be trifled with, as I know from recent experience.”
“Realty? Tell me about it, do.”
“She is not just any girl, for one thing. She’s a member of a race of unicorn people. A very sophisticated people no one m this side of the universe had heard of before, but who apparently have been making contact with other worlds for some time. My troops formed an alliance with Li and Harakamian against an old enemy of these Linyaari, as they were called, and liberated a planet called Rushima. Afterward-I could hardly believe it myself-Lady Acorna and the others of her species healed all of the wounds as if they had never occurred. I heard that a time or two she has revived the dead, though I didn’t personally witness those events. Not only that, but some young renegades aboard a Starfarer’s ship were heard to say that she had purified poisoned air aboard their ship, and the people of Rushima claim she gave them a magical device to purify tainted water that had covered their world. Purified the whole world’s water supply. I hear it’s the horn that does it.”