Lieutenant (3 page)

But then again, this was Graves Registration. Depression was our leading occupational hazard.

Because there were so few officers in our training program at any one time, no attempt was made hold formal classes. Instead Commander Pollard handed me a boxful of databooks and told me to study them in my spare time—he’d be glad to help me if I had any questions. And I must admit that they were surprisingly interesting! I’d never really thought much about it, but Graves Registration units by their very nature did a lot more than just bury the dead, maintain cemeteries, and console the living.
Someone
had to police the battlefields once all the fighting was done, and the cleanup process involved far more than just removing the corpses. Fresh battlefields could be incredibly dangerous places, littered with unexploded ordnance, loaded (and often damaged) weapons, mines, booby-traps, and who knew what all else. Once the Field Engineers had been responsible for all this hardware, but no more! My interest actually began to flicker a little as I learned how to safely salvage and repackage everything from bayonets to anti-ship missiles for re-issue. It was fascinating, really; as a Graves Registration officer I’d be expected to know how to safely handle nearly every weapons system in the inventory. No one could be
proficient
with them all, of course; I wouldn’t, for example, be expected to actually know how best to employ a Mark Thirty-Seven Heavy Anti-Vehicle Mine during an actual battle. But I
did
have to know how to recognize one, look it up in my reference files, and put it into ‘safe’ mode. I even had to know about antigravs and cargo lifts and stuff—anything I might find on a battlefield. The same went for Imperial equipment, too! I’d grown interested in military hardware during my time as a wargamer. Now, my professional working library included the most complete possible catalog of operating manuals for every known weapon. It didn’t even begin to make up for not being assigned with James to the
Javelin
, but at least it was
something
!  

And despite myself, I took a rather macabre interest in the more gruesome aspects of my new career as well. Militaries have been dealing with the problems related to the disposal of large numbers of bodies since time immemorial, and it was a bit shocking to discover just how much effort, thought and planning went into the process. For example, everyone in the armed forces, whatever the branch, had a datachip implanted under their skin. But we were also required to wear plain, low-tech identity-discs around our necks. Most fighting men believed that this was simply a useless traditional holdover meant to annoy us. The truth, however, was that the disc was a tool meant to make things easier for the burial details. When we came upon a casualty we were to remove the disc, use a special tool to cut it in half, and then (utilizing the built-in notch, whose proper function hardly anyone knew) wedge half of it between the corpse’s front teeth. The other half either went into a special holder on the body-bag or served as an identifier on a temporary grave-marker if a field-burial was necessary. Implanted chips, experience had shown, often failed via scorching, blast-pressure, electro-magnetic disruption, or being physically separated from the body. Identity discs weren’t infallible either, but of the two they were more versatile and had the better track record.

There was all
sorts
of fascinating stuff to learn! A lot of it had to do with morale—not ours, but that of the fighting soldiers. We were authorized to maintain a separate chain-of-command and even in many cases our own supply structure at every level from top to bottom, all for the sole purpose of remaining under the average fighting-man’s radar. It wasn’t that the navy was ashamed of us or anything like that, but the reasoning was that fighting officers would be more aggressive and less casualty-minded if we weren’t present at the same staff meetings with them, looking depressed and wearing our tombstones and shovels. “Out of sight, out of mind,” one of the chapters in my ‘Operations’ text was entitled, and it didn’t take me long to realize just how seriously the author meant it. While some cross-contact was inevitable, Graves Registrations units were whenever possible to maintain separate barracks, campsites, motor pools—we even had our own fleet of interstellar spacecraft! Generally speaking we were to wait until battlefields quieted down, partly to spare us from getting ourselves killed for no good reason but mostly so the troops on the ground would have moved on and therefore not see us going about our function. If working near fighting men was unavoidable, we were to perform our field operations as much as possible in the fog or near dusk and dawn when the light was poor. If someone saw us and tried to help out or maybe find one of his dead buddies, we were to sympathetically but firmly direct him away. Fighting men, the reasoning went, saw
plenty
of corpses. The fewer unnecessary ones, the better. A perfect operation, the author of the manual explained, was one in which rows of temporary headstones appeared as if by magic, with no one outside of our organization having a clue as to how and when it’d happened.

I was also fortunate that I didn’t need to learn embalming. The navy outsourced that sort of thing to civilian outfits. Our job, besides sanitizing the battlefield weapon-wise, was to collect the dead and bury them in temporary graves, then dig them up later and freeze them for transport on one of our own specialized ships. I’d probably never have to get my hands dirty at all, because slave-Rabbits were used for all the nasty stuff.

No, it wasn’t exactly the career I’d have chosen for myself—what sane person would? But it was better than I’d feared. I could stand five years of it, if I had to. Besides, it paid to always keep the big picture in mind. At least I wasn’t going to be the Rabbit spending his entire life scraping rotting corpses out of the mud and not even getting paid for it. If they could stand
that
, well…

Who was I to complain? 

5

I shocked the heck out of Commander Pollard two different ways during my short time assigned to his cemetery. First, I managed to pass all the qualification tests within ninety days of receiving my textbooks. Then I immediately requested a transfer to a field unit. My commanding officer tried to talk me out of both of these endeavors—“I know you’re passing the tests, David. But you can’t possibly be absorbing the material so quickly; not in any meaningful way at least. Everyone else takes at least a year, so why shouldn’t you? And… Why leave us so quickly? This is the best duty in the navy, son. You’ve already proven your courage; no one will ever question it again. So why be such a fire-eater?” By then I secretly despised the commander, though I never let him see it. It wasn’t that he was incompetent or a bad person or anything like that. In fact, as near as I could tell neither my standing in the House of Marcus nor the Rabbit-thing fazed him at all. He treated me as a social equal, in precisely the manner I wished everyone would, and even invited me to dine with his family if I ever felt lonely. But try as I might, even with all this to his credit I just couldn’t find it in my heart to respect the man. Perhaps what was missing was the Academy; like many other specialist officers he’d first been drafted straight out of college and then stayed on to make a career of Graves Registration. Such officers tended to care a lot more about personal comfort and rates of pay and such than we Academy types; they knew they’d never be admirals no matter what, so there was no reason for them to push themselves. It was therefore entirely natural that a man like Commander Pollard could never comprehend why I wanted to leave such a comfy berth, just as it was inevitable that I’d look down on him for not trying to find a way to grow and excel regardless of his situation. My dislike for the man wasn’t personal, in other words. It might even have been rooted in pity. Regardless, the sooner I moved on the better for us both.

It was much easier to transfer out of a safe and lazy cemetery billet than into one, I soon learned. I put in for all three of Graves Registrations’ active vessels—
Arlington
,
Beechwood
, and
Westminster Abbey
. It should’ve been a warning to me when all three were approved within ten days. Though
Beechwood
was by far the smallest of the three, she was currently docked just a few thousand miles above my head and provisioned, it was said, for a long cruise. If I was lucky, I reasoned, Lord Robert might’ve found a way to move me back into Engineering where I belonged by the time her voyage was over. And who knew? If I were lucky I might strike up a friendship with the chief engineer and complete my watchstanding certification as well. It was something to hope for, at least.

Predictably, Commander Pollard was good-natured about the whole affair. First he wrote me up a very nice fitness report, then granted me a week’s leave to get my affairs in order before shipping out. I was thankful for this, as it allowed me to have some final fitting work done on my new Field-suit. I’d outgrown my old one while at the Academy, so I was grateful to the commander for his thoughtfulness. I also visited the family penthouse and had a very nice farewell dinner with Lord Robert, who nodded in approval when he saw how I’d solved a rather delicate problem. He’d given me the old Elijah-ring to
wear
, not to stash away in a musty old safe somewhere. Anyone who at all understood how the Marcus clan did things would’ve understood that. But my fingers were thinner than those of old Elijah, so much so that every jeweler I’d consulted told me that if I had it cut down to my size the fire-lily engraving would be ruined. So after thinking it over I bought a nice gold chain crafted so finely that it didn’t catch in my fur, threaded the ring through it and wore he whole affair around my neck. It might or might not’ve been within uniform regulations; individuals lucky enough to be authorized to wear House symbols were permitted to do so, which was why from day one a fire-lily had been embroidered on my shirt pocket. Signet rings were specifically permitted as well, as were certain religious necklaces. The navy had made special allowances for me over and over again, such as my sandals and ventilated tunics. So I didn’t feel that this was too far over the line.

Sadly a certain Lieutenant Jeffries, first officer of
HMS Beechwood
, didn’t quite see things that way. “What’s this?” he demanded the moment I reported to him in my new ship’s wardroom. I’d arrived late in the ship’s day, long after his normal duty hours. “Sandals, snotty? And a necklace? What do you think this is, the bloody merchant marine?”

I stood rigidly at attention. “No, sir! Of course not, sir!”

“Remove them immediately!” he ordered. “And put on your proper footwear.”
“Sir!” I explained. “The navy doesn’t issue any other kind of footwear for Rabbits, sir! My whole uniform is non-standard! If you examine it carefully, that is!”  Meanwhile an older lieutenant sat on the wardroom sofa, smoking a pipe and saying nothing.

Lieutenant Jeffries took me up on my invitation, walking slowly around me and shaking his iron-gray head. “Sandals! And a tail-hole, for the love of god! What’s next for the navy?” Meanwhile, I remained at a stiff attention. “What’s the necklace for?” he demanded eventually. “Let me guess. There’s a big carrot on it, to help you worship the Great Orange Root?”

“Sir!” I replied, having learned at the Academy how to hold my temper. James had once told me that the bitterest, nastiest officers in the entire fleet were always the elderly lieutenants. This was because they’d been passed over so many times that they’d never move up in rank, and they knew it. Even worse, everyone else knew it too and assumed they’d been passed over for a good reason. Which, of course, they usually had. It wasn’t a happy-making situation. This was my first encounter with the breed—I’d often wondered, in fact, where the navy was hiding them all. Now I knew—they filled the dead-end jobs no one else wanted and made everyone around them miserable in the process. “It’s a Noble House symbol, sir!”

“Show me!” the lieutenant ordered, so I pulled out Elijah’s old ring and let it dangle before his eyes. It was quite a large one, as such things went. Exactly the same size as James’s, in fact, the one that’d once been Milord’s. Which was natural enough; they’d originally been made for twins.

“I…” the lieutenant gulped. “I mean, I’ve never seen…”

“For god’s sake, Thomas!” the other, even older lieutenant finally declared from the couch. “Lighten up on the middie! It’s a signet ring, sure enough. So why not let him wear it on a nice little chain? It’s not like anyone’s liable to perform an inspection out where we’re headed.”

The first officer’s eyes narrowed in rage; someday I was going to pay for this intercession. Meanwhile the older man stood up, walked over to me, and extended his right hand. “I’m Captain Holcomb,” he explained. I smiled and shook his hand, understanding that the ‘captain’ in this case was by courtesy only. He was
Beechwood
’s commanding officer, though only a lieutenant by substantive rank. It wasn’t uncommon for elderly lieutenants to fill the navy’s least-desirable command-slots. That certainly described both
Beechwood
and its mission. “Welcome aboard, David.” His eyes fell to my Sword-ribbon, lingered a moment, then lifted to my face. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

I nodded and smiled back, though I’d have felt much better if Captain Holcomb’s breath hadn’t been foul with whiskey, and if his features weren’t red and coarsened from what certainly looked to me like a long-term love affair with the stuff. “I’m pleased to be here, sir. It’ll be good to be out in space again.”

“Quite,” Holcomb replied, looking me up and down again. Then, rather too familiarly he reached out and tousled my ears. “We’ve an interesting mission ahead of us,” he explained, “though I can’t say anything more until we’ve made our first Jump. Until then I suggest you get to know your Rabbits and get them all squared away.”

I blinked. “
My
Rabbits?”