by Phil Geusz
So I was in a very foul mood indeed as I thrusted my way back to the Station, towing four Imperial corpses from our stash at the base of the Sweeper. We’d processed all our own marines already, save for the isolated floaters Devin was still bringing in, and the backlog was nearly caught up. In fact, I decided as I zoomed across the little distance that separated Beechwood from Zombie, it was just about time for us to start boxing up the salvaged suits and weapons and such and start conveying them back to the ship for the Rabbits to repair and recondition during the long trip home. I was just starting to feel the warm, fuzzy happiness that came with working out how many containers I’d need and how many trips it’d take when…
…suddenly, a wave of nausea passed through me! Then a second, and a third!
Instantly my tail was high, my ears were straining against the helmet, and my head was swiveling left and right. Nausea was an old friend by now; that sort of went with being anywhere near Zombie Station these days. I’d emptied and re-emptied my stomach more times than I could remember; we all had. But this was different, a special kind of nausea I recognized from my days as an engineering cadet. Only two things could generate such a sensation. One was sitting in an engine room while a ship tried to thrust with a badly-synched warp coil. That was how I’d come to experience the feeling before; Father had seen to it as part of my training.
The other way was to sit unprotected in normal space very near a Jump point as a ship came through. Or three ships, as the case might be.
15
I don’t know how I knew the ships were Imperial men-of-war, but I did. Perhaps it was because I was aware that that the House of Marcus had drawn a line in the sand just before my departure regarding a date for the return of Marcus Prime, and that said deadline was due to expire. Or maybe it was just the general flow of my life during that period—everything had been getting worse and worse for so long that the ships simply had to be Imperials. It was the only thing that would fit the ongoing pattern. At any rate I’d dumped my payload and turned back towards Beechwood long before Astrogator Kelly made the announcement and issued a general recall to all personnel.
They were destroyers. Three of them, probably on reconnaissance to verify that Zombie was still out of action before the convoys started rolling through. They were fast, sleek, and heavily-armed, three vital attributes that Beechwood could by no stretch claim for herself. And while no transmissions had yet been received, the simple act of Jumping into Royal space without permission constituted a declaration of war.
My sled wasn’t equipped with a fancy computer, but I was pretty good at crunching numbers in my head and coming up with at least rough answers. Based on the stream of position reports that the increasingly hysterical astrogator was pumping out every few seconds, it was soon clear that it’d be a good two to three hours before our enemies would be in any position to engage us. If ‘engage’ was the right word to use for when one side blew the other out of the sky without a single shot being fired in self-defense, that was. Which meant that we had time to try to retreat to Zombie. Our situation would still be hopeless there of course, but at least we’d have dozens of cubic miles of rock to shelter behind instead of a tissue-thin merchant-marine class hull. “Devin!” I called out on the Rabbit’s frequency. “Do you read me?”
“Yes, sir!” he replied.
“Drop everything,” I ordered. “If you haven’t heard already, there are Imperial ships about. Which means we’re at war, I’m afraid.” I sighed, trying to decide what would be best for the Rabbits. While the Imperials didn’t generally take prisoners, they were perfectly willing to confiscate valuable property. Eventually, I decided, I’d have to work out a way to pass them across to our enemies without them getting hurt. But until then… Well, there was a war to be fought. “Everyone who’s more than an hour out is to fly back to Zombie and report to me there. The rest are to meet me on the main work deck as quickly as they possibly can. We need as many sleds there as we can get.”
“Of course, sir,” Devin replied, and I couldn’t help but note his cool, calm tone. I’d just upended his world at least as thoroughly as our astrogator’s, and assigned him a far more difficult job. Yet it was the human who was doing the panicking, not the Rabbit. Devin would’ve made a good NCO, I decided, if the world only worked a little differently. Or perhaps he might even have become something more.
The panic was already well under way by the time I reboarded Beechwood; while she didn’t carry much of a crew each and every man was quite thoroughly rattled. Already the passages were strewn with debris, as if a battle had already been fought, and when I got to the bridge no one was there. That wasn’t ever supposed to happen! I was just about to get on the intercom to try and find out where everyone was at when Petty Officer Bryant, whose foot problem had caused me to take his place on EVA with the chief back when we’d first arrived, came running towards me. His uniform was a shambles, he stank of rum, and his eyes were glazed. Overall, he was the most pathetic sight I’d ever seen aboard a king’s ship. “Tench-hut!” I roared as he approached. My tone must’ve penetrated even if my words didn’t, for he skidded to a halt and snapped-to.
“Button up your tunic!” I roared. “This instant! And where’s your tie?”
He blinked, totally unaccustomed to such treatment from me. “Sir…”
“I don’t want to hear any goddamn excuses!” I bellowed, doing my best to emulate my instructor-sergeant. “This is the goddamned navy, not a nursery school! You’re on report, Bryant!” Then I let my tone soften a little. “Now… Where the hell is everyone? What’s the plan?”
“Sir!” he replied. “I don’t know, sir!”
“Where’s the captain?” I demanded. “And Lieutenant Jeffries?”
“I don’t know! I haven’t heard anything from anyone since the Astrogator’s last report, sir!”
“I see,” I replied. “Well, the chief’s over on Zombie. Who’s on engine room watch?”
He gulped. “I am, sir!”
My fists balled; he'd abandoned a vital station. “Why, you miserable…” Then, very carefully I relaxed them. No matter how pitiful it was, this was the material I had available to work with. “Go back to your post,” I ordered him, my voice now completely calm. “I’ll be checking in on you every ten minutes.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” he replied. Then he was gone, buttoning his tunic along the way.
Because of the way the ship was laid out, I wasn’t more than twenty feet from my cabin. So I allowed myself a minute and a half to snatch up my heirloom pen, His Majesty's get-well letter from when I’d stood Mast all night, my engine-room watch-standing certification, my brushes, a clean tunic and two spare sets of underwear. Then, rather reluctantly, I buckled on my Sword as well. His Highness had given me the ridiculous thing in person, so I reckoned that I ought at least try and save it. The rest I wrapped in a sheet and slung over my shoulder. Then I went looking for my chain-of-command superiors.
I found Captain Holcomb in the first place I looked—his cabin. “Who is it?” he demanded when I knocked.
“Midshipman Birkenhead,” I replied. “May I come in, sir?”
There was a long, long delay before he replied, so much of one that I’d just inhaled to ask again before he finally spoke. “I suppose.”
I’ll never know what I expected to see when the door swung open; the captain putting on his best uniform to die in, perhaps, or even him draining one last bottle before the end. Instead, I found myself confronting the spectacle of an elderly drunk lying naked under a single thin sheet. His arm was wrapped lovingly around Nestor’s shoulders. The Rabbit was trembling in fear. “What is it?” he demanded.
“I’m reporting for orders, sir!” I replied, snapping to attention. “We can still go down fighting. Maybe even do some real damage, if we’re lucky. But discipline’s breaking down all over the ship! And—“
“What nonsense is this, Middy?” the captain asked, though clearly his heart wasn’t in it. He squeezed N
estor a bit closer. “We’re done for, son. It’s over. Kaput. Finished.” He shook his head. “God, but you’re a fire-eater. Maybe it’s a mercy this way, for you at least. Because at the rate you were going, you’d have grown up into a real ring-knocking go-getter of a rank-climbing prick.”
I licked my nose and reminded myself that I had to work with what I had, not what I might wish for. “Sir! We can hold out on the Station—for weeks, maybe. And delay the convoys!”
“We can die, David,” he countered. “That’s what we can do. Pleasantly or otherwise; it’s up to you. I’m no longer your commanding officer—I abdicate, resign, whatever.” He smiled and raised his glass. “Want some? It’s my best stuff.”
My lips curled in disgust. “But… But…”
“I’m not giving any more orders, but I’d consider it a kindness if you took care of the Rabbits for me—prevented them from falling into Imperial hands, and all that.” He smiled again and pulled a standard-issue blaster out from under the sheet. “All except for Nestor, of course. I’ll see to him just before taking care of myself.”
I looked over at the slavebunny; he was frozen in terror. Except for his eyes, which were locked on mine. Then I knew what I had to do; there wasn’t time for anything else.
“Sir,” I said, lowering my head. “I’m sorry you think I might’ve become a career-seeker. I’ve tried so hard to be a good officer for you.”
The captain’s face softened. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he acknowledged. “Not here and now, certainly. And you did work hard. ” He shook his head. “It’s the drink, is all. Speaking of which… Are you sure you won’t do me the honor?”
I smiled and nodded. “Of course. I can see that you’re right, now.”
“It’s a hard thing we face, David. Let’s go as easy as we might, with all forgiven.” He looked up hopefully at me.
“All forgiven,” I agreed.
“Excellent!” he declared, setting down the blaster and reaching for his bottle. “In that case—“
But I never found out what ‘that case’ was. Because as soon as his head was turned I drew my Sword and slashed the bastard’s throat. From then on the only sounds he made were gurgles.
16
“Come on!” I urged the weeping, blood-soaked Nestor as I half-dragged him down Beechwood’s passages towards the work decks. He was about as upset and traumatized as a Rabbit could be, and in any sort of fair and decent world he’d have been given the opportunity to sit down and weep and snuggle with his mates until he felt better. But there was no time for that anymore, or for much of anything else.
There was a mass of Rabbits waiting for us on the work-deck when we arrived. “Pack up all the suits and weapons you can in half an hour!” I ordered even before the door shut itself behind me. “The bigger the bang, the better. Especially, grab as many demolition charges as you can.” Then I turned to Fremont. “All the tools you can carry—pack them now! You have thirty minutes.”
“But sir…” Albert replied, his eyes narrowing in puzzlement. He’d been one of my hardest-case laggards back in the day, but now worked more productively than anyone. “That’s not what Lieutenant Jeffries said to do.”
My eyes narrowed. “What were his orders?” I demanded.
“To help me launch the Imperial life-boat we recovered,” the lieutenant himself explained, stepping out from behind a structural-support bulkhead. He was wearing an enemy commander’s uniform that I recognized from a corpse I’d helped process, and was pointing a blaster at me. “You wouldn’t have any objections to that, would you?”
“Of course not,” I replied, though suddenly my hand was on my Sword-hilt again. It was slimy with blood. “If you want to desert your post in the face of the enemy, why should I care?”
He laughed. “You’ve always been such a tightass, David. By the book, according to regulation, dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. I swear, I’d have ridden you twice as hard if the reports you wrote up for me hadn’t been so well-done. An anal personality can be quite a useful trait in a subordinate.”
I felt my ears hunker down in preparation for a fight, but kept my mouth shut. The sooner he was gone, the less of my precious time he’d waste on self-serving drama.
“So, smug one. How about you strip down to some slave-shorts and tag along? If everything goes well I can Jump out of here a good fifteen minutes before the Imperials are in firing position. And for all your mule-headedness you’re a good one to have around in a tight spot.” He smiled. “Maybe desertion in the face of the enemy sounds a little more appealing now, eh?”
My mind spun. Jeffries was right; he could hit the nearest Jump point before the destroyers opened up. It’d take him into the heart of Imperial space, but in a far-flung empire where communications weren’t exactly what one would call instantaneous he might pass himself off as a survivor for days or even weeks. And from there, who knew what opportunities might arise? Certainly he was sly and world-wise enough to make a go of it. Ruthless, too. But… “No thank you, sir,” I replied, taking a single step backwards. “We can make a fight of it here; I’m sure of it. I’ll explain how, if you’ll listen.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, snotty,” he answered, lowering himself through the lock and into the lifeboat. “Better men than you have tried. Real men, not manumitted Rabbits with oversized egos. And look where it got them!” Then he shook his head. “Die here, if it’s so important to you. I don’t care anymore. A pox on you and the rest of the goddamn navy!”
17
Nothing ever goes nearly as quickly as you think it will during an emergency—it was nearer forty minutes than thirty before we were ready to make our escape to Zombie. So when the Imperials finally opened fire on Beechwood most of us were only halfway to the Station, being dragged on handlines by an overloaded one-man sled. Only one pressurized crew-sled had been in position to stop at the ship first, and I’d been forced to load it with my engineers in their clumsy Field suits along with all the hay we could stuff into the thing. Hay became inedible once exposed to vacuum, and there wasn't much of the stuff over on the Station. The shortage promised to be a critical one unless I could get my Rabbits surrendered early—without hay, a bunny’s digestive tract goes haywire almost immediately. I’d also commandeered every pressurized container on the work-decks for the stuff, but it was already obvious what we’d run out of first.
Only the lead destroyer fired on Beechwood, and it only took her two salvoes to find the range. The first hit was an easily-fatal strike in the engine room, but just to make certain the destroyer poured it on until the Graves Registration vessel exploded. I closed my eyes and sighed; spacers are notoriously sentimental about ships they’ve served on, but I couldn’t find it in my heart to mourn Beechwood. What I was sighing over was the fact that the explosion surely relaunched dozens of frozen corpses recovered at the cost of endless danger and labor back into free orbit. Someday, someone would surely be tasked with recovering them once again. The only good news was that by now I was reasonably sure it wouldn’t be me.
Then all three destroyers shifted their fire to us. While it wasn’t exactly good life insurance to float serenely through space with a man of war’s main armament blazing away at you, the fact was that we weren’t in much danger. The bigger a blaster is the slower it is to charge and fire. We were still well out of range of the Imperial’s fast-shooting anti-boarding weapons, and in space a miss is as good as a mile. Nothing came anywhere near me, as the enemy seemed to concentrate on a smaller group being pulled by another sled. It took me a while to figure out why; I’d waited until the very last minute to evacuate Petty Officer Bryant from his watchkeeping station, so that he’d been forced to grab a towline despite his Field suit. That marked him as a human to the Imperials, since slaves wore different gear. Even I wore a slave-suit, because I’d changed over early on so that Fremont would be in charge of its maintenance. In space, apparently, I was just another Rabbit to the enemy. This didn’t bear forgetting.
I was relieved anyway when we all made it safely, though by then the lead destroyer was nipping at our heels. “Keep moving!” I ordered into my radio as the Station’s hangar-bay doors swung shut behind us. Unless I missed my guess, it’d be a very long time, if ever, before they moved under their own power again. “We’ve got to get past the first bend in the tunnel!”
We managed, though just barely and me last of all. Battles fought in vacuum are silent, but quite suddenly the lights dimmed as the ever-present film of rock-dust was shaken free from the tunnel walls. It was the destroyer’s main armament, slamming into the Station and vibrating all the garbage loose. Then behind me there was a series of violent flashes as the heavy energy-bolts fired at point-blank range burst through the now-ruined hangar door and slammed harmlessly into the bedrock not twenty feet away. Or almost harmlessly, rather; a single sliver of stone penetrated my suit and bit into my calf. It was just a flesh wound; in null-gee it’d barely be an annoyance. The incoming fire wasn’t anything more than an annoyance either, I decided. No mere destroyer’s guns could harm something as big and solid as Zombie Station, at least not in any significant way. And the ships carried far too high a relative vector to board us on this pass. They’d have to circle around and brake. Which they’d surely do, of course. It was clearly their duty to mop us up. But I had at least forty or fifty minutes to get ready for them first. That, I reckoned, was plenty.
“Chief!” I exclaimed into the intercom once I was locked through and had good air around me again. “Where are you?”
“In the engine room,” he answered.
“Secure your boards and get down here to the hangar deck right away,” I ordered. “I’ve got a rush job for you, and your whole crew’s here to help you with it.”