Lieutenant (11 page)

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 their 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!”

“Right,” I agreed, edging further behind the armor. “But the turret, chief! How’s it coming?”

“I’ve got slow traverse only, no elevation. Another two or three minutes and I’ll have that, too.”

I scowled, picturing the situation in my mind. The current elevation ought to be fairly close… “Swing her around!” I ordered. “Towards the destroyers! Right now—don’t wait!”

“But…” the chief objected. “It won’t shoot!”

“Do it!” I screamed for the second time that day. “
Now!
You and I know it won’t shoot! But the
Imperials
don’t know that!”

There was a short silence. “Traversing now!”

I stuck my head back above the plate and watched. The destroyers had already been edging away from their damaged sister; now it was as if they’d suddenly realized they were knee-deep in cobras. Which they actually would’ve been, of course, had the turret been operational. Their Fields hardened, and then they were racing away, dodging madly. “Track them as best you can under local control,” I ordered as the cripple attempted to follow. This set off yet another chain of secondary explosions, and in my heart I knew she didn’t have long. It was time for me to find a safer place to watch from. “And get the elevation working as soon as you can!”

Lancrest probably ‘aye-ayed’ me, but I didn’t hear it. Because a single blaster-bolt erupted out of the ruins of the bridge and clipped the side of my helmet just hard enough to crack it. Instantly the air began whistling out, and I was forced to duck back under cover in order to apply an emergency patch. I had to use the largest in my kit, and it blocked half my visor. Even worse it didn’t seal well; I was still losing a lot of air. So much that I only had a few minutes to find pressure. That didn’t leave me much in the way of a margin of error. I stuck my head out again…

…and another bolt sizzled across my shoulder, creating yet another leak. Damnit, he had me cold!

Frantically I patched myself again, then dove down deeper into my hidey-hole hoping to find another way out. But there wasn’t, at least for not anything bigger than a mouse. Desperately I looked up at the doomed destroyer—it was making good speed for a cripple, but that couldn’t last. Maybe it’d blow up spectacularly, offering a diversion? I waited and waited long seconds as the air roared out past my left ear…

…and the stubborn destroyer continued to thrust away just fine, if anything making less of a show than it had before.

Soon a new red light appeared in my display; I had no more time to waste waiting for a lucky diversion. So I gritted my teeth, stood up and then kept right on moving even after a blaster-bolt knocked my own gun out of my hand. I turned my thrusters on max, charging the sea of twisted compartments where I thought the enemy fire might be coming from. Another bolt flew by, this one finally a clean miss. But I had a long way to go, and was only becoming an easier and easier target.
I tried
,
Father
, I found myself murmuring.
I tried so hard
…

Then two more blasters fired, targeted on the ruins I was racing towards for all I was worth.  One bolt missed, but the other must’ve struck a grenade or something because there was a small explosion. A detached combat-suited arm drifted out still clutching an Imperial blaster-rifle, then Snow and Devin stuck their heads up and waved gleefully at me. “We’re sorry, sir,” Snow explained over the slave-link. “But we’ve decided not to surrender. All of us, that is. We hope you’ll understand.”

“We
can’t
surrender, if it means losing you,” Devin amplified. “I mean… How could we ever look another bunny in the eye again after letting
that
happen?”

21

The destroyers kept right on running until they Jumped back into Imperial space. Lancrest and his staff cheered themselves hoarse at the sight, and do did the Rabbits. But really it was the only thing our enemies
could
do. Absent their marines they were impotent to do much of anything about us, and the turret’s threat was something they absolutely, positively couldn’t ignore. While they must’ve wondered why we never opened fire the improvised training system was jerky and slow, which they certainly must’ve seen. Since fast-moving destroyers made difficult targets at the best of times, their only safe bet was to assume that we’d simply never been able to line them up properly. And most naval officers tended to favor the safest of bets, at least when expensive vessels were at stake. Not to mention their careers.

So, I suppose, we actually
did
have something to cheer about even though the third, damaged destroyer successfully Jumped as well. I still doubted she’d make it home, but couldn’t count her as a kill in the Station log, either. That bothered me. Perhaps I should’ve nailed her in the blaster-accumulators instead?

But it was too late for regrets and might-have-beens. Instead there was a huge amount of work to be done and little time to do it in. The very first thing I had to do was thank my Rabbits. I assembled them on the mess deck and asked each individually if they really and truly wanted to volunteer. Every single one did, so I legally swore them into the navy, grinning evilly at the conniption fits this was going to cause among the lawyers back home. Then I thanked them as well as I could, both for signing up and saving my life, and promised them on my honor a better future no matter what happened—if we survived, that was. “Three cheers for David!” Devin cried out. For a moment the mess deck thundered with lapine voices, and I fear I shed a tear or two. Even the chief and his men seemed moved by their willingness to fight.

“We’ll treat you Rabbits fair,” they promised. “Like shipmates, not slaves. You’ve earned it and more.” Then
they
cheered me as well!

Having a few dozen fighting men I could count on eased the situation enormously, but there was still an unbelievable amount of work to be done. My first task was to break up the Rabbits into squads along lines nearly identical to their previous work-units. They were accustomed to these groupings and I saw no need to mess with a good thing merely in order to comply with a standardized organizational model. I assigned Fremont and his suit-techs to help out the engine-room gang as much as their other duties allowed, and put Snow in charge of recovering and repairing as many weapons as possible. Especially I trained him on how to combine grenades into improvised demolition charges, since these had proven so effective and we had far more grenades than charges. Devin’s crew became ersatz marines; while their marksmanship and tactical skills and such might need work they were more experienced able-spacers and null-gee hands than most of their human equivalents, and of the two in my opinion this was the more important qualification. The rest I somewhat sadly relegated to routine ship’s duties that simply
had
to be performed, largely the same work they’d done as slaves. I took the time to explain how vital their tasks were, however, and also promised them that I’d have Devin’s squad train them in weapon-handling just as soon as they themselves mastered the art. They nodded soberly, swore they’d give it their best and, well…

…I never saw such clean heads on any naval installation in all my life.

That left Nestor to deal with; he’d never been part of a work-unit because of the way the captain had, well… For the first couple days I assigned him to the general labor pool. Soon, however, I came to realize that I just couldn’t keep up with everything on my own. Back at the Academy I’d been assigned a personal servant for the simple reason that it was impossible to cope with all the demands on my time without one. Now I found myself in precisely the same situation once again. After my second day of not-eating for lack of time and sleeping in my uniform I took Nestor aside and, making it very clear that it was perfectly okay if he refused, offered him the job. His answer was a grin and a hug, and from that day forward he spent every possible moment making himself useful to me, doing everything from laundering my clothing to running messages all over Zombie. He stood proud and tall, and though at first I didn’t want to believe it soon even I could see that the other Rabbits envied him. 

And so I found myself wandering endlessly about Zombie, one moment explaining to Devin’s bunnies about what a flank was and why they were important and the next nodding to the chief as he gleefully explained his next major project and how he thought it might perhaps further confound the Imperials. In-between I labored endlessly at my own responsibilities. The one that occupied the most worry-time was our most crucial supply problem. Almost my first action after the Imperials retreated was to round up every scrap of hay on the station and arrange for strict rationing. Things weren’t quite as bleak as I’d first feared; we found three dozen undersized bales of ancient, mouldery stuff in the slave quarters, and a little computer research revealed that we could stretch things a little further by allocating all the bamboo shoots and alfalfa sprouts and such in the Station larder to we Rabbits. Our human crewmates didn’t seem to mind at all that we were hogging all the greenery— there was plenty of high-quality beefsteak and other luxury-meats in the deep freeze as well, enough for them to eat like kings for months to come. Meanwhile I allocated the worst of the hay to myself and sent out a work party to see if they could find any wood that might be reduced to sawdust. There wasn’t much and it neither tasted good nor was as healthy for us as hay, but it’d help eke out our supplies a few more days. Sadly the library didn’t suggest much else in the way of potential substitutes. Partly this was because hay was normally so cheap and easy to store, and partly it was because we Rabbits tended to die so quickly in the absence of the real McCoy. There wasn’t much motivation, in other words, for anyone to run a lot of experiments.