Commodore (The David Birkenhead Series) Page 12

  "Excellent work," I said to Heinrich when it was all over. We'd lost forty or so men, nine fighters, and had expended most of our military-grade explosives. The Imperial casualties were truly horrific—those not killed outright were left to freeze to death. "Well conceived, well planned, well executed. A textbook operation."

  He smiled and stood a little straighter. "As the professor used to say—if you ever catch yourself fighting fair, you've made a serious mistake somewhere along the line. Maybe they'll finally acknowledge that I won one, sir?"

  I smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. "Don’t hold your breath! But we know that you won, just like before." Then my expression faded as more imagery of the distant battlefield came in. This victory, as with all the others I'd ever been part of, was hardly a cause for celebration. A nice, clean snowfield had been transformed into a frozen bloodstained hell, populated almost entirely by corpses. At least the cold would keep the stench down. I mused, and make things a little easier for Graves Registration when eventually they arrived to put things back to rights.

  Then I sighed and turned to Jean. "Heinrich and his marines did well, Commander. They just bought you roughly another four or five months.

  "I suggest you use them wisely."

  28

  Preparing for Jean's battle wasn't at all like getting ready for Heinrich's had been. The Imperials had taken their one shot at a rapid, improvised victory, and they'd been badly burned indeed. Once again they faced two choices, but this time the options were even harder to swallow than before. The Battle of New Queensland was an enormously lopsided victory for our side; the entire continent was littered with the shattered wrecks of boats and light vessels thrown away for no gain, and if our enemies hadn't lost eighty percent of their available troops I was a woodchuck's uncle. Because of this, the first of the two Imperial options—accepting defeat and re-establishing their base back where it'd been before—would be more difficult for them to swallow than ever. In fact, I dismissed it out of hand. Their other possible course of action—waiting months for a marine force to arrive and then invading again— was very nearly as bad. This would call for the admiral in charge to keep his entire fleet juiced up and combat-ready, racking up hours of service on who knew how many critical components per ship just as quickly as he possibly could, and all this without a base available to perform necessary maintenance. Meanwhile he'd also be consuming fuel at a breakneck rate as well, since there could be no possibility of anything like adequate resupply. The cost of such a course of action was mind-boggling to even contemplate, not just in terms of credits but in pent-up downtime for the ships themselves. And all this with a navy whose ships were designed with a bias towards capability over reliability—the better to fight the Emperor's short, decisive wars declared only when he was good and ready. Soon a major turret's energizer-coil would fail, then an engine would suffer a sticky control rod. Eventually the grand, imposing Imperial line of battle would be little more than an orbital scrapyard. And through all this the food lockers and fuel tanks alike would grow steadily emptier and emptier. After losing at New Queensland, the Imperial admiral really should've shaken his head, cut his losses and skedaddled for home. From that point forward his potential risks far outweighed any possible gains, and the odds would skew that way more and more with every day that passed.

  But he couldn't, of course. Because unlike James or his eternally-understanding grandfather, the Emperor would utterly destroy any admiral who came home so bloodily beaten from what looked like a milk run. "His Majesty," Sir Jason had mentioned in his letter me, referring to his uncle, "hungers for a victory." The fate of the man who'd failed to deliver one would be quick and certain—if he was lucky.

  Jean and Heinrich and I were so certain that our enemy would hang on until enough reinforcements arrived to try again that we never even discussed any other possibility. Yes, some of the political types needed convincing. But not anyone who'd ever held a commission and understood what it meant to hold command responsibility. So we threw ourselves into preparations, racing against the clock on every front.

  Some of our tasks were obvious. Wilkes Prime did a lot of mining, so there were large explosive-works already up and running. Working through the governor, we put them to work making warheads for our little single-shot missile launchers. They were so successful at this that we designed a timer to fit the warhead, designated the result a mine, and set our volunteers to training on that as well. Sadly, however, that was our only major industrial success-story. Our cheap, inaccurate blaster-rifles shouldn't have been that terribly hard to produce—they'd been designed specifically to be made and used by insurgents, and in theory could be cranked out by anyone with even a basic machine-shop. But somehow we couldn't quite seem to get the river flowing. One day I visited three weapons-assembly lines in an effort to convey our sense of urgency. The first was shut down for want of batteries when I arrived, but had more grips than they knew what to do with—cases and cases of them! The second was waiting for trigger mechanisms, but had tons of batteries on hand. And… You guessed it. The third was wallowing in trigger mechanisms, but had no grips to work with. This wouldn't have been so bad, but… They were all in the same building! I was still tearing my ears out and screaming when Nestor finally dragged me out the front door.

  Most of my work, however, wasn't strictly military in nature. In fact, I spent most of my waking hours among my fellow Rabbits and at no point did I ever feel that this was a misappropriation of my time. After seeing how eager and proud my steward-bunny during the Battle of New Queenstown was of his yellow ribbon, for example, I made an effort to get to know him better. His name happened to be David too, and I made it a point to invite him and his entire family to lunch with Nestor and I at one of the finest restaurants on Wilkes Prime. He'd never dreamed of entering such a place as anything more than a bus boy, and the experience marked one of the high points of his life. When he stuttered out his counter-invitation for Nestor and I to come dine at his slave-quarters, well… Certainly the food was better there. So was the company, even though it felt like every Rabbit for miles around had gathered in the hope of at least catching a glimpse of the mythical David Birkenhead who they'd heard so much about but was really just another Rabbit in person after all. I very carefully blocked out six hours for the event, taking the time to converse with every Rabbit I could and most especially bunny-hug each and every ribbon-wearing volunteer. During dinner Nestor and I steered the conversation towards the meanings of freedom and responsibility—or at least we did when we weren't discussing food! The affair seemed to be a big success, so we repeated the effort over and over again, carefully choosing bunny-volunteers from all over the planet and every caste of servitude. First we invited them to dinner, then we accepted the inevitable counter-invitation and touched as many lives as possible. When the Dogs joined up in numbers we did the same for the canine set—though we never, ever discussed food with them! Wilkes Prime had a small population of Horses as well, and I paid them two visits more out of a sense of fairness than anything else. Horses were pleasant enough creatures, and as fully sentient as anyone else. Their gengineers, however, hadn't been nearly so kind to them as the rest of us slaves. Horses were created strictly as rich-men's toys, to be ridden in traditional activities like polo games and fox hunts. Save only for a difficult-to-detect bulge in their skulls they were physically identical to lower-case horses, and since the humans were far more interested in having their mounts understand and obey commands than offer their own opinions they were as mute as real horses as well. Equines were by far the least common of the slave-species—many planets boasted none at all. Even back during the startup days of the fencibles I'd made it a point to at least mention the possibility of Horse-volunteers if an effective means could be found for them to serve, but it was really all just lip-service. I wanted for them to be free as much as anyone else—a society with only a few slaves is in most ways as big a mess as one with many. And yet… "Please be patient," was the
best I could offer them once they finished rearing and whinnying and kicking their approval at my arrival. "You're not forgotten, but we'll call if we need you. Until then… Accept your reduced rations stoically. It's all we can ask of you."

  Meanwhile, every week we cranked out more trained volunteers. It was phenomenal, how the numbers rose as the exponential effect of the volunteer-sergeants kicked in. By now we had volunteer-sergeants running entire training centers, and we'd commandeered practically every classroom on the planet. Sure, the sergeants with the most responsibility were all humans—most, in fact, had been leaders of one sort or another in civilian life. The Rabbits didn't resent this, however, and understood the necessity so long as the sergeants were fair and diplomatic in their dealings. Some weren't, naturally enough; these were immediately busted back to private as a direct result, while a couple of the worst offenders were kicked out of the service entirely. But the others… Well, given the proper training a few might've made good officers in the real armed forces, if I were any judge. And it was all for the good that an internal pecking-order was emerging. When the Imperials came for real, I fully expected the planetary command structure to collapse. Once it did the volunteers would largely be on their own, leaderless and poorly-armed against a pitiless enemy.

  My dinners, in fact, proved so successful in raising morale and unifying support against the upcoming invasion that Jean (in his role as a future House Lord) and I started inviting humans to dinner as well. We didn't do it nearly as often—partly because the commander was up to his neck in preparations—so our focus was on the higher-ranking types. Still, we accomplished a lot in terms of winning the opinion-leaders over to the new way of things. "How much longer could you have kept them in chains anyway?" Jean would ask over after-dinner cocktails in the drawing room, imagining I was out of earshot. Then he'd nod towards me. "After all that David's already accomplished, I mean? This way at least they'll fight the Imperials for you; without them you don't stand a chance." Meanwhile, my own shtick was to appear as confident, capable and intelligent as possible, sprinkling my conversation liberally with facts and figures regarding how well the Marcus planets were being served in economic terms by a free Rabbitry. In the end I think we did a lot of good; certainly the Wilkes nobles appeared to be a little more at peace with the whole manumission-thing. Not that they ever had a choice, of course. But at least they seemed a bit more open to the brighter side of it all.

  Soon I was doing seven dinners and seven training-class introductions a week. This left me little time for anything else, but that didn't matter anymore because the die was long-since cast and all the important decisions made. Now it was just a matter of pumping out as many volunteers as possible, each of them as well-armed and well-trained and well-motivated as possible. I could contribute best to the last of these goals, so that's how I spent my time. Meanwhile Heinrich was working out a formal defensive perimeter for us to fall back on and hold as long as we could. He was better trained and suited for that than any of the rest of us, so we left it to him and ate, ate, ate our way through the long, brutal weeks.

  I gained eight pounds on a planet supposedly undergoing strict food rationing before the Imperial marines finally made their first appearance. "Don't worry sir," Nestor said as he let my uniform pants out for the second time. "Knowing you, you'll probably pace the extra pounds right back off again."

  And I did exactly that. For the Imperials had somehow rounded up no less than six assault vessels and two aerospace-carriers worth of marines to drop on our heads. Even worse, they were clearly waiting for more arrive before getting started, so as to be absolutely certain of the outcome this time around.

  29

  All through these months of wining and dining, Jean, Heinrich and Governor Vorsage's propaganda staff worked double overtime. We'd realigned the command arrangements, now that the nature of the threat had changed. Heinrich was now in charge of everything related to the 'traditional' defense of Wilkes Prime. His oversized job consisted of working out what we should abandon to the enemy, what it would be worthwhile to defend, and what ought to be demolished so as to deny it to the Imperials. This was an even more complicated task than it at first appeared, mostly because we couldn't know if we royalists were ever going to take the planet back or not. Seeding the fuel-farms with plutonium, for example, sounded like a great idea unless you suddenly inherited the cleanup job and needed the things in a hurry. What little free time I had went to assisting him with this task, and though the resulting plan was mostly his I was pleased to have contributed an idea or two. For example, I'd learned while the blaster-factories were being set up that Wilkes Prime imported all its hand tools and most of its fastening hardware. Both were always in tight supply. So rather than blow up important infrastructure items like railroad trestles and the valuable fuel-farms, we simply took as many out of service as possible and then removed so many nuts and bolts and such—the more highly-specialized the better—that they could barely support their own weight. Then we tossed both fasteners and tools alike into the scrap furnaces and melted them down to nothing. That way the facilities could be brought back on line inexpensively, but most assuredly not quickly. Which was, I deemed, good enough.

  Meanwhile Jean worked on the nontraditional resistance that had always lain at the heart of our plan. There was no way to foresee what would need to be done when, so he oversaw the placing of thousands of tiny arsenals and supply caches all over Wilkes Prime, assigning each to a local volunteer sergeant. A few of these contained high-quality milspec gear, though most held only cheap locally-produced blasters, mines and above all many, many rocket launchers. He also worked out a simple drop-box system that allowed one unit to contact another with at least some degree of security, and began picking out the finest sergeants to become volunteer captains. These he trained at a special, highly-secretive facility not too far from the ruins of the Wilkes Palace. These men, mostly of the non-blue-blooded merchant class of Wilkes society, were rushed through a course on what amounted to advanced guerilla warfare techniques. Jean taught some of the classes personally, and I managed to drop in to speak to most of them as well. "No planet can be held against the will of its inhabitants," I explained to them. "None. Ever. Not so long as both sides have access to anything like the same level of technology. Such a planet can be taken, yes. But it can never, ever be held!" Then I told them rousing tales of Mao, the Yugoslavian resistance, Ho Chi Minh and even the recent Marcus uprisings until the fire glowed bright in their eyes. It was a lie, of course—there were exceptions to every rule, and over the grand sweep of history the people's will to resist had been broken by every imaginable means from brute force to cultural absorption. But it was very nearly true, or at least the spirit of it was. With their own Noble House essentially decapitated and disempowered, there was little danger of the serfs of Wilkes choosing an even more aristocrat-centered way of life under a foreign nobility they had no reason whatsoever to love. And while the occupying Imperials could and would be murderous enough, well… So could we Rabbits, if it meant being free. There'd never been a knife made that couldn't cut two ways and sheer brutality was no exception; it was my full intention to teach whoever the Imperials sent out to lead the occupation forces this most painful of all lessons.

  The Governor's propagandists in many ways had the most difficult problem. Eventually, we all knew, the Imperials would add up two and two, come up with the correct answer of five, and realize that I'd blown up the Palace. Indeed, they almost certainly had to have already done so, since the Wilkes people wouldn't have done such a thing to their own leadership and I was the only other nuclear-armed individual at the table. Yet though their propaganda was now beamed down to Wilkes Prime from so many sources as to be unjammable, they'd never so much as breathed a syllable on the subject. Clearly they were saving it for a special occasion—to dishearten the populace after my capture, perhaps, or maybe to dump on us right as their 'liberating' forces landed. There was only one way to remove the sting
from such an announcement, and that was to beat the Imperials to the punch. Yet despite the urgency it had to be done slowly, carefully… even lovingly. Bit by bit the facts behind the Wilkes-Hashimoto conspiracy began to 'leak' out, including rather heavy-handed hints that the Hashimotos had been dragged in against their will and that the leadership of the House of Wilkes, and of Wilkes alone, was the driving force behind it all.

  Governor Vorsage's media experts were true masters of their art, it didn't take me long to decide. Every day's newspages contained new hints and subtle foreshadowings as to the extent of the conspiracy, until one day an "unnamed but formerly highly-ranked source" spilled his guts to a prominent reporter and told all. Or almost all, rather. Yes, the former assistant chief of the Wilkes intelligence service was honest and complete in his accounting of who had corrupted and coerced who, and when and how they'd done so. The truth served our purposes perfectly, after all, so there was no reason why we'd ask him to lie. Of course he omitted the part about how we loyalist types had figured out that he wanted to live, and had permitted him to keep on doing so as long as he cooperated with us. That was something the public had no need whatsoever to know. In the end he did such a good job that we let him keep his estate and personal wealth as well.

  Even the Imperial propagandists had a hard time dealing with solid, verifiable facts; they were still sputtering and avoiding the subject when the Wilkes treachery made the transition from mere speculation into unquestionable fact in the minds of the populace. As a result they missed their last potential window for action, small as it was. Three hours after the local "story of the century" broke and before any of the local reporters did their own addition and publicly came up with five on their own, I held a press conference and acknowledged that I was the one who'd given the order and also that the conspiracy was the reason why. The result was first stunned silence, then a veritable gabble of questions. I answered almost none of them on the grounds of military necessity, until a blonde reporter who reminded me very much of the one I'd watched die in the bombing asked me if I still felt such an extreme action was justified. "Yes," I replied. "I'd do it again in a minute. I regret the deaths of so many innocents, of course. I mourn them more deeply and completely than most of you can imagine. Yet killing most of the leaders all together at once was the only way there could be any hope for anyone at all, and I couldn't come up with any other method that would leave the planetary defenses intact and yet be effective and certain within the amount of time available. So I gave the order." For a long moment I looked out at the sea of reporters, meeting as many eyes as I could. "The responsibility is mine and mine alone. I can only hope that I don't ever have to give another such order again." That created yet another stunned silence, which I took advantage of to turn the conference over to Governor Vorsage.