Lieutenant

by Phil Geusz

  “Go tell everyone to eat all the hay they want,” I instructed Nestor after ordering all hands to their battle stations. This wasn’t the kind of detail I wanted the Imperials to overhear from our damaged and possibly leaking wiring. “Each squad should send one Rabbit to go get all they can carry. Tell them I want them to go into battle with full bellies and strong hearts. And, that I’m prouder of them than they can possibly imagine.”

  “Yes, sir!” Nestor replied, turning to go.

  But before he could, I stopped him. “And I’m extra-proud of you. I want to make sure you know that. I couldn’t have asked for a better aide and helper during all these long weeks. In fact, I can’t imagine what I’d have done without you.”

  The little Rabbit froze in place for an instant. Then his ear linings reddened, he stared down at his feet…

  …and was gone without a word.

  Our enemies maneuvered pretty much as I’d foreseen they would; the troopships stood off well out of range while the cruisers bored in at high speed for a pre-invasion bombardment. They didn’t come anywhere near the line of fire of our one working gun—probably they had things all figured out by now. The only surprise came when, just as they were lining up to make their first pass, the communications circuit crackled into life. “Hello Zombie Station,” a voice called out. “This is Admiral Lord Maddox, in command of His Imperial Majesty’s Cruiser Division Six. Who do I have the honor of addressing?”

  I replied once again by text. “Captain Holcomb here.”

  “Captain Holcomb,” the admiral replied, “it’s my genuine pleasure to be in contact with you. You’ve accomplished more than you probably know for your sovereign, sir. I salute you for your ingenuity and dedication.”

  “My duty, sir,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

  “Quite right, Captain, quite right! And I respect you for doing it so well. Others in the Imperium agree. So much so, in fact, that His Imperial Majesty himself has authorized me to accept your surrender, should you be willing to offer it. I guarantee you honorable terms and a pleasant confinement until the war ends, whereupon you and your men will be allowed to return home to the honors you’ve already done so much to earn. Your position is hopeless; what would be the point in further bloodshed?”

  I frowned to myself. Was he telling the truth, or lying in order to preserve the lives of his valuable marines? And in any event, would Rabbits be considered eligible for honorable confinement? I rather doubted it. Especially Rabbits who’d already stood up to and helped kill hundreds of their former masters. “I fear that I must decline your generous offer,” I replied. Then, just to muddy the waters and hopefully introduce a nagging smidgen of doubt into his mind, I added a bit more. “In recognition of your gallantry, I in turn am prepared to accept your own honorable surrender at any time. Long live the King!” And with that, I powered down the console.

  “But…” Fremont asked as I leaned on the dead cabinet munching huge mouthfuls of fresh, wonderful hay. “I mean… Where would we put them all?”

  “We’ll find a place,” I promised him. “If and when.”

  The bombardment was thorough and long when it came; the cruisers worked the Station over from stem to stern and back again, pounding our already-dead turrets into even worse junk than they already were. They paid special attention to the two which had shown signs of life; these didn’t hold up for even five minutes. Then they worked us over again, pounding the secondary and tertiary armament and even breaching our armor in a few places, so that new parts of the Station were exposed to vacuum. They didn’t get even half of our cameras, however, which were all that really mattered. This was because there were so many of them. It was all for naught, however; long before the cruisers opened fire I pulled everyone back into the safe rock-shielded depths, where human and Rabbit alike sat silently in their suits and waited for the eternal pounding to end, like so many warriors before them. Finally the transports closed in…

  …and launched boat after boat filled with marines.

  28

  It wasn’t hard to figure out what parts of the Station they were assaulting. Four assault boats headed for the main locks, which by now were all welded shut. Eight more made for the main turrets. It was a textbook assault, all right—the Imperials hit all the classically-vulnerable areas of a fortress. The locks constituted our “gate”, the place where people and supplies normally came and went and which therefore offered in theory the biggest, widest weak point. Meanwhile, even though by now they had to be pretty sure that our big guns were out of action it was essential that they make absolutely, completely certain of this as soon as possible. They’d probably have attacked the bridge as well, had it not been so obviously slagged. “Chief,” I ordered. “You’ve got the weapons decks. Plan ‘A’.”

  “Aye-aye, sir!” he agreed with a grim nod, then he was off. I then forgot about him and his mission utterly—the turrets were the best-defended part of the Station; if he failed all was lost no matter what happened elsewhere.

  Next I turned to Devin. “They’ll have to cut their way in, with the locks welded shut like they are. Send three men and both of our mines. The idea is to let them cut through and pour in, then blow up the whole shebang in their faces and mop up.” I grinned. “Your men are not to show themselves at all; if they’re invisible the Imperials won’t realize how few they are. Once their foothold has been blown up twice I bet they won’t be too energetic about trying a third time.”

  He nodded and smiled, then raced off. Eventually the Imperials would begin blowing their way in, bulkhead by bulkhead. Then his three Rabbits would die very quickly indeed. But we all were going to die, eventually. This little group would probably take more with them than most, and create much delay. In the end, that was what really mattered.

  Then I turned to Snow. “Go power up the special gear,” I ordered. “Then wait for my order. Do nothing without it.”

  “Right,” the big white bunny agreed, dashing off as well. That left Nestor, Fremont and I alone in Tunnel Zero.

  “What do we do, sir?” Fremont demanded.

  “Wait,” I answered. “Which is the hardest part of all.”

  29

  It didn’t take the chief long to get started, once he was given his head. Almost immediately a series of huge explosions rocked the entire Station as he tapped the main warp cores to do as much damage as possible to the Imperials. Though the guns themselves were useless the oversized power plant intended to sustain them was in near-perfect working order, and the main electric trunks hadn’t been damaged either. Lancrest had spent most of an hour explaining the various high-voltage gadgets he’d dreamed up to make life both brutal and short for the Imperials—my favorites were the improvised railguns meant to fling nuts and bolts down the longest corridors at hypersonic speeds and the overpowered doors capable of cutting a battle-armored man in half. Yes, his little crew had twice as many Imperials to deal with as anyone else. But he was a competent engineer indeed, and had spent weeks doing little but working out and implementing ways to make an already dangerous environment immeasurably more lethal for the invaders. Given that he had enough raw power to propel a battleship to work with, all the actuators and relays and such that a man could ever wish for and had been granted weeks of planning and preparation time, well… The Imperials could indeed land on that part of the Station—there wasn’t a thing we could do to stop them, particularly in such numbers. But I didn’t reckon they were going much of anywhere in a hurry, either.

  So far I’d sent a total of seven soldiers to contain roughly a thousand. That left me quite a reserve, if I could but find a way to make use of it. Plus my tactical nuke, of course.

  It was a long, agonizing wait. I floated patiently up and down Tunnel Zero, stopping only to check the cameras from time to time or wince at the shockwave from an exploding mine or one of Lancrest’s infernal machines. The Imperials decided that the main docks were too hot for them, just as I’d hoped they would, and reinforced the a
ssault on the turrets with eight more boatloads of marines. This was what I'd been waiting for. “Devin,” I ordered. “Take your two best Rabbits and sink a missile into one of those assault boats for me. Then run like the wind for cover and get back here.”

  “Can do!” he agreed from behind precisely the same smile he’d displayed while accepting a thousand other assignments. Scrub a floor, recover a corpse, kill some Imperials—it seemed to matter little to him. He was always happy and outgoing regardless.

  In theory the marines of an assault force were supposed to keep a strict lookout for any threat to their boats—not only were the things terribly expensive for their size, but they were also vital for carrying supplies, evacuating wounded, and a thousand other missions. There were never enough of them about. But the Station’s surface anywhere near the turrets was a nightmare of ripped plating, broken plumbing, and still-sparking wires. And Devin’s Rabbits were the most experienced and graceful spacers I’d ever known. Even with the advantages of having a dozen cameras to call on and knowing for fact that they were there, I didn’t locate the slavebunnies until long seconds after their missile had roared out and killed an unloading boat and everything in it. Instantly, as ordered, they dashed for home…

  …and a rocket-propelled grenade detonated in their midst. They died screaming and kicking, every one of them, deeply wounded from the fragments and sucking vacuum and shorn of all hope.

  “Dear god,” Fremont whispered.

  But this wasn’t the time or place for that sort of thing. “Quiet!” I demanded, feeling like a louse but knowing that it was the right thing to do. “Give me a panning view,” I ordered Fremont instead of doing it myself as usual. Keeping him busy would be a mercy, the only one I could offer. “I want to see how the Imperials react.”

  And react they did. Perhaps it was the stalled attack as much as the lost assault boat—I’ll never know. But, slowly at first, the lead Imperial cruiser swung out of line and began closing the station in order to offer direct fire support at point-blank range.

  Perfect! “Tell Snow to power the corpses up,” I ordered Nestor. “It looks like we’re going to need them after all.”

  30

  Edging a heavy naval vessel in close to an ongoing invasion was bold to the point of recklessness. The temptation was easy to understand, however; it must’ve been difficult indeed for Admiral Lord Maddox to sit and do nothing aboard the flagship of so many powerful vessels while his attacks stalled and what must’ve seemed like endless casualty reports came rolling in one after another. Then he’d lost an assault boat and, well… Boldness was the Imperial way. Nine times out of ten it was the best way, as well. I nodded slowly to myself as the flagship—of course!—thrusted slowly into a position from which it could offer fire support with all of its dozens of short-range weapons as well as the larger ones. More than likely, it was exactly what I’d have done myself.

  And I’d have been just as wrong as he was.

  When the cruiser finally stopped moving it was just over a mile away— two or three minutes by jetpack, and even less by sled. “Snow,” I finally said into the annunciator. “You’re in command of all the marines now. Prepare to execute Operation Z. Report back when you’re ready.”

  He gulped, but thankfully didn’t ask what’d happened to Devin. “Yes, sir! And thank you!”

  Next I closed all my camera windows and opened up some software left over from our graves registration work. The chief’s crew had done a little hacking on it for me, but a few little details had to wait for absolutely the last second. I entered a series of new coordinates, then carefully verified that they matched the location of the enemy cruiser.

  Right on time, Snow was on the annunciator again. “All systems armed and ready,” he replied.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything I might’ve forgotten. “Go, go, go!” I finally ordered. “And best of luck to you all!”

  Within seconds, all the major airlock indicators on the Station went from green to red as Snow hit the master cycle switch. This left the suited-up corpses we’d stashed there free to drift in space. My fingers a blur, I typed in the recall codes that we’d first used so long ago to instruct the still-functional suits to fly back to Beechwood under their own power. Only this time I’d altered the coordinates so that they homed on the Imperial flagship instead. Hundreds of corpses, all warmed to body temperature and apparently armed to the teeth, went zooming off to assault the enemy in one vast coordinated wave.

  Close behind them, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, followed Snow and his Rabbits. And, of course, a tactical nuke.

  31

  When last I’d seen a mixed group of men and Rabbits cross space under Imperial fire, I’d noted the way our enemies shot at the humans in preference to the bunnies. It’d made quite an impression, in part because I was wearing an unarmored slavesuit myself at the time. Sure enough, they did the same thing again. It took the Imperials long precious seconds to react to our simulated mass assault, which must’ve been absolutely the last thing in the universe they ever expected. After all, they’d known full and well that we only had a handful of crewmen. First a few and then all of their rapid-fire weapons ripped into the corpses, shredding them to gibbets. There was little or no visible gore when their bolts struck home, and at first I cursed myself for not adding bags of red dye or something to mask the corpses’ desiccated state. But the Imperials continued to blast away regardless. Finally I realized that they probably hadn’t seen nearly as many men die in vacuum as I had, so they couldn’t know the difference. Besides, they wouldn’t have much time to think things through.

  Relatively few bolts were directed towards Snow and his crew, and these mostly focused on the sled-teams. I’d instructed these latter to jink and dodge wildly rather than appear determined to drive their mission home- they were decoys too, as the nuke was concealed in an empty bunny-suit being controlled remotely by Fremont. The longer they survived, the more effective they’d be. But ‘relatively few bolts’ could be a misleading term given such a storm of fire; to the Rabbits it must’ve seemed like they were advancing directly into the teeth of all the machine guns of hell. The fire was a demonic vortex, a hurricane of instant pain and death.

  And yet, not one bunny turned back.

  Half of them must’ve been dead by the time they strapped the nuke to the cruiser’s skin, suit and all. And far more than half the rest died falling back. Eventually the nuke went off, however, the equivalent of a direct hit by a torpedo. Field or no Field, no mere cruiser was going to survive the likes of that. The flash was awe-inspiring; it blew the vessel’s stern clean off and launched yet another intact Imperial turret into close-orbit of the Station. I watched the broken hull sparkle and flash for a while as the various electrical potentials canceled each other and died, then turned my attention to the appallingly-small handful of Rabbits thrusting homewards for all they were worth, still being picked off mercilessly by the invasion force dug into our turret area. “I’m going to meet them,” I declared to Fremont, who was bawling his eyes for all the old friends and workmates he’d just watched die. Then I raced to the main airlocks for all I was worth, arriving just in time to watch five Rabbits cycle through. Rather to my surprise, Snow was among the little group.

  Nobody was behind them. No one at all.

  “I— I—…” I stuttered, at a loss for words. Finally, I drew my Sword and formally saluted them.

  “Sir!” Snow replied, his eyes wide and terrified. “Sir!” Then he collapsed into my arms, shaking and trembling and stinking of shit and terror.

  32

  By then I had less than twenty Rabbits and men left to defend the Station—the very idea was ludicrous and I knew it. Even more, I’d used up all my heavy explosives, my tactical nuke, even my corpses. Yes, all of them had gone to the best purposes I could possibly have put them to; my little improvised garrison had acquitted itself pretty well overall, I grudgingly granted myself. But the root problem was
that we’d never had anything even remotely like enough in terms of men or weaponry to throw back a serious invasion attempt. There were no more aces up my sleeves, and the only options left were to either attempt surrender or die game. Seeing as how my Rabbits had just most likely killed the only Imperial in the universe who I had any reason to believe might conceivably accept our surrender, that left only fighting and dying. Which was going to be hard—incredibly hard, even. And yet, I was determined to see things all the through to the bitter end.

  “Hello, Chief!” I called out into the nearest annunciator station, no longer much caring if our communications were secure or not. After all, I had nothing left to hide. “Are you there?” But apparently he wasn’t, because after repeating myself twice he still hadn’t answered. That meant I had to consider the Engineering spaces overrun as well as the turrets, which was very bad news indeed. Frowning, I hit the button again and called Fremont. “Play ‘general retreat’,” I ordered him. This was a coded message instructing all survivors to fall back to Tunnel Zero. “I’ll be down myself with Snow and the rest of the survivors in a minute or two.”

  Apparently Fremont had recovered from his emotional lapse, because almost instantly the coded message began to play. I smiled despite myself as I led my little group back to our final stronghold, Snow still clinging to me and weeping all the way. I’d chosen the message personally—it consisted of a pleasant female voice reading off a fake self-destruct countdown. “Powerplant overload in sixty seconds,” she began. “Fifty-nine, fifty eight…” In point of fact Zombie Station was designed with safety-cores like any other manned space-habitat. She could be made to fall into her own black hole from the primary bulkhead back; heaven knew that was plenty spectacular in its own way. Before all was said and done I might yet arrange exactly that. But along the way the cores would induce one wave of nausea and disorientation after another in everyone not wearing a Field suit, clear and obvious warnings that would come in plenty of time for the Imperials to evacuate. The countdown was a ruse, pure and simple, and anyone who knew anything about engines would’ve realized it in an instant.