Commander

by Phil Geusz

  Still, I observed the proprieties first. “Strike your colors,” Josiah invited the Imperials over the interstellar distress channel. “Your situation is hopeless—certainly you must be aware of this. We’ll accept your surrender and treat you well.” But there was no response, of course—there rarely was under such circumstances from an Imperial. Not that the Royal Navy often had the opportunity to make the offer in the first place. Usually it was our side on the losing end of things.

  I didn’t like the silence one little bit. “Well,” Josiah observed at last. “At least we’ll have time to pick up the lifeboat with the VIP’s in it.”

  I nodded back. Had the cruiser’s captain, whoever that might be at this point, accepted my offer I’d have had to let the lifeboat go. Our schedule was too tight for both. But, as things were… “All right, Wu. They’ve had plenty of time to be reasonable. How’s the range?”

  “Optimal in two and a half minutes, sir.”

  I nodded, then sighed. “This is slaughter, not war. And yet we must do this thing regardless. Make your run and fire at will, Astrogator.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.” To his credit, the young man who’d once been so excited at the prospect of blowing every ship in sight out of the sky had matured quite a bit on this unexpectedly long and stressful mission. He too looked genuinely saddened at what had to come next. First he pressed the little ‘arm’ button, then he switched to manual and stopped our continual jinking and dodging for the best possible accuracy…

  …and, just a second too late, I saw it coming. “No!” I cried out. “Don’t—”

  But, it was too late. The entire stern half of The Seventh of November lit up in one huge muzzle-flash as every functional weapon opened up on us. Her marksmanship was terrible; there probably wasn’t a trained gunner in the bunch, and only a very few batteries got off a second shot before the torp struck home and sealed their vessel’s fate. In fact, they only scored one single hit. But what a dreadful hit it was! One of her main-battery bolts struck us near the stem and, not encountering anything solid, burned all the way through our hull from end to end. Half of Richard’s compartments catastrophically depressurized, and most of the rest sprung slow leaks. There were casualties everywhere. While the bridge held its air, we were all thrown to the deck and it was several long minutes before even battery power could be restored.

  “…surprisingly light casualties,” Parker was reporting a few minutes later, as unflappable as if this sort of thing happened to Richard every week. “But life support’s trashed—we’ve canned air for a week or so. All the main frames are distorted, all the cores are down…” It was a litany of destruction. And it was all my fault, for letting my guard down and seeing what I wanted to see, instead of what was really there.

  “It’s all right, David,” Uncle Robert whispered softly, so that no one else could hear. “We all thought she was dead, too.”

  I shook my head angrily. “I was a fool!”

  “You made a mistake,” Josiah corrected me. “A very human mistake, one that we all made right along with you. After a long, long run of good decisions, I’ll add. Some of them downright brilliant. And you’re still in command. So… What are your orders, sir?”

  I blinked, then scowled. Had I fallen so low that my first officer had to remind me of my duty? “Let’s see a schematic on the main screen,” I demanded, extra-gruff due to my anger at myself. For as long as I lived, I’d never, ever for a moment forget what a fool I’d been!

  Then the diagram I’d asked for appeared on the screen, and I winced at the wide swaths of blinking red and yellow. “Poor Richard,” I heard Josiah mutter under his breath. “Poor, poor Richard!”

  “Sir!” Wu interrupted. “Whiff of Grape is underway, and working up to full speed!”

  I nodded, not having to ask which way she was headed. “When will she be in range?”

  “Three hours and forty-three minutes, more or less.”

  I looked at Josiah. “Better get busy with the tarps,” I suggested. In an instant he was off the bridge, on his way to supervise the damage-control work. Then I rang up engineering. “An hour or two, sir,” I was informed even before I could ask how long it’d be before we had power. “We didn’t unseat the rods, just burned out the primary leads.”

  “Good,” I replied. That was one less worry, at least.

  Then a new light appeared on my console—a red one, from the boat deck. “Sir!” Sergeant Petranovich reported. “We’re ready to go after that VIP boat.”

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant,” I replied. “It appears you didn’t get the word. We’re dead in the water. The boat’ll be gone before we can catch it.”

  “No it won’t, sir!” he replied. “We can use the yacht!”

  I blinked. The “yacht” was a luxuriously-appointed ship’s boat with an oversized drive that we’d requisitioned back at the mine. It’d been assigned to the supervisor, and was meant for high-speed inspection runs and the like. We’d shipped it as an extra lifeboat, since we so often found ourselves with so many unplanned guests. “Are you sure?” I asked. “It’ll only hold six men.”

  “Seven, if they’re all Rabbits except me. We’ve already checked that out. And the math’s all in the green too. Sir… I’d hate to see ‘em get away after all this trouble. I plan to grapple and hold them. Then when Richard is operational again, you can bring us all back aboard.”

  My eyebrows rose. It sounded workable. And Petranovich was certainly demonstrating plenty of initiative and ability, considering that he’d originally been dumped on me as a hopeless alcoholic. In fact, I had to admit, he’d been doing so for some time now. At least there was one happy ending today. “Execute,” I ordered. “Godspeed! And Sergeant?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “You’ve made me proud.”

  37

  There was little to do except watch the clock while Josiah and the able spacers tarped our wounds over. Normally I’d have taken advantage of the interlude to visit the wounded, inspect our damage with my own eyes, and generally make myself visible in every corner of the ship in order to help sustain morale. That was a ship captain’s traditional role under such circumstances, and it was a good and honorable one. But because of my own wounds, if I tried moving about all I’d accomplish would be to get in the way. So I did what I could over the intercom instead, ringing up every communications node on the ship and talking to as many crewmen as time allowed. Morale was excellent, considering our losses. “Such a wonderful a crew Richard’s been blessed with,” I commented to Uncle Robert at one point. “They’re absolutely magnificent.”

  He looked at me oddly. “You’ve led them to victory after victory on this cruise, David. When in the beginning all seemed lost. Not another officer in the Fleet would’ve shown such panache. By now not only would they follow you to the gates of Hell, they’d march right in, slaughter all of the demons with big grins on their faces and install you as the new Lucifer-in-residence. They’re not stupid—they know that they’re winning still, despite their sacrifices. If you don’t understand how much they love you and why, then you’re not the officer I thought you were.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I licked my nose and turned back to the intercom. I hadn’t seen Nestor since we’d taken the hit in the hold where the Imperious Rabbits were quartered—indeed, he was long overdue on the bridge. It wasn’t right for a captain to play favorites; I’d quite deliberately never inquired specifically about him while so many of our shipmates were fighting and dying in the lowest sorts of misery. But now I’d caught up with my duties enough that it was appropriate for me to ask around. The bad news was that it didn’t take me long to find him—he was down in sick bay sure enough, being treated for vacuum exposure. The instant the atmosphere in the compartment started to vent, he’d begun stuffing landlubber-bunnies into survival bubbles and had kept right on doing so until there were none left to stuff. Only then had he climbed into one himself. The good news was that the damage wasn’t too terribly
awful—his lungs and throat were in bad shape but would recover, and the same was true of his eyes. The pharmacist mate I was speaking to held his headset up close to my aide’s ear, so that I could wish him well directly and congratulate him on being so brave. There was a sort of dull croak in reply, and I was assured that my friend had smiled. It wasn’t the sort of sickbed visitation he deserved, but under the circumstances it had to do.

  I was just finishing up my call when Sergeant Petranovich intercepted the VIP boat and attempted his grapple; it held, though the Imperials counterattacked with great vigor. Only four of them emerged from the lifeboat to try and cut our cable, but they fought with enormous skill and verve despite their disadvantage. Tentatively I labeled them as an elite bodyguard detachment, and revised my estimate of the unknown VIP’s importance higher still. As planned, our marines made no attempt to force the airlock—they were far too few for that. So they merely waited for the rest of us to catch up, and I went half-mad wondering exactly who and what our prize was.

  “I think we’ve got it,” Josiah finally reported just over three hours after that last catastrophic hit. I was very glad indeed to hear from him, as Whiff of Grape was closing fast. He sounded terribly old and tired; sometimes it was easy for us youngsters to forget that he was no spring chicken. “Wu, could I trouble you to make a low-power continuity test?”

  The astrogator looked at me for permission; I nodded. “All hands clear of the hull!” he warned on the vacuum-suit frequency. “Powering up in thirty seconds!” The repairs proved good, by rush-job standards at least. “Sixty-four percent,” Wu replied with a grin. “That’s enough for a Jump, sir!”

  I nodded back. It was indeed enough—barely. “Bring in your crew, Josiah! And move, move, move!”

  38

  We were already under extreme-range fire from Whiff of Grape’s main battery by the time we stopped to secure the VIP’s. There wasn’t any time to spare for niceties. So we simply transmitted a warning to the boat’s occupants to prepare for hard vacuum, then blew a twenty-foot-long gash right through the hull of the Imperial boat. There was no way we could afford to dilly-dally around waiting for our enemies to don pressure suits at their leisure; if they didn’t want to be taken prisoner conveniently and efficiently, then they’d simply have to settle for being dead instead. Rather to our surprise there was another brief exchange of blaster-fire before the Imperials submitted, then half a dozen spanking-new prisoners appeared outside the hull-breach with their hands on their heads in the universal gesture of surrender. I examined their suits carefully. One was wearing a naval captain’s epaulettes, sure enough, and the rest seemed to defer to him to the point of excess. We’d lost a man during that last frenetic exchange of fire; some poor wretch was sealed up in a standard-issue bodybag. Our marines transferred the lot over to Richard in commendably short order, then looted the boat of everything that looked important as well. “There’s so much expensive furniture and junk in here that we can hardly move, Captain!” Silk reported.

  “Leave it,” I ordered. “It’s useless to us. Just grab everything that looks like it might be capable of storing data. And if you see anything that seems like it might be a diary, snatch that up too. Forget everything else and get back here as quick as you can!”

  “Aye-aye, sir! Silk replied, sounding far more confident and marine-like than he had so many months back when we’d first left home. “Awright, youse guys!” I heard him begin before our circuit cut off, as he amplified and explained my orders to his own men. The rest was too profane to repeat.

  Even though we scuttled both the Imperial boat and our yacht rather than take the time to bring them aboard, the enemy got several good salvos off at us before we hit Point Eight. One round actually struck home in an already-shattered hold, and for a long sick moment I thought that the game might be up after all. “H-how bad is it?” I finally choked out.

  “Fifty-eight percent Field stability,” Wu reported. “But steady.”

  “Get us through no matter what,” I ordered. “At any cost. Jump us the first possible second.”

  “Aye-aye,” he replied, sounding distracted as he performed his final calculations.

  The main-screen was reading off of our rear-facing camera, and I watched as Whiff’s final salvo roared across space towards us. It was going to hit, I was sickly certain, at least one of the bolts. The spread was perfectly aligned, and had us dead to rights. “Wu…” I muttered, my voice still gentle. “Any time now would be just fine by me. Any time at all.”

  Instead of answering, he stabbed his red button. All space everywhen went insane for a moment as the imperfectly set-up Jump and damaged Field half-twisted our engineering plant out of reality. Then we switched to the view ahead...

  …and there was the armored colossus of New Geneva hanging in the middle distance like a misshapen balloon.

  39

  I was long past the point of exhaustion; the analgesic and alertness shots weren’t working nearly so well anymore as they had a few hours back. My body was beginning to remember that it was badly wounded after all, and was no longer so easily fooled on that score. But at least I’d gotten a few hours of rest while undergoing surgery. Except for some too-brief moments of personal relief, the rest of the bridge crew had been at their posts ever since a few hours before the attack on the battlecruiser. They not only looked it, they smelled it—the odor of dirty, exhausted and frightened humanity filled the air. Sadly, I couldn’t dismiss them below quite yet. There were still critical moments ahead of us.

  The New Genevans were nothing if not prompt—I’d heard that their military was top notch if small, and their watchkeeping certainly proved to be up to snuff. They maintained a small fleet of revenue cutters in order to patrol local space; one of these, unsurprisingly, was sitting just on their side of Point Eight to keep an eye on things. “Royal Auxiliary Cruiser,” it signaled us within two minutes of completing our Jump. “This is Capain Akeno Watanabe, of the New Genevan Republic cutter Bodensee. You are in violation of our neutrality. Go about immediately.”

  I smiled, and for once used video to reply. “Greetings, Captain Watanabe!” I replied from amidst the many bandages swathing me. “This is Captain David Birkenhead, of HMS Richard. I regret that this is impossible; we’ve sustained severe battle damage, and while I’m not quite certain yet I suspect that our engines have made their last Jump without a complete overhaul. Therefore, I regret to inform you that as much as we’d like to return to Imperial space, we’re incapable of doing so.”

  There was a pause as Watanabe’s eyes widened. “You’re dead!” he answered at last. “Missing for over a year! Though there have been rumors…”

  I smiled again, for once pleased that my fame had preceded me. “Not quite yet,” I replied. Then I let my expression fade. “We accept voluntary internment. My men and I won’t put up a fight— in fact, I’m not sure that we could if we tried. Send a boarding party, if you like. But we’re done and we know it.”

  There was another pause; Watanabe had to know the rules at least as well as I did, yet to my knowledge no other warship had ever accepted internment at New Geneva. “Understood,” he replied eventually. “Your word is sufficient—a boarding party won’t be necessary at this time. Come under my stern, Captain, and follow directly in my wake.”

  I made a sort of ridiculous bow from the command chair. “Thank you, Captain. We’ll comply as best we’re able. Once more, I remind you we have serious engineering problems.”

  “Obviously,” Watanabe agreed. “We’ll go nice and slow for you.” There was another long pause. “And, if I may be so bold Captain Birkenhead… Once things are squared away back the Station, and of course if circumstances and your wounds allow, would you and your first officer do me the honor of dining with my command staff?”

  My smile widened, and for the first time I began to relax a little. Exchanging dinners was a long-hallowed peacetime tradition among naval officers regardless of nationality. Unless the man was tota
lly duplicitous, which I had no reason to suspect, he was making a sincere attempt to ease the sting of losing my ship. “At the first opportunity, sir!” I replied, half-bowing again. “You might also be interested to know that just on the other side of the node there’s an Imperial light cruiser of the Sword of the People class in hot pursuit of me. I don’t expect they’ll be nearly so happy to see you as I was. They’ll be about another thirty-five minutes or so, if they come at all.”

  He smiled. “Given what I know of you, Captain, I’m amazed that it’s just a light cruiser and not half the Imperial Fleet.” Then his features hardened. “We’ll be ready for them. Thank you. Watanabe out.”

  “Sir,” Wu said the instant the New Genevan’s image faded. “The Station’s main batteries are traversing towards us.”