The War With Earth (37 page)

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.

The compromise we settled on was that as far as the KEF was concerned, their pay and authority would be in accordance to their KEF rank. When they were outside of my city, they would dress either in civilian clothes, or in KEF uniforms, with the addition of being permitted to wear their almost sacred Gurkha
kukri
knives, except in a few localities where all weapons were forbidden by local civilian laws.

However, they would continue to use their old military rank among themselves, and would see to it that normal promotions within their own ranks were made. They would normally use their old uniforms bearing those insignia of rank in Dream World, and would be permitted to wear their old uniforms while living in my valley. Socially, among themselves, things would continue as they always had.

I wasn't precisely sure what had made these men some of the finest warriors in Human Space, but whatever their program was, I didn't want to mess with it.

Being a warrior was a full-time occupation with them.

They had a unique style of fighting with their
kukris
, which was ungodly deadly. They delighted in demonstrating it to me in Dream World, where you could actually go ahead and kill your opponent, and not just fake it as you had to do in real world practice sessions. The usual fight was over with in less than a second, with the loser's head rolling on the ground.

In addition, eighty-two percent of them had the equivalent of a black belt in at least one martial art, most often karate, but with eighteen other disciplines being represented, besides. I'd never even heard of half of them, but watching them demonstrated, I was impressed. More important,
Quincy
was impressed, and that sold me.

With this kind of hand-to-hand fighting skill available, we decided that every Gurkha should be issued a humanoid drone, so that he could use those skills while he was still in his tank.

However, since my well-publicized use of them in the New Kashubian campaign, those drones had become very popular throughout the KEF. Everybody was trying to get one. The laws of supply and demand took over, and the few that were available were selling for a half million zloty each, half the price of a stripped-down tank.

(I found out much later that Quincy and Zuzanna had sold most of theirs at that price, had paid cash for the castle they had bought from me, and had put the rest into Kasia's KEF Fund.)

The Army Supply Corps balked at the expense of my requisition, and refused to supply us with that many drones.

I decided to hell with them, and supplied the drones myself, out of the ten thousand that I had bought a few months earlier for three hundred and eighty-six zloty apiece, military surplus.

General Sobieski got into the act, telling me that I was not playing the game properly, and arranged for the army to pay me four hundred thousand each for them. This didn't seem right to me, but when he finally ordered me to take the money, I took the money.

At the same time, my own purchase order for all future drones produced, at less than four hundred zloty each, was canceled by the factory.

Then the Army Supply Corps came back to me, offering to purchase an additional eight thousand humanoid drones from me at the four hundred thousand zloty price.

I sold them. My God, how the money rolls in!

The army's purchasing agent told me afterwards that he got a bonus and a medal for saving the government eight hundred million zloty on the purchase. The fact that they had just sold them to me for over a thousand times less than what they had bought them back for didn't seem to faze anybody but me.

I felt guilty about the whole thing, and put the three and a half billion I'd gotten in the transactions into the charity account of the KEF Fund, which is when Kasia heard about the deal. She got mad at me. She said that their value had increased because I had proved the worth of the drones, and had publicized it. She also said that if I had consulted with her first, she could have gotten twice what I did.

Women.

My major problems with the Gurkhas were not military, but social. For one thing, they all insisted on each swearing loyalty to me personally, as though I was some sort of medieval liege lord, and they were my vassals.

In the KEF, no biological person swears any loyalty to anybody or anything. They don't have to, since the tanks are sworn in, and those girls wouldn't permit anything disloyal to happen. About the only thing that a human could do to hurt his outfit would be to not notice enemy activity in combat.

That is to say, he could commit suicide.

But there wasn't anything in our regulations forbidding personal loyalty, so if they wanted a swearing in ceremony, they got a swearing-in ceremony.

We held the affair in my valley, in the real world. This was possible because almost all of the Gurkhas spoke English.

I winced a bit when I saw what the tank treads were doing to my young grass, but we all felt that the earth, the sun, and the sky were needed to make the whole thing real. Still, if I ever have to do it again, I will hold the ceremony on the high, rocky mesa above my valley.

My whole staff, Kasia, Quincy, Zuzanna, Conan, Maria, Lloyd, and Mirko, were in dress, but not full dress, uniforms. These outfits sported a fancy knife, rather than the sword of the full dress uniforms, and thus put us on the same level as the Gurkhas, with their
kukris
. We went to each man, who was standing by his tank, in the Gurkha dress uniform. Each man's officers and NCOs were there as well. I saw each man, from their colonel on down, in strict order of rank.

Mostly, it involved being personally introduced to each man, being told quickly of his ancestry, and the rank those men had held. I kept my communicator on, so Agnieshka could remember everything, since I certainly wouldn't. I took a Gurkha
kukri
from the top of each man's tank and put it into his hands. It was always his own weapon, some of which had been handed down for many generations. They each swore never to draw it again without also drawing blood. They each cut themselves slightly on the hand before resheathing the blades.

They stood there, proudly dripping blood on the ground. I was told that they always did that, even if they had only drawn the blade to sharpen it.

I added something extra to their ancient ceremony.

I put each man's bleeding hand on his tank. I told him that she was his weapon, and that
he was her weapon
. I said that they were bonded, like a brother and sister, or a man and his wife, and that in combat they would become a single person.

Of course, by this time they had been in their tanks for over a standard month, training. That was almost two and a half years in Dream World. They already knew these things, but this somehow made it official.

We had started the ceremony at first light, and it was growing dark when we finished.

At the very end, the Gurkhas surprised us, with an addition of their own. They presented me with an elaborately decorated
kukri
, and asked that I wear it as a favor to them. My seven "colonels" were also given similar weapons, and we all proudly put them on.

"We could not get the watered steel that these blades are traditionally made of. These were made of surgical quality stainless steel, but I think that they should suffice," the Gurkha colonel said.

It had been a long day, but these were a very ceremonial people, and what we did was important to them.

And you know? I found that it was very important to me, as well.

I got the results of the statistical and engineering studies that I had requested.

The backpacks containing power capacitors for the humanoid drones had been designed, approved, and put into production, as were a set of small, cheap, and disposable transponders for keeping drones of any sort in touch with their tanks.

Our rail guns showed no significant wear after firing billions of rounds, and were considered an engineering masterpiece, a design not to be screwed with.

As to the tanks themselves, less than one tenth of one percent of them had failed for any reason except by direct enemy action. Admittedly, the majority of these failures were in the drive coils, and these were not repairable because they were cast inside of the ceramic inner frame of the vehicle. It was cheaper to replace those tanks that failed than it would be to redesign the tank and the automatic factories that produced them. Anyway, there was a war going on, and we could not afford the factory downtime required to change anything.

I sent the report on to Conan, whose drive coils had failed while he was on the surface of New Kashubia just before the searchlight hit us.

He said that he would discuss matters with the engineers.

I told him not to kill anybody.

A few days later, the Gurkhas were each issued a humanoid drone, equipped with the new backpacks filled with power capacitors that let them operate for a full, standard day without needing recharging, provided that they went easy with the lasers.

Most of the Gurkhas were tough, thin and wiry. They were short by European standards. When you were wearing a drone, you were vastly powerful, fast, and two meters tall. My new men liked it.

Very soon, each drone sported a
kukri
of its own, paid for by the soldiers themselves. But since the drones were five times stronger than any man, these blades were well over a meter long, and weighed ten kilograms each. Like the blades given to me and my colonels, these huge blades were of surgical steel, the best that they could find, but still not as good, they claimed, as real watered steel.

Their colonel talked wistfully of perhaps someday setting up a forge of their own, and making truly proper blades for their drones.

I got many requisitions from the Gurkhas. Replacement uniforms of their traditional cut could be supplied out of the automatic factories right here on New Yugoslavia, although the army insisted that they pay for them themselves. Various religious and personal articles were eventually supplied, mostly by local merchants. But the Nepalese foodstuffs and spices that they seemed to crave so badly were simply unavailable on New Yugoslavia. All that I could do was to promise that when the war was over, we would be able to import some of them from Earth, or at least get some of the seeds for these plants, and grow them here on my extensive lands.

They said that they could live with that, especially since, at least in Dream World, they could eat as they pleased.

Then I got a really strange requisition from my new men.

Each of our tanks was normally equipped with a pair of humanoid manipulator arms. These things were twelve meters long, with the shoulders at the front of the tank, and the elbows at the back, when they were folded down. There was a large humanoid hand at the end of each. Controlled by the tank's computers, or by the human observer directly, these things were used to load the guns, and to do all sorts of other useful things.

They were very strong, and could move as fast as your own arms could, but being fifteen times longer, it was actually possible to move them so fast that the finger tips broke the sound barrier, making a loud cracking sound, like a whip.

Once, faced with a Serbian guard captain that I had to kill silently, I used my manipulator arms to simply grab his head, and squeeze. He popped like a zit.

My Gurkhas wanted some six-meter-long
kukri
swords, massing eighty kilos, so that their tanks could fight in hand-to-hand combat.

At first, I simply couldn't believe that this was a valuable military weapon. I mean, come on, sword fighting with
tanks
? Tanks that were equipped with rail guns that could tear up mountains, shoot down satellites, and take out incoming artillery? They couldn't be serious!

But they were persistent, so finally I did order up a dozen of the things, cheaply made of mild steel, and demanded a demonstration.

I got one.

One of their best swordsmen, Jemadar Harkabahadur Gurung, got into his tank and took a few practice swings with his new, huge sword. It moved so fast that you couldn't see the thing moving—over two thousand kilometers per hour, the colonel told me. All you could hear was the deafening crack of a sonic boom!

Then we all went over to an old, damaged tank hull, devoid of electronics and power supply, that had been dragged over for a target. The jemadar pulled over to the side of the wreck, and paused for a moment. I could almost see him bowing to me. Then there was a loud crack, the wrecked hull was cut completely in half, and the sword was buried deep in the soil beneath it.

I was awestruck.

"Good God!" I said, "That hull was made of depleted uranium reinforced with a ceramic composite! A mild steel sword could cut right through it?"

"In truth, sir, we took the liberty of sending your tank swords out for heat treating and shot peening," the colonel said. "Also, our tanks tell us that the edge is now composed of pure diamond, a few hundred atoms thick, although how this was accomplished, or where they got a diamond so long was not explained to us, despite considerable urging on our part. Still, we wanted as realistic a test as possible. But I assure you that better metal will make an even better sword. But now, let us go over into Dream World, where we have been rehearsing several battle scenarios using these remarkable weapons."