by David Drake
He wasn’t trying to get to safety: he knew his safest course would be to lie silently in a dip, hoping to go unobserved or pass for dead. He wasn’t thinking clearly, but his troopers were on the knoll so that’s where he was going.
A rebel ran out from behind the command car shouting, “Protect me, Lord!”
Ruthven glanced back. His sub-machine gun was in the vehicle, but he wore a pistol. He scrabbled for it but his equipment belt was twisted; he couldn’t find the holster.
The rebel thrust his automatic rifle out in both hands; the butt wasn’t anywhere near his shoulder. “Die, unbeliever!” he screamed. A 2-cm powergun bolt decapitated him. The rifle fired as he spasmed backward.
One bullet struck Ruthven in the small of the back. It didn’t penetrate his ceramic body armor, but the impact was like a sledgehammer. Bits of bullet jacket sprayed Ruthven’s right arm and cheek.
He pushed himself upward again, moaning deep in his throat. He thought he might be talking to himself. A skimmer snarled through the high grass and circled to a halt alongside, the bow facing uphill. Nozzles pressurized by the single fan sprayed grit across Ruthven’s bare face.
“El-Tee, grab on!” Rennie shouted, leaning from the flat platform to seize Ruthven’s belt. “Grab!”
Ruthven turned on his side and reached out. He got a tie-down in his left hand and the shoulder clamp of the sergeant’s armor in his right. Rennie was already slamming power to the lift fan, trying to throw his weight out to the right to balance the drag of Ruthven’s body.
The skimmer wasn’t meant to carry two, but it slowly accelerated despite the excess burden. Ruthven bounced through brush, sometimes hitting a rock. His left boot acted as a skid, but often enough his hip or the length of his leg scraped as the skimmer ambled uphill. A burst of sub-machine gun fire, a nervous flickering against the brighter, saturated flashes of 2-cm weapons, crackled close overhead, but Ruthven couldn’t see what the shooter was aiming at.
The skimmer jolted over a shrub whose roots had held the windswept soil in a lump higher than the ground to either side. Ruthven flew free and rolled. Every time his right leg hit the ground, a flash of pain cut out that fraction of the night.
A tribarrel chugged from behind, raking the slope up which they’d come. Ruthven was within the new perimeter. Half a dozen Royalists huddled nearby with terrified expressions, but E/1 itself had enough firepower to halt the rebels. They’d already been hammered, and now more shells screamed down like a regiment of flaming banshees.
Firebase Groening was northeast of Firebase Courage, so the hogs were overfiring E/1’s present perimeter to reach the rebels. Somebody . . . Sergeant Hassel? . . . must be calling in concentrations, relaying the messages through the command car. The vehicle was out of action, but its radios were still working.
Rennie spun the skimmer to a halt. “Made it!” he shouted. “We bloody well made it!”
Ruthven found his holster and managed to lift the flap. Beside him, Rennie hunched to remove his 2-cm weapon from the rail where he’d clamped it to free both hands for the rescue.
A buzzbomb skimmed the top of the knoll, missing the tribarrel at which it’d been aimed and striking Sergeant Rennie in the middle of the back. There was a white flash.
The shells from Firebase Groening landed like an earthquake on the rebels who’d overrun the Royalist camp and were now starting uphill toward E/1. In the light of the huge explosions, Ruthven saw Rennie’s head fly high in the air. The sergeant had lost his helmet, and his expression was as innocent as a child’s.
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Ruthven,” Doctor Parvati said as he stepped into the room without knocking. “You are up? And packing already, I see. It is good that you should be optimistic, but let us take things one step at a time, shall we? Lie down on your bed, please, so that I can check you.”
Ruthven wondered if Parvati’d put a slight emphasis on the phrase “one step.” Probably not, and even if he had it’d been meant as a harmless joke. I have to watch myself. I’m pretty near the edge, and if I start overreacting, well. . . .
“Look, Doc,” he said, straightening but not moving away from the barracks bag he was filling from the locker he’d kept under the bed. “You saw the reading that Drayer took this noon, right? I’m kinda in a hurry.”
“I have gone over the noon readings, yes,” Parvati said calmly. He was a small, slight man with only a chaplet of hair remaining, though by his face he was in his early youth. “Now I would like to take more readings.”
When Ruthven still hesitated, Parvati added, “I do not tell you how to do your job, Lieutenant. Please grant me the same courtesy.”
“Right,” said Ruthven after a further moment. He pushed the locker to the side and paused. The garments were new, sent over from Quartermaster’s Stores. The gear on the command car’s rack had burned when they shot at rebs trying to get to the tribarrel. The utilities Ruthven worn during the firefight had been cut off him as soon as he arrived here.
He sat on the bed and carefully swung his legs up. He’d been afraid of another blinding jolt, but he felt nothing worse than a twinge in his back. Funny how it was his left hip rather than the smashed right femur where the pain hit him now. He’d scraped some on the left side, but he’d have said that was nothing to mention.
“So,” said Parvati, reading the diagnostic results with his hands crossed behind his back. The holographic display was merely a distortion in the air from where Ruthven lay looking at the doctor. “So.”
“I was talking to Sergeant Axbird this afternoon,” Ruthven said to keep from fidgeting. “She was my platoon sergeant, you know. I was wondering how she was coming along?”
Parvati looked at Ruthven through the display. After a moment he said, “Mistress Axbird’s physical recovery has gone as far as it can. How she does now depends on her own abilities and the degree to which she learns to use her new prosthetics. If you are her friend, you will encourage her to show more initiative in that regard.”
“Ah,” Ruthven said. “I see. I’m cleared for duty, though, Doctor. Right?”
He wondered if he ought to stand up again. Parvati always used the bed’s own display instead of downloading the information into a clipboard.
“Are you still feeling pain in your hip, Lieutenant?” the doctor asked, apparently oblivious of Ruthven’s question.
“No,” Ruthven lied. “Well, not really. You know, I get a little, you know, tickle from time to time. I guess that’ll go away pretty quick, right?”
It struck Ruthven that the diagnostic display would include blood pressure, heart rate, and all the other physical indicators of stress. He jumped up quickly. Pain exploded from his hip; he staggered forward. His mouth was open to gasp, but his paralyzed diaphragm couldn’t force the air out of his lungs.
“Lieutenant?” Parvati said, stepping forward.
“I’m all right!” said Ruthven. Sweat beaded his forehead. “I just tripped on the locker! Bloody thing!”
“I see,” said Parvati in a neutral tone. “Well, Lieutenant, your recovery seems to be proceeding most satisfactorily. I’d like you to remain here for a few days, however, so that some of my colleagues can check you over.”
“You mean Psych, don’t you?” Ruthven said. His hands clenched and unclenched. “Look, Doc, I don’t need that and I sure don’t want it. Just sign me out, got it?”
“Lieutenant Ruthven, you were seriously injured,” the doctor said calmly. “I would be derelict in my duties if I didn’t consider the possibility that the damage I was able to see had not caused additional damage beyond my purview. I wish to refer you to specialists in psychological trauma, yes.”
“Do you?” Ruthven said. His voice was rising, but he couldn’t help it. “Well, you let me worry about that, all right? You’re a nice guy, Doc, but you said it: my psychology is none of your business! Now, you clear me back to my unit, or I’ll take it over your head. You can explain to Colonel Hammer why you’re dicking around a platoon l
eader whose troops need him in the field!”
“I see,” said the doctor without any inflection. “I do not have the authority to hold you against your will, Lieutenant, but for your own sake I wish you would reconsider.”
“You said that,” Ruthven said. He bent and picked up his barracks bag. “Now, you do your job and let me get back to mine.”
Parvati made a slight bow. “As you wish,” he said. He touched the controller in his hand; the hologram vanished like cobwebs in a storm. “I will have an orderly come to take your bag.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Ruthven said harshly. “I can get it over to the transient barracks myself. They’ll find me a bunk there if there isn’t a way to get to E/1 still tonight. I just want to be out of this place ASAP.”
He didn’t know where the platoon was or who was commanding in his absence. Hassel, he hoped; it’d be awkward if Central’d brought in another officer already. He wondered how many replacements they’d gotten after the ratfuck at Firebase Courage.
“As you wish,” Parvati repeated, opening the door and stepping back for Ruthven to lead. “Ah? By the water pitcher, Lieutenant? The file is yours, I believe?”
Ruthven didn’t look over his shoulder. “No, not mine,” he said. “I was thinking about, you know, transferring out, but I couldn’t leave my platoon. E/1 really needs me, you know.”
He walked into the corridor, as tight as a compressed spring. Even before Axbird had come to see him, he’d been thinking of night and darkness and the faceless horror of living among people who didn’t know what it was like. Who’d never know what it was like.
The troopers of Platoon E/1 did need Henry Ruthven, he was sure.
But not as much as I need them, in the night and the unending darkness.
JIM
The Hammer series exists because Jim Baen first bought individual stories, then the books themselves.
These three volumes of The Complete Hammer’s Slammers are therefore the right place to print my obituary to my friend Jim.
Jim Baen called me on the afternoon of June 11, 2006. He generally phoned on weekends, and we’d usually talk a couple more times in the course of a week; but this was the last time.
In the course of the conversation he said, “You’ve got to write my obituary, you know.” I laughed (I’ll get to that) and said, “Sure, if I’m around—but remember, I’m the one who rides the motorcycle.”
So I’m writing this. Part of it’s adapted from the profile I did in 2000 for the program book of the Chicago Worldcon at which Jim was Editor Guest of Honor. They cut my original title, which Jim loved: The God of Baendom. I guess they thought it was undignified and whimsical.
The title was undignified and whimsical. So was Jim.
James Patrick Baen was born October 22, 1943, on the Pennsylvania-New York border, a long way by road or in culture from New York City. He was introduced to SF early through the magazines in a step-uncle’s attic, including the November, 1957, issue of Astounding with “The Gentle Earth” by Christopher Anvil.
The two books Jim most remembered as being formative influences were Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard and Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke. The theme of both short novels is that a youth from a decaying culture escapes the trap of accepted wisdom and saves his people despite themselves. This is a fair description of Jim’s life in SF: he was always his own man, always a maverick, and very often brilliantly successful because he didn’t listen to what other people thought.
For example, the traditional model of electronic publishing required that the works be encrypted. Jim thought that just made it hard for people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make. His e-texts were DRM-free and in a variety of common formats.
While e-publishing has been a costly waste of effort for others, Baen Books quickly began earning more from electronic sales than it did from book sales in Canada ($6,000/month). By the time of Jim’s death, the figure had risen to ten times that.
Jim didn’t forget his friends. In later years he arranged for the expansion of Fire-Hunter so that he could republish it (as The Hunter Returns, originally the title of the Charles R. Knight painting Jim put on the cover).
Though Clarke didn’t need help to keep his books in print the way Kjelgaard did, Jim didn’t forget him either. Jim called me for help a week before his stroke, because Amazon.com had asked him to list the ten SF novels that everyone needed to read to understand the field. Against the Fall of Night was one of the titles that we settled on.
Jim’s father died at age fifty; he and his stepfather didn’t warm to one another. Jim left home at seventeen and lived on the streets for several months, losing weight that he couldn’t at the time afford. He enlisted in the army as the only available alternative to starving to death.
Jim spent his military career in Bavaria where he worked for the Army Security Agency as a Morse Code Intercept Operator, monitoring transmissions from a Soviet callsign that was probably an armored corps. One night he determined that “his” Soviet formation was moving swiftly toward the border. This turned out to be an unannounced training exercise—but if World War III had broken out in 1960, Jim would’ve been the person who announced it.
Jim entered CUNY on the GI Bill and became a Hippie. Among other jobs he managed a Greenwich Village coffee house, sometimes acting as barker as well: “Come in and see tomorrow’s stars today!” None of the entertainers became tomorrow’s stars, but that experience of unabashed huckstering is part of the reason that Jim himself did.
Jim’s first job in publishing was as an assistant in the Complaints Department of Ace Books. He was good at it—so good that management tried to promote him to running the department. He turned the offer down, however, because he really wanted to be an SF editor.
In 1973 Jim was hired at Galaxy and If magazines when Judy-Lynn Benjamin left. He became assistant to Ejler Jakobson, who with Bernie Williams taught Jim the elements of slash-andburn editing.
Unfortunately, this was a necessary skill for an editor in Jim’s position. The publisher wasn’t in a hurry to pay authors, so established writers who could sell elsewhere preferred to do so. Galaxy and If published a lot of first stories and not a few rejects by major names. Material like that had to be edited for intelligibility and the printer’s deadline, not nuances of prose style.
Apart from basic technique Jim had very little to learn from his senior, who shortly thereafter left to pursue other opportunities. Jim’s first act as editor was to recall stories that his predecessor had rejected over Jim’s recommendation. When in later years I thanked him for retrieving the first two Hammer stories, Jim responded, “Oh, David—Jake rejected much better stories than yours!” (Among them was Ursula K. LeGuin’s Nebula winner, “The Day Before the Revolution”.)
Ace Books, in many ways the standard bearer of SF paperback publishing in the Fifties, had fallen on hard times in the Seventies. Charter Communications bought the company and installed Tom Doherty as publisher. Tom hired Jim to run the SF line. The first thing the new team did was to pay Ace’s back (and in some cases, way back) royalties. By the time the famous SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) audit of Ace Books was complete, the money had already been paid to the authors; a matter of some embarrassment to the SFWA officers who were aware of the facts.
Ace regained its position as an SF line where readers could depend on getting a good story. (To Homer, that was the essence of art; not all writers and editors of more recent times would have agreed.) As well as pleasing readers, the Ace SF line made money for the company; unfortunately (due to decisions from far above the level of publisher) SF came to be the only part of the company that did make money. Tom left Ace in 1980, founded Tor Books, and hired Jim to set up the Tor SF line.
Which Jim did, following the same pattern that had revived Ace: a focus on story and a mix of established authors with first-timers whom Jim thought just might have what it took. It worked again.
In fact it w
orked so well that when Simon & Schuster went through a series of upheavals in its Pocket Books line in 1983, management decided to hire Jim as their new SF editor. Jim thought about the offer, then made a counter-offer: with the backing of two friends, he would form a separate company which would provide S&S with an SF line to distribute. S&S agreed and Baen Books was born.
Jim used the same formulas with his new line as he had at Ace and Tor, and again he succeeded. If that were easy, then past decades wouldn’t be littered with the detritus of so many other people’s attempts to do the same thing.
Even more than had been the case at Ace and Tor, Jim was his own art director at Baen Books—and he really directed, rather than viewing his job as one of coddling artists. Baen Books gained a distinct look. Like the book contents, the covers weren’t to everyone’s taste—but they worked.
Jim had the advantage over some editors in that he knew what a story is. He had the advantage over most editors in being able to spot talent before somebody else had published it. (Lois Bujold, Eric Flint, John Ringo, and Dave Weber were all Baen discoveries whom Jim promoted to stardom.)
Furthermore, he never stopped developing new writers. The week before his stroke, Jim bought a first novel from a writer whom Baen Books had been grooming through short stories over the past year.
The most important thing of all which Jim brought to his company was a personal vision. Baen Books didn’t try to be for everybody, but it was always true to itself. In that as in so many other ways, the company mirrored Jim himself.
When Jim called me on June 11, he told me he was dying. I thought he was simply having a bad interaction among prescription drugs. Though the stroke that killed him occurred the next day in hospital, Jim was right and I was wrong—again.
After that opening, Jim said, “I’m just going to say it: we’ve known each other all these years and you seem to like me. Why?”
