Lieutenant (15 page)

Nobody was behind them. No one at all.

“I— I—…” I stuttered, at a loss for words. Finally, I drew my Sword and formally saluted them.

“Sir!” Snow replied, his eyes wide and terrified. “Sir!” Then he collapsed into my arms, shaking and trembling and stinking of shit and terror.

32

By then I had less than twenty Rabbits and men left to defend the Station—the very idea was ludicrous and I knew it. Even more, I’d used up all my heavy explosives, my tactical nuke, even my corpses. Yes, all of them had gone to the best purposes I could possibly have put them to; my little improvised garrison had acquitted itself pretty well overall, I grudgingly granted myself. But the root problem was that we’d never had anything even remotely like enough in terms of men or weaponry to throw back a serious invasion attempt. There were no more aces up my sleeves, and the only options left were to either attempt surrender or die game. Seeing as how my Rabbits had just most likely killed the only Imperial in the universe who I had any reason to believe might conceivably accept our surrender, that left only fighting and dying. Which was going to be hard—incredibly hard, even. And yet, I was determined to see things all the through to the bitter end.

“Hello, Chief!” I called out into the nearest annunciator station, no longer much caring if our communications were secure or not. After all, I had nothing left to hide. “Are you there?” But apparently he wasn’t, because after repeating myself twice he still hadn’t answered. That meant I had to consider the Engineering spaces overrun as well as the turrets, which was very bad news indeed. Frowning, I hit the button again and called Fremont. “Play ‘general retreat’,” I ordered him. This was a coded message instructing all survivors to fall back to Tunnel Zero. “I’ll be down myself with Snow and the rest of the survivors in a minute or two.”

Apparently Fremont had recovered from his emotional lapse, because almost instantly the coded message began to play. I smiled despite myself as I led my little group back to our final stronghold, Snow still clinging to me and weeping all the way. I’d chosen the message personally—it consisted of a pleasant female voice reading off a fake self-destruct countdown. “Powerplant overload in sixty seconds,” she began. “Fifty-nine, fifty eight…” In point of fact Zombie Station was designed with safety-cores like any other manned space-habitat. She could be made to fall into her own black hole from the primary bulkhead back; heaven knew that was plenty spectacular in its own way. Before all was said and done I might yet arrange exactly that. But along the way the cores would induce one wave of nausea and disorientation after another in everyone not wearing a Field suit, clear and obvious warnings that would come in plenty of time for the Imperials to evacuate. The countdown was a ruse, pure and simple, and anyone who knew anything about engines would’ve realized it in an instant.

Apparently, however, as few Imperials as Royalists studied engineering. Suddenly the background roar of the fighting redoubled as our panic-stricken enemies discharged their weapons at nothing and began frantically seeking exits. With any luck, some of them might even start shooting at each other. One group flashed by down at the end of the corridor; had the invasion penetrated so deeply already? The first and second enemy slipped by before I could react, but I nailed the last clean in the center of mass with my salvaged Imperial hand-blaster. Fortunately, the others kept right on running.

There was no direct route from the airlocks to Tunnel Zero, and hadn’t been for quite some time; we’d long since closed off various key arteries to make the invader’s task more difficult and confusing. Along the way we stopped by the room where we’d stored the corpses there’d not been enough suits for—many of these were dressed in Imperial uniforms. We each grabbed one, and they proved very useful indeed. Wherever we thought an enemy might’ve penetrated, we threw a corpse ahead of us and let it float along in the null-gee. If nothing happened, our route was safe. But if someone challenged the thing or shot at it, we backed off and found another way.

Our little group was the last to make it back to Tunnel Zero; in fact, I closed the vault-like doors of our last ditch keep behind us with my own hands. Now we were enclosed in an armored and stone box many feet thick in most areas, with enough air to last for weeks. There were only about twenty of us left; the five surviving bunny-marines from the assault on the cruiser, one of the three I’d sent to counter the docking-area invasion, and the few Rabbits like Fremont and Nestor who’d been assigned other essential work that so far had kept them out of combat. Plus Chief Lancrest and one of his crew had made it alive out of Engineering, though both were bleeding from multiple wounds. Lancrest, however, still sat stubbornly at his backup console, intent on damaging as many Imperials with his widgets as he could possibly manage. “He’s figured it out, damn his eyes!” the petty officer muttered as I stepped up behind them. An Imperial marine was floating in the center of their screen, reaching out towards what must’ve been the hidden camera.

“Energize the cabinet,” Lancrest ordered, and the enlisted man struck a single key. There was a bright flash, the screen went dead…

…and from another angle I watched in grim satisfaction as the howling Imperial tried to apply a vacuum-tourniquet to his burned-off wrist.

Suddenly the pair noticed me. “We’re still getting them now and again, sir,” Lancrest reported. “But it’s retail, not wholesale. Ones and twos, is all. They overran us through sheer numbers.”

I nodded. “It was unavoidable. You did a wonderful, wonderful job.”

He smiled through his pain. “Not half as good as the one you’ve done, sir. They’ll still be telling tales of how you defended this Station a thousand years from now. You’re going to be a legend.”

I felt my ears redden and looked away. “Keep at it,” I instructed him. “As long as you’ve got anything left. There’s nothing else more constructive to do anymore.”

His smile faded. “Aye-aye, sir.” Then he turned back to his screen, seeking out another victim.

“How long do you think we have, sir?” Fremont asked from his station at the console.

“I don’t know,” I answered. It was the simple truth. “We have two days worth of hay stockpiled here, plus some water and human food. But I doubt they’ll let us starve to death. They’re
much
too angry at us for that.”

“I can see where they might be a bit irritated,” the former suit-repair specialist replied with a faint smile. “Sir…” But words failed him.

“You’ve done magnificently,” I replied, redirecting the conversation. Yes, he’d broken out weeping at a critical moment. But I’d have loved him less if he hadn’t. Then something occurred to me. “You haven’t had a break in hours, have you? Not even when I told everyone to fill up on hay?”

“No sir. But I’m fine.”

I shook my head. “Go take ten. Or even twenty, if you’d like. That’s an order. Brush your ears, exercise a little. And above all, eat! I need you wide awake, my friend. Not half-exhausted. I’ll cover the console myself.”

“Well,” he answered. “If it’s an order…” His hips cracked audibly when he got up—Fremont was getting on and was probably a bit arthritic—and I knew that I’d done the right thing. Besides, I needed a little time to think, and in all truth manning the console had become more a formality than anything else. A parody of navy watchkeeping-normality, in other words, totally inappropriate to our new circumstances. Idly I switched from one interior camera to another—our enemy was in full roar now, enraged at their unexpected losses and the cruel games we’d played with their minds. They were like rampaging animals as they swarmed from deck to deck, working themselves ever deeper into Zombie. Some were even driven to base, instinctual behaviors like blindly smashing everything in sight and beshitting the mess decks. I gulped at the sight of such primal rage and again vowed not to be taken prisoner. Soon they’d find their way all the way down to where the last great armored-steel doors stood closed in their faces, and they’d know what lay just beyond. Then they’d send for torches and jackhammers or perhaps a diamond-tipped drill and exotic explosives…

…and we’d be dead, no more than five minutes after the tools completed their work. If we were lucky, that was.

I closed my eyes and lowered my head onto the control board; suddenly I was exhausted beyond all measure.
A few more hours
, I reminded myself.
At most a few more hours, and then you can rest forever and ever and ever.
It was overwhelming, the fatigue was, as if I’d been carrying all the millions of tons of Zombie Station on my shoulders for an eternity, and now the burden was at last exacting its toll. I might even have been asleep, as unmilitary as that was, when Fremont returned and shook my shoulder. “Sir?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

I sat up with a start. “Sorry,” I muttered as I blinked away my fatigue. “I’m afraid that—“

“Sir!” Fremont interrupted, pointing at the tactical display, which I only now realized was beeping insistently. “That’s a new pip! A big one! And… It’s in red!”

I blinked again—everything was still a blur. “But… But… That’s impossible! There
can’t
be any friendlies all the way out here!”

Fremont reached around me and hit a button, something that no real navy man would ever have dared do to an officer. “She’s
HMS Javelin
, according to the squawk,” he replied. “Ever heard of her?”

My jaw dropped so far that it was a long moment before I could speak. “She’s a brand-new deep-penetration raider,” I eventually explained. “A new class of battlecruiser, all guns and speed. Specifically designed to penetrate multiple Jumps behind enemy lines and raise havoc among the Imperial merchant marine.” I turned and looked my fellow bunny in the eye. “Especially in places where traffic is already all backed up and congested. Like, say…

…here.”

33

The battlecruiser’s
unexpected appearance changed
everything
. My fingers flew as I typed out a message to her. “Zombie Station to
Javelin
—Midshipman David Birkenhead in command. Be advised that I am under active invasion. Resistance on verge of collapse—enemy controls all vital sectors. Can offer you no fire-support or other assistance at this time.”

There was a long pause as first one powerful salvo reached across the Zombie cluster, then a second.
Javelin
had opened fire at very long range indeed, but there was no point that I could see in holding back. The bolts missed their intended target, one of the troop transports. However, they sizzled near enough by her hull to force her to take evasive action. This in turn created total chaos among the orderly little trains of assault boats shuttling back and forth to support their men on Zombie. Two salvoes, I realized, and already the invasion was being disrupted. Why, if it were but offered a little nudge…

“We’ll be making a sortie soon,” I informed everyone. “All of us, just as soon as the time is right. Get ready.” I checked my internal monitors—there was a little group of Imperials gathered just outside the armored doors on the engineering side of Tunnel Zero, but the other end of our refuge was still clear. I turned to Snow. “Take the marines and go open the dock-end hatches. Occupy a bit of the corridor beyond so that we have our choice of exits. That way we won’t be trapped so easily when the time comes.”

“But... But…” Snow stuttered, his eyes once more wide in terror. “But…”

For an instant I nearly screamed “Do it!” in his face. And perhaps I should’ve done exactly that. After what he’d already been through, however, and given his necessarily poor training and preparation for such an ordeal I didn’t have the heart. So turned to Fremont instead. “You!” I snapped. “Go!”

“Aye, aye sir!” he replied, snapping off a pretty fair salute. Then he was off like a shot.

Finally
Javelin
sent us a reply. “Midshipman Birkenhead,” it read. “Your friend James says hello. He wants to know what your favorite flavor of ice cream is?”

“I can’t stand any of them,” I typed furiously. “Hello, James! You
definitely
drew a better berth than I did! Can’t wait to tell you about it!”

There was another pause, shorter this time, as more salvos rang out across space. All of them Royal, of course; the Imperial cruisers couldn’t yet hope to match the range. There was an intense debate raging in navy circles regarding what a group of cruisers should do when confronted with a vessel like
Javelin
. Some officers believed that the battlecruiser’s advantage in range was so decisive that the only sane option was to retreat as quickly as possible. Others felt that the smaller vessels should charge into action, get up close, and smother the larger vessel with their faster-firing weapons. But none of the proposed scenarios, so far as I knew, took into account the presence of slow, highly vulnerable troopships actively engaged in supporting an invasion. It was no wonder that the enemy commander—who hadn’t even been in overall charge until two or three hours before—hadn’t reacted yet. His mental wheels must be spinning at a gazillion revolutions per minute but getting nowhere. It wasn’t his fault—the confusion was perfectly understandable.

“How many of you are there?”
Javelin
asked me. ”Do you have suits and a working beacon?”

“About twenty,” I typed back, embarrassed that I’d neglected to take an actual headcount. Some kind of commander
I
was! “Mostly Rabbits, who are fighting hard and well. And, yes.”

Just then one of
Javelin
’s shots struck home on the troopship, which crumpled as if it were made of tissue paper. Every major pressurized compartment on the vessel must’ve depressurized at the blow. After a second or two’s delay her munitions hold went up as well. There could’ve been no survivors. Remorselessly the turrets swung and the battlecruiser began firing again, this time at one of the warships.

“Find your way to the surface immediately,”
Javelin
ordered. “Remain in one group. Will attempt pickup if practical.”