Midshipman (16 page)

“Their entire social structure is centered around the armed forces,” Yan Chang agreed. “On our side, bloodline and family means everything. That’s important there too, but who you are in the army or navy is what really counts. Officers are treated like gods on the streets. My father trades with them; we lived on Imperius itself for five whole years.” He shook his head and met his brother’s eyes. “We were
miserable
!”

“I’ll bet,” Professor Lambert agreed. Then he sighed and set down his fork. “It’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again throughout history. Militarism is obnoxious, oppressive, nasty, and brutish. It’s also a damnably efficient and effective way to unify a human society.”

James scowled. “They started out as republican revolutionaries. One-man/one vote types. Which is pretty much the opposite of an Imperium.” He shook his head. “I’ve read books on the subject, Professor. But I still don’t really understand how the Republic ended up with an Emperor.”

“It didn’t, in some ways,” our strategy professor replied with a sad smile. “Emperor Tallsdale is technically President-For-Life. As was his father, and his son will inherit the title after him. They still have elections every six years. Anyone can run for anything. So long as they don’t mind ending up dead afterwards, that is.”

“The root problem,” Heinrich suggested, “is that they can’t form a government without the blessing of the military. If the Army or Navy Secretary resigns, the cabinet falls and Parliament is forced to offer a more acceptable slate.”

“In the beginning that might’ve been it, maybe,” James replied. “But now… their Parliament’s dead. It’s degenerated to the point that nowadays it’s just a place where Emperor keeps his closest friends all together in one place so he can keep a better eye on them.”

“Heh!” Professor Lambert replied. “Well spoken, James!”

He blushed. “Actually, His Majesty said that when I was visiting him last summer. To the Foreign Minister.”

There was a long, long silence after that. Long enough for us all to eat another course, in fact, and move on to dessert. Usually that was my least-favorite part of a formal meal. Humans crave sweets far more than do we Rabbits, so normally I forced down a little bit of something and then felt sick later. But this time the Rabbits took care of me and offered me a plate of dried banana chips. Manna from heaven, it was! For a while I even forgot to follow the conversation, they were so good!

“…is a problem not amenable to most traditional solutions,” the professor was saying when I finally returned from paradise. “In the long run militarist societies eventually collapse of their own weight. They stifle innovation and trade, which are any society’s lifeblood. But the process is slow—it sometimes requires hundreds of years.” He sighed. “The problem is that I’m not certain we loyalists can hold out that long.”

“Trade helps,” Yan Chang offered. “Our society is much wealthier than theirs, and they know it. My father’s outlet on Imperious is his most profitable of all. You can’t buy advanced merchandise anywhere else on the planet.”

“And as you said,” Heinrich added, “they don’t invest nearly as much in science as we do, except for stuff that’s directly military-related. My father left the Empire because he couldn’t get funding, and look where he is now! That sort of thing will bite them, in the end.”  

James nodded. “Our king is beloved, by and large. And our people believe in their government. You don’t need secret prisons and internal spy networks when everyone’s happy.” He frowned. “Except to counter theirs, of course.”

There was a long, thoughtful silence. “Professor?” I finally asked.

“Yes, David?” he replied with a smile.

“You said that many militarist cultures have persisted for centuries. But that means others don’t. Right?”

He nodded, and I wriggled a bit nervously in my seat. No matter how old I grew or how many medals I won, I’d never enjoy being the center of attention. “Then… What usually brings down the failures? What are militarist societies vulnerable to? In the shorter term, I mean?”

He smiled and looked dead into my eyes. “The short-timers quite often fall because they couldn’t adapt quickly enough to new circumstances, David,” he replied softly. “It’s not a sure thing, mind you—several of the nastier examples of the breed have thrived on continual upheaval. But as a rule they’re far more vulnerable than freer societies to any form of fundamental change in the basic order of things. Whether said fundamental change be economic, technological, or…” His grin widened, and his eyes bored into mine.

“Social.”

30

We awoke bright and early the next morning, breakfasted in our rooms to make Security happy, then formed up once again in our Class-A’s. At first I thought James was going to march us down to the tournament area, but at the last moment he ordered “Fall out!” instead. I was a little disappointed at this. Then I thought things all the way through and realized that my friend was right. Yes, marching yesterday had indeed been a lot of fun, and had built up our confidence enormously. But that was then and this was now. We couldn’t outswagger the Imperials; that was obvious to anyone with eyes. So our best bet was to abandon swagger entirely and find a new way to gain a psychological edge. Besides, the tournament room was only a couple hundred yards away, the journey broken by an elevator trip roughly halfway through. So far as I knew, no drill manual in the universe dealt with proper elevator etiquette. “Select floor button,
hut
!” I pictured James declaring solemnly, and so arrived on the main floor with a big grin on my face. Which was even better than swagger, I decided.

The entire lobby seemed to be awash in Imperial green; there were rigidly-formal cadets and officers standing around everywhere! I scowled at the presence of the latter; we’d stood formed up at the docking-ring for two hours yesterday waiting to greet them as well their cadets, but they’d never shown. Now, looking around the room and meeting one by one their cold eyes, I decided that this had been no accident. They’d wanted to humiliate us.

“Well!” James declared overly-loudly as we stood there with the door open in front of us. “Looks like there’s plenty to go around. Eh, Captain?”

I fear that it took me a moment to recognize that I was being addressed by my cadet-rank. “Yes, sir!” I agreed, also a bit too loudly. “Shall we head on into the gaming room and set up shop?”

“The sooner we begin, the sooner it’ll be over,” James agreed. “God, I need another drink! Why anyone would hold these games at such an uncivilized hour, I can’t imagine.” He looked up at Professor Lambert. “Sir, you don’t have another hangover pill on you by chance, do you?”

Our strategy professor had spent months teaching us to do the unexpected, grasp every possible advantage, and fight dirty at every opportunity. War was of such grand, sweeping importance to a society, he taught, that the ends can and quite often do justify the means. And what was gaming but war in miniature? So he didn’t have any trouble at all playing along. “I fear not, James,” he replied, blinking sickly in the bright light. “I took the last of them myself.”

“Shit!” James swore, again deliberately breaking one of our strictest regulations. “I’ll have to find a vendor-bunny!” Then he shook his head and stepped off the elevator, leading us first into and then through the thickest knot of Imperials as if they didn’t exist. “Tell me,” he declared turning to the nearest Yan as I struggled to keep a straight face. “Were those girls from Benedict Four as good as their pimp claimed? How about the little boy? I can’t
wait
to hear!”

I licked my nose and followed close behind, stopping for a moment to scratch and thus spread my shedding fur far and wide among the oh-so-perfect uniforms. While doing so I carefully noted the gaping mouths and wide, shocked eyes of our suddenly babyish and innocent-looking opponents.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d decided that a grin just might be a good answer to swagger. 

We got our first rude shock in the gameroom itself. Rather to our surprise, no less than thirty chairs were packed into each team’s designated area. Professor Lambert went ballistic at this, though you had to know him well to appreciate how angry he was—on the outside he remained cool as a cucumber. “I don’t understand,” he declared to the nearest New Geneva gaming official. “What are all these seats doing here? We’re not allowing spectators in the team area, are we?”

“Why, no!” the official replied. “Of course not!”

“Then,” our coach continued, his voice urbane but his eyes icy, “won’t you please remove all but six? From
both
sides, of course.”

The official shook his head. “Would you have me leave most of your opponents standing, sir?”

It was right about then that the awful truth began to sink in on us. The Imperial academy was many times as large as ours, and on top of that wargaming was a long-established and presumably prestigious activity there. So, their team was simply that much larger than ours.

“There are only four events scheduled, plus a possible tiebreaker!” the professor sputtered, knocked off balance at last. “What
possible
justification can there be—“

“Sir!” the Geneva man interrupted. “Your team was invited, and so was theirs. They came, and so did you. That’s how it is.” He turned and looked at the wall-clock. “Opening ceremonies are in ten minutes. If you wish to register a formal protest, I suggest you hurry. But I can assure you that it won’t do you any good. I’m the chairman of the rules committee, you see. If you wanted more players, you should’ve brought them.”

Our instructor’s shoulders spread like the hood of an angry cobra, then very slowly and deliberately he deflated himself. “I see,” he replied, bowing formally. “Thank you.” His eyes narrowed, then met those of the Yan brothers. “I’m sure we’ll adapt to circumstances somehow.”

Opening ceremonies, like most such events, were a bunch of useless bushwa so far as I was concerned. Professor Lambert delivered an insincere speech about how competition can help heal old wounds, while the Imperial coach—an elderly full admiral who’d won several real-life battles—glorified the art of strategy as the highest calling of humanity. Then it was time for Heinrich and I to shake hands with our opponents, sit down at our chessboards and begin.

My opponent was a pasty-looking young man who looked more like he belonged in a group home than at an Imperial military academy. His uniform was stained with egg yolk, his face was covered with the kind of sores that humans called ‘acne’, and he kept making odd facial expressions for no reason that I could discern. He even smelled bad, though not so much that a human nose would pick up on it. Yet an uncanny, distorted intelligence blazed in his eyes, and he seemed far more at home sitting behind the chessboard than he had while standing at attention. His name was Crager, according to the plate on his chest, and he was a cadet-corporal. Rapidly I spun everything I knew about chess, chess prodigies and military academies through my mind, and came up with what I believed was the right answer. Cadet Crager was probably both a ringer and a savant. While he might well be enrolled at the Academy, all he probably ever did was play chess, chess, chess under the finest coaches available. Instead of graduating to become an officer he was destined for the Imperial team, where he’d continue to compete for the greater glory of his Emperor. This, I also realized, was the beauty of having so many team members. They could specialize, while we were perforce generalists. Heck, he probably hadn’t even marched onto the Station with the rest—he didn’t look half strong enough!

Instead of letting my dismay show, I did what Professor Lambert always advised and dithered as long as possible while I thought things through. Cadet Crager was unbeatable by conventional means, I decided. Or at least he was unbeatable by the likes of me. Nor was chess a game one could effectively cheat at. That left me only one worthwhile strategic aim—to lose in such a way as to further my ultimate goal as much as possible. And that goal was of course to win the series overall. With that understanding, at last all came clear. So, once I was plenty good and ready, I tapped the New Geneva man’s left hand…

…and drew the black chessmen. 

“Hooray!” the Imperials screamed, stamping their feet and making as much of the insignificant victory as possible. Even poor Cadet Crager clapped his hands in an infantile manner and smiled so wide he drooled. The psychological pressure in the room was palpable; you could cut it with a knife. For a fleeting second I wanted to get up and run, to go hide in a place where I didn’t have to face swaggering Imperials and struggle against freaks in battles that I was destined to lose no matter what. Then I reminded myself for the first time in a very long while that the Imperial system had killed my father, and was even now busily looting my once-beautiful homeworld.

After that I was pitiless, and made my coach proud.

Wargaming chess differed slightly from the traditional tournament version. The basics remained unchanged; all the pieces moved the same way, the board still had sixty-four squares, and the ultimate objective remained the enemy king. No timer was employed, however, because it was impractical to use one in certain other wargames. And, again because it was useful in other games, a notepad and pencil was provided.

Rather to my surprise, Cadet Crager (I never did learn his first name—it was almost as if he’d never had one) took voluminous notes from his very first move— the traditional two-square advance of his king’s pawn. He used a sort of dot-dash code with circles and squares thrown in here and there, clearly meant to be incomprehensible to his opponent. Recognizing a standard opening, I replied automatically to his next few moves…

…but only very slowly, taking plenty of time with my own notepad. On which, inspired by James’s earlier ploy, I began to sketch a large-breasted, long-legged bunnygirl in the skimpiest clothing possible. Lying on her back, with her legs spread wide and a seductive smile painted on her face.