by Phil Geusz
The worst part of the meeting was seeing Nestor for the first time since I’d watched the captain fondling him in his cabin. He didn’t look at all good. Sure, he was well-fed and his fur was neatly brushed. Physically he was fine. But he moved slowly and listlessly, and often had to be told twice what to do. Strangest of all, he absolutely refused to meet my eyes. It was so blatantly obvious that I found it hard to believe that no one else noticed, and distracting enough that once the meeting was over there were large parts I couldn’t even remember. It wasn’t until we were almost ready to break up that I finally figured out what was going on. The captain might’ve been too drunk to realize that he’d paraded his little secret right out in the open in front of me, but Nestor had been as sober as I was. He knew that I knew, in other words. And that must’ve been just awful for him. While Rabbits understand better than anyone that they have no options about such matters, they also tend to look askance at those who lead the ‘easy’ lives of sex objects and see them as ‘brown-nosers’ of the worst kind. It makes no sense, of course—it’s not even logically consistent. Yet Nestor had every reason to fear that I’d already spread the word of his shame far and wide down on the work decks, so that his mob-mates—his entire social universe!—would never treat him as an equal again. And this was on top of the psychological damage that the captain’s repeated violations must surely have caused. No wonder he was so ashamed that he could barely function!
“Sir?” I asked the captain when the meeting was over. “Can I see Nestor for about an hour down below? I need him to help settle a dispute.”
Captain Holcomb’s eyebrows rose. “A dispute?”
I nodded. “It’s about bedding-down space, sir. Since Nestor’s never there anymore, the other Rabbits in his section have divvied up his straw allotment. So they have more than the others now. That’s not right, sir—straw’s important to a bunny. And they said Nestor was okay with it. So I thought that—“
“Fine, fine, fine!” my commander interrupted. “Don’t bore me with trivial details. But if it were me, David, I’d just lay down the law and take away all their straw for a while. You shouldn’t be so easy on them.”
“Exactly what I had in mind, sir!” I lied, knowing he’d never bother to double-check. “But they should have to confront Nestor, too. In the end, that’s who they’re stealing from.”
“Whatever,” the captain replied. He fozzled Nestor’s ears, then squeezed him up close to his side for a moment before releasing him to me. “But keep in mind, Middie, that Nestor is a good bunny. I don’t want to hear that you’ve let the others abuse him. And hurry, will you? He’s to serve me my dinner, and I don’t want to eat it cold and late.”
Nestor’s eyes were wide with terror as we boarded the main lift together, then went wider still when I hit the manual override and halted us between decks. “Sir!” he blurted. “I didn’t… I mean I don’t…”
“I know you don’t,” I answered. Then I sighed. “Nestor, of all the ship’s Rabbits I've had the least contact with you. And yet I’m going to have to ask you to trust me.”
He licked his nose. “How so, sir?”
I raised my eyes and met his. “First, I want you to know that none of the other Rabbits have found out about… What the captain expects of his personal servant. Nor will they ever, from me.”
Nestor blinked, but said nothing.
“Second, I’m going to make you a promise. At the moment there’s nothing I can do to help you. It’s just how thing are, for us both. But someday, just as soon as I can, I’m going to see to it that Captain Holcomb never hurts you again. Or any other Rabbit either, if I can manage it. You have my sacred word on that as an officer, and as a Marcus.” I smiled slightly. “As a fellow Rabbit, too.”
For a long, long time Nestor said nothing. Then a single large tear flowed down his cheek. “I want to kill him sometimes,” he whispered. “Rip his throat out, claw his… his…” Then he shook his head and met my eyes again. “I hear you’re teaching the others to read. And lately about how things like the government works, too. All the stuff the Masters never bother telling us. Because they think we don’t care.”
I nodded and smiled. “They seem to enjoy it. And I do too.”
Nestor looked back down at his feet. “Please, sir. Will you teach me to read too? Once… After, I mean…”
“Of course!” I answered him. “Personally, if at all possible.”
“Then I can stand it, I guess,” Nestor replied with a scowl. “Until forever, if I have to.” Then suddenly he was hugging me. It went on for several long minutes, until finally the little black-and-white bunny slave pulled away and began claw-grooming his fur back into shape. “I have to go get the captain’s dinner,” he explained. “He’s always cross when it’s late.”
“Yes,” I replied, re-energizing the lift. “That’s how things have to be, for now. But someday…”
Nestor smiled; it was the first time I could ever remember seeing him do that. “Someday,” he agreed as the door slid open on the galley deck. “Thank you, sir! This is the first good someday I’ve ever had.” Then he squeezed me one last time and was gone.
10
The first thing a Graves Registration unit always does upon arrival at a former battlefield is to examine and document everything. While keeping records is important in its own right, the delay was also vital to our success and safety. The fighting had left precisely one million, one-hundred and seventy-two thousand, four hundred and twelve bits of detectable debris floating about in the immediate vicinity of Zombie Station. Many of them carried quite a high relative vector, and it’d be some time before the Sweeper could gather up all the ferrous bits. While we’d always have to consult the computer in order to determine where we might work on any given day in relative safety, at first we were pretty much shipbound anyway. So we manned the sensors and did the best job we could.
It was never wise to place much trust in Imperial war-bulletins, but in this case they were the only clue we had as to what’d taken place during the recent battle. According to them, they’d brought in their main line-of-battle ships and blasted Zombie’s turrets into scrap metal over a period of many days, losing a heavy cruiser to a direct engine-room hit and explosion in the process. Then they’d boarded with their own marines, expecting a fierce hand-to-hand battle. However, everyone was already dead by their own hand, choosing a painless death over a hopeless battle against an enemy who didn’t believe in taking prisoners. No one actually believed this, of course—the Imperials had made the same claim the last time they’d taken the Station. But it was the only version of the story we had so far, and everything we could see from space backed it up. An unusually high percentage of the orbital debris was ferrous, and the largest chunks were obviously pieces of what appeared to be a cruiser-sized warship; indeed, an intact turret assembly made a near pass every six hours and sixteen minutes. The Station’s heavy guns were oriented every which-way, wherever they’d been pointed at the moment they’d been knocked out. Zombie’s fortress wasn’t generating even a trickle of power, though Chief Engineer Lancrest’s first job would be to get it limping along at least well enough to generate light and gravity and a basic level of environmental services. We’d be working aboard the Station for weeks, and we’d finish twice as fast if we didn’t have to spend the whole time suited up.
Once we had our photos and such, and long before anyone so much as boarded the Station proper, our work began. The first thing we did was broadcast a ‘recovery blip’, a coded signal that any even halfway-functional combat suit would reply to. In seconds we learned that there were almost a hundred dead Royal servicemen floating in nearby space, and with another signal that the Imperials released to us after the Armistice was signed we learned that there were another three hundred enemy dead, most of these presumably from the exploded cruiser. (The Imperials didn’t care much about their fallen warriors so long as they didn’t end up someplace where the odor was a concern; our concern for mere de
ad bones was considered effete. They were perfectly willing to let us collect their dead for them so long as it didn’t cost them anything, however, and for our part we treated their men as honorably as our own.) It was fortunate that most still had functional jetpacks; when Lieutenant Jeffries and I ordered the suits to home in on Beechwood the majority responded instantly. It still wasn’t safe outside the hull, so we just sort of piled them up at the base of the Sweeper, where the magnetic fields would hold them in place. Four of them exploded during the trip, as improperly secured grenades or damaged blast-rifle magazines or who knew what were set off by the application of vector. It was sad, but better that it happened at a distance rather than up-close and personal. We’d bring the rest in one by one inside armored capsules for the Rabbits to process and deep-freeze as time allowed; it wasn’t like the vacuum could damage them any further.
When space finally cleared out a little we were able to go EVA ourselves. I assigned Devin’s squad the always-dicey task of running down the rest of the floating dead, plus the dozens upon dozens of major body parts. It was among the most dangerous work of all, combining all the perils of working and maneuvering in vacuum with the risks of dealing with damaged ordnance. But someone had to do it, and Devin and his bunnies seemed honored to have been chosen. Given the magnitude of the task I allotted him all but two of our one-man power-sleds and all but three of the pressurized longer-ranged units. Even granted the lion’s share of the equipment and assuming every one of his Rabbits put in sixteen-hour days, I still expected Devin to be the last of us to finish. I also expected at least one of his ten Rabbits to die as well, based on past statistics. They had to know, but still they were grateful for my trust.
Zombie Station had carried seven hundred and thirty-six men on her muster rolls when war broke out. There were always more floaters than the original search revealed, so it was safe to assume that that perhaps a hundred fifty in all were drifting in open space. That left roughly six hundred bodies to be dealt with in the Station itself, though of course there’d never been a major battle where everyone was found. I assigned Snow’s squad to that part of the cleanup—his bunnies were older and more experienced than Devin’s, though less space-savvy. “For now,” I urged him, “process the bodies we’ve already brought in. But be ready to transfer your operations to the Station the minute we’re ready over there.”
“Yes, sir!” he replied with a smile. And that very afternoon, one of his graybeards successfully disarmed a booby-trapped Imperial who’d taken the time to wire his sidearm to a heavy demolition charge before dying. He’d been a midshipman like me, whoever he was, and wore the sash of a Noble House under his vacuum gear. Armored capsule or no, the explosion would’ve killed everyone on the entire work-deck and crippled if not destroyed Beechwood herself. I gave the old bun a special ration of banana chips, and on another ship might’ve asked the captain to come and praise him for his good work. On this one, however, he’d have to settle for me. The captain had retired to his cabin with Nestor and an unlimited supply of whiskey for the duration, and so far as I was concerned we were all better off if he remained there.
On the ninth day, Chief Engineer Lancrest came to see me. “I need a favor if you’re willing, David.”
“For you, anything!” I answered, meaning it. Near as I could tell, our chief engineer was the only competent officer on the ship. Working with him was always like having the sun peek out from behind the clouds for a few glorious minutes after days of grayness.
He smiled. “Dan Bryant’s come down with a foot problem,” he explained. “Which leaves me shorthanded in my department at just the worst possible time. I’m about to make my preliminary survey of the Station, and according to regulations I can’t go alone. You’re qualified and have a Field suit. Would you be willing to ride shotgun? The captain’s already blessed it, if you’re not too far behind here.”
“Of course,” I replied, though my reaction was dampened somewhat by the chief’s choice of words. ‘Foot problem’ was navy-speak for ‘developed cold feet’. It was a bit shocking, really; I’d spent several hours working with Petty Officer Bryant while qualifying for my certification and at the time had even been under his nominal supervision. Somehow I’d gotten the idea that the engineering staff was an oasis of cleanliness and decency amidst Beechwood’s mostly rotten-to-the-core crew. But here was proof that the decay extended even abaft the primary bulkhead.
“Good!” Lancrest replied, slapping me on the shoulder. “You’re a better engineer than he is in my book anyway, David. You’ve a real gift for it.” He turned to leave. “I’ll see you in the main shuttle lock in an hour.”
11
If there’s anything more disturbing than locking onto a cold, dark, powered-down Station full of unburied men who’ve all died violently and which may well be booby-trapped six ways from Sunday, I don’t ever want to find out what it is. By the time the chief and I had selected a bare patch of hull in the Engineering section and cut a nice round hole in it so that we could enter without fear of blowing ourselves to kingdom come on a sabotaged airlock, I had a lot more sympathy for Petty Officer Bryant’s foot issues. In combat at least I’d been distracted from my terror by rage and violence and flying blaster-bolts, with a simple and definite mission to perform and relief from the tension (one way or the other) well within sight. But this was another breed of cat altogether. It was so dark and still that every time the chief spoke I damn near leapt out of my suit. There was nothing to divert my attention from the danger that filed every cubic centimeter of space all around me, every single instant. Except the bodies, of course, in all their endless variations. There were headless bodies, armless bodies, disemboweled bodies, cooked bodies, exploded bodies, even bodies that seemed perfectly undamaged save for the effects of vacuum, so that you had to wonder exactly how and why their owners had come to die at all. In no time flat, in fact, I’d seen all the bodies I’d ever want to see, or would ever need to see in order to consider myself an unwilling expert on the subject for life.
But bodies weren’t what we were there for, for the moment at least. Our first order of business was to make a quick assessment of how damaged the powerplant was, and the second to power up the Station’s electronic control system and find out what we could about everything else. That meant traveling almost five hundred yards through cramped corridors and tunnels, among so many bodies that there was barely room to shove them all out of the way.
Rather to our surprise, we found that the power plant had been shut down in an orderly fashion and was ready to be restarted. It was wired to blow the instant anyone touched the controls or for that matter half the other surfaces in Central Control; that was standard Royal procedure when abandoning an installation to the enemy. But the chief knew how to defuse it—that was standard procedure as well. In no time at all we had most of the internal lights up and running, and even a couple externals so that the rest of the crew would know we’d made a little progress. “The outer skin’s a sieve,” I reported as I studied the environmental readout.
“That’s pretty much to be expected,” the chief replied. “Check out the internal bulkheads.”
I did so, and was pleasantly surprised to see that most of the Station was still holding its air. “Wow!” I exclaimed. “I’d have thought a boarding action would’ve done more damage than this.”
The chief sighed. Then he shook his head. “Anyway, David… We’ve got quite a bit of good reserve air in the Station’s tanks, and it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to get the fans and filters up and running again. With masks, we’ll be okay after that.”
“Masks?” I asked. “There’ll be plenty of oxygen!”
The chief sighed and pushed away a one-legged corpse that’d floated in behind us. “The masks won’t be for oxygen, David.”
Then I realized what a fool I was. All the corpses I’d seen so far were vaccum-dried, of course. But in the parts of the ship that were still all nice and moist… “Right,” I agreed.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” my friend replied. “I only wish I could still forget about little details like that.”
12
Because of the threat of booby-traps, at first our engineering people slapped a temporary docking ring onto the hole we’d cut and everyone entered and left the Station via that single route. The chief asked the captain for permission to let me supervise the welding work, which was both a sign of his confidence in me and a welcome respite from my usual duties. For three glorious hours it was almost as if my dreams had come true and I was an engineering officer after all, with a nice clean job that needed to be done and no interference from Beechwood’s miserable officers in performing it. Then it was back to the old grind.
Our procedures were thorough, meticulous, and effective. First we broke Zombie up into sectors. Then we pressurized as much of each one as practical and cleaned it up completely before moving on to the next. First I went in with Snow, snapping holos of the carnage so as to make a permanent record and looking for booby-traps, damaged ordnance, and anything else that might constitute a danger. Then Snow’s bunnies took over, first removing the bodies for processing and freezing and then scrubbing the bulkheads and deckplates with disinfectant over and over again until the place finally smelt clean. Putting things so baldly, however, is to do Snow and the rest a terrible disservice. Removing and processing the bodies, for example, sounds like a sterile, clinical process when it was anything but. Often the work involved scraping badly-decayed human remains from walls or floors or even ceilings, using everything from special flat-bladed shovels to putty knives. There were no machines or robots to help us with the dirtiest work—the job wasn’t automatable. Little bits and gobbets floated everywhere—we never did the gravity back online—and worked their way into everything. Often it was so bad that it was impossible to determine which arm or leg or head went with which torso; in these cases we took our best guess and added a special notation to our log.