Commander Read online

  After that, all of the tedium and paperwork got a lot easier. For with our first ship, at last the fencibles found its true purpose.

  12

  "Tench-hut!" Sergeant Piper bellowed three short months later, as Richard's commissioning flag rose up her absurd little mast and burst open at the top. "Hand salute!" Only naval vessels carried masts these days; flags and their related ceremonial were a distinct anachronism aboard vessels that fought in places where there could be no breezes. But they were much-beloved anachronisms as well as legally-required ones; not for a moment did any of us so much as consider dispensing with them aboard fencible vessels.

  Then James stepped forward to the microphone. "It is with great gratitude and honor," he began in his nasal voice, "That I welcome His Majesty's Auxiliary Vessel Richard into the king's service..."

  For all his strengths as an administrator and leader of men James had a rather poor speaking voice, I decided as I stared across our spanking-new barracks complex and at the newly renovated Richard, whose Field was powered up just enough to make her glitter and sparkle in the sun. He wouldn't mind if I let my attention drift, I knew—after all, I'd helped write his speech, just as he had mine. So instead of listening to James enumerate the crimes of the Imperials against our common homeworld and wax eloquent about the future of the fencibles on all Royal worlds once we'd proven the concept, I smiled to myself in satisfaction as I admired Richard's crew, all formed up in neat lines in front of their shiny, freshly-refurbished ship. I was still amazed that we'd come so far so quickly, once we made the decision to purchase her. Part of it was pure luck; even before we could send out a destroyer a Royal revenue cutter had Jumped into the system on a perfect vector to intercept our new purchase and bring her home. That alone had halved the time it should’ve taken us to bring the former mining-service vessel into commission. We'd also been able to streamline the process by borrowing some key personnel from the navy—we could never have come up with a trained engine-room crew on such short notice, for example. And such volunteers we'd been blessed with! We could've easily manned Richard three times over with a skilled, all-human crew if we'd chosen. The fencibles wouldn't always be able to be so choosy, however, and a precedent needed to be set. While I chose a few humans to fill certain of the lowest ranks, for the most part Richard was the first commissioned vessel in history (so far as I knew) whose crew included Rabbits under arms. Certainly, her officers were all human—I was the only qualified Rabbit officer there was, after all. But I hand-selected each and every one of said humans, rejecting them freely at the slightest sign of smugness or self-assurance in my presence. And Snow returned just in time to go through a crash-course on military discipline and take over as sergeant in charge of the tiny marine detachment. My classmate Jean ended up in command, and I was confident that he'd deal with the volatile social problems that were certain to arise as well as anyone could.

  "...someone who of course needs no introduction," James was just finishing up as I returned my attention to the real world around me. "David Birkenhead, the hero of Zombie Station!"

  I took my time stepping up to the podium so as to let the cheering die down. As was our habit at such events, James and I took a moment to embrace like brothers in front of the cameras—we never missed a chance to broadcast the fact of our personal alliance far and wide, so that no one would ever have any doubts that to make an enemy of one of us was to make an enemy of both. Then I stood at the microphone, notes fluttering in the wind.

  "Gentlemen of the press," I began. "My fellow natives of Marcus Prime..." I had to wait for the cheering to cease again after that—emphasizing our common birthplace was something that James had suggested, and sure enough he'd been right. "Today marks the beginning of not just a new branch of the armed forces, but of a new, tighter partnership between the civilian and military spheres of influence..."

  My speech was considerably longer than I'd have liked. But there was so much that simply had to be said! The fencibles, I explained, would be the province of the common man within the military establishment. "We'll soon be in need of far more officers and men than the nobility can possibly provide!" And we'd accept not just every able-bodied human, but Rabbits and eventually Dogs as well. "Marcus Prime has long offered proof that members of the gengineered species can and will be productive, useful citizens when offered the chance. Zombie Station has proven that we can serve as soldiers as well." By the time I was finished, what had begun as a noisy, celebratory crowd had turned quiet and thoughtful.

  After that the band played and sailors marched and there was much more in the way of pomp and ceremony. James and I hosted a banquet, and the highest-ranking officers from the fleet in orbit high above drank toasts to the new armed service far into the night. But there was a muted note to it all, and had been ever since I'd given my big speech. My god! the regular officers and nobles were asking themselves. Where is all this going to lead?

  Into the future, I could almost hear His Majesty whispering into his chocolate milk. A bigger, better and stronger future for us all.

  Including even the citizens of the Empire.

  13

  It was a very pleasant thing, it didn’t take me long to decide, to have a spaceship to order about. Not that I often got the chance—the orbiting fleet needed their errands run and their personnel transferred every bit as much during peacetime as when at war. While I probably could’ve held onto Richard a lot more than I did for our own uses, such as training and publicity, it was even more important that we begin working out the mundane, day-to-day details involved in servicing the fleet. I’d created special fuel indent forms, for example, which the Navy Department had approved in full. But... Would a purser stationed light-years from home actually know what to do with one when he saw it? Almost never, we quickly learned. There were a million such inevitable and unforeseeable bugs to work out, and the more Richard and her crew interacted with the regular fleet the quicker they’d be resolved.

  It was just as well that I’d been able to slide Jean into a command spot so quickly—his ship-purchasing mission with the House buyers had utterly flopped. It wasn’t his fault by any means; the issue was one of sheer economics. The shipbuyers had been instructed to collaborate closely with Jean when and where possible, but no one could’ve foreseen that they’d arrive back home just in time for the largest, most impressive auction of used interstellar vessels in recorded history. These were Javelin’s prizes, or at least those that’d broken through the blockade and made it back home to Royal space in one piece. They were the wildest assortment possible, of varying design, age, and purpose. Even more they were mostly very slow, which was part of why Javelin had been able to run them down and force their surrender to begin with. These traits combined to make them highly uninteresting to the fencibles. I had to admit, however, that in terms of renewing the House’s merchant fleet at a bargain price, well… They buyers couldn’t have done much better. Besides, there were sentimental factors involved as well. A small portion of the proceeds went into James’s pockets, as his share of the prize money. He in turn donated it to the recovery efforts. And I did the same when I learned that the Prize Court had ruled that since Zombie’s successful defense had made most of the captures possible, we were entitled to an equal share. The sum wasn’t all that large, but the newspapers gave our donations prominent headlines indeed. And, I was rather touched when the second-largest of these ships, a bulk-gas tanker, was rechristened the David Birkenhead. (The largest, of course, became the First Duke of Marcus.)

  So Jean was pleased indeed to be rewarded with an independent command after what a less understanding superior officer might’ve considered a complete failure. He did very well indeed; the endless headaches associated with his vessel being the first of its kind seemed to roll off of his back like water from a duck, and his social rank was complete assurance that Richard and its crew would be treated with dignity and respect wherever it went. Best of all, Snow sent me a letter assuring me that he was
treating the Rabbits well. In my book, there was no higher authority than that.

  Fortunately for the fencibles, Heinrich’s purchasing mission proved more successful. This one had ordered eighteen brand-new ships, of which a round dozen were mining-support craft and thus near-clones of Richard. We accepted every last one of these latter into the fencibles even before their keels were laid down. These would be the first of the shared-duty ships that would constitute the bulk of our fleet, as we could only justify a single full-time flagship. The House of Marcus bent over backwards cooperating with us on these, up to and including letting us help select their officers and crews long before the ships were delivered. Soon Sergeant Piper was out bellowing and screaming on the parade-ground again, while a mixed platoon of humans and Rabbits stared in slackjawed awe at his mastery of the art of profanity. The plan was for each crew to receive their ship while still in uniform and on active duty, under the orders of her merchant-marine skipper. Then they’d go through a naval-type shakedown until everyone and everything was in full fighting trim. After she passed her final test we’d put her guns in storage and let her serve in her civilian role for two years or so. At that time we’d retrain and requalify everyone all over again. It was the best balance between military necessity and civilian economic need I’d been able to come up with, though because it was based entirely on seat-of-the-pants judgment rather than any kind of actual experience I fully expected to have to make changes in the future. But we had to start somewhere.

  Heinrich also brought back some bad news. “The Imperials are astir,” were the first words out of his mouth when I greeted him upon his return. “They’ve laid down a battlecruiser of their own, sir—maybe she’s even a match for Javelin. And they’re demanding the same trade concessions they just relinquished.” This was hardly unexpected news—our triumph in the last conflict was very much akin to my victory at chess during the war games of so long ago. Yes, I’d beaten my opponent. But by any reasonable measure he remained a far more competent player than I’d ever be, and the ploy I’d used against him would work only once. In any rematch, he’d be far more likely to defeat me than I him. The Imperial forces and even the base Imperial economy were designed to fight a series of short, sharp wars, consuming the Kingdom in small, easy-to-swallow bites. We’d disrupted them this last time not by outfighting them, but rather by jamming up their internal traffic flow so badly that it was impossible for them to prosecute a successful war until the mess was resolved. Well, it was resolved now, though they’d been forced to sue for peace in order to make it happen. And even though we’d taken and swallowed a small bite of their territory for once, the core Imperial forces were still practically undamaged and ready to try again. Near as anyone could tell, their leadership was ready as well. Readier than ever, in fact, after being humiliated. So, in the minds of most of us Royal officers, at least, it wasn’t a matter of if there’d be another war, but when.

  “I see,” I replied with a smile. “Well, we’ll just have to be ready for them then, won’t we?”

  “We will be, sir,” he answered. “Or at least here we’ll be ready. The fencibles, I mean. And the rest of the House of Marcus, for that matter. I’m truly impressed with how much our friend James is accomplishing. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but he ordered two hundred atmospheric-defense fighters. That’s as many as any five other worlds!”

  I nodded, scowling at the memory of how the last remnants of the Marcus fighter squadrons had sacrificed themselves to cover the launch of Broad Arrow so long ago.

  Apparently James hadn’t forgotten either; our fliers had been hopelessly outnumbered, and he clearly didn’t intend to allow that to happen again. The purse-strings had been similarly loosened for the purchase of fleet-support facilities and surface-based defense battalions. It was hoped that some of these latter could be made up of Rabbits, and though Henrich didn’t know it yet his next assignment would involve planning and implementing their training. Ground fencibles, they’d be called, counterparts to the part-time fighting men who’d once manned shore batteries.

  “They caught us by surprise last time, Heinrich. It was one of the saddest, most wretched things I’ve ever seen. But times have changed and the element of surprise is gone. If they attack us here again, they’ll damned well wish they hadn’t.”

  14

  It came as quite a shock when one day I suddenly realized that I had well over a thousand individuals under my command. Some of them were part-timers, yes—the crews of the eight mining ships we’d so far welcomed into the fencibles, for example, as well as the Rabbits of the single ground-fencible unit that Heinrich was still struggling to bring into service. This last was still a long way from being combat-ready; it was to be scattered out among a dozen of Marcus Prime’s satellites, both natural and artificial, and equipped with old weapons that’d been scavenged from scrapped dreadnoughts. Both the nature of the job itself and the scattered condition of the unit demanded significant initiative and decision-making capabilities far down into the lower ranks—in some locations, there wouldn’t be a human to seek guidance from within many light-minutes.

  My classmate at first had great difficulty replicating my success with the Zombie Rabbits. It wasn’t his fault; he simply couldn’t bond with them in the same way that I could. So I not only sent out Fremont and Nestor to aid and advise him, but finally shucked off all the responsibilities I could manage and gave the matter my personal attention.

  The Rabbits in question, it didn’t take me very long to decide, were made of very good stuff indeed. Though they weren’t graves registration bunnies who perforce had a good grasp of what combat might be like, they were one and all experienced spacehands. No truly stupid individual—human or Rabbit either one—ever lasts long working in vacuum, nor do those deficient in the common sense department. And yet… It was the early days of Beechwood all over again. The Rabbits were too timid even to meet my eyes when I first arrived, much less ask questions, though every last one had begged for the opportunity to serve with the fencibles. I was certain that given time something could be made of them, but the fact was that there was only one of me and I had so many, many other fish to fry. It was a pretty problem indeed, and one that might’ve proven insoluble without Fremont and Nestor’s expert help. “Sir,” Fremont suggested when I held a private Rabbits-only meeting on the subject. “How about if we just show them?”

  So it came to pass that the three of us spent a week in class together with the other Rabbits, learning how to serve as crewmen on obsolete weapons that we’d almost certainly never have cause to operate again. It was fun, really—even though the patient, long-suffering petty officer in charge of the class was “in on the gag”, it was clear by the end of the first day that he was growing weary of the endless questions we three came up with. We even asked for an extra break now and again; the other Rabbits were frozen in shock! (Afterwards, I made sure that these breaks were incorporated into the schedule permanently, even if it did add a couple days to the course. These Rabbits weren’t merely learning how to fire guns. They were being introduced to an entirely new role in life and society, and it was obvious to me that we were attempting to move them along far, far too quickly.) I also turned-to for deck-swabbings and such with the rest of the mob, to demonstrate that one form of work was as important as any other. While they of course didn’t achieve full psychological independence in that single week, it was enough to infect them with the virus and that was what mattered most. While I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to see them in charge of setting the kingdom’s monetary policy or designing new hyperdrive systems, given a little support from their officers and well-written guidelines the best of the group would likely prove able to make good, rational decisions on when to shoot and what to target.

  And who could say? Maybe their grandkids might someday set monetary policy and design hyperdrives after all?

  I left Fremont to act as Heinrich’s consultant, but had to bring Nestor back home with me. I felt guilty s
ometimes about holding him back by keeping him on as my personal batman and aide; there weren’t half enough Free Rabbits to go around and the more I grew to know my undersized friend the better I appreciated his true capabilities. It would’ve almost certainly been better to send him to some university or another—I’d never even heard of anyone else learning so much so fast solely through independent study. He was obviously officer or executive material in his own right, save for the fact that he remained so painfully shy with everyone but me. Which I couldn’t blame him for, of course, after what’d been done to him for so long. Even more to the point, he absolutely refused to even consider any other career. “You freed me, sir,” he explained once when I broached the subject. “Even more than you did the others, and at far greater risk. I owe you everything, and don’t want any other job.” I kept him on without rank, like Fremont, so that he’d be free to come and go pretty much as he pleased. He served as my runner, butler, cook, aide, servant, and quite often good friend and confidante. Every time I walked past a work-gang of bunnies maintaining flower beds or collecting garbage, I thought of how Nestor’s talents had been squandered as a mere cabin-servant, never mind the continual abuse. How many other Rabbits like him were being wasted as menial laborers? His Majesty had once told me that in his view half of his subject’s talents were being frittered away via the mere fact of slavery. The older I grew, the wiser His Highness became.