The Guns of Two-Space

by Dave Grossman

  Finally he was led into the inner sanctum, high up in the main building of Earthport. More like the "inner sphincter" thought Melville. The gravity was extremely light here, but his heart was heavy as he walked into the admiral's suite.

  The ancient hallways, expensive old furnishings and vaguely musty atmosphere made Melville feel like an intruder in a posh gentleman's club. A chummy realm of collegiality and handshake deals. An exclusive club where he was not welcome.

  "So, you have one of those new Guldur Ships, eh?" said the dapper young flag lieutenant who was the admiral's aide. "How do you find it?"

  "Usually where I left it."

  "Ha, yes, mmm. Indeed. You know, Melville, nobody here's quite sure what to make of your story. Personally I think that a tale of such bizarre complexity and outrageous daring has got be true. Nobody here can believe you're smart enough to make it up. Well, off we go to see the admiral."

  As he entered the admiral's office he was disconcerted as his bare feet trod on a plush, maroon carpet. Usually aboard Ship and on Piers the decks were left bare for the Moss to flourish. The walls had an assortment of oil paintings, and a big bay window looked out on the Pier.

  "Ha! Melville," said Admiral Beaucoup, a bluff old man with huge white muttonchop sideburns who was behind an enormous desk, leaning back in a black chairdog. The admiral pointedly did not get up, nor did he offer Melville a seat or refreshments. "So you're the young man who's been the source of so much trouble, eh? You've got an amazing number of people who want your head on a platter, I'm afraid. So many pigeons have come home to roost, it's like a damned eclipse!"

  Good! said a little voice in Melville's head. Then we will fight in the shade!

  "You know," the admiral continued, wagging his finger admonishingly with a jovial chuckle, "in retrospect, capturing three Guldur Ships, sinking a couple dozen others, and helping to kill a few hundred thousand Oraki and Guldur just might not have been a very good move. Eh?"

  Well sir, thought Melville, it is true that we helped turn a couple hundred thousand of them into buzzard buffets on Ambergris. And thousands more are freeze-dried pup-sickles floating around in space thanks to us. But if we don't kill enough of them, the others just won't respect us in the morning, don'tcher see? And, anyway, what's the point of having a devastatingly destructive, kick-ass Ship if you can't use it?

  That's what the little voice in his head was gibbering. What he said was, "Well sir, it was all in self-defense. They did start the whole thing by ambushing and killing the Kestrel, our captain, and a good portion of our crew."

  "Eh, well they do admit to that, but they say it was an accident. They claim they were cleaning their cannon when it went off. Damned wogs and aliens, can't trust any of them, eh?" said the admiral with a knowing wink.

  "And the Oraki claim you executed one of their royalty. Two good shots to the forehead and one right into the old kisser. Ha! Good shootin' that, eh? Best thing to do with 'em if you ask me. But I'm afraid the whole matter is completely out of my hands. It's all politics, don'tcher see? We can't let them think you're being rewarded for that kind of behavior. Where would we be if all of our officers went off whacking wog royalty, eh?"

  Thus Melville was informed of the Admiralty's judgment. In the end, it wasn't as bad as he'd feared. He was pretty sure that he could see the influence of the Celebri Shipwrights at work, and it was a bemused and mostly relieved young captain who returned to his Ship.

  "Deck there!" called the lookout in the foremast crosstrees. "I can see the cap'n comin'!"

  "Very well," replied Fielder. "Midshipman of the watch, call the side party, stand by to pipe the captain aboard."

  Soon Melville came up the gangplank and saluted the side party as his monkey leapt happily to his shoulder.

  "Well," he said, when he stood on the quarterdeck with his first officer and purser, who were the two key officers involved with the operation and finances of the Ship. "I think we've succeeded in dodging the bullet. They've denied us prize money for the Gnasher and the Biter, but they sure as hell are not going to give 'em back to the Guldur."

  "Huh. Tightfisted bastards," said Fielder.

  "Wait, you haven't heard anything yet," replied Melville. "Archer and Crater remain in command of their Ships. The Admiralty doesn't have much choice about that, since the Ships have bonded to them. There'll be no promotions for any of us though. They've rated us all as sloops, and therefore a lieutenant can stay in command."

  "Ha!" exploded Fielder. "The most powerful Ships afloat, and we're rated as sloops. There is the twisted mind of the bureaucrat at work for you."

  "Aye," Melville replied with a sad, bemused shake of his head. He felt like he was in the middle of a novel, like one of those compelling, addictive, and terribly frustrating Connie Willis books from the classic era of science fiction, where you just wanted to take every single silly sod of a character and slap the snot out of them. "At least they can't deny us the Osgil prize money," Melville continued. "But here's the real kicker. Look at this," he said, holding out a sheet of paper for them to look at. "They've assessed a 'registration fee' for all three new Ships."

  "Hmm," said Brother Theo, carefully calculating the sums. "It's nothing like having to pay for a new Ship from the Keel up. We could probably scrape up the fee for the Fang from our Osgil prize money. And the income from our cargos, and from selling the 24-pounders on Nordheim and Earth would go a long way toward paying for the Gnasher and the Biter. But it's an ingenious way for the Admiralty to 'tax' us and get their teeth into us."

  "Aye," said Melville. "Of course, we won't pay our debt off right away, even if it didn't bankrupt us. We'll pay it in increments over the next few years, just like a new Ship. Oh, and the Fang is still banished to the far side of the galaxy. I don't know what they plan to do with Gnasher and Biter, but I'm betting they'll keep us far apart from each other."

  "Probably the poorest possible milk runs and scut jobs they can find," said Fielder.

  "The important thing is, we've got our Ship," said Melville, "and we've got twenty-four hours to get the hell out of Dodge. Is everyone aboard?"

  "Aye, sir," replied Fielder. "There were amazingly few complications with the local authorities. We just got our only problem child out of hock from the local authorities. It seems Ranger Valandil was arrested for climbing some of their skyscrapers, which apparently is something they frown on here. EarthPol has some remarkable vid shots of him free-climbing outside the 212th floor of his hotel. The cops said to ask him—and all the other Sylvans—to, 'Please not climb our buildings.'"

  "Huh. It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?" said Melville, shaking his head. "Well, we're off. Our first stop is Lenoria, followed by an endless string of one-Pier ports to the Western Rim, and then across the Far Rift to the Hero Cluster. We'll probably never see Evereven and our homes and families in this lifetime, but at least we are alive and fairly well off."

  "Amen to that," said Fielder. "After everything we've been through, I'm just happy, and surprised, to be alive!"

  "Oh, and call all hands aft," added Melville. His face suddenly split into a grin of sincere pleasure as he continued, "I've actually got orders now, and I have to read myself in as Master and Commander!"

  When the crew and officers had assembled, Melville stood at the upper quarterdeck rail, looked out upon his crew, and began reading from the parchment in his hand. The more he read the bigger the smile became on his face. Initially there was some confusion among the crew, but then the Fangs began to echo their captain's smile.

  "'By the Commissioners executing the office of Lord High Admiral of Westerness and Lenoria et cetera, and of all Her Majesty's planets and territories et cetera. To Lt. Thomas Melville, Esquire, hereby appointed Master and Commander of Her Majesty's Ship the Fang.'"

  This was greeted with a great roar of approval from the assembled Fangs, and Melville's face was alight with joy as he continued. He had heard other commanders read themselves in before, but as he read thes
e beautifully penned, powerful, ancient Words, he felt something greater than himself flooding through his soul.

  "'By virtue of the power and authority to us given, we do hereby constitute and appoint you Master and Commander of Her Majesty's Ship the Fang willing and requiring you forthwith to go aboard and take upon you the charge and command in her accordingly, strictly charging and commanding the officers and company belonging to the said Ship subordinate to you to behave themselves jointly and severally in their respective employments with all due respect and obedience to you their said commander, and you likewise to observe and execute as well the general printed instructions and what orders and direction you shall from time to time receive from us or any other of your superior officers for Her Majesty's service. Hereof nor you nor any of yours may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril. And for so doing this shall be your warrant. Given under our hands and the seal of the office of Admiralty on this fifth day of May in the twenty-seventh year of Her Majesty's reign.'"

  The Fangs roared their approval, and rising up through their bare feet there was a great tide of affirmation, a fierce ratification that came swelling out from Fang herself, until it felt like a ringing in the ears and a soaring in the soul.

  During the time that Melville had been making his whirlwind media tour, the Fang's sailors, marines, and middies had been training and qualifying on high-tech simulators on Earth. And they took the qualification process very seriously.

  An American private who fought in the trenches of World War I back on Old Earth had a base pay of $13 a month. But he received an extra $5 a month if he qualified expert with his rifle, which was a significant bonus. In the early twenty-first century, the Los Angeles Police Department still maintained a "bonus range" which provided bonus pay for pistol marksmanship. Officers received $8 per month as a Marksman, $16 per month as a Sharpshooter, $32 per month as an Expert, and $64 per month as a Distinguished Expert.

  The sailors, marines, and midshipmen of the Westerness Navy received similar bonuses for qualifying expert with their pistols and rifled muskets. The sailors also received considerably more pay if they passed the series of simulators and tests that qualified them as an "able-bodied sailor."

  Needless to say, the Fangs were all eager to earn such qualifications, and a stop on Earth was their chance to attain them. But Earth's high-tech total immersion simulators weren't just for qualifying as marksmen or able-bodied sailors. These incredibly realistic combat simulators also gave them a chance to fight and "die" yet still live to learn from the experience.

  (Only Broadax failed to benefit from this opportunity. She was kicked out of the simulator facility because she kept going into berserker attacks on the computers and their operators. "This is not combat! This is a simulator! It's just like a video game! There are rules!" screamed the enraged senior simulator operator as a squad of marines finally escorted Broadax from his facility.)

  Between sessions on the combat simulators, the troops had a chance to immerse themselves in the "classics" that were not available in printed form. The Star Trek TV series and movies, the Star Wars movies, and of course Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies were standard fare for a young sailor's first Earth visit. These movies and TV shows had survived the Crash created by the Elder King's Gift through data disks that were recovered from museums.

  The middies were pretty "buzzed" by this experience. Their captain had just read himself in, and then the midshipmen began their morning class. During a break in their training Brother Theo took the opportunity to discuss their recent activities.

  "And so, my friends," began Theo when his middies had assembled in the waist, "you have now had an opportunity to experience the classics. Earth brings in a tidy sum from Westerness citizens who come to steep themselves in these movies, like an ancient Muslim making his Haj to Mecca—back before it was nuked into a glassy plane. And the Lord of the Rings is the most famous and popular of them all. Peter Jackson was a great genius, but even he had a tragic flaw. He tried to change the work of the master. He actually changed Tolkien's original!"

  "But, sir," interjected Aquinar, "what we saw seemed pretty true to the book."

  "Aye," Theo replied with the kindly chuckle and benevolent nod of a buddha holding court. The usual ring of additional students and onlookers had gathered around, listening with eager attention. "Jackson cannot be blamed for neglecting to think of the far future. But he really should have anticipated the fact that hundreds of years later the copyright would have passed, and the technology would be there to 'rectify' a movie just as easily as you can rewrite a book. Thus it was inevitable that most of Jackson's deviations from the original text would be changed back, but it was done so artfully that you would not have even noticed the difference. Of course, the movie and the book are not nearly so salient to Earth, but they are terribly important to Westerness. So in the process of catering to us, you can rest assured that most of the scenes that were not faithful to the book were treated like some perverted, obscure mistranslation, with the errors and departures from the primary source quickly sorted out for future generations."

  "What kind of things did they do in the original movie?" asked Faisal with horrified fascination.

  "Well, for instance, there was Gimli, who was played almost entirely for comic relief in the movie." This brought a growl from Broadax who was listening nearby, leaning on her ubiquitous ax and looking as if she'd like to fight somebody. "Or, worst of all, there was the treatment of Merry and Pippin. In the book they were transformed through war from simple, carefree souls into 'fearless hobbits with bright swords and grim faces' who came home and brought a righteous reckoning to the Shire. In the original movie this was completely omitted! There were several other such instances. They should have known that altering this story was like changing the Bible, and that six-hundred years later people would be watching a version that had completely corrected their sad attempts at 'artistic license' with one of the great works of all time."

  "Well," said Jubal thoughtfully, "it wus one hail of a movie."

  "Aye," said Grenoble, the captain's Sylvan bodyguard who was standing silently by in his crimson-and-clover uniform. "Thy Prime Minister Disraeli, a great leader who stood at the helm of the British Empire in their prime, advised us to 'Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.' 'Tis nothing in the galaxy more heroic than thy Lord of the Rings. It may be thy culture's greatest contribution. Believe it in thy heart, and may the heroes of literature make thee heroic in life. For that is what literature should accomplish."

  "Aye,' concluded Theo, "so here's to the great twenty-first century genius who made this masterpiece come alive on the screen, and, here's to those who went back and rectified his hubris and folly."

  Then he changed topics and asked his class, "Tell me, what did you think of your experiences in the simulators?"

  There were shudders and frowns among the middies, and then tiny Aquinar looked up with his dark eyes and said, "I got the impression that the simulator liked killing us, sir."

  "Aye," replied Brother Theo. "Computers. The intelligence may be artificial, but the malice is genuine. Enough talk. Back to sword drill, you laggards!"

  Later that day the middies were invited to dine with the wardroom. In the captain's cabin, Melville was hosting Archer and Crater. It was the Fang's final evening in port, and soon another chapter in their adventure would begin.

  The wardroom was filled with the satisfaction and contentment of full bellies after a good meal. The wine was circulating and the discussion had turned to the Fang's treatment by the Admiralty.

  It was hard for them to accept what had happened. What good was glory, bought at such a tragic price of blood and lost lives, when others didn't recognize it? It was like being a wealthy man traveling in a foreign country, where you couldn't exchange your money into the currency of the land.

  "At least we got our prize money from Osgil," said old Hans, "an' we've all got ownershi
p shares in three Ships, by the Lady! Accrost the years 'at's gonna amount ta more money then most folks could dream of."

  "Eep!" agreed his monkey, bobbing its head happily.

  "I don't know," replied Fielder, "I can dream of an awful lot of money. Me, I want what's coming to me... The world, sweety, and everything in it. The bottle stands by you, Mr. Hayl."

  Broadax shook her head. "If'n ye ain't morally bankrupt, yer definitely overdrawn! Hell, money ain't everythin'!" growled Broadax. "We been cheated outa our fair share o' glory, fame, an' immortality, dammit! Fame an' immortality bought with blood an' lives. The lives of our mates, an' the lives o' bunches o' Guldur an' Goblan bastards we done sent to freeze in hell with the Elder King. They done spat on the sacrifice o' all our dead mates, an' the spirits o' all the enemies they took with 'em!"

  "I don't want to achieve immortality through acts of glory," replied Fielder, "I want to achieve immortality through not dying!"

  Broadax just snarled as the first officer continued. "As for fame, well: once God gave a man a choice of fame, power, and adulation, and wealth. So he asked only for great wealth. And lo, he had all of these. We have got wealth, and wealth will make you famous and powerful. And handsome—at least in the eyes of most ladies. Come now, Mr. Hayl. Move the bottle along smartly if you're not going to partake."

  "But not wisdom," replied Brother Theo as his monkey nodded wisely from his hood. "No amount of money can buy wisdom. That is one commodity that has not been commercialized."

  "Hmm, you want wisdom, do you?" asked Mrs. Vodi with a smile. "Once two men saved a fairy. The fairy gave them each one wish. One asked to be the wisest man on earth. The other asked to be even wiser, and lo, the fairy turned him into a woman!"

  That received a round of appreciative laughter. Then Midshipman Hayl said hesitantly, "Forgive me if I'm out of line, but can anyone tell me why we have been treated like this. I thought we'd be greeted as conquering heroes."