* * *
At Kasia’s urging, Agnieshka turned out a full-length feature movie called The Attack on Baden-Baden Island. I was the hero again, but this time, my metal lady had time to collect up data from all of the other men and tanks who were in the fight, so we had a cast of thousands.
This was probably the first war in history where everything that every single combatant did was automatically recorded, on our side, at least. The historians would have a hard time arguing with each other over facts, once it was over. They would just have to find something else to argue about.
As usual, Agimieshka wasn’t always absolutely factual. Among other things, she took the footage we had of that strange, aboriginal, vodka-swilling blue crab I’d found on our honeymoon island, and had it wreaking havoc among the Earthworms. It cut neat, circular holes in much of their equipment, and drank most of their booze.
My wife sold the movie for half again more than we’d gotten for any of Agnieshka’s productions to date. The profits had to be divided up among a lot of people, but our share went into the charity account, anyway.
So did Agnieshka’s.
I was told that our movies were important to the war effort. They cheered people up, and gave them confidence in our armed forces. As the war progressed, people needed that more and more.
Over the next two months, the Earthworms hit us on Soul City, New Israel, New Palestine, and New Erie. There was no pattern to their advance, but the reality of a universe connected by Hassan-Smith transporters was that one place was pretty much as close as any other. The old concepts of geography didn’t apply any more.
At first, it seemed like the Earthworms just wanted to fight, and to expend their men. The fighting on Soul City was far more protracted, and far more bloody, for us, than New Kashubia and New Yugoslavia had been. The enemy was learning, but in the end we won.
Then, within a month, we lost contact with New Israel, New Palestine, and New Erie.
Earth had somehow found and knocked out all of the transporters on those planets. Not only the few that Earth had installed, but those built by the smuggling network as well. They had either developed some new technology beyond the understanding of our scientists, or they had a well-coordinated organization of saboteurs in place that our military intelligence couldn’t find.
How the war was going on those planets, and if indeed it was still going on at all, we didn’t know. But we couldn’t send them any reinforcements, for fear that the receivers were out as well, and the enemy could presumably keep sending in men and machines.
How they had done this was beyond us.
Personally, I doubted the sabotage theory. My guess was that Earth’s science had always been superior to our own, out here on the frontier, and that they had somehow figured out a way to detect the exact location of each of our transporters, and perhaps our receivers as well.
Then they had sent each of them a very deadly present.
In actual combat, man for man, we seemed to be generally better than they were, since our computers were so much faster than theirs. But they were using something that we didn’t understand to cut us up into little pieces that could no longer help each other.
Things started to look very grim.
There was nothing that I could do to help. I just heard about the battles on all those other planets in the news, and watched them on the movies that everybody seemed to be making, now.
My new job was something very different.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
My Gurkhas
The Gurkhas had insisted, as a requirement for their enlistment, that I be given command of their battalion, nine hundred and thirty-six hereditary warriors.
I was given that command, despite the fact that I was officially only a tanker first class.
It’s not like I needed a general’s pay, and everybody except the army’s upper brass still thought that I was a real general. Nonetheless, it irked me. Sobieski just told me to relax. Everything would work out, soon.
He reminded me of the case of the American, General Chuck Yeager, who had been an ace fighter pilot during World War II, a test pilot who had been the first human being to fly faster than sound, and who had received several citations for running the most efficient squadron in that country’s war in Vietnam, but who was actually only a sergeant on the books of the U.S. Air Force.
I asked him why this was supposed to make me feel better.
He didn’t answer.
Kasia wasn’t much interested in anything but her growing financial empire, and I let her follow her wishes. The Gurkhas weren’t comfortable with women in command, anyway.
My four Croatian “colonels” had gotten deeply involved in the politics of revamping the military situation in New Croatia, and indeed in rewriting their entire national constitution. If they were successful in getting a system of universal military service going in their country, I knew that all of the other countries on New Yugoslavia would have to follow suit, out of self defense, if nothing else.
It was an important job, and I encouraged them to get it done.
And Zuzanna was living in her Dream World castle, when she wasn’t living in the real castle I’d sold her. She threw some great Dream World parties, which General Sobieski and a few hundred of his friends enjoyed immensely. But she was not being useful for much else. Since she was usually more trouble than she was worth, I let her go her own way.
Mostly, Quincy and I got the Gurkhas under control, and integrated into the KEF.
My battalion had been transported to New Yugoslavia, mostly because, having been part of the army that had that had invaded New Kashubia, they weren’t really welcome there. I found them, undergoing a prolonged basic training, secure in their new Mark XIX tanks. We had no artillery, which was probably just as well. Long-range fighting just wasn’t the Gurkha’s style.
They were stored in an area that was destined to become a food processing center, for the manufacture of chicken soup. Throughout Human Space, commercial projects were being delayed while military production was booming. The chickens had gotten a reprieve.
I had the Gurkhas sent to my valley, and placed in the lowest level of the underground parking lot of the cathedral there. My electronic architects had decided that this parking lot should be big enough so that even if the huge cathedral was filled to capacity, and everybody arrived in their own separate car, there would be room enough for everybody to park. A bit of overkill, I thought.
As soon as his training schedule permitted, Quincy and I had a long talk with Lieutenant Colonel Parta Sing Gurung, who commanded the Gurkhas. There were problems that we had to resolve.
He agreed that the pay was generous. A tanker first class in our army made twice what he had been making as a colonel, and our retirement benefits were better than anything the Gurkhas had ever seen before in their long history.
He liked the financial options available to him and his men, as well, and had recommended to his men that they each invest eighty percent of their pay into the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces Fund.
He understood that it would be impossible to transport their dependants to New Yugoslavia while the war was going on. He was glad that somehow, through our spy network, we had been able to inform those people that their men were safe, and was pleased to hear that as soon as it was possible, we would get them here at army expense.
He liked my valley and the city that I had built here, but when I offered the golden castle for him and his men, he said that he had toured the entire city in Dream World, and that there was a portion of the Oriental sector that had been designed in the style of Nepal. That was where he and his men would be most comfortable, and they had already made arrangements to buy it, on the generous terms that I was offering.
That was frustrating. Nobody wanted my magnificent golden Castle of the Three Eagles!
The real problem with the Gurhkas was one of rank.
The KEF used a system where there was a general and five colonels, living in a Combat Control Computer, who directly commanded fifty to one hundred thousand human troops, plus an equal number of electronic intelligences. These people were organized into squads of typically six tanks each, but we didn’t have the hordes of middle managers that most traditional armies had. The computers handled all of those functions for us.
Military rank was supremely important to the Gurkhas. They could all recite the ranks that all of their ancestors had held when they were alive, often back for fifteen generations. Every man’s status, and the social standing of his entire family, was entirely dependent on his rank.