Commander (7 page)

The cold showers helped too.

The psychiatrists of old had been obsessed with sexuality; they claimed that repressed urges always came out somewhere else. In my case I deliberately emulated Dad and threw myself into my work harder than ever. Perhaps the habit made me a bit dull socially, but it certainly got things done! My ground-facilities experts suggested that we take over one corner of a shipyard in Lord Hubert City, and I backed their decision wholeheartedly. Sure, the Imperials had wrecked the place. But then again they’d wrecked everything else on the planet as well, and in this case at least they’d made a less-than-thorough job of it. The drydock was of an obsolete design, but for small improvised warships of the sort we fencibles were interested in the facilities would be more than adequate, once repaired. There was also a hanger complex, three hardpoints and a well-designed taxiway network; even enough open space for us to set up barracks and classrooms for as many as a couple hundred trainees at a time. With luck someday we’d outgrow the facility, but for getting started it was just about perfect. The only drawback was the price—I winced as our purser wrote out the indent, but it was a good investment in the long-term. Land values on Marcus Prime would only rise as the recovery progressed. Uncle Robert suggested that perhaps the House might apply a little pressure on the owner to be more “reasonable”, but I vetoed that from the beginning. If the fencibles were to succeed, they needed the goodwill of the populace behind them. And nothing bred bad feelings more quickly than arm-twisting on financial matters.

Good will was so important that I decided to go ahead and exploit my own celebrity status as well. While of course I’d already received dozens of offers to endorse products and appear in movies and such, I’d made it a point never to so much as acknowledge any of them. It was deeply wrong, I felt, to cash in on the trail of dead bodies I’d left in my wake. Even the Imperial ones. But here on Marcus, where I was legitimately a member of the ruling House as well as a hero, well… For the fencibles, I made exceptions. Soon I was wandering the planet, appearing at schools and festivals and such. I even gave speeches sometimes, though Uncle Robert was a bit vexed that I kept them short and never said much of substance. Mostly I told them that I considered them heroes for surviving the occupation, assured them that their leaders knew of their suffering and were doing all they could to alleviate it, and that the fencibles along with the regular army and navy were going to their best to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again. Furthermore, I added, they could help by supporting the fencibles. Humans and Rabbits alike found plenty to cheer about in these words, and once I found myself being carried about on the shoulders of a dozen mixed Rabbits and humans for half an hour as thousands chanted “David! David! David!” After that, however, I reluctantly accepted the navy’s offer to pay for a squad of Dogs to act as my personal security detachment, separate from the fencible budget and meant to last the rest of my life. Dogs were pleasant enough creatures, if a bit smelly—I had nothing against them. But it grated me deeply that they were necessary whenever I appeared in public. From then on events had to be scheduled and carefully planned; nothing could be spontaneous.

Fortunately, in my private life things were better. Without even asking me, James and Uncle Robert had warned the local journalists that I was a very private Rabbit who needed a little space. Special favors, they implied, would be few and far between for any media outlet that pestered me in my home range. This worked surprisingly well at first; so long as I offered them a formal interview now and again the local Marcus reporters were wise enough to pretty much leave me alone. Since for a long time access to Marcus Prime was tightly restricted, this allowed me to settle in nicely. But once the travel bans were lifted, the paparazzi flowed in with a vengeance. They were fairly easy to outfox, however, especially since my fellow Rabbits understood perfectly well why I considered them so irritating. Soon I found myself walking to work every day in slave shorts with a shipping box containing my uniform hefted on my shoulder. Sometimes other Rabbits carrying similar containers and gardening tools walked with me, so that it appeared I was part of an ordinary work-gang. It was absolutely amazing how effective this disguise was, and I laughed myself silly every time an off-planet reporter asked the other bunnies about me and they all solemnly pointed in a dozen different directions—“Yes, sir! David was right over there just a few minutes ago!” Once a desperate-looking young man even asked
me
, and I practically giggled as I pointed. Eventually one of the professional nuisances would get smart enough to look past the fancy Sword and uniform and carefully examine what I
really
looked like. Among humans, however, the idea of adopting a lower-status identity in public was so repugnant that I didn’t expect them to tumble to my trick anytime soon—even the open-minded Marcuses would never willingly do such a thing. In the meantime I was perfectly safe from annoyance and even having a lot of fun, so long as I was satisfied to enter and leave my office via the loading dock.

Organizational work is essential to an establishment of any size, military ones more than most. Yet it’s dull, boring, and thankless. Therefore no one was more grateful to Nestor than I was when he, of all people, found us our first actual, honest-to-goodness ship. She was the mining-service vessel
Richard
, abandoned and placed in a cometary orbit by her crew when the Imperials came.  My insatiable reader of a personal aide came across a story in the paper about how she’d still not been recovered, and brought it to my attention. While the fencibles as a rule wouldn’t outright own its own vessels, from the getgo we planned to buy a few. Eventually we’d need our own salvage tug, for example, and at least one full-time gunnery-training ship. Another void we needed filled was for a sort of flagship and general errand-runner, and
Richard
looked like the perfect vessel for us. Meant to shuttle relatively small cargoes of supplies and high-value ores between asteroids and Kuiper bodies and such, she was also fully capable of planetary landings. I spent hours poring over her specs—her engines were powerful and of modern design, and if her holds were modified a bit she could remain in space for months. Best of all, due to an oddity of the Marcus Prime system she was Field-equipped for hyperspace jumps. My home system, it so happened, had more jump-points than any other. However, for many years it was believed that only one of these led to another star-system—the rest connected only with each other. (The Imperials had proven that a second could somehow be made to lead elsewhere by invading us through it—we still hadn’t figured out how, why, or where.) Therefore,
Richard
had been equipped with a Field-type drive—jumping was far quicker than thrusting, when things were lined up just so. In short order I was practically drooling over her.
Richard
’s owners let her go for a song—chasing her down would cost a small fortune if you didn’t happen to have several destroyer captains at your beck and call, all of them eager for a worthwhile mission to break the tedium of garrison-work.  I expected her home just about the same time that my freshly-repaired drydock would be ready to receive her, and my barracks-facilities prepared to train her crew.

After that, all of the tedium and paperwork got a lot easier. For with our first ship, at last the fencibles found its true purpose.

12

"Tench-
hut
!" Sergeant Piper bellowed three short months later, as
Richard'
s commissioning flag rose up her absurd little mast and burst open at the top. "Hand
salute!"
Only naval vessels carried masts these days; flags and their related ceremonial were a distinct anachronism aboard vessels that fought in places where there could be no breezes. But they were much-beloved anachronisms as well as legally-required ones; not for a moment did any of us so much as consider dispensing with them aboard fencible vessels.

Then James stepped forward to the microphone. "It is with great gratitude and honor," he began in his nasal voice, "That I welcome His Majesty's Auxiliary Vessel
Richard
into the king's service..."

For all his strengths as an administrator and leader of men James had a rather poor speaking voice, I decided as I stared across our spanking-new barracks complex and at the newly renovated
Richard
, whose Field was powered up just enough to make her glitter and sparkle in the sun. He wouldn't mind if I let my attention drift, I knew—after all, I'd helped write his speech, just as he had mine. So instead of listening to James enumerate the crimes of the Imperials against our common homeworld and wax eloquent about the future of the fencibles on all Royal worlds once we'd proven the concept, I smiled to myself in satisfaction as I admired
Richard
's crew, all formed up in neat lines in front of their shiny, freshly-refurbished ship. I was still amazed that we'd come so far so quickly, once we made the decision to purchase her. Part of it was pure luck; even before we could send out a destroyer a Royal revenue cutter had Jumped into the system on a perfect vector to intercept our new purchase and bring her home. That alone had halved the time it should’ve taken us to bring the former mining-service vessel into commission. We'd also been able to streamline the process by borrowing some key personnel from the navy—we could never have come up with a trained engine-room crew on such short notice, for example. And such volunteers we'd been blessed with! We could've easily manned
Richard
three times over with a skilled, all-human crew if we'd chosen. The fencibles wouldn't always be able to be so choosy, however, and a precedent needed to be set. While I chose a few humans to fill certain of the lowest ranks, for the most part
Richard
was the first commissioned vessel in history (so far as I knew) whose crew included Rabbits under arms.  Certainly, her officers were all human—I was the only qualified Rabbit officer there was, after all. But I hand-selected each and every one of said humans, rejecting them freely at the slightest sign of smugness or self-assurance in my presence. And Snow returned just in time to go through a crash-course on military discipline and take over as sergeant in charge of the tiny marine detachment. My classmate Jean ended up in command, and I was confident that he'd deal with the volatile social problems that were certain to arise as well as anyone could.

"...someone who of course needs no introduction," James was just finishing up as I returned my attention to the real world around me. "David Birkenhead, the hero of Zombie Station!"

I took my time stepping up to the podium so as to let the cheering die down. As was our habit at such events, James and I took a moment to embrace like brothers in front of the cameras—we never missed a chance to broadcast the fact of our personal alliance far and wide, so that no one would ever have any doubts that to make an enemy of one of us was to make an enemy of both. Then I stood at the microphone, notes fluttering in the wind.

"Gentlemen of the press," I began. "My fellow natives of Marcus Prime..." I had to wait for the cheering to cease again after that—emphasizing our common birthplace was something that James had suggested, and sure enough he'd been right. "Today marks the beginning of not just a new branch of the armed forces, but of a new, tighter partnership between the civilian and military spheres of influence..."

My speech was considerably longer than I'd have liked. But there was so much that simply
had
to be said! The fencibles, I explained, would be the province of the common man within the military establishment. "We'll soon be in need of far more officers and men than the nobility can possibly provide!" And we'd accept not just every able-bodied human, but Rabbits and eventually Dogs as well. "Marcus Prime has long offered proof that members of the gengineered species can and will be productive, useful citizens when offered the chance. Zombie Station has proven that we can serve as soldiers as well." By the time I was finished, what had begun as a noisy, celebratory crowd had turned quiet and thoughtful.

After that the band played and sailors marched and there was much more in the way of pomp and ceremony. James and I hosted a banquet, and the highest-ranking officers from the fleet in orbit high above drank toasts to the new armed service far into the night. But there was a muted note to it all, and had been ever since I'd given my big speech.
My god!
the regular officers and nobles were asking themselves.
Where is all this going to lead?

Into the future,
I could almost hear His Majesty whispering into his chocolate milk.
A bigger, better and stronger future for us all.

Including even the citizens of the Empire.

13

It was a very pleasant thing, it didn’t take me long to decide, to have a spaceship to order about. Not that I often got the chance—the orbiting fleet needed their errands run and their personnel transferred every bit as much during peacetime as when at war. While I probably could’ve held onto
Richard
a lot more than I did for our own uses, such as training and publicity, it was even more important that we begin working out the mundane, day-to-day details involved in servicing the fleet. I’d created special fuel indent forms, for example, which the Navy Department had approved in full. But... Would a purser stationed light-years from home actually know what to do with one when he saw it? Almost never, we quickly learned. There were a million such inevitable and unforeseeable bugs to work out, and the more
Richard
and her crew interacted with the regular fleet the quicker they’d be resolved.