Commodore (The David Birkenhead Series) Read online

  "And that's that," Jean observed sadly. "The textbooks say that an invasion's half-won once you've seized a secure beachhead."

  "Usually it is," I agreed, sipping more tea. "Most likely the Imperial high command is reminding each other of exactly the same thing just about now, amidst happy faces and much laughter." Then I smiled. "But it's the damnedest thing, how often the textbooks turn out to be just a wee bit mistaken, or how the specifics of one instance never quite match up perfectly with those of another." I let my smile widen and leaned back on a control panel. "Yes, the invasion's a success and the Imperials have landed in force. There never was anything we could do to prevent that, once they put their minds to it. So instead of doing the obvious and going all-in on repelling the landing, we did our damnedest to transform this planet into the biggest sheet of flypaper in the universe. Which I think we've done a pretty fair job at, actually." Then I set my teacup down, stretched and yawned—it was long past time to hit the rack. "Let them celebrate. Today is their day, gentlemen, and fairly earned at that. We'll just have to settle for tomorrow and all the rest of the tomorrows to come instead."

  33

  And, ever so slowly, we did indeed begin to win.

  At first the signs were almost undetectable amidst the glaring Imperial triumphs. There they were on holovision marching through Wilkes Square, raising their flag above the capital, and installing their smiling Imperial governor. At the same time, however, Jean's shadowy network was reporting that our enemies seldom left the big cities, and even there they always, always, always traveled in groups. Despite these precautions, Jean's sources continually received reports of an Imperial marine sniped here or a truckload blown to smithereens there. It was far too early in the game for the volunteers to be hitting important targets or putting on "shows" that required a lot in the way of planning and organization. They simply hadn't learned enough advanced lessons yet. But the sheer scale and widespread nature of the resistance both warmed my heart and should've served as a sharp warning to the Emperor's people.

  Best of all was the Rabbit situation. I'd put out word that no Rabbit should ever turn down a direct order to work for the Imperials. If given such a command he should cheerily put his back into it and do as poor a job as he thought he could get away with. Then at the first opportunity he should run like hell for the bush country and leave everything behind him in as sad a state as possible. Yes the new masters to death to their faces, in other words, then backstab them both deep and hard. My fellow lapines were already much more accomplished at this sort of thing than any human realized, I suspected—an awful lot of Rabbits were poor workers by any measure, and some were actual thieves even during normal times. My Graves Registration bunnies had doubled their work output metrics once I'd started treating them with dignity, for example, and they were an above-average group to begin with. So, once even the 'good' bunnies started actually working at malingering, well…

  It caused the Imperials an even bigger headache than anticipated. At first their policy was to smile condescendingly during their special broadcasts aimed at the slave species, then explain in very small words that Rabbits and Dogs and Horses didn't really want to be free after all. Oh, no! True happiness was to be found in occupying their traditional and honored place at their master's heel, where their poor furry heads wouldn't be troubled with all that 'thinking' and 'deciding' nonsense. This went over about as well as might be expected—the result was more malingering, more thieving, more sabotage, more Imperial marines found dead with improvised Rabbit-sized knives and spearheads lodged in their hearts. Clearly the local slave population was unreliable and it was necessary to look elsewhere for stoop labor. But…

  …Where? The Wilkes human population? Perhaps, if you wanted to alienate them forever and give up all chance of them ever becoming your allies. Or, maybe the Imperials could bring in their own Rabbits to load and unload ships and the like? Our enemies tried exactly that, until they discovered that within hours of landing the Imperial bunnies became just as truculent and unreliable as the Wilkes breed. And even worse, now that that they too were 'infected' they could never, ever be returned to the fleet orbiting above for fear of spreading the problem even further afield. It all must've sounded so easy to the Emperor sitting back at home on his comfy throne. And yet, how could the Imperials effectively govern or even garrison a planet where they dared not stir out of their encampments in groups of less than ten? And when at the same time half of one's own marines had to be kept continually at work performing Rabbit-duties such as stevedoring and preparing food and repairing potholes in the hardpoints? This, I was willing to bet, wasn't at all like the occupation the Imperials had envisioned when first they came to Wilkes Prime. Expecting to be greeted as friends, instead they were being forced to play the fools. Even worse, they knew it. About two months in their commanding admiral finally got the right idea. They decided that I was the key to it all. Personally, I mean. Kill me, and perhaps the Rabbits might go back to being the meek and docile servants they'd always been instead of cold-blooded assassins with dopey smiles on their faces. So they set out to excavate me from the deep tunnels of our mountain fortress and shut off my continual broadcasts promising freedom to all who resisted the Imperials, fur-coated or not.

  Killing a Rabbit in his own high-tech and well-defended warren, however, also proved rather more difficult than it looked. Our mineshaft complex was from the beginning far more extensive than the Imperials had any way of guessing, and it'd done nothing but grow since. The previous owner had two hard-rock boring machines; we commandeered five more from other companies and ran them around the clock for months. Where originally the shafts had at least roughly paralleled the ore vein, our new additions were all of a strictly military nature and ran unpredictably all up and down the mountain range. In some cases, they stretched for miles.

  The new enemy campaign began, predictably enough, with an all-channels news broadcast from the Imperial governor. "Most of the serfs of the House of Wilkes," he declared, "have been good and obedient to their new lords. As have most of the slave species. But our tolerance for those who refuse to cooperate has reached an end." Then he listed off a new series of blood-curdling new punishments for various 'crimes' such as 'malingering while on Imperial service'—that one called for death by whipping, in extreme cases—and 'aiding and abetting insurgents', which called for being boiled alive. The Imperials were fully capable of such actions when provoked, I well knew—many POW's taken by diversion-seeking Imperial marines had died by precisely these methods, despite not having done anything whatsoever to provoke such a fate. So it was and always had been inevitable that eventually our enemies would attempt such tactics here on Wilkes Prime, as well. Still, it was damned difficult to stand and helplessly watch as the first malingering Rabbit was made an example of on another all-stations broadcast, and a volunteer sergeant I'd spoken to personally was boiled in front of the cameras as well. They both screamed—rather a lot, in fact—and I'd had to exert every ounce of willpower not to go outside, find the nearest Imperial, and see if he thought turnabout was still fair play.

  Fortunately, however, I didn't have much time to dwell on the atrocities. The Imperials also announced on the first night that they would soon either kill or capture me, proving that I was impotent to save myself much less keep promises about the distant future. While they'd had all known (to them, at least) entrances to the mine complex under close guard for days now, the speech itself was apparently the attack signal. At a certain point more than halfway through the Imperials assaulted everywhere at once, bravely charging headlong into heavy blaster fire and dragging diesel hoses behind them. Inch by painful inch they crept forward, accepting a heartbreaking body-count along the way. Then, once our own marines were winkled out of every last hidey-hole, the Imperials began pumping diesel fuel into our mine. We let them pump and pump and pump—the stuff was expensive, after all, and not easily replaced given that we'd removed all the screws and bolts from this world's sin
gle refinery. We smiled as it flowed down into the deep sump we'd bored for the purpose, then dropped a pre-planned series of ceilings. This closed off the old well-mapped mine area from the newer works before the diesel fuel was ignited. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the next staff meeting as they tried to figure out what our ceiling-dropping blasts had been all about—while some would figure out that there had to be another entrance, I couldn't imagine them guessing the entire scope of truth. Finally, after letting the Imperials brag about their great victory for a full forty-eight hours we launched a pair of our carefully-hoarded aerospace fighters and cluster-bombed what we thought might be a block of VIP quarters on the nearest edge of the main Imperial stronghold. We also chose that moment to go back on the air and explain that not only were our obituaries a bit premature, but that the bombing raid was in retribution for the criminally-cruel executions. Overall the whole thing came out quite well—our marine losses were far lower than those of our enemies, the aerospace fighters both made it safely back home against all odds—I put both the bomber pilot and his escorting wingman in for a Sword—and the Imperial government was taken entirely off-guard when we re-emerged onto the public scene. For its part, in the future the Wilkes general public would be far less inclined to take Imperial newscasts at face value now that they'd been proven so spectacularly false. Best of all, we never saw the Imperial-backed Ministers of Propaganda or Education again. Mere coincidence? I think not.

  And so we moved into phase two, during which the Imperials attempted to snoop us out. They brought in ultrasonic sonar from the other mines and began assiduously ferreting out the exact locations of our tunnels. Or they would've, at least, had we not previously ourselves pilfered the very best and most powerful ultrasonic scanners on the planet from every last mine, and kept them running continuously so as to create such a tsunami of sound that no one could possibly make head or tails of even the grossest geological structure for tens of miles around. Heinrich had wanted to confiscate all the scanners, but I suggested leaving the older, weaker ones in order to create further delay—if they all came up missing the Imperials would have their fleet's artificers attempt to improvise something. If that happened, then who knew? Their knocked-together gadget might actually work despite our jamming. So instead they spent a good ten days playing with the useless toys we'd left behind before reluctantly moving on to explosive charges as sound-sources for their echolocation machines. That wouldn't do at all, because it'd likely be effective. Therefore we studied their pattern and determined where the next blast was to be set off, as well as the best places for ground sensors and even where we thought the central data collection point might reasonably be. Some of these spots—including the inferred data center—were fairly near to tunnels we didn't really need for anything anyway. So we packed these 'useless' passages with explosives and when the Imperial exploratory charges went off, well… The geologists must've been astounded at the results. Until they completed their trajectories and smashed back down onto the planetary surface, that is. After that, they never felt anything at all, ever again. We never did find out if we got the data center or not. But one thing was for sure—from that point forward there was little rhyme or reason to the Imperial blasting schedule, which must've slowed things down enormously.

  Still, slowing wasn't at all the same thing as stopping. Bit by bit, our enemies would figure out where our tunnels were. Nor was Imperial progress on the rest of Wilkes entirely stymied either. One of the major fuel plants was back in limited operation, sadly not one of the two within artillery range of our stronghold. We could watch with our naked eyes as the Imperial shuttles formed an endless chain, resupplying their heavy ships. It was just a trickle for now, relatively speaking—probably about enough to cover half of daily usage. This was hardly enough to support a major forward base. But there were other tankers coming and going from Imperial space as well, and I had no doubt that, very slowly, our enemies were re-supplying at last. Plus they'd set up several hangers in the midst of their ultra-secure landing area. Ships' boats accounted for most of the traffic to and from these, which was a dead giveaway. Light maintenance, probably most of it long-deferred, was taking place on removed ship components there. We couldn't get at either them or the traffic-streams, which was as frustrating as could be. Jean was planning a guerilla operation and seemed optimistic, but I had my doubts. In terms of fleet strength the Imperials were now past their nadir and ever so slowly starting to recover. It was beginning to look like they might soon have something resembling a Wilkes Prime forward base after all, despite all their troubles and travails. While our side, week by week, was beginning to fade.

  34

  "The fleet should be here by now, sir. Shouldn't it?" Midshipman O'Toole asked during the ferociously-fought endgame of one of our evening chess matches. One of the advantages of being besieged was that it tended to leave you with a lot spare time on your hands—after all, there wasn't anywhere to go rushing off to anymore. And so I'd found time to keep my promise to my fellow gaming team captain. His specialty had been card games while mine had been more modern combat simulations. Both of us had chosen chess as our secondary interests, however, so our matches were often very tight affairs if not quite up to the grand-master level. Heinrich could and sometimes did kick both of our tails, but we tried not to let that dampen our enthusiasm too much. Over time, we'd gotten to know each other a little. For my part I'd learned that Kevin O'Toole was the son of a Presbyterian minister who'd won a battlefield commission in the Army, that said minister had freed the family's Rabbits way back when I'd won my first Sword, and that he'd been preaching manumission ever since. By now, Kevin had begun to loosen up enough to treat me as a person rather than a godlike entity. I'd encouraged this; Midshipman O'Toole was a promising young officer indeed, and I considered it both my pleasure and my duty to mentor him a bit. Most naval officers of my rank had long since developed a coterie of younger protégés, and generally this was a good thing for the service as a whole. But somehow I had not. The midshipman, I decided, seemed as promising a place to begin as anywhere.

  "Perhaps," I replied, tapping my incisors with the ears of the knight I was considering moving. It was an old nervous habit, one that drove many humans batty but didn't seem to faze Kevin at all. "Or perhaps not."

  He nodded slowly, and I mentally gave him extra credit for being one of the few junior officers so far who seemed to grasp the ultimate purpose of my efforts on Wilkes Prime. It'd seemed so obvious to me that I'd never felt it necessary to explain the matter aloud; both Jean and Heinrich had also understood intuitively, which was part of why they'd been able to throw themselves so wholeheartedly into the effort. But hardly anyone else seemed to 'get it'. "When would you have expected them?"

  Kevin scowled. "I guess… I'm not quite certain, sir. There's too many unknowns. But it sure would've been nice if they'd gotten here before the Imperials brought that one fuel depot back on line. That was when they were at their weakest."

  I nodded and began tapping my knight again. That'd been my vision—the Royal Line of Battle swooping in on an Imperial fleet short on everything, half its weaponry offline for lack of service and all its spare parts and special tooling loaded up in slow, vulnerable freighters just begging to be blasted out of the sky. But Kevin was right—the ideal moment had passed, and every day now saw the Imperial naval position become a tiny bit stronger. Carefully I placed my knight back on the board where it had started, then moved a bishop. "You can only pre-plan a campaign to a certain degree, son. Then you have to sort of improvise the rest, cross your fingers, and hope things fall into place. The Imperials are inherently predictable because they have such a conservative, rigid society. That's their greatest weakness, and one I've exploited over and over again. But events can and usually do spiral out of control sooner or later; even an Imperial has an original idea from time to time. And by the way, check."

  He nodded and scowled again, studying the board. "Sometimes your friends c
an be less predictable than your enemies," he added tentatively, not sure if he was pushing his privileged position too far. "I mean… Maybe our fleet is further away than you thought? Maybe it needed maintenance and resupply itself before it could travel this far? Or maybe the admirals think your plan is too risky, and they're dragging their feet?"

  I smiled as Kevin studied the board. "Or perhaps our destroyers were somehow lost, and the message never got through. It also could be that the admirals have another operation underway, so that they can't support us no matter what. Or…" I sighed. "Maybe there's been a coup, and whoever won thinks it best to leave us here to die."

  The midshipman blinked at the last suggestion. "Wow!" he said eventually. "I never would've even considered the possibility of a coup, sir."

  I smiled, albeit wearily. "That's because you're still young and idealistic, son. Enjoy it while you can."

  Kevin's eyes narrowed, and I could only assume that his razor-sharp mind was reconsidering James's accession to the throne in a whole new light. Then, rather to my surprise, he smiled. "We'll come out on top no matter what, sir. I just know it, somehow; it's in the air. We may suffer terribly before all is said and done, but history's on our side. Or your side, maybe. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. If there is one, that is." Then he moved his rook. "And by the way, sir… Checkmate in two."

  35

  Kevin did indeed have the chess game won, just as the Imperials were slowly but steadily regaining the ascendancy in space. Only on Wilkes Prime proper were the Royal forces still doing well. The insurgency was by now so well-rooted that I doubted the Imperials would ever stamp it out, and our mountain stronghold remained impervious to everything. Or, at least for the moment it was impervious—I was beginning to worry a bit, as nothing lasts forever.