Commodore (The David Birkenhead Series) Page 15

  So were Jean and Heinrich, apparently. "Sir," Jean asked me after a routine staff meeting about a week later. "Could you perhaps stay and speak with us for a few extra minutes?" He nodded at Nestor. "You too, if you would."

  I raised my eyebrows and sat back down in my folding chair—we hadn't brought much in the way of comfy furnishings into the tunnels with us. "Sure. What's up?"

  The two commanders looked at each other, then Jean nodded slightly. "All right," Heinrich agreed. "I'll go first." He turned towards me. "Sir… It's time to make some alternate plans. Regarding you personally, I mean. You're far too valuable to lose here." I opened my mouth to object, but my old friend kept right on talking. "I don't have to explain why, sir. You know the truth as well as we do."

  I sat and said nothing, but felt Nestor shift in his seat next to me. Clearly, he felt this conversation was long overdue himself.

  "You've accomplished all you can here, sir," Jean explained, taking over. "We have to accept reality. The Fleet's still not here. It may yet arrive any day; we're all well aware of that. But… It's been long enough now that one must begin to wonder. So Wilkes Prime is going to be a long, dirty, irregularly-fought battle. I still believe we'll win in the long term. However, it's time for us to consider cutting our potential losses."

  "Potential loss number one being… You." Heinrich amplified.

  I frowned. "Gentlemen," I began. "I know you mean well, but…"

  The pair looked at each other again. "You don't want to abandon your command," Jean continued for them both. "Who would, under such ugly conditions? Under even slightly different circumstances, it'd be the act of a coward of the worst sort." His face hardened. "But not under these circumstances, sir, as they exist here and now. And not considering your personal role in the larger war effort."

  "I designed this fortress to hold out for four months," Heinrich amplified. "There's a reason I chose that figure—it's about as long as I figured it'd take for the Imperials to send back home for specialized tunnel-busting weaponry, and far longer than we thought it'd take for our own forces to relieve us. Everything is based on the four-month figure—our levels of supply, munitions expenditures, everything. Because once the proper weapons arrive, well… We'll have to abandon these works very soon and join the guerillas if we can. It's either that or be buried here, sir. Once we're out with the rebels, there won't be any further purpose to your presence here. You won't be able to broadcast or do much of anything else that a far lesser officer can't handle in your stead. So we need to find a way to get you out of here and smuggle you off-planet. It's time, sir. You've done a magnificent job, seeing the possibility of starting a resistance movement where no one else did and then creating said resistance out of nothing. And your plan to bring about a fleet action under ideal conditions deserved to be successful. But it's time to cut the potential losses."

  I nodded slowly. "Your reasoning is impeccable," I agreed. "However, I don't agree that there's no further purpose to be served in my remaining here. The traditions of the service—"

  Rather to my surprise, Heinrich interrupted me by turning to Jean again. "He's going to be stubborn," he said. "We knew that he would. So let's just get it over with."

  "Right," Jean agreed. Then he reached into his tunic and produced…

  …a Royal Stationery envelope with my name on it. Before I could react, Heinrich produced another just like it. "I'm sorry, David," Jean explained. "But it's easy for you to forget that His Majesty was our classmate and good friend, too. He sent special orders with us as well, to be used only if absolutely necessary. And I fear that time has come."

  By then my face must've been a mass of rage. But a Royal Command was a Royal Command, so I had to open them both. As expected, they were identical. "David," they read. "I'm sorry to have to do this to you from so many light-years away, but I simply can't afford to have you go gallivanting off and getting yourself killed playing the hero. You've taken far too many risks already; I shudder at what we might so easily have lost long ago. I've entrusted Jean and Heinrich with orders for you to return home the moment they feel that you're taking too large a risk with your person. Please don't hold this against them—they both begged not to be placed in the position they're now in, if you're reading these words.

  "Come home, David. Whatever local mess you're in the middle of will resolve itself with or without you. A single battle is of relatively little importance. What I need most is you alive, to help me win the war. And of course the peace that will follow."

  36

  I never could win an argument with James, even back when we were kids together. And now that he wore the crown to boot… Well, it was better to just sit back and accept the inevitable.

  I did manage to negotiate some conditions to the loss of my command, however; if it was time for me to get out of the tunnels, I pointed out, then it was clearly time to get everyone out. It turned out that Jean had already come to the same conclusion, and after remarkably little grumbling Heinrich agreed as well. We'd made provisional plans for exfiltrating our men from the very beginning—there were several very long tunnels that led to nearby population centers, for example, and we were fairly sure these still hadn't been detected. From the beginning we'd maintained a loose and intermittent contact with Wilkes society through them though traffic had been kept to the bare minimum. Now, beginning with the wounded, we began issuing our marines with identity cards, escape cash in the form of gold coins, and all the personal munitions they cared to tote along with them. Then we turned them loose with our blessings into the broader world beyond. Each had been well-trained for such a circumstance—this was both because marines fought a long way from home in places where extraction wasn't always the simplest of matters, and also due to the fact that the Imperials didn't take prisoners. The master plan called for them to contact the underground via various means and then help them along in their various activities as best they were able. Under similar circumstances in the past groups of disbanded marines had done very well indeed; I could only hope that they'd repeat the pattern here.

  In all I managed to delay my departure for nine days in this manner, giving each exiting group of men a handshake and pep talk as well as meeting and talking with those who'd volunteered to defend the tunnels to the bitter end. But on the tenth day Jean and Heinrich showed up in my office and threatened to pull out their royal letters again if I wasn't gone by dark. Neither of them were exactly known for making false threats, so Nestor and I were waiting obediently in the main tunnel with the rest by noon.

  "They're right, sir," my aide repeated for about the sixth time in as many hours. "In your heart you know it."

  My answer was a very feral snarl.

  "And so is James," he continued on, unfazed. "In fact, you really should've left with the last destroyer. I can't imagine what anyone was thinking, allowing you to stay on when those letters were available."

  I wanted to growl again, but this time couldn't quite bring myself to. If I'd gone with the destroyer, then maybe—just maybe!—I'd have been able to persuade whoever was currently in charge of the main battle fleet to set course for Wilkes Prime immediately instead of doing whatever they'd done instead. In that sense, it appeared, I'd made a poor decision after all. It was one I intended never to repeat.

  Then I heard a group of others making their way down the tunnel towards us, and forced calm upon myself. Another promise I'd extracted was that I'd take my chances like everyone else and be made part of an ordinary group of evacuees, at least during the earliest and most dangerous stage of the getaway. And sure enough, my nose soon informed me, I was being exfiltrated with a group of Rabbits and at least one Dog, plus a few human-type marines.

  "Good afternoon," I greeted the rest of my breakout group as Nestor and I rose from the little meeting-place bench. Heaven only knew how far these guys had hiked already, so they needed the seats worse than we did. Slowly my new mates loomed out of the darkness; sure enough there were five humans, nine Rabbits
, and the single Dog.

  "Hello, Commodore," the senior NCO greeted me with a smile—he was a human. Since all of us were wearing civvies—slave shorts in my own case—there wasn't any saluting. "I'm John Lundberg, sir. Master sergeant, Third Marines." His smile widened. "I used to train aerospace fighter pilots on escape and evasion techniques full time, sir."

  I nodded and smiled back, then shook his hand. "Pleased to meet you, sergeant." Of course if such a man were available Heinrich and Jean would see to it that he was placed in my own escape group. I could ask for an average, normal group all I wanted. But the sergeant would find his way in nonetheless, no doubt after a long harangue about how miserable the rest of his life was going to be if I didn't make it. Similarly, I soon discovered that the Rabbits were all marines as well, some of the group I'd originally pilfered from the fencible-manned destroyers and used to train the Wilkes volunteers. They'd been good troops even then, but now that they'd worked so closely with regular-force marines in the face of the enemy and even fought a few battles alongside them, well… If they weren't every bit as salty as the humans, I was a junior assistant fan dancer. Our single Dog was a highly valuable asset to the team as well—Fidel was a local volunteer sergeant of insurgents that we'd brought underground with us due to his familiarity with the local terrain. He was a sheep dog, and his herd's normal grazing-grounds were directly above our heads.

  "A completely ordinary and average group," I observed to Heinrich as he stood aloof in the back, watching us get to know each other. My voice was pitched so that only an old friend like him would detect the sarcasm. "Just as I asked for."

  He smiled wide, letting me see that my message had in fact been understood. Then his features sobered again. "Sir, there's no one in the universe I less enjoy having displeased with me than you. Excepting of course His Majesty."

  I nodded again and sighed. He was right, of course—I was in some respects a valuable commodity, and all friendship aside he'd have to be able to show he'd done his best for me in the event I was lost. "I'm sorry, Heinrich. I know you're just following orders, but…"

  He looked me in the eyes. "No officer in the fleet," he said slowly, "believes in you more than I do, sir. We were once friends, and I can only hope that… that…"

  It was too much—in an instant I was hugging him, Rabbit-style. "You're following orders, Heinrich. I understand. Someday when this is over and we're both old and retired, we'll sit around and laugh about it. All right?"

  He closed his eyes and relaxed a bit as he squeezed back. "Thank you, sir. I… Ah… Well, thank you."

  "Don't mention it," I replied, releasing him. "Now… Which way out do you have in mind for us?"

  "Tunnel seven," he replied.

  I nodded. "The longest one. It exits behind a thermal spring."

  "Right," he agreed. "You'll be the first to use the route—we've been saving it for something special. An underground operative will be right there on the spot to pick you up. And…. I'll be accompanying you all the way to daylight personally, sir. Since it's the first time for this tunnel, you see—I always come along the first time, in case something goes wrong. Jean's going to do two shifts back-to-back in the command post to cover me."

  I smiled at the polite, well-intentioned lie, just to show that I knew it for what it was. Heinrich couldn't possibly have time to accompany escape-groups to their designated exits, not even just the first time. He was trying to take special care of me, was all, and didn't want me to feel badly about it. "Of course," I agreed. "How long's the hike?"

  "It's too far to walk," Heinrich explained. "So we've arranged for an electric tram." He smiled again, this time far more naturally. "Only the best for personal friends of the management, you see!"

  37

  Even by tram, it was a long, dull trip to the end of tunnel seven. I was no geologist, but as near as I could tell by the headlights the hole's walls consisted of a single type of stone—the gray and boring kind. This being one of our purely military additions to the tunnel complex, we were no longer anywhere near the presumably more interesting ore body. Still, after the first hour or so of watching the featureless walls roll by I was ready for something more than just a slight change in the slope of the floor to break the tedium. But when it finally came, well…

  Our first clue that something had gone badly wrong was when we Rabbit-types noticed an odd sort of roaring-crashing sound above the continual whine of the tram's motor. Fidel—the Dog—heard it as well, I'm certain, because his ears pricked up too. Then, before we had time to think, it was as if something huge punched me in the gut and kicked me in the behind at the same time. Then we were flying half-senseless down the borehole, at least six of us, until suddenly the tunnel floor rose up and smote us. Somewhere in there—I'm not sure exactly where—something big and glowing yellow-orange came careening through as well, bouncing from the curved walls like a ping-pong ball. Then, though I tried my hardest to remain conscious, I passed out.

  The next thing I knew I was being dragged through a silent darkness—the tugs came from a low-enough angle that I knew I was being dragged by a Rabbit. Then I was rather unceremoniously flopped down next to another bunny, who I recognized by scent as Nestor. I couldn't move a muscle, however; the explosion of whatever-it-was had completely paralyzed me. Soon Fidel was lying on the other side of me, then another Rabbit beyond him. I was just about to go insane with frustration at not understanding what was going on when something finally unstuck itself in my head and I could hear again, though in a curiously muted way.

  "…anti-tunnel bomb," Heinrich was explaining to someone. "Special purpose—full of little rockets that spread out and smash everything within reach all to hell. Any closer and it would've killed us all."

  "We've got to go back, sir," Sergeant Lundberg replied. "We'll never get past the Imperials with so many wounded."

  "You're right," Heinrich replied in his upper-class Imperial accent. "But the roof's caved in, probably for a hundred yards or more. There's only one way out for any of us now, like it or not. And that's forward."

  Just about then my musculature caught up with my hearing, and I began to be able to move a little. The first thing I did was to lean over and sniff Nestor to see how badly hurt he was. I couldn't detect any blood, so I figured that he was probably just stunned, as I'd been. Then I did the same for Fidel. He smelled okay, too. Very slowly I climbed to my feet and stood as the tunnel floor heaved to and fro under my feet. "Heinrich?" I asked when it finally stopped.

  "David!" he replied. "Thank god! You just lie still, and—"

  "I'm already up and about. And I think I'll be all right—nothing feels too badly broken. Status report, please."

  "Yes, sir," he replied formally. "We've been hit by a tunnel-busting bomb, sir— it was probably shipped in all the way from Imperious. The injured all appear to have been stunned—the ones riding with you towards the back of the tram were worst affected—and one marine has a badly broken leg. I don't think we could've been targeted specifically, sir—they missed us by a good half-mile, and while they clearly have the complex at least partially mapped out I don't see how they could possibly know which parts we're using for what. More likely, in my opinion, it was part of an opening salvo of best-guesses—almost a random shot."

  I nodded. "That makes perfect sense."

  "Does anyone have a light?" a human voice asked off to my right, where most of the rest of the wounded still lay in a row. From the tone of his voice, it wasn't the first time he'd asked.

  "Mine's broken," Sergeant Lundberg muttered. "The survival-specialist's flashlight is broken— can you imagine that? I just hope I live long enough to write a nasty letter to the manufacturer. They claim their products are indestructible!"

  "Everyone's lights seem to be broken, sir," Heinrich amplified. "They imploded. Apparently there was a severe pressure-wave."

  I nodded; that was to be expected whenever there was an explosion in a confined space. "Do we have anything that'll burn?"


  "Working on it now, sir," Lundburg replied; faintly (due to my damaged ears) I heard him rummaging through our luggage-boxes. We Rabbits were supposed to carry those, once we were on the surface. In them were most of our weapons, plus a few important files and such that we hoped might somehow make it back to Royal space. Presently there was a little 'pop', and Lundburg was holding a burning piece of cloth in his hand—a hat, I suddenly realized. It produced perhaps as much light as a dinner candle. But between the previous darkness and my recent spell of unconsciousness, it was bright enough to drive daggers into my eyes and make me nauseous.

  "Good work!" Heinrich exclaimed. "Let's check on the wounded first, so we know where we stand with them." He looked directly at me. "And that includes you, sir."

  My head was pounding worse and worse from the 'bright' light, then my knees grew weak again as well. "Yes," I agreed reluctantly, sinking back down to the stone floor. "But check on me last. The others are worse off than I am."

  38

  Modern first aid kits are wonderful things, but they have their limits. While we were able to establish that save for a single broken tibia all of our victims were suffering from concussions, treating them was another matter entirely. We had a medication available in our first aid kit that'd help stabilize the brains of any of our three species. The stuff had nasty side effects, however, including inducing a twelve-hour near-coma. "Evacuate the patient immediately to a field hospital with adequately trained personnel," the instructions on the little bottles read. Fortunately while we were squinting at the tiny letters in the darkness two more of the Rabbits, a human marine, and Fidel regained consciousness as well. Fidel in particular was even more unsteady on his feet than I was; he vomited twice before his head began to clear.

  "He was sitting in the second to the back row, wasn't he?" I asked Heinrich.