Admiral Read online

  My own staff saw it as a big Imperial win as well, at least until they heard me give orders to our own top negotiators that their job was to do nothing but delay, delay, delay while appearing to make a genuine effort until something major broke. After that, I assured them, they wouldn't have any trouble at all obtaining a full surrender. "How will we know when this 'event' happens, Your Highness?" the team's top man, Ambassador Cutter asked.

  "You'll know," I replied with a smile, very carefully not looking at the Yan brothers. Due to their ostensibly low rank they were seated near the back of the room, in relative obscurity. "Believe me, you'll know. There won't be the slightest doubt in your mind. And then all this pointless slaughter will finally be over and done with."

  13

  The more one rose in rank, the further one was generally forced away from where things actually happened. Since I was now at the highest rank it appeared possible for me to ever achieve, well… I shouldn't have been surprised that I had to spend the next months in relative idleness while others did my bidding for me. On the surface I probably appeared to be the second incarnation of Alexander at his height in Persia, accepting surrender after surrender while leaving the local satraps in power until something more permanent could be arranged. By now merchantmen were leaving and rejoining the Third Fleet at pre-scheduled times and places, so that our trade-bribes remained tailor-made for each planet and far too tempting to refuse. While this apparently seemed an unremarkable accomplishment to the remaining contingent of diplomats aboard Javelin, I knew it was the result of a logistical ballet that might yet reduce those doing the choreography to gibbering madness before all was said and done. That was work I was pleased to remain distanced from; while my math was up to the challenge I wasn't so sure about my patience. On the other hand, oh how I yearned to be headed for Imperious along with the Yans, the dozens of spies they'd hand-selected back on Earth Secundus as the best in the business and all the deadly little toys they'd be smuggling along with them! Plus of course the most assuredly lethal items of all—an Emperor's ransom in plain gold bars conspicuously lacking any sort of serial number, and a whole notebook full of blank Royal Pardons bearing my personal seal. There had to be individuals close to the Imperial family who knew their necks were scheduled for Royal nooses. Certainly some of these also had clear enough vision to perceive that the war was lost. Combine an offer of personal enrichment with a promise of survival, and who knew what might be accomplished? If such individuals existed—and they practically always did, or so history informed me—then the Yans could be counted on to find and make full use of them during the weeks and months of slow, infinitely boring negotiations. Or if that didn't pan out there were three Rabbits in the entourage who'd been the first of their species to graduate spy-school. They might either act directly somehow, or perhaps arrange for a palace servant's uprising. I rather hoped that it'd be my fellow lapines who did the ultimate deed, frankly—it was fitting, somehow. Either way I had full faith in the Yans—they hadn't failed the kingdom yet.

  Until then I wandered from star to lonely star, accepting surrenders from the Empire's outlying worlds that I didn't believe really mattered anymore and perfecting an invasion plan I expected never to implement. It grew harder and harder to concentrate on the latter as time slipped by; increasingly I spent the days sitting alone in my cabin sipping tea, staring at the bulkheads and worrying about all sorts of things I had no control whatsoever over. Nestor would never have let me fall so low. But of course he was off on his own adventure, one he'd earned a thousand times over and more. So I paced and fretted my heart out over what I'd tell Mr. and Mrs. Yan if their beloved sons were caught and died a spy's death on this last, most dangerous of all their missions. I wondered if I'd be able to face up to the responsibility of giving the order for someone else to lead the final Jump into the Imperious system, while I sat on my silly throne and wore my silly bejeweled hat and overall rendered myself perfectly useless. I wondered how many good people were still dying every single day as the war sputtered on because I'd been unable to come up with a quicker way of ending it. I wondered how long my fellow ex-slaves, or for that matter the humans, would love me if I made a terrible hash of things somehow and was thrown back in a bloody repulse. And above all I wondered if I really was doing the right thing on the grand scale—would such "easy" treatment encourage another group of House Lords to break away again in the future, so that the whole pointless mess was repeated?

  It went on and on and on. I think it was the gaming nights that kept me sane, though even at those I grew sharp-tongued sometimes, particularly when I'd made an error I felt I shouldn't have. If I could make a mistake on the gaming board, after all, then could I not do the same when lives and more than lives were at stake?

  It wasn't until Jean invited me to a private dinner in his cabin and made guarded attempts to find out what was wrong that I finally realized what a funk I'd slipped into. "I'm terribly sorry," I told him as he finished up his dessert. "Truly I am—is it showing that badly?"

  "You're under a huge amount of stress, David," he replied. "One that frankly I don't want to even try and imagine." Then he looked away. "And your primary support mechanism is gone."

  I sighed. "That's part of it, I suppose. Yet… I've been cantankerous before, when Nestor's been around. Though perhaps not this badly."

  "Perhaps not," Jean replied in a diplomatic tone that made me wince. Then he put down his fork and sighed. "You need a friend, sir. Some sort of… companion."

  My mouth went hard again for a moment, until I recalled that Jean didn't know about Frieda or how I'd been carefully designed to love only her. In fact, perhaps he… "Nestor and I are close, Jean," I explained softly, forcing a half-smile. "But just to make certain that you and I understand each other, we're not that close."

  My Chief Courtier nodded back, though I could see there had been a bit of doubt in his mind on the matter after all. "Still, sir… You should make more friends. Particularly if Nestor is to have a career of his own."

  I nodded back, then decided to unburden myself further. "We Rabbits touch frequently. And hug and snuggle regardless of gender as well, you know. This is social behavior, not sexual—I'm sure you’ve seen it in your household staff." I sighed. "It's not entirely optional. We need the contact for good emotional health. And yet…" I looked at Jean, and he flinched at the pain in my eyes. "Where am I to go, Jean? What Rabbit may the Prince of the Realm safely and properly hug, here where everything is so formal all of the time and in the absence of Nestor, who knows how to be discreet?" I sighed and shook my head. "Or maybe I'm exaggerating the differences between my kind and yours after all—His Highness King Albert and I exchanged letters for a few months before his stroke, if you didn't know it. Daily, almost."

  His eyebrows rose. "No, I didn't."

  I smiled, though it was a sad one. "He didn't really have time for so much personal correspondence. But anyway… He poured his heart out about how much he wished he could step down in his dotage and just be an ordinary person for at least a few months at the very end of things." I sighed and shook my head. "He never actually used the word, but I've come to understand that he was lonely almost to the point of death. It may actually have killed him, in fact—who knows why his health deteriorated the way it did?"

  "He was a widower," Jean observed. "That couldn't have helped."

  "He never really loved his queen," I replied. "The marriage was political, not rooted in romance." I smiled again. "It's why James, er…"

  Jean smiled back—the whole universe now knew that my adopted brother's father was Albert's bastard. "Well…" He looked at me oddly. "I realize that circumstances rather limit your choices. But have you considered meeting a few does on your own?"

  I forced myself to maintain the same expression on my face that had been there before Jean said the one thing that was capable of throwing me into a truly Royal state of fury. My gengeneering was still both very illegal and frowned-upon by society at large.
If the slightest hint ever got out, well… It'd not only totally disgrace me, but the resulting scandal would probably unseat James from his throne as well. And that'd mean civil war, which would in turn mean that our entire lives had been wasted, and… Well, it was unthinkable. "It's so hard," I explained calmly. "I mean… How many other Rabbits are there who can hold up their heads in society, buck or doe either one? Where would I find anyone even halfway suitable?"

  "There is that, I suppose," Jean replied, scowling again. "It's not something I'd considered." Then he sighed and shrugged. "Any of us would do anything for you—the inner circle, I mean." He looked away. "I'm sorry that this has to be so painful for you, David. It doesn't seem right, somehow, after all you've done for the rest of us."

  I shrugged. "There are worse fates. You'll never know how close I came once to ignoring a ringing phone. If I'd done so, I'd probably be an Imperial slavebunny right now. One that nobody ever so much as heard of."

  Jean's eyes bugged slightly. "My god! I'm certainly glad that didn't happen!"

  "Me too," I replied with the same fixed smile. Even though I wasn't quite so sure anymore if that was really the truth.

  14

  And so it went on and on and on. We rendezvoused and re-rendezvoused with fresh merchies and our short-legged destroyers were from time to time relieved. But the Third Fleet moved ever onwards through the eternal night, accepting the surrenders of everything from tiny one-man trading outposts to underway merchantmen to, sometimes, entire groups of planets. We were past the richest pickings now, and had moved out into the less lucrative agricultural and frontier regions. Here the slavebunnies outnumbered their masters by large multiples, which was all to the good for my purposes since the humans were so terrified or a revolt breaking out at any moment. "It's all because of you," Jean explained to me once. "The Imperial officials won't say anything in your presence, of course—there's no polite way for them to even bring the subject up when you're around. But I think that if it hadn't been for the big revolt on Boyen Twelve, the Imperials in these parts wouldn't be giving up nearly so easily. "

  I nodded back; unlike our earlier conquests, which had depended entirely on the Imperial Battle Line to defend them, these more recent planets were protected by locally-based aerospace fighters and defense battalions, much as Wilkes Prime had been. They were able to resist, in other words; some even had local destroyer squadrons assigned to protect them from far-ranging Royal raids. And yet they too gave up without a shot. "It must've been quite a thing, that revolt. In order to stir up so much fear, I mean."

  Jean nodded. "You wouldn't believe the stories if you heard them, David. Mass lynchings of the Masters alongside their children, the burning of farmhouses, a total descent into animal savagery..." He shook his head. "In fact, I don't believe them. They're loaded with too many internal contradictions. Pretty much all the stories agree, for example, that the Imperial Governor was allowed to leave the planet unharmed with his family and go home in a passenger ship that happened to be in orbit at the time. And yet... I also hear claims that the Rabbits slaughtered every single human they could get their claws on and used the corpses to fertilize their hayfields." He shook his head. "Those two just don't add up, sir. Anybody who did the one would never have done the other."

  I wriggled my nose in thought; stranger things had happened, and yet... "Forgive me for pointing this out, Jean—I certainly don't mean to imply that it applies either to you or any of my other closest friends. But… Humans aren't exactly fond of having a Rabbit beat them at almost anything. Not games, not business, and certainly not at war. So perhaps a lot of what you're hearing are mere stories, made up by humans to justify their losing?"

  "Very likely," Jean agreed. "In fact, I was about to suggest the same."

  And so things remained until at long last Frobisher and her consorts finally returned to the Third Fleet, and Nestor with them. Fortunately we were quite near her Jump point, being just a couple hours from using it ourselves. "I'd prefer to report in person, sir," Nestor reported to me from the big viewscreen on the bridge. "If you don't mind."

  I smiled wide as I drank in the sight of a Rabbit standing tall and proud on the bridge of one of His Majesty's ships of the line, even if an obsolescent one, thoroughly in command and so far as I could tell fully respected by the humans sitting and standing all around him. Other people saw a certain Admiral Birkenhead in such a light all of the time these days, I knew. But for me, well...

  It was a new—and most welcome!—experience.

  "Of course!" I replied through the first smile I'd experienced in weeks. "In my working quarters, then?"

  He smiled back—perhaps he'd been lonely too? "That'd be perfect, sir! I'll see you in three hours!"

  15

  I chose to receive Nestor in private for a dozen different reasons. One was that he might wish to discuss sensitive information. Another was that this was his first big independent assignment, and he might very well have made serious mistakes—the first time was rough on everyone. Also, knowing he was a bit shy sometimes, I felt that he might give me more complete information without an audience.

  But the biggest reason, of course, was that I knew I was going to bunny-hug him half to death the moment I saw him, and it'd be best if that happened in private.

  Apparently he felt the same way, because crowbars couldn't have separated us for a long, wonderful time. Then we finally sat down in our respective chairs and got down to business. "Sir," he began. "The first thing I want to say is that for all these years I've completely underestimated you. I had no idea whatsoever of how hard it is to be in charge. I mean, none! It's not just the workload—it's all the worry."

  I smiled a little and nodded. "Thank you."

  "That said..." He sighed and shook his head. "The situation on Boyen Twelve was in many ways exactly as we expected it to be. And yet in even more ways it was beyond our wildest imaginings." He looked up from his folder. "Is it always that way?"

  "Pretty much," I assured him.

  "Anyway," he continued, once again intent on his notes. "Upon our arrival the first thing we noticed was that planetary traffic control was still operational. Not fully operational, mind you—it was over an hour before our entry into the system was noticed, and when decisions were required regarding what to do with us and what orbits to put us in, well... That took even longer. But..." He smiled. "The surprise was that it was working at all."

  I blinked. "Manned by Rabbits?"

  "Dogs, actually. Being part of the planet's security apparatus, it was sort of their bailiwick. They'd studied their masters for years, you see. So when the time came they weren't afraid to try it themselves. Though they freely admitted to me later that if anything major had gone offline they could never have repaired it."

  I blinked again. "I see."

  He smiled. "Anyway... They had a working planetary government up and running too, which was probably easier than it sounds since there were only a few hundred thousand on the planet. So we were able to negotiate properly and everything." He smiled and thumped his feet like a kit. "Piece of cake!"

  I smiled back, but didn't thump even though I felt like it. "Wow! That's pretty good for a bunch of ex-slaves." I let my expression sober again. "How did they succeed in rebelling?"

  "It was a carefully organized coup," Nestor explained. "I swear, whoever writes the first book about it is going to be rich; truth in this case is far stranger than fiction. There was this one Rabbit in a key position—she could read and write especially well, and so became an office assistant for an Imperial official in the Bureau of Economics. Over the years she set up a communications network with other literate Rabbits. It kept growing bigger until eventually the slaves were better informed about what was going on in the galaxy than their masters. They'd been making plans for ages when we won the Battle of Wilkes Prime, which they understood ended any real chance of Imperial reprisal. That's when they struck, sir, while the humans were still reeling in shock over such a h
orrid defeat. The Rabbits simply took up weapons and arrested every human in sight, while the Dogs were held back to deal with any organized resistance."

  "So it wasn't completely bloodless?"

  "No, sir. A few thousand humans tried to hole up in the governmental buildings in the capitol city." He frowned. "They were asked to surrender three times. Then, the Dogs burned the entire city to the ground. In their opinion they had no other choice; the humans were threatening to use nukes, and no one was sure if they really had them or not. Plus, of course, there were other holdouts here and there. But most of the civilian humans are still alive, sir, and though held captive are being treated decently. I made it a point to meet with their leaders several times."