The Guns of Two-Space (20 page)

"Um, sir, one last question," said Archer. "I'm really honored and overwhelmed to be given my own Ship. It is the most coveted gift. But I gotta know, why didn't you give this opportunity to Lt. Fielder? He
is
senior."

"Well," replied Melville thoughtfully, "you are now a fellow Master and Commander of a Ship, and essentially an equal, so I'll speak frankly. But this has to stay between us. I offered the opportunity to him. His answer was not just 'No,' but '
Hell no!
' He said he wanted to keep his sanity and, I quote: 'French kissing an alien mind is not conducive to mental hygiene.' He also felt he was better off staying here with a lucky captain. And, frankly, he had absolutely
no
interest in facing the enemy captain in mortal combat."

"Hmmm," replied Archer, "in retrospect, maybe he's the smart one."

"Aye. I've thought that many times," said Melville with a sigh.

In the end, the battle for the last Guldur Ship went comparatively well. This time Melville hammered the enemy with cannon fire for considerably longer, paying special attention to the crow's nests in order to butcher the ticks who were hiding there. Only
then
did he conduct the boarding operation. He cursed himself for not doing the same previously, but he had been too eager to have enough enemy crewmen survive so they could form the core of a crew for the Ship in the future. He had miscalculated, spending the lives of too many of his own sailors, trying to preserve the lives of the enemy. It was a mistake that he would not make again.

Lt. Crater led the cutter party that assaulted the quarterdeck from the enemy's right flank this time, with Midshipman Hayl again serving as the "messenger' for this force. Midshipman Hezikiah Jubal, an able seaman who had been promoted from the ranks and had seen several boarding operations, was in charge of the cutter party hitting the enemy's left flank. The marines took the lowerside again, and this time Private Dwakins was able to keep his feet if not his wits. And Corporal Petrico replaced Ulrich in the assault from the jollyboat onto the enemy's stern.

This enemy captain had been killed by the
Fang
's cannon fire. The low-ranking Guldur in charge of the Ship quickly submitted to Lt. Crater, and Corporal Petrico leapt up onto the stern rail with a pistol in his hand and a great cry of "Die chew pockers!" on his lips, only to find that the battle was over. The Ship readily accepted Lt. Crater as her captain, and she was christened the
Biter
.

Melville felt a great weariness flood through him when this final enemy was defeated. He knew it was his normal post-combat malaise, combined with the physiological "backlash" as the sympathetic nervous system stopped providing survival hormones and the parasympathetic processes began to demand attention and bodily resources for neglected maintenance functions. Having been through this several times before helped a lot, but knowing what was happening did not take
all
the sting out of it.

In his case, the normal, human, post-combat response was aggravated and complicated by his telepathic and empathic communication with his alien Ship and her guns. In some ways the spirit of his Ship strengthened him, and in other, unpredictable ways it weakened him. The result was that he was emotionally off-balance after combat.

A part of him feared that he would become unstable, and would spin into a pit of madness. As Neitzche put it, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. For when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." Melville peered constantly into that abyss, and he felt a constant dread of its result. Or maybe it was simply a sane man's wish to remain so, in an environment that damned near required insanity to deal with it.

The young captain stood on the enemy deck and looked out on the ghastly, gruesome carpet of wounded, dead, and dying sprawled thickly upon the white deck in awkward, undignified postures.
The dead are always without dignity
, thought Melville.

They were mostly Guldur, the wounded ones moaning softly or trying to crawl away like sick animals will do, leaving bloody smears behind them. There were many who would never move again. Some of his crew was here as well. Melville stood amidst the malodorous miasma of the battle, mourning each and every one of them as he softly bestowed a benediction.

"
O ye afflicted ones, who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, yet afraid to die..."
 

The warriors around him nodded their solemn agreement.

Melville was reeling under the weight of exhaustion, trying to shake off his post-combat depression and silence the blood-lust of the alien minds that had bonded with him. Then fate dealt him its harshest blow of all.

"Sir," said Fielder with unaccustomed gentleness. "I'm afraid I have bad news." His first officer had met Melville in the bow just as he was climbing back aboard the
Fang
, and the sadness in Fielder's eyes chilled Melville in a way no words could accomplish.

"Go ahead. What is it?"

"Chips... Mr. Tibbits, he was killed just before we launched the boarding parties. The butcher's bill is really surprisingly light, but he... he will be missed."

"Aye," replied Melville quietly, thinking of the gentle old Ship's carpenter. Tibbits' death had not been particularly heroic. A random bullet, probably fired from a Goblan in the upper rigging, had caught the old man in the head as he was coming out of a hatch. It came as such an out-of-the-blue surprise that his monkey was completely unprepared to block it. It was just damned bad luck. A senseless death, like most deaths in combat. As usually happened whenever a crew member died, Tibbits' monkey just ... disappeared.

Melville turned away from Fielder as tears began to well up in his eyes. The whole weight of this battle, the ultimate responsibility for all the deaths that had happened, suddenly felt like an unbearable burden.

Melville had lost both of his parents as a teenager, and like his parents, that decent, fatherly old man just hadn't seemed mortal.

If I had thought thou couldst have died,
I might not weep for thee;
But I forgot, when by thy side,
That thou couldst mortal be.
 

The loyal old officer who had been such a staunch supporter to his young captain
couldn't
have been the one to die. It wasn't conceivable that he was dead.

This is the real world
, Melville told himself.
It is not some fable, where the characters you really love are never killed. Sometimes the wrong people die. That is the terrible, unpredictable actuality of real combat. Remember this the next time you think about going into battle.
 

As a wise man once wrote, "Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death." And those who get to live, should. It took all the energy he could muster to get on with his duties. But that stern mistress, that harsh hag,
duty
, drove him on.

Melville moved to the upper quarterdeck and called the crew aft. "Shipmates," he said, gripping the quarterdeck rail and looking out upon their faces, "there's a possibility that more Guldur are coming." Through his bare feet on the deck and his hands on the rail he felt his Ship imparting strength. "We may not be done fighting. We need to get repairs in place, get as much speed on these Ships as we can, and get the hell out of here. You deserve a chance to rest, but we all know that life isn't fair. So let's go to work."

The
Fang
's crew, for the most part, were as exhausted as their captain. They had all been under incredible, life-and-death pressures—literally seconds from death for hours at a time. But the crew tended to be less oppressed by the post-combat let down, and they didn't have the fey, fell, and sometimes malignant spirits of alien minds to shake off. The crew was generally of a simpler disposition and philosophy, without the burden of command.
They
were already anticipating the loot and the fame that would come from this battle.

These enemy warships didn't have any commercial cargo that the
Fang
could claim, and most of the actual Ships' equipment would stay onboard. Furthermore, their eventual objective was Earth, and the
Fang
s had a sense that the Westerness Admiralty would
not
welcome the news of this battle. Nor was the Admiralty apt to tender money for their war prizes, as the King of Osgil had done for their capture of the
Fang
. But all the dead ticks (there were no captured ticks) had been stripped of their silver, gold, and gems. And two Shiploads of ticks made for a lot of loot.

The Guldur officers sometimes carried money, but the cur sailors generally did not have anything of value. In life and in death the cur crewmen were mostly tragic, impoverished, oppressed creatures. A Guldur sailor's attitude seemed to be, "If you can't eat it, play with it, mount it, or fight it, then piss on it." (Which, in fact, wasn't much different from a young Westerness sailor or marine.) But past battles had taught the
Fang
s that the Goblan secreted their life's savings upon their bodies and, unlike the Guldur, the ticks were wealthy, grasping, miserly creatures.

As to the fame the
Fang
s had earned, well, there was no doubt that this tale was a ticket to free drinks in any tavern in Westerness. Or Sylvan or Dwarrowdelf space for that matter. So the fame was good and you
could
upon occasion drink fame, but you could not eat it. Nor would it buy you that retirement farm, tavern, or business back home that most sailors dreamed about. In the end what really counted was the loot, which was placed into a common kitty and then carefully divided by rank and duties. Thus the money from the ticks was nice and it was immediate, but the primary source of wealth (or at least potential wealth) was the future income of the captured Ships themselves.

One of the rarest, most expensive, and precious things in the galaxy was a Ship of two-space. The technology behind the Keels was a great secret, but it was common knowledge that the manufacturing process was arduous and expensive, dwarfing even the enormous cost of the huge, intricate, complex wooden Ship, constructed of the rare and costly Nimbrell wood. The Star Kingdom of Westerness made these absurdly expensive Ships, and then their crews spent generations helping to pay for them.

Although their routes and assignments were usually prescribed, a Ship of the Westerness Navy operated its own budget with a high degree of independence in internal business affairs. Cargo, trading goods, food, supplies, and equipment were not supplied from some central storehouse. These goods were earned, purchased, constructed, and traded for with great zeal and a constant eye for profit.

Each Ship of Westerness was a business, and each crewman a stockholder in the business. If the business did badly the officers and crew could have their Ship taken away from them. Such foreclosures were rare, but they did happen. As the sailors said, "The best way to get back on land is to miss a boat payment." Of course, if a Ship was on special duty for the crown, such as exploratory duty, then the Navy met their payment, or paid them for their service. During time of war, commercial operations and trade became secondary, the crown assumed responsibility for the Ship's payments, and they became first and foremost men-of-war.

The older Ships, like their
Kestrel
and the other Raptor Class frigates, and the Author Class frigates, had been paid off over the span of many generations. The new Poet Class frigates were still in the process of paying for themselves. The Queen and the Admiralty always got their share, but once the Ship was paid off there was a far larger slice of the profit for the crew.

Thus, what was exciting and important to the
Fang
s was that their Ship was paid for, and so were these newly aquired Ships,
Gnasher
and
Biter
. The
Fangs
were now stockholders in these new Ships.
Gnasher
and
Biter
were debt free, so money would flow from them in the years to come and a share of the wealth from all three Ships would go to each crew member who was there from the beginning. Future crew members would have to pay out their ownership shares, but the current crew would reap a profit from the very beginning.

The exhausted
Fang
s worked their miracles on the
Biter
as they cycled through all-too-brief rest periods.

Again the wounded were evacuated back to the
Fang
and the dead Guldur were put over the side. Their bodies had not yet stiffened, and the limp corpses sailed lazily into two-space without resistance, as if they were resigned to their fate and glad to get it over with.

The Ship had to be self-sufficient. Very little was ever wasted. Economic survival required it, and their actual physical survival might demand it at any moment. The lack of some trivial piece of equipment could very well mean the difference between life and death. "For want of a nail..."

The ropemaker and the carpenter's mates picked through the debris to salvage everything that might be of use. All around them were the sounds of hammers, axes, and saws, mixed with the strong smell of paint from the repaired red- and greenside railings.

Above them the sailors stayed busy splicing and mending, and the tattered sails were pulled down to patch and stow for future use. The sailmaker and his mates were squatting amidst most of the open deck space, their canvas spread and their needles flashing as they patched and repaired the sails that could be salvaged. Some of the canvas would be put immediately into service, wrapped lovingly around the bodies that came out of the hospital.

Periodically a surgeon's mate would come on deck and toss a bloodstained bundle over the side. A leg? An arm? No one wanted to know, and the silent, grim-faced observers couldn't help but think that it might have been theirs. The
Fang
s tried to salvage everything, but there was nothing in that bundle that could be put to future use. The owner was done with it.