Commander (16 page)

Nestor, who I later learned was applying a tourniquet to what was absolutely the
right
place, both mistook my meaning and agreed with the result. “Yes, sir! We’ve got to get you out of here, and right now!”

“No!” I replied. “I mean…” Then somehow I couldn’t find words anymore and blacked out again. Eventually an explosion awakened me, then there was another and another and another. When I opened my eyes there was a veritable vortex of blaster-fire crisscrossing above my head, and a desperate-looking Nestor had my Imperial blaster in his hands. But he was as pinned-down as I was.

“Shoot me,” I muttered—that was clearly Nestor’s last hope, as the schedule called for
Richard
to up-ship mere seconds after the charges went off whether there were still crewman stranded dirtside or not. My instructions had been very strict indeed. “Get out. That’s… Order.”

“No,
sir
!” he replied angrily. “Not a chance!”

I tried to sit up and grab the blaster to do the job myself, but it seemed that my chest was covered with invisible lead weights. It was the darnedest thing—I don’t know how long I pawed at myself trying to remove them. “Run for it!” I finally tried again.

“No!” he countered. “I’ll stay right here with you until—“

Then, something happened. I’m still not quite sure how it got started, but suddenly a cheer echoed across the ruins of the harmless little granary that’d somehow become the focus of so much violence. A high-pitched, lapine cheer, raised by dozens of throats.

Nestor’s eyes went wide—somehow I remember that quite clearly. Then the firing rose to a crescendo. But there weren’t any more bolts flying overhead!

The cheer went on and on, punctuated by screams of pain and terror. “Da-vid!” I soon realized they were chanting. “Da-vid! Da-vid!” And it was getting louder! Were they coming to take me alive?

Then Nestor raised his head to look, and his eyes widened further still. “Holy mother of god!” he whispered, one of the few times I ever heard him so much as border on the profane. Then he bent down and tried to lift me. “Come on, sir! It’s time! We’re getting you out of here!”

It hurt like hell, and despite every effort my limbs simply wouldn’t function properly. I couldn’t hold myself upright to save my life, which was of course exactly what was at stake. Little Nestor, who massed not much more than half what I did, struggled for us both. We took one step, then a second. At that rate, it’d only take half an hour or so to reach
Richard
’s hatch.

“Run!” I muttered again. “Please! I’m begging you!” But this time Nestor didn’t even dignify my request with a reply; instead he gritted his teeth and dragged me forward a third step, the cheers meanwhile growing louder and louder. And, even more menacingly, blaster-bolts were sizzling by once more. Just as we were setting up for a fourth step, the chanting mob came swirling past and around us…

…and suddenly I was being carried by three, four, a dozen work-hardened Rabbits!

“Da-vid! Da-vid!” they cried as they raced for the ship, carrying Nestor and I along with them and shielding us from fire through sheer numbers. And all the while, a rapid staccato of shots seared home into soft fur and living flesh as our escorts absorbed the laser-bolts for us. Between the shock and the sheer scale of the sacrifice, I was weeping by the time we surged past the marines who were doing their level best to provide covering fire, then through the gaping cargo-hatch and into the empty hold beyond. “No!” I was still protesting as they carried me on past the bulkhead to where it was relatively safe. “Leave me! Nothing’s worth
this
!” But it was too late by then; I was back aboard,
Richard
was behind schedule…

…and a thick trail of dead and bleeding Rabbit-slaves in various postures of agony led all the three hundred yards back to the wet cement where Nestor and I had left our foolish footprints.

30

I continued to weep as the pharmacist’s mate prepared a very large syringe. It was an anesthetic, I had the presence of mind to realize, which meant that I had only seconds left before the blackness closed in. There were other Rabbits being rolled in all around me, so far as I could tell all were local slaves who’d been wounded getting us back aboard in one piece. Some were missing limbs, others were bleeding by the bucketful. They must all have helped carry each other too, I realized, not just Nestor and I. “Thank you!” I cried out. “Thank you all!”

“David!” the nearest replied with a grin. He was a huge buck with a gaping ruin where his eyes had once been, and an ear was missing as well. He bounced up and down slightly. “Da-vid! Da-vid! Da-vid!”

Then they were all chanting again, so that the corpsmen had to shout in order to make themselves heard. Nestor was still standing by my side, not sure what to do. “Did they all make it aboard?” I demanded. “The Rabbits, I mean? The ones who helped us!”

“Yes, sir!” he snapped. "All the living ones, at least."

“Are you sure?”

“Of course!” There was a pause. “If someone had ordered they be left, sir, no one would’ve obeyed. It was like that. We took losses helping the last ones aboard. How could we
possibly
leave a living Rabbit behind, after… after…”

I scowled and laid my head back down on the too-soft pillow. So that much at least was in order among all the wreckage. If we’d left any surviving Rabbits behind god only knew what the Imperials would’ve done to them. As it was I feared deeply for their families. My
god
, what they’d just sacrificed! Did they yet appreciate the enormity?

“Da-vid! Da-vid!” they were still chanting as the pharmacist’s mate turned to me with his hypodermic and smiled.

“Everything’s going to be all right, sir!” he reassured me. “I’ve patched up far worse!”

I nodded back, knowing it was the truth. My suffering was almost over, while that of my fellow Rabbits was just beginning. “Just enough to get me back to the bridge,” I ordered.

“Of course,” he replied. “But I’ll have to put you under. I’m afraid it’s not optional, sir.”

My mouth opened, then closed again. “How long?” I demanded.

“About eight hours,” he replied. “When you come around, you’ll probably be in good enough shape to exercise command again.”

Which meant I’d already been deemed temporarily unfit, I realized, leaving Josiah in charge for the moment. So there was no point in arguing. Besides, he was an able man indeed. He’d make no more of a hash of things than I just had, by getting myself shot up for no good reason. “I won’t argue anymore,” I promised the technician. “In fact, I’ll be a model patient.” Then I turned to Nestor. “When I come back around, I’ll want a complete situation report ready and waiting for me.”

He nodded. “Understood, sir.”

I smiled at him as the doctor finally sank his needle home. Then, with my last conscious effort I reached out with my good arm and clapped him on the shoulder. “And thank you, too. No one could ask for a better friend.” 

31

It was in fact fourteen hours before I returned to the bridge. This was because there was nothing going on anyway, so the decision was made to allow me a little extra rest. Though
Richard
had traded a few ineffectual salvoes with an orbital battery—part of the price of running late—while escaping from Imperious’s immediate vicinity, once that little bit of excitement was behind us there was nothing to do but hold our course for the system’s Number Eight Point and wait to see what happened next.

Everyone smiled and seemed pleased when Nestor wheeled me up onto the bridge-deck proper, and First Officer Parker (looking very odd back in his regular navy uniform) helped Nestor transfer me into my usual seat. The sick-bay types had promised to “patch me up”, and that was a pretty fair description of what they and their gadgets had accomplished. Nothing had been properly healed; rather scar tissue was rapid-grown in all the appropriate places so that I didn’t leak anymore, and transfusions and interesting chemicals had done the rest. While I could use one leg and one arm pretty well and hobble around a bit on crutches, physically I was still a wreck. But at least I was an
alert
wreck, which was all that really mattered under the circumstances. “We’re very glad to have you back, sir!” Josiah announced as he stood up straight and saluted after getting me settled in.

“Thank you all for your concern,” I replied, nodding to everyone. “You’ve done a fine, fine job. Let’s walk this last mile, then we can take a nice long rest.” I turned to Wu. “We’re behind schedule, Astrogator.”

“Yes, sir!” he agreed. “Sixteen minutes worth, though we were eighteen behind at our worst.”

“I’ve been overdriving the engines, trying to make up some of the lost time,” Parker interrupted. “She should handle it just fine, so long as it doesn’t go on too long.”

I nodded—no one knew precisely how far
Richard
could be pushed better than
Parker.  Some captains might resent this in a subordinate, but I was grateful as could be for his wealth of experience and willingness to apply it as needed. “Yes. Of course.”

“As a result,” Wu continued, even though I already knew from reading the situation report, “we’re subject to interception from two forces. The light cruiser escort from the smaller convoy, and the crippled heavy and her destroyer. The other escort—the two destroyers—are totally out of the picture.”

I nodded again. In other words, our situation was very bad indeed. “Options, anyone?”

“If we just blunder on ahead, sir, we’ll have to fight them both,” Wu offered. “But they’ll only have about a quarter of an hour to destroy us before we translate out. Perhaps we can hold out that long?”

With a tissue-paper hull?
I didn’t reply. The light cruiser was the old
Whiff of Grape
, sister-ship to the
Sword of the People
which I’d grappled so long ago. As an old, nearly obsolete ship
Sword
had been poorly officered, manned and fought. We would never have taken her otherwise. And now the class was that many years more ancient and undesirable to serve aboard. Hardly the sort of ship to attract top-level personnel! Plus the entire series was known to be terribly prone to engineering failures due to overeager adoption of what back then had been bleeding-edge technology. This resulted in deep design flaws that were avoided in later cruisers, but proved impossible to remedy in the
Sword
s. The story was in all the engineering training manuals, where it served as a cautionary tale. “How many hours ahead of those destroyers from the second convoy are we, Wu?”

“Over twenty, sir. They haven’t even tried to come after us. So our lead is steadily growing.”

I smiled. That gave us all the time in the world. “Work out a course to intercept the smaller convoy. Just as if we’d decided to take as many ships with us as possible on our way down to Davy Jones’s locker. Got it?”

He blinked. “Aye-aye, sir!”

“Cut our acceleration down to nominal flank, and aim us for the tail of the line. Like we’re trying to sneak by.”

“We can’t, you know,” Josiah pointed out. “The geometry’s all wrong.”

“Right,” I agreed. “As soon as she comes about, I’m going to aim for the head of the convoy. Then the tail, the head, the tail… It’s a miniscule correction, but I want to force them to make it over and over again.”

“So that they’re constantly fiddling with the engines,” Uncle Robert observed.

“Yep,” I agreed. “Let’s see how well their control rods hold up to the strain. I bet ours do a lot better! And who knows? If worse comes to worse, we’ll get to see how many merchies we can take down with us after all.”

32

After that I sat back in my comfortable chair and drank tea for a few hours. Sometimes a pharmacist’s mate appeared and gave me an injection or changed a dressing. I asked Nestor to circulate among the Imperious Rabbits whenever he got a chance, helping them settle in and deal with what must be a million problems. Two had already died under our care, but the good news was that we had enough Tanks to accept all the remaining critical cases. The blind bunny—whose name I’d learned was Clem—was in a Tank as well, and would surely be able to see again. On that front, at least, the news was as good as could be expected.

I also spent as much time studying the damaged heavy cruiser as I could. The
Seventh of November
, named after the date of Imperial Secession, had lost her bows to a torpedo. All by itself this was a blow she’d been lucky to survive. In addition she’d also taken two medium or perhaps even heavy bolts to the stern half of the ship, both of which had burned through deep into her guts. Clearly, other Royal Navy men besides ourselves were earning their paychecks. The destroyer was of the conventional sort, equipped with a medium-light battery plus torpedoes and very, very fast, while the damaged ship was barely capable of crawling along.
How much of that cruiser’s armament is still on-line?
I asked myself over and over. The answer was terribly important, or would be if we proved able to deal with
Whiff of Grape
. It was Zombie all over again, except this time I was on the outside looking in. I couldn’t be certain of anything any more than my enemies had been back then. The only hint I had was the presence of the destroyer itself—if the cruiser were capable of defending itself, would it have been provided with a valuable escort that was in high demand for other assignments? In the end I just couldn’t know.