Lieutenant (The David Birkenhead Series) Read online

  There was a long, long pause. “David,” the chief said. “Have you forgotten something? Like my rank badges, perhaps?”

  “No, sir!” I replied. “Of course not. But sir… Have you perhaps forgotten that I’m a line officer and you’re an engineer? With all due respect sir, I’m in command here. The captain’s dead, and Lieutenant Jeffries has deserted his post.”

  Suddenly Chief Lancrest seemed much less certain of himself. “I… I mean… We’ve always gotten along, right? So how about I come down and discuss this so-called plan of yours with you?”

  I decided to be gentle. It probably was quite difficult for an officer of the chief’s age and experience to defer to what must to him seem a mere child. The chain of command, however, was the chain of command. And it would brook no argument. “Yes, sir. We have always gotten along, and I respect you enormously. But we won’t be discussing anything once you get here, sir. Because I’m in command, and you’re going to obey my legal orders.” Then I hit the kill switch and turned to face Devin, who’d suddenly appeared at my elbow. “Pick out five of your best,” I instructed him. “Load them up with demolition charges and grenades, and two or three spools of wire. Have them meet me here. Then take the rest of the Rabbits and carry everything all the way down to Bottom Alley. The gear on the mess deck, too—especially the rockets and that tactical nuke we salvaged. The further down our stuff is, the harder it’ll be for the Imperials to get at.”

  “Bottom Alley, sir?” Devin asked.

  Of course; he’d been working out in open space. “That’s the nickname for Tunnel Zero,” I explained. “The very deepest one that runs right down the rock’s core. And, come to think of it, hold out one missile for me. Send someone reliable to find me with it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Devin replied with a nod. Then he was gone.

  And so I had at least four minutes for myself, I reckoned. I used one of them to remove my left boot, and half of another to slap an emergency patch on the rip the splinter had created. I was just about to slide my foot back into place when Nestor spoke up. “Wait, sir! You’re bleeding!”

  Of course I was bleeding; the wound stung like the very devil, too. But… “Nestor,” I explained. “There just isn’t time—“

  “Yes there is, sir!” And just like that the little Rabbit was peering intently at my calf. “It’s not deep at all!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a combination corkscrew and icepick, both of which devices he’d probably needed frequently in his role as cabin boy given the captain’s proclivities. Then he pulled a tiny flask out of another pocket. “Hold still!”

  He was right; the chip was indeed lodged quite near the surface. The icepick dug it out almost as quickly and easily as a real surgical instrument would’ve. The whisky burned as it hit the open wound, but once the pain passed I felt a lot better. And the bleeding was down to a trickle, too. I started to pull my boot on again, but before I could Nestor ripped a large piece of his shorts off and fashioned the material into a crude bandage. “Hold still,” he ordered. “You’re wiggling all over the place.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “It’s okay.” Then he looked up and smiled. “I’m done, sir!”

  “Good,” I replied. Then, despite the insanity and chaos I’d been dealing with all day, I forced a smile. “Thank you, Nestor.”

  He sort of glowed for a moment, then looked down at the hull plates. “No sir. Thank you.”

  18

  The chief, his mates and the Rabbits with the demolition charges all arrived at the same time. Fortunately the Rabbits were accustomed to going last, because Lancrest didn’t waste a nanosecond before opening up. “David!” he cried from halfway down the corridor, floating along at breakneck speed. “Son! I don’t think you—“

  There wasn’t time for that. “Go to Turret Ten,” I snapped. “The one that took so many hits. At one point the traverse and elevation motors were knocked out, so the Station’s people jury-rigged an auxiliary system. The Imperials slagged it when they boarded, but it’s an idiot-simple hoist-and-pulley set up. Get it working again, pronto! And see if you can’t connect a few outside cameras to the internal net so we can see what’s going on. Do that first, in fact. There’s not a second to spare!”

  “But… David! The Imperials are bound to board us! And… And…”

  “Do it!” I snapped, my face an angry snarl. It probably didn’t hurt any that my hand found my Sword hilt as well, though I had no intention of using it. Besides, at heart he was a good officer even if he’d never seen anything resembling combat and had therefore grown slow, lazy and sloppy. The clincher, of course, was that under the circumstances I really did outrank him and he knew it.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” he snapped as his old training began to reassert itself. “Right away, sir!” Then he flipped himself around and, followed by his crew, vanished.

  “All right,” I said turning to my Rabbits and shifting mental gears. These weren't sailors, I reminded myself, and had never been exposed to military discipline. They were also expert non-cooperators whenever they chose to be. Therefore an entirely different approach was required. Carefully, I smiled. “Thank you for your help, guys.”

  “No problem, sir!” Snow replied, smiling back. Then his expression faded. “Nestor said you’re hurt, sir.”

  I showed him the little patch on my calf. The clock was racing along, but with this group there was no sense in even trying to hurry. It’d just cost even more time in the end. “It’s not much. He bandaged it up real nice for me.”

  Snow nodded. “He’s good at first aid, Nestor is.” Then he looked down at the demolition charge in his arms, and it was time to get down to business.

  “We have a nasty little job to do,” I explained. “The Imperials are going to board us, probably somewhere near the bridge…”

  “Why the bridge, sir?” Cutter asked, his brow wrinkled in confusion. He asked lots questions in training classes too, and I had to remind myself that under normal circumstances I actively encouraged him to do so.

  So I forced another smile. “For two reasons. One is that the big guns are normally controlled from there, and even though they don’t work anymore that’s sort of automatically where they’ll go without thinking about it. Like how most of us always brush ourselves from the head down when there’s a million different ways we could do it. The other is that the hull in that area is like swiss cheese; there’s no pressure because it’s so shot up, and there’s plenty of holes for them to come in through.”

  He nodded. “All right. I understand now.”

  “Good! I’m going to take us to the place nearest the bridge where I can access to the ship’s computer. Once I'm sure of where the Imperials are going to land, we’re going to rush in and wire that whole section of the Station to blow. They won’t be expecting that, because people generally don’t blow up large parts of their own ships. In our case, however, it doesn’t matter. We don’t need it all anyway.”

  “What if they land in more than one place, sir?” Felix asked.

  “Then I’ll have to figure something out,” I explained. “But I doubt that’ll happen; destroyers don’t carry very many marines because their real job is to rush around and see what’s happening, and maybe shoot up a merchant ship or another destroyer now and again. They’ll want to stay close together because if they break up the groups will be so small that we might wipe them out one by one. That’s called ‘concentration of force’. It’s a basic principle of strategy.”

  “Concentration of force,” Felix muttered. “I see.”

  I smiled again. “Anyway, I’ll tell you guys where to set the charges. Then we’ll wire them up to a central board, and you guys will be done. In fact… once everything’s all set up why don’t you go down to Bottom Alley and take a little rest?”

  Snow’s whiskers bristled. “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “These people are… They're same ones who made all the navy people here kill themselves?”


  I nodded. “Yes. I’m afraid that’s basically the situation.”

  “And… You’re a navy person too, even though you’re a Rabbit?”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “Yes. But—“

  “So,” he interrupted, speaking right over me in a manner no enlisted man would ever dare attempt, “that means that they’re going to make you kill yourself too, if they can. Right?”

  It took me a moment to figure how best to answer, during which times the Rabbits’ noses wriggled furiously. “Either that or kill me outright,” I finally said. “But don’t worry! They’re not after you guys. All you’re going to have to do is surrender—in fact, I promise on my honor that I’ll work it out as soon as I can. Though it won’t be to these destroyers, I fear—things are happening much too…”

  My voice trailed off as I realized that all five of the Rabbits were staring at me in abject horror. Snow was the first to recover, however, as usual. “Well,” he said, exchanging glances one by one with his peers. “We’ll deal with that when we come to it, just like you always say, sir. In the meantime I guess we ought to get to work.”

  19

  There must’ve been a thousand books in print on the proper and efficient employment of military explosives. Unfortunately I’d never read any of them. So for the moment I was limited to the bare essentials—just wire up what looked like enough charges, and make them go ‘boom’. Simple, efficient, purposeful, sudden; these were the hallmarks of a successful military operation. Perhaps just this once we could let the ‘efficient’ part slide?

  Once it became obvious that the destroyers were indeed making a close approach to the Station’s bridge, we began wiring the place up like a bunch of long-eared demons. It was glorious in a way, destroying what was quite possibly the most expensive part of the costliest installation in Royal space. I personally emplaced a satchel charge right next to the Station’s billion-credit main targeting computer—it looked like it’d make fine shrapnel indeed. And later I found out that Snow set up another right under the Station Commander’s seat. We stuck the things practically everywhere, so many that we barely had time to finish before the destroyers braked to a halt just a couple hundred yards outside the Station’s skin.

  Then we waited. But not so very long, because the Imperials were nothing if not well-drilled. They formed up beautifully outside their ships, coalesced into a single mass of perhaps fifty men, and began thrusting our way. They might as well have been on parade. Best of all, they headed directly towards the center of my little minefield. “Well,” I said to Snow once I saw how things were proceeding. “I guess you guys had better fall back now. Thank you so much for the hard work! You all did very, very well!”

  Snow blushed and lowered his ears; he always did that when praised. “Thank you, sir. But… Couldn’t we stay and help?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure you mean well, all of you. But you can’t have any idea of what combat’s like. It’s something you have to train years for, to ready yourselves physically and psychologically. Besides… We can’t let the enemy see that you’ve done too much. If they do they’ll treat you as soldiers instead of property and won’t accept your surrender. Then you’ll all die, and… and….” Somehow, I couldn’t finish.

  Snow nodded. “Sir,” he observed, “if anyone knows how awful a battlefield is, it’s us. And… You weren’t trained for combat before your first time either.”

  My jaw worked. Wherever I went in the universe, it seemed, the Rabbits all knew my story in the minutest detail. I’d never once discussed the matter with a single bunny, but somehow they always knew. “That’s true enough,” I admitted. “But… Take your Rabbits and go down below anyway, Snow. I’ll handle matters up here by myself. This isn’t your war, and you have no stake in it. So let there be some survivors this time, eh?” I smiled faintly. “Though I’m quite certain you’d all do as well as any humans would. I’m prouder of you all than you can possibly imagine—every last one of you.”

  Snow nodded. “I see,” he said, his voice very soft. “Thank you for caring so much about us, sir. We’ve never had it so good.” Then, obeying orders as he always had, he vanished.

  That left me with a little time to think things through and make final preparations. My armor-piercing missile had arrived, and on his own initiative Devin had sent a hand-blaster along with it. My ears burned with embarrassment when I saw the thing; how could I have forgotten to ask for one? But the embarrassment was also mixed with pride—not so long ago neither Devin nor any of the others would’ve lifted a finger without being told precisely what to do in painstaking detail, and even then would’ve taken as long as they possibly could about doing it. Now they were easily the finest labor squad in the navy. In all fairness I probably deserved part of the credit. But the pride I took in them far exceeded anything that might’ve related to ‘excellent’ ratings on an efficiency report. No matter where I went or what happened to me, Devin and Snow and Nestor and all the rest would always be my brothers in a way that even James couldn’t match. It was a brotherhood that reached down deep into the bedrock of who and what I was. It was right that they should survive the battle, I decided, right in a way that transcended even my duty to the navy. There was a spark in them now that was good for Rabbitkind and therefore good for everyone in the long run. If their fire had to spread in the Imperium rather than the Kingdom, then that was the way it had to be. But it was something altogether too rare and precious to allow a mere war to destroy.

  By the time the first Imperial’s magnetic sandals locked onto the bridge’s plating, I was long past worrying about my bunnies. Enemy marines always merited one’s full attention. This was doubly true when one had only a smattering of cameras to work with; it hadn’t been our job to repair the things, so all we had left were what’d survived the last battle and months of subsequent vacuum exposure. Mostly these were out on the hull. In the end, all I could do was hope that the Imperials would follow the manual and mostly remain massed together until they could assess the nature and extent of the opposition. So I waited until they’d all disappeared into the hull, counted to fifty…

  …and threw the master switch.

  It was overkill—huge, massive overkill. The entire Station trembled and shook as my charges effectively shredded not just the command and control center, but everything for three decks around it. Even at what I’d thought was a safe distance the blast stunned me so badly that I spent most of a valuable minute staggering about and listening to the atmosphere shrieking into space, not quite sure of where I was or what I was supposed to do next. Then I finally shook it off, picked up my missile, and began picking my way through the wreckage.

  I had a destroyer to kill.

  20

  Officers in any navy don’t tend to react well when their carefully-laid plans go suddenly awry. They’re so accustomed to detail-planning operations months in advance that over time they lose the ability to think on their feet and react instantly to a wholly-unforeseen situation. During that crucial moment, he who moves quickly enough can often turn what should’ve been a mere enemy setback into disastrous defeat. The opportunity doesn’t come everyone’s way, nor does the improvisation always work. But sometimes…

  The bridge was in far worse shape than I’d ever dreamed; the explosions had twisted major structural girders into pretzels. If the Station were ever rebuilt, the whole sector would have to be cut off and scrapped. It’d cost billions. But more importantly for my purposes, the Imperials were dead, dead, dead. There wasn’t a complete body to be seen anywhere, with the exception of a single private I came across wedged in a corner where a beam had shielded him from most of the blast. He wasn’t moving, but his suit was still pressurized so I carefully shot him in the head as I passed just to be sure. The Imperial was probably already gone, but as twisted-up as he was I did him a favor if he wasn’t.

  It took me so long to work my way out into free space that I was sure the destroyers would be gone. But apparently th
eir commanders were still in a state of shock over how I’d just blown my own command’s brains out and killed so many of their men in the process. My guess was that they were still broadcasting their recall signals over and over in the hope that at least part of the boarding party had survived after all, while aboard the flagship a regular debating society was deciding what to do next. They’d been sent to secure what they thought was an abandoned Station, with what seemed like plenty enough firepower to handle whatever trivial Royal forces might be about. The Imperial commander would naturally be reluctant to return with the mission unaccomplished. It’d… look bad. So, moving carefully and never exposing much of myself to view, I took shelter behind a bit of warped armor plate and aimed my missile not at the flagship but the second destroyer in line. Why should I kill a man who was so conveniently predictable?

  Normally you can’t destroy a warship with a man-launched missile. A Field-based powerplant makes the ship faster and more maneuverable than the missile, for one thing. Plus the missile’s range is very short and its warhead relatively small. But this time the target was at rest, not two hundred yards away. Destroyers carried little in the way of armor. And I knew exactly where to hit her.

  So, very carefully, I lined up my sights on destroyer number two’s nearest warp coil housing and fired.

  The projectile struck before I’d even released the trigger, penetrating through the coil and then almost certainly at least one more beyond it before exploding deep in the engineering spaces. Within a second or two a chain of secondary explosions erupted like firecrackers. The wound might or might not be mortal; it was too soon to say. But it was deep and debilitating for certain.

  “Chief!” I called out, breaking radio silence at last. “How are you coming on the turret?”

  “What on earth are you doing, David?” he cried. Obviously he was monitoring the cameras as well. “Get out of there before she blows!”