Lieutenant Read online

  Lord Roberts nodded, looking a bit relieved. “You have my solemn word, David, that I’ll get you out of there the minute I can. If it goes on too long… Well, it’d hardly be an optimum outcome. But once you’ve served your five years we can always find an honorable, important place for you here in the Family.” His mouth hardened. “You have my sacred word of honor that you won’t be forgotten. Nor will James forget you, I’m certain, should anything happen to me.”

  I bowed my head again. “I owe the House of Marcus everything. For you, I’d serve in the hottest firepit of hell.”

  “I know,” Lord Roberts replied, his face softening into a smile. “For you’ve already served us—and served us well!—in circumstances every bit as awful.” He looked off into the distance for a moment, then nodded as he came to a decision. “David,” he said, opening his top desk drawer. “I have something for you.”

  My ears perked up. “Sir?”

  “I’ve always meant to give you something when you reached your majority, but here and now, well… This feels right.” He reached far into the back and pulled out a signet ring. It carried a single large ruby, and there were fire-lilies cast into the gold band. “James wears his father’s ring,” Lord Robert explained. “As is right and proper. This one, however, last belonged to a certain Elijah Marcus. Are you familiar with him?”

  I shook my head. “No sir.”

  “Actually, he was Dr. Elijah Marcus. This ring is well over three hundred years old, David, so I’m not surprised that you’ve never heard of him. Long ago, the House of Marcus was nothing more than a wealthy family from Mississippi. That was a region of Old Earth noted primarily for its poverty and backwardness. Elijah and his twin brother Moses, however, believed in the future. So they invested heavily in space travel and biotech. It’s because of Moses that we got into the space colonization game early. And Elijah, well…”

  “He invented slavebunnies,” I guessed. “Didn’t he?”

  Lord Robert nodded. “I see you’ve already heard about that part of our history.” He sighed and looked away. “Colonizing gained us territory, David. It was an important part of our rise. But it was slavery that made us the richest of all the Houses. Even today we’re still entitled to a small royalty on every Rabbit born outside our own borders. It’s the only significant income stream that I’m eager for us to lose.” He looked down at the ring. “Elijah died childless, David. In recent times we found his ring in the back of a vault, utterly forgotten. It took us years to figure out who it’d belonged to. But once we found out… Well, since then it’s been seen as something of an albatross. A reminder of a matter we’d sooner forget. I’ve kept it here in my desk to help me remember that we’ve done your kind a great wrong. One that to our credit we’re attempting to right, but which remains far from undone. And now…”

  He slid the ring across the table to me. “This is yours, David. We can’t legally adopt you just yet; with the laws being what they are it’s smartest for us not to even try. But you’re the proper heir of this ring and all it represents. For you’re the first Marcus able to wear it without shame.”

  My jaw dropped. “Sir…”

  “Uncle,” he corrected me. “Uncle Robert, from now on. Though had my brother not found you first, you’d be my own.” He smiled. “Now… You’ve an unpleasant task before you, my nephew. But for all it lacks in terms of glory it remains an important job, worthy of your finest efforts. Our fallen deserve the best we can give them. For now, at least, it’s your sacred duty to give them all you’ve got.”

  4

  Graves Registration duty had its advantages, I had to admit. I got my own apartment, for one thing; aboard a warship I’d have had to share a stateroom half its size. Discipline was relaxed and informal, as well. “Show up about tennish,” Commander Pollard advised me the day I arrived. “Unless you have some urgent personal business, of course. Then just call in—it won’t be a problem, so long as you’re spic and span for the ceremonies.”

  That was the focus of my new life, of course, or at least it would be until I had more training under my belt—endless ceremonial. While I did have other duties, such as verifying that my petty officers had ordered the Rabbits to mow the proper areas, the truth was that aside from funerals my entire workday was no more than twenty minutes long. And even the funerals themselves only took about an hour and a half or so, for us honor-guard types anyway. Every afternoon about one I’d assemble my men, inspect them minutely, and then ride with them in a civilian van to grave number whatever. There we’d set up and stand at attention until the appropriate moment, when we’d present arms and fire a salute of however many blanks the rank of the deceased merited. My bugler Sam would then play ‘Taps’ as all the civilians hung their heads and wept. Then afterwards we’d stand around and offer comfort to any mourners who wished to speak with us. That didn’t happen very often, though sometimes people who didn’t know how to read rank insignias complained to Sergeant Keldron about how terribly wrong it was for the navy to include a Rabbit in an honor guard. The sergeant always turned red when that happened—he was a kind-hearted man even when drunk, which was most of the time. Then he’d politely explain that I was an officer, not a Rabbit, and that the fancy sword I’d saluted the departed with was in fact the embodiment of the highest honor that it was within the power of His Majesty to award. That usually shut them up, though once someone complained that a Rabbit shouldn’t be allowed to carry such a dangerous weapon regardless.

  So Graves Registration was easy duty, really. Many hard-working men in the fleet who were risking their lives every day would probably have envied me. Sergeant Keldron had spent most of the last several years trying to get transferred to an honor guard, and he’d only made it because two wars back he’d won a Royal Citation for almost single-handedly repulsing an Imperial attack during the legendary siege of Firebase Newton on Mattabon Three. That’d been almost thirty years ago, and it was difficult indeed to find even a trace of the brash young hero in the corpulent, alcoholic sergeant of today. “He’s coasted through his entire career on the strength of that one incident,” my new CO explained to me on the day I took over the squad. “No one’s dared dress him down since, because you just don’t do that to a bonafide hero.” He glanced at the little ribbon on my blouse that indicated I’d won the Sword of Orion, and looked away. “A lot of our best men go to seed in very similar ways, and most of them seem to end up here. Sergeant Keldron only has sixty days or so left to serve, Middy. He keeps his uniform neat and shows up on time. Don’t press him, for the sake of the great thing he did genuinely once achieve. That’s an order, son.”

  And so it was with the rest of the men of my little detail. Corporal Sam Geisler, the bugler, was mentally deficient. He’d just barely passed the Corps entry tests at a time when the marines had been so desperate for men they’d take practically anyone. He too was near retirement after a lifetime spent shining shoes and cleaning weapons and digging latrines for reasons that lay eternally just beyond his comprehension. The other men helped him along, as they always had, or he couldn’t have functioned at all. Nor could he play a bugle note to save his life; his instrument was equipped with a gadget that played a slightly-imperfect version of ‘Taps’ upon the push of a button, while he puffed his cheeks and pretended. To my knowledge none of the bereaved had ever tumbled to it. It was standard practice, real buglers being as scarce as they were.

  The rest of the honor guard was all the same—misfits and screwups one and all, though more of the to-be-pitied type than scoundrels. Private Madsen was continually in and out of the mental hospital, and had been ever since watching the rest of his platoon being burned alive by an Imperial flamethrower. Parts of Corporal Stuart’s brain had been so badly damaged in a training accident that sometimes he was unable to speak aloud for minutes at a time. No one suffering from such a handicap could ever be used in combat, but his father had died winning a Sword of Orion of his own and the corporal wanted to remain in the corps worse tha
n anything, even though he was entitled to a pension equivalent to his full pay. He could march, present arms and salute satisfactorily, so why shouldn’t he serve on an honor guard? My men were all like that, every last one of them—has-beens or never-weres with nothing in their futures but a long slow decline and someday an honor-guard of their own to fire a few blanks as they were lowered into the ground. It was downright depressing, it was.

  But then again, this was Graves Registration. Depression was our leading occupational hazard.

  Because there were so few officers in our training program at any one time, no attempt was made hold formal classes. Instead Commander Pollard handed me a boxful of databooks and told me to study them in my spare time—he’d be glad to help me if I had any questions. And I must admit that they were surprisingly interesting! I’d never really thought much about it, but Graves Registration units by their very nature did a lot more than just bury the dead, maintain cemeteries, and console the living. Someone had to police the battlefields once all the fighting was done, and the cleanup process involved far more than just removing the corpses. Fresh battlefields could be incredibly dangerous places, littered with unexploded ordnance, loaded (and often damaged) weapons, mines, booby-traps, and who knew what all else. Once the Field Engineers had been responsible for all this hardware, but no more! My interest actually began to flicker a little as I learned how to safely salvage and repackage everything from bayonets to anti-ship missiles for re-issue. It was fascinating, really; as a Graves Registration officer I’d be expected to know how to safely handle nearly every weapons system in the inventory. No one could be proficient with them all, of course; I wouldn’t, for example, be expected to actually know how best to employ a Mark Thirty-Seven Heavy Anti-Vehicle Mine during an actual battle. But I did have to know how to recognize one, look it up in my reference files, and put it into ‘safe’ mode. I even had to know about antigravs and cargo lifts and stuff—anything I might find on a battlefield. The same went for Imperial equipment, too! I’d grown interested in military hardware during my time as a wargamer. Now, my professional working library included the most complete possible catalog of operating manuals for every known weapon. It didn’t even begin to make up for not being assigned with James to the Javelin, but at least it was something!

  And despite myself, I took a rather macabre interest in the more gruesome aspects of my new career as well. Militaries have been dealing with the problems related to the disposal of large numbers of bodies since time immemorial, and it was a bit shocking to discover just how much effort, thought and planning went into the process. For example, everyone in the armed forces, whatever the branch, had a datachip implanted under their skin. But we were also required to wear plain, low-tech identity-discs around our necks. Most fighting men believed that this was simply a useless traditional holdover meant to annoy us. The truth, however, was that the disc was a tool meant to make things easier for the burial details. When we came upon a casualty we were to remove the disc, use a special tool to cut it in half, and then (utilizing the built-in notch, whose proper function hardly anyone knew) wedge half of it between the corpse’s front teeth. The other half either went into a special holder on the body-bag or served as an identifier on a temporary grave-marker if a field-burial was necessary. Implanted chips, experience had shown, often failed via scorching, blast-pressure, electro-magnetic disruption, or being physically separated from the body. Identity discs weren’t infallible either, but of the two they were more versatile and had the better track record.

  There was all sorts of fascinating stuff to learn! A lot of it had to do with morale—not ours, but that of the fighting soldiers. We were authorized to maintain a separate chain-of-command and even in many cases our own supply structure at every level from top to bottom, all for the sole purpose of remaining under the average fighting-man’s radar. It wasn’t that the navy was ashamed of us or anything like that, but the reasoning was that fighting officers would be more aggressive and less casualty-minded if we weren’t present at the same staff meetings with them, looking depressed and wearing our tombstones and shovels. “Out of sight, out of mind,” one of the chapters in my ‘Operations’ text was entitled, and it didn’t take me long to realize just how seriously the author meant it. While some cross-contact was inevitable, Graves Registrations units were whenever possible to maintain separate barracks, campsites, motor pools—we even had our own fleet of interstellar spacecraft! Generally speaking we were to wait until battlefields quieted down, partly to spare us from getting ourselves killed for no good reason but mostly so the troops on the ground would have moved on and therefore not see us going about our function. If working near fighting men was unavoidable, we were to perform our field operations as much as possible in the fog or near dusk and dawn when the light was poor. If someone saw us and tried to help out or maybe find one of his dead buddies, we were to sympathetically but firmly direct him away. Fighting men, the reasoning went, saw plenty of corpses. The fewer unnecessary ones, the better. A perfect operation, the author of the manual explained, was one in which rows of temporary headstones appeared as if by magic, with no one outside of our organization having a clue as to how and when it’d happened.

  I was also fortunate that I didn’t need to learn embalming. The navy outsourced that sort of thing to civilian outfits. Our job, besides sanitizing the battlefield weapon-wise, was to collect the dead and bury them in temporary graves, then dig them up later and freeze them for transport on one of our own specialized ships. I’d probably never have to get my hands dirty at all, because slave-Rabbits were used for all the nasty stuff.

  No, it wasn’t exactly the career I’d have chosen for myself—what sane person would? But it was better than I’d feared. I could stand five years of it, if I had to. Besides, it paid to always keep the big picture in mind. At least I wasn’t going to be the Rabbit spending his entire life scraping rotting corpses out of the mud and not even getting paid for it. If they could stand that, well…

  Who was I to complain?

  5

  I shocked the heck out of Commander Pollard two different ways during my short time assigned to his cemetery. First, I managed to pass all the qualification tests within ninety days of receiving my textbooks. Then I immediately requested a transfer to a field unit. My commanding officer tried to talk me out of both of these endeavors—“I know you’re passing the tests, David. But you can’t possibly be absorbing the material so quickly; not in any meaningful way at least. Everyone else takes at least a year, so why shouldn’t you? And… Why leave us so quickly? This is the best duty in the navy, son. You’ve already proven your courage; no one will ever question it again. So why be such a fire-eater?” By then I secretly despised the commander, though I never let him see it. It wasn’t that he was incompetent or a bad person or anything like that. In fact, as near as I could tell neither my standing in the House of Marcus nor the Rabbit-thing fazed him at all. He treated me as a social equal, in precisely the manner I wished everyone would, and even invited me to dine with his family if I ever felt lonely. But try as I might, even with all this to his credit I just couldn’t find it in my heart to respect the man. Perhaps what was missing was the Academy; like many other specialist officers he’d first been drafted straight out of college and then stayed on to make a career of Graves Registration. Such officers tended to care a lot more about personal comfort and rates of pay and such than we Academy types; they knew they’d never be admirals no matter what, so there was no reason for them to push themselves. It was therefore entirely natural that a man like Commander Pollard could never comprehend why I wanted to leave such a comfy berth, just as it was inevitable that I’d look down on him for not trying to find a way to grow and excel regardless of his situation. My dislike for the man wasn’t personal, in other words. It might even have been rooted in pity. Regardless, the sooner I moved on the better for us both.

  It was much easier to transfer out of a safe and lazy cemetery billet than into one,
I soon learned. I put in for all three of Graves Registrations’ active vessels— Arlington, Beechwood, and Westminster Abbey. It should’ve been a warning to me when all three were approved within ten days. Though Beechwood was by far the smallest of the three, she was currently docked just a few thousand miles above my head and provisioned, it was said, for a long cruise. If I was lucky, I reasoned, Lord Robert might’ve found a way to move me back into Engineering where I belonged by the time her voyage was over. And who knew? If I were lucky I might strike up a friendship with the chief engineer and complete my watchstanding certification as well. It was something to hope for, at least.

  Predictably, Commander Pollard was good-natured about the whole affair. First he wrote me up a very nice fitness report, then granted me a week’s leave to get my affairs in order before shipping out. I was thankful for this, as it allowed me to have some final fitting work done on my new Field-suit. I’d outgrown my old one while at the Academy, so I was grateful to the commander for his thoughtfulness. I also visited the family penthouse and had a very nice farewell dinner with Lord Robert, who nodded in approval when he saw how I’d solved a rather delicate problem. He’d given me the old Elijah-ring to wear, not to stash away in a musty old safe somewhere. Anyone who at all understood how the Marcus clan did things would’ve understood that. But my fingers were thinner than those of old Elijah, so much so that every jeweler I’d consulted told me that if I had it cut down to my size the fire-lily engraving would be ruined. So after thinking it over I bought a nice gold chain crafted so finely that it didn’t catch in my fur, threaded the ring through it and wore he whole affair around my neck. It might or might not’ve been within uniform regulations; individuals lucky enough to be authorized to wear House symbols were permitted to do so, which was why from day one a fire-lily had been embroidered on my shirt pocket. Signet rings were specifically permitted as well, as were certain religious necklaces. The navy had made special allowances for me over and over again, such as my sandals and ventilated tunics. So I didn’t feel that this was too far over the line.