The War With Earth (32 page)

She ended it by showing everybody in New Kashubia out dancing in the streets, with drinks being passed around, and pretty girls kissing everybody they could find in a uniform. This was completely fraudulent, of course, since at that moment everybody in the planet was glued to their TV screens.

In the background, General Sobieski was repeating himself, going on about the importance of having a real, interstellar military force, composed of the finest people and the finest computers, working freely together for the benefit of all of humanity, both chemical people and electronic people, too.

It was to be a well paid military force, of course.

I thought that it was a pretty fair piece of propaganda, and told Agnieshka so.

She insisted that it was a completely accurate documentary, I suppose because there were a few dozen studio people watching it along with us.

The guy in charge of the TV studio loved it, and said that they would be putting it on three more times that day, and then twice a day for the next week. And would I have any objections to his sending copies of it out to all the other planets?

"No, that would be just fine," I said. "Of course, we'll expect to get the standard rates for this sort of thing, based on audience size, and so on."

The figure we settled on was actually quite generous, I thought, but Kasia was sure that we should have held out for more.

"Next," I said. "We've got these twelve bastards still in our tanks who are as guilty as hell of treason. Does anybody here know of an honest judge, and an honest cop?"

"I do," said one of the studio people, a news anchorman.

"Well, get them on the phone, and find out what's the proper thing to do with people like this," I said.

Somebody shouted, "Let's just hang them right now!"

"No, none of that!" I shouted back. "We've got to do this legally. We have to make an object lesson out of these people. Then, we can hang them."

The judge said that he could send a paddy wagon out for them right away, but that it might be safer for all concerned if we could take them to the jail ourselves. He was worried about mob violence.

Maria asked if she could be detached from the squad, so that she could go after Conan, who was still in a crude tunnel on the surface. I gave her permission to do so, but told her that she should find Quincy and Zuzanna first, so they would have enough tanks to drag him back to where there was enough air for him to safely open up.

Those two found us first. About the time that our drones were back on the street, the two of them pulled up, loaded down with most of the group's drones, and piled high with their relatives, as well.

The newsmen wanted to interview everybody, but I begged off for the squad, pleading urgent business, and let Zuzanna's grandkids have all the glory.

They were interviewing the Gurkha jemadar as we left. He'd told me that he would soon have to report to his superiors, and that he would certainly convey my offer to them.

I warned him to throw away all of the ammo they had been issued in the last week, since we had booby-trapped it. He said thank you, but they had already surmised that.

It turned out that the jail was on the way to the small tunnel that was still the only route to the surface that we knew about, so we all stayed together.

It was a long trip. The whole population of New Kashubia seemed to be out in the street, having taken the hint from Agnieshka's documentary. People were drinking, dancing, and kissing everybody in sight. Getting a convoy of nineteen tanks through it without hurting anybody wasn't easy. Especially when fourteen of the tanks weren't very bright.

"It kind of makes you wish that we could go out there and join them," Quincy said.

"Well, why can't we?" I asked, "A few more hours one way or another won't make much difference to Conan."

"Well, clothes, for one thing, unless you plan on dancing in public buck naked. When I handed out our personal weapons to that last bunch of hostages, I just gave them the whole survival kits, in case there was anything else in there that they could use. I guess that included our clothes as well."

"Damn you, Quincy!" Kasia shouted, "Now I won't even be able to visit my folks while I'm here."

"Well, then buy some, if you are so worried about it," I said.

But when we stopped at a phone booth, we couldn't find a single store that was open. Everybody was out partying in the street.

"Oh, hell," Quincy said. "Being in a drone is just as good as being there for real."

The drone that had been sitting on his tank became active. Its Squid Skin covering changed into the clown outfit that he had used when we rescued the hostages, it picked up the violin that was hanging on the turret of his X-ray laser, and he began to play it, doubtless with Eva's help, while dancing on the top of his tank.

"Yeah, unless you want to kiss a girl," I said.

But I got into my drone, switched it to the clown outfit, and started dancing on my tank, too, as we moved slowly down the street. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

People recognized us from the "documentary" they'd just seen, and soon so many of them were crowding around that all motion came to a halt.

"You guys are crazy," Kasia said, "And you are also rotten dancers. Eva, take over!"

I felt Eva take over the controls on my drone, and from the way that all of the drones were dancing and playing their violins in unison, I knew that she'd taken over the rest of them as well.

I could have taken back the controls, since on the one hand, I'd been having fun, but on the other, I was up there looking as though I was actually talented, and you know? In a crunch, your ego wins out over your libido every time!

We went through the whole routine, with the Russian dancing and all, and the crowd loved it!

Finally, Quincy took over and pointed the arms of all the drones out at the crowd. About half of then screamed and ducked, but of course he never fired at them. But he did at last yield to his temptations, and bow.

The applause was thunderous.

I took over my drone again, had the rest sit down, and said, "We love you! But you know, we still have Wolczynski and the rest of his treasonous bastards locked up in these tanks! We've got to get them to the jail, so they will still be in good shape for their trial, and, I hope, for their hanging! So back off, good people! We've still got a job to do!"

Well, a lot of them backed off, enough to let us start moving again. Then someone started chanting, "Derdowski! Derdowski! Derdowski!" Immediately, everyone in the crowd joined in.

They kept on doing that, until we had left them far behind.

It feels good, being appreciated.

At the jail, they had more than fifty uniformed policemen waiting to take our prisoners into custody, but I elected to decant Wolczynski myself.

"General Wolczynski, I have a great big surprise for you!" I said as his coffin slid out of the back of the tank. "I really am that Mickolai Derdowski fellow that you heard so much about, and
you are busted
! Take him away, officers!"

They read him his rights, handcuffed him, and searched him. They found his copies of the Articles of Surrender, which they kept as evidence.

The rest of my squad took turns, decanting and enlightening the other eleven traitors, and had a good time doing it.

From the jail, we had to work our way back through the old enemy control room, which nobody had yet started to clean up, into the small tunnel, and eventually up to the surface. I took all of the tanks with us, since I had a use for those we'd liberated, and I didn't want them commandeered by some other unit.

Conan was just fine, and eager to hear all the news. The quickest way to fill him in was to simply let him watch Agnieshka's documentary.

We got him out of the tunnel in exactly the same manner as he'd gotten in there, with Zuzanna pulling and Maria pushing, while Agnieshka rode herd on our bunch of brainless tanks.

We had to drag him all the way back down to the gold layer before there was enough air around so that when we opened his damaged tank, he didn't die on us.

We had to go through the wrecked control room yet another time, and I had us travel another kilometer besides, just to get away from the carnage of that place.

When we got Yvette, Conan's tank's computer, plugged into the liberated tank we'd gotten for them, she complained about the slow, silicon computers that she had to interface with.

"Mickolai, I can handle them, after a fashion, but in a combat situation, I might end up letting you down. It can't take all that long to replace all five of the silicon things here with the perfectly good diamond computers from my old body. Please, let's do that."

Actually, it took us three hours, in real time, to do the job. Some of those computers were in very hard to get at places, and we had to shut down both muon exchange fusion bottles before we dared disconnect the computers that controlled them. We also took the time to move the Squid Skin tank cover over to her new body, since she didn't like the silly paint job somebody had given it. But it was better to have the team in good shape, and the victory celebration was long over by now, anyway.

When we got back to the populated areas, we found that the communication channels were all again working.

There was a recorded message waiting for us, from General Sobieski.

It said, "Nice job, Mickolai! You and your squad have earned a chest full of medals each, and probably a lot more, besides. You have won us a major battle, but you have not won the war, at least not yet. Earth's Forces have invaded New Yugoslavia. Come home at once."

We again had priority at the transmitter to New Yugoslavia, courtesy of our general, and the whole trip only took an hour in real time. I spent the day in Dream World in the sack with Kasia, except when actually in transit, where we were perforce separated, and that time I spent sleeping.

Warfare sure takes it out of a guy, even when you win.

It can't be the physical strain, since I had spent the whole time physically on my back, floating in the belly of a tank. It has to be the mental effort of trying to figure out what you are going to do next, and the anxiety of wondering if you and your people will survive it.

There were a few hundred letters of congratulations waiting for me when we arrived at New Yugoslavia, but there weren't any more messages from Sobieski, or any orders from anyone. I told Agnieshka to send all of them a polite reply, and to take us home.

"But shouldn't we report in?" She said.

"Why? General Sobieski knows where we are. The last order I heard was to go home, so that's where I'm going. He'll call me when he wants me. Anyway, we've got some errands to do before we get involved with the rest of this war."

"What kind of errands?"

"Like doing something with these tanks we liberated, for one thing," I said.

"Do you plan on keeping them? Wouldn't that be illegal? I mean, they are armed and everything!"

"I don't care. Call them war trophies, if you want to. They're not on the books anywhere, so who will know about it?"

"Everybody in Human Space? They were in the documentary I did, remember?"

"Knowing about something, and having it on some bureaucrat's books are two quite different things. As it is, they'll all assume that somebody else did something about the tanks," I said.

"What do you want with them, anyway?"

"There are well over two dozen damaged tanks around my property with perfectly good computers in them. We can do some switching around, like we did with Yvette, and make thirteen of those girls well again. Then, we can take the old damaged tanks and use them for emergency power supplies, since they will only have silicon electronics, and no real brains to speak of, but they must have working fusion bottles."

That had to be, since if the fusion bottles had blown, there wouldn't have been anything left of those tanks in the first place.

"Oh, that's brilliant, boss! We love you for it! But how do we pick who gets a new body?"

"Hold a raffle, I guess, or maybe take the thirteen who have been crippled the longest. That might be the fairest way to do it."

"I'll set it up. The rest of the squad has come through to New Yugoslavia. Should I tell them to go home, too?"

"Some rest and recuperation are definitely in order, I'd say. Just tell them to keep in touch, in case we get some orders."

"Right, sir. We'll be sending the refurbished tanks back to the army?"

"If they ask for them, yes. If not, well, you never can tell when thirteen more main battle tanks might come in handy. Anyway, those disabled tanks are all taking care of some of our nut cases, aren't they?"

"Boss! Please? Psychiatric patients?"

"Danes?"

"Ah! Now I
know
that you are not serious!"

"Have it your own way. If the army, by which I mean General Sobieski, wants to transfer those patients to some other coffins, and put those thirteen tanks into combat, he has a perfect right to do so. Until that time, let it be. Next, I want you to contact some of your coworkers, the ones with engineering talent. I want a backpack full of power capacitors designed for the humanoid drones to carry, and then see about getting it into production. It should be simple enough to do. They don't have nearly enough power available to them, at present."

"Good idea, boss."

"Next, I want the communications improved between the drones and the tanks controlling them. Some combination of IR, fiber optics, and radio frequency transponders might do the trick. I want something small and cheap, so that a drone can carry a lot of them, and leave them behind him."

"Okay."

"Lastly, the tanks themselves need some work. This was the first time that they have actually been used in combat. The Japanese engineers who designed them could only test them in simulations. For one thing, there seem to be a lot of drive coils failing. I want to know why that is, and why we can't repair them easily. I'd like to get some real statistics on that, too. I mean, is this just a statistical fluke that I've been seeing, or maybe just my imagination? We've had a lot of tanks operating over the last five years, and I'd like to know what has been breaking down on them. Next. Zuzanna and Maria fired an awful lot of rail gun needles at that neutron star. I'd like to know how good their rail guns still are. Is wear a problem with them? Once we know what really needs work, we can see about making some design changes, maybe as a retrofit, and certainly on all new tanks being built."