"Frankowski, Leo - Kren of the Mitchegai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

Conrad's Time Machine

Prologue
DEDICATION
This one is again dedicated to my lovely wife, Marina, and to her father, Vasili Ivanovich, for making the roof fit on my castle.
—Leo Frankowski
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my most excellent partner, Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, for all his encouragement and enthusiasm.

Richard T. Bolgeo, Bruce R. Quayle, Ed Dunnigan, Mike Hubble, Mike Thelen, and Rodger Olsen all made many valuable suggestions and did yeoman service at proofreading.

And special thanks go to Dave's Ever Perfect Lieutenant, Susan, in the hope that she will someday stop calling me "Sir."

—Leo



I want to take this opportunity to offer my sincere thanks and appreciation, first and foremost, to Leo Frankowski, a wise and experienced science fiction writer who has helped me to enter into the world of SF. Leo has been one of my heroes as a writer, but now he is a hero and a friend as a person. Hooah!

—Dave

CHAPTER ONE
Mickolai's Homecoming
New Yugoslavia, 2205 a.d.
It had been one hell of a battle. More than half of my men had been killed. Not just casualties. Killed. In armored space warfare, nonfatal injuries are very rare.

The enemy had been defeated, but we had not really accomplished our objective. We had been ordered to capture the Solar Station that was maintaining the continued expansion of Human Space. Instead, we had been forced to completely destroy it.

Now, something else would have to be built to take over that job. Something very expensive.

When what was left of my battalion got home, there wasn't anyone waiting for us. Military receiver stations aren't set up to handle crowds; the few operable transmitters on Earth's wrecked Solar Station took four days to get those of us who had survived back home, and that's a long time to keep a brass band going. Anyway, all we really wanted was a long sleep in a real bed. The parades and awards could come later.

The War With Earth was over, and the good guys, those of us from the colonies, had won. My unit was the only one to take really serious casualties; I was the commander, and so somehow in the public imagination that made me a hero. A strange way of looking at things, praising the guy who had done his job the worst, but it has always been that way. Maybe the psychology of it all is that, "If it cost us that much, it must have been important."

I left orders that all of my men, mostly Gurkha mercenaries, were to go on R & R for an indefinite period. They could do whatever they wanted to do, provided that they kept in touch.

For myself, all I wanted was to go home to my wife.

When the elevator got me from my garage up to my apartment, I found my Kasia standing there wearing nothing but a glorious smile. She was on maternity leave, and three months pregnant, but it didn't show, except that she looked even more beautiful than ever.

"You lived," she said. "Thank you."

She kissed me, and the war, the deaths, and all of the ugliness was somehow worth it. I picked her up, stepped back into the elevator, and then carried her over the threshold once more, just as when we had first been married, and the other times when I had come home victorious.

She squealed in her usual way, and I said, "Family traditions must be upheld, once per victory!"

And then, I carried her to the bedroom.

After a wonderful night, we rolled out of bed at the crack of noon, and we went to the kitchen looking for something to eat.