Commander (20 page)

Instead of answering, he stabbed his red button. All space everywhen went insane for a moment as the imperfectly set-up Jump and damaged Field half-twisted our engineering plant out of reality. Then we switched to the view ahead...

…and there was the armored colossus of New Geneva hanging in the middle distance like a misshapen balloon.

39

I was long past the point of exhaustion; the analgesic and alertness shots weren’t working nearly so well anymore as they had a few hours back. My body was beginning to remember that it was badly wounded after all, and was no longer so easily fooled on that score. But at least I’d gotten a few hours of rest while undergoing surgery. Except for some too-brief moments of personal relief, the rest of the bridge crew had been at their posts ever since a few hours before the attack on the battlecruiser. They not only looked it, they smelled it—the odor of dirty, exhausted and frightened humanity filled the air. Sadly, I couldn’t dismiss them below quite yet. There were still critical moments ahead of us.

The New Genevans were nothing if not prompt—I’d heard that their military was top notch if small, and their watchkeeping certainly proved to be up to snuff. They maintained a small fleet of revenue cutters in order to patrol local space; one of these, unsurprisingly, was sitting just on their side of Point Eight to keep an eye on things. “Royal Auxiliary Cruiser,” it signaled us within two minutes of completing our Jump. “This is Capain Akeno Watanabe, of the New Genevan Republic cutter
Bodensee
. You are in violation of our neutrality. Go about immediately.”

I smiled, and for once used video to reply. “Greetings, Captain Watanabe!” I replied from amidst the many bandages swathing me. “This is Captain David Birkenhead, of HMS
Richard
. I regret that this is impossible; we’ve sustained severe battle damage, and while I’m not quite certain yet I suspect that our engines have made their last Jump without a complete overhaul. Therefore, I regret to inform you that as much as we’d like to return to Imperial space, we’re incapable of doing so.”

There was a pause as Watanabe’s eyes widened. “You’re dead!” he answered at last. “Missing for over a year! Though there have been rumors…”

I smiled again, for once pleased that my fame had preceded me. “Not quite yet,” I replied. Then I let my expression fade. “We accept voluntary internment. My men and I won’t put up a fight— in fact, I’m not sure that we could if we tried. Send a boarding party, if you like. But we’re done and we know it.”

There was another pause; Watanabe had to know the rules at least as well as I did, yet to my knowledge no other warship had ever accepted internment at New Geneva. “Understood,” he replied eventually. “Your word is sufficient—a boarding party won’t be necessary at this time. Come under my stern, Captain, and follow directly in my wake.”

I made a sort of ridiculous bow from the command chair. “Thank you, Captain. We’ll comply as best we’re able. Once more, I remind you we have serious engineering problems.”

“Obviously,” Watanabe agreed. “We’ll go nice and slow for you.” There was another long pause. “And, if I may be so bold Captain Birkenhead… Once things are squared away back the Station, and of course if circumstances and your wounds allow, would you and your first officer do me the honor of dining with my command staff?”

My smile widened, and for the first time I began to relax a little. Exchanging dinners was a long-hallowed peacetime tradition among naval officers regardless of nationality. Unless the man was totally duplicitous, which I had no reason to suspect, he was making a sincere attempt to ease the sting of losing my ship. “At the first opportunity, sir!” I replied, half-bowing again. “You might also be interested to know that just on the other side of the node there’s an Imperial light cruiser of the
Sword of the People
class in hot pursuit of me. I don’t expect they’ll be nearly so happy to see you as I was. They’ll be about another thirty-five minutes or so, if they come at all.”

He smiled. “Given what I know of you, Captain, I’m amazed that it’s just a light cruiser and not half the Imperial Fleet.” Then his features hardened. “We’ll be ready for them. Thank you. Watanabe out.”

“Sir,” Wu said the instant the New Genevan’s image faded. “The Station’s main batteries are traversing towards us.”

I nodded. “That’s only to be expected.” Then I sighed. “We’re prisoners now, more or less. While it remains the best possible outcome, I suppose we ought to start getting used to having guns pointed at us. It’s liable to be more the rule than the exception from here on in.”

“It was worth it, sir,” Parker opined.

“
Well
worth it!” Uncle Robert agreed. “This cruise has been absolutely unforgettable. For the Imperials no less than ourselves, I’d imagine.”

I felt my face redden under the fur. There were a thousand ways we could’ve—
should’ve!
—done a better job. Most especially that
I
could’ve done a better job. “Are there any Royal despatch-vessels in-system?” I demanded. “How come I don’t have a full traffic report yet? We’re slipping, people! Slipping!”

Wu smiled, and within two minutes
Richard
was tight-beaming all but the last few paragraphs of my after-action report to HMS
Swift
, which would rush the document on to navy headquarters via the quickest possible route.  “We're being interned at New Geneva,” I concluded in a verbal appendix to what I’d prewritten days before. “Our final detailed report will follow from there via diplomatic pouch.”

“Acknowledged,”
Swift's
captain replied when the long transmission was finally completed. “Please accept my most sincere congratulations for an epic voyage. Hooray for
Richard
, and confusion to the Emperor! And hooray for our David Birkenhead, come back to us from the dead!”

Then it was time to destroy the codebooks, signal logs and other classified materials. Mostly this was a simple matter of button-pushing, though in a couple of cases we had to use the small sledgehammer that’d been gathering dust on the bridge ever since
Richard
was first commissioned. In the middle of the confusion Silk appeared on the bridge. “Sir!” he declared with his back ramrod straight. “Permission to speak?”

I nodded; as physically nonfunctional as I was there was very little else for me to do anyway. “Certainly, Silk.”

“Sir!” he said, holding out his right hand. In it was a small, elegantly-sculpted crown. A large green warp-gem was mounted over the brow. “We found this aboard the lifeboat. Someone had stuffed it in a trash bin.”

“My god!” Uncle Robert declared, stepping across to examine the thing more carefully. “That’s an Imperial crown!”

“Which means?” I asked, not being as up to date on such mumbo-jumbo as perhaps I should’ve been.

“We’ve bagged one of the Emperor’s own sons,” he cried in delight, bouncing on his toes as if he were a bunny too. “A Prince of the Realm! Not the Crown Prince, sadly. But, still!”

I smiled back, pleased that Uncle Robert was so happy. “Why don’t you go down and have a nice little chat with him then?” I suggested. “It’s unfortunate, but we won’t have His Highness aboard with us for very long. The New Genevans will take him into separate custody. Those are the rules.”

“But we have all his correspondence and such!” Uncle Robert replied, still practically dancing. “I’ll list that as part of my personal luggage—I’m a fully-credentialed diplomat, so they won’t so much as lay a finger on my things. And… They’ll never be able to hide the fact that he surrendered to start with, David! I bet it’ll do as much harm to their war effort as those cement pawprints you left behind!”

I blushed again—how had Uncle Robert found out about those? “I leave the whole affair in your capable hands,” I replied. All too soon I’d be back in sick bay anyway, so it was best to delegate something so sensitive. “Handle it however you choose, and I’ll back your decision.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” my uncle replied. Then he turned and vanished, still carrying the priceless crown. I blinked—had the man actually forgotten that he outranked me? Or was he just tired too?

Then I noticed that Silk was still waiting patiently in front of me. “Yes?” I asked again.

“Sir…” He looked down at his feet for a long moment, then met my eyes. “I’m speaking for the entire marine detachment, sir. And most of the swabbies as well, though of course with things being as they are right now we couldn’t exactly hold a formal meeting.”

Something tensed inside of me. We’d taken terrible losses, right at the end. In many cases they were the direct result of mistakes I’d made. Was I about to be taken to task?  If so, I decided, I could hardly blame the survivors of my incompetence. “Yes?”

He smiled and produced a bundle from under his tunic, then a broom from behind his back. “We’ve been getting this ready for over a week now, sir,” he explained as he tied the bundle to the broom, creating a crude swallowtail pennant. “HMS
Richard
,” it read in big print.  There were thirty-eight miniature ships sewn onto it, each with “X”’s struck through them and their own name recorded below. Four of these miniatures were red, which by long tradition denoted a warship, and one was much larger than the rest though its name was missing—we’d never been able to identify the battlecruiser. Below that was a pile of metal ingots, representing the mine and its loot, and then last and biggest of all the footprints that Nestor and I had left on Imperious herself, shown in front of a broken grain silo. “We’d like permission to fly this under our regular colors, sir. From the mainmast. Until the New Genevans by god
make
us take it down!”

I thought about it for a long, long time. It wasn’t seemly to brag about one’s exploits, especially when they’d left so many good men so thoroughly dead. And the broom… That was an even purer form of swagger. Since ancient times, a broom at the masthead was a boast that one had swept the sea—or space—clean. No one had sailed into harbor under a broom since… since…

…since an equally fine crew had performed their duties equally well, I decided at last. If this was what they wanted, then it was no more than they deserved. “With my blessings,” I replied. “And while you’re at it, replace that teensy-tiny ensign with our largest, if you please. The one
Richard
commissioned under. And hang a few more, wherever you find appropriate.”

“Aye-aye, sir!” Silk replied, snapping off the sharpest salute I’d seen in ages.      

“By the way,” I asked before he left. “Shouldn’t Sergeant Petranovich be reporting to me, instead of you?”

Suddenly all the starch disappeared. “He’s dead, sir. Shot while boarding the lifeboat. But the pennant was his idea.”

“I see,” I replied, the moment ruined for us both. “Carry on, then.”

Whiff of Grape
never did Jump into neutral space, which was just as well for her as it would’ve done her no good whatsoever. She was totally outclassed by the New Genevan firepower and though I couldn’t be certain I thought I was detecting more than a trace of anti-Imperial sentiment in the air. For example, no one ever asked that we lower our colors. As a result we locked-on with a dozen flags and the broom-pendant all still flying just as if we were being received by a Royal dockyard back home. Our hosts sent no more than a minimal neutrality-enforcement crew aboard, released Uncle Robert immediately, and offered all of our officers parole. They also loaned us a dozen doctors and opened up their hospitals to our wounded. Under the circumstances, we could ask for nothing more. Though no one could know what the future might hold, all the portents looked very favorable indeed.

And then, at long last, it was time to power everything down and go to anchor-watches. As was traditional, I gave the order myself last thing before reporting to sick-bay. “All hands,” I ordered over the intercom. “Attention all hands! Prepare to unseat all control rods and switch over to shore power. Our long cruise is over at last, and you’ve made it one for the history books. I’m proud to call each and every one of you shipmates. We’re about to be placed in detention, but for us this is no mark of shame. Not a man-jack in the entire navy will ever be able to claim that he’s served his kingdom better than you. Not one!

“We’ve fought and we’ve suffered and we’ve bled together. Far too many of us have died. But the Kingdom lives on. The House of Marcus lives on! And
Richard
will live on as well, in the hearts of us all until the very last of us is dead and gone. Hooray for
Richard
!”

“Hip, hip, hooray!” the crew cried out three times, so loud the bulkheads shook.

“Hooray for His Majesty!”

“Hip, hip, hooray!”

“And hooray for David Birkenhead!” Wu interjected without orders and very much against my will.

“Hooray!” the crew screamed like madmen, over and over again until all order broke down. “Hooray!” And they kept it up, so that as I was wheeled down to sickbay for a long rest and then a second round of surgery I was surrounded by bouncing bunnies and cavorting humans, all still screaming themselves silly. Even the New Genevan midshipman assigned as my personal jailor smiled and cheered, he was so caught up in the moment. Then we passed through the sickbay doors and the tumult faded to a dull roar. They rolled me up next to Nestor’s bed, and he too smiled and waved mutely from inside his oxygen tent. Then he held up a little card. “Hooray for Captain Birkenhead,” it read.