

Ship's Boy

The David Birkenhead Series

Book 1

Copyright Phil Geusz 2012

Published by Legion Printing and Publishing, publishing on Smashwords

Phil Geusz

First Printing January 2012

Published by Legion Printing, Birmingham, AL

Copyright Phil Geusz, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-9829866-6-0

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without explicit permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

# 1

"Hooray!" I cried, dancing across the fields after Frieda. "Hooray for Fire-Lily Day!"

"Yay!" my classmate agreed, maintaining an easy lead as she dashed through the endless rows of blossoms. We were in a special program together at school, and Mrs. Bozeman assigned us to work together all the time. Our projects were always the best, and everyone knew it. But that didn't matter on Fire Lily Day—not much of anything did, except for running and playing and eating too much. The fire-lily was the Lordly Symbol of the House of Marcus, mostly because it grew like a weed on so much of his Lordship's primary planet. All year long everyone had to let them grow and grow and grow—it was a crime to pick one, except out of a garden or farmer's field. But this one day a year, all Lord Marcus's serfs, yeomanry and slaves could pick all they liked. Frieda was carrying a whole armful of the things, yet was still outrunning me. That was mostly because she was bigger than me; according to our teacher we bucks always got our growth-spurts later.

Despite her advantages in size I finally managed to close the distance a little, and was right on the verge of tackling her when my phone rang. I cursed aloud, then remembered my duties and answered the miserable thing. It was like wearing a permanent leash sometimes—life was _so_ much easier back when I was still just an ordinary kid. "Hello?"

"David!" my father's voice declared. "Thank heavens! I was afraid you wouldn't answer." At first there was near-silence, as Dad huffed and puffed into the phone. He was a certified interstellar ship's engineer, the only non-human ever so rated as far as we knew. Engineers don't tend to get much physical exercise, and clearly he'd just been running. "I need you to come to the spacefield, son. Right now, no stopping along the way. Do you hear me?"

My brow furrowed and my ears drooped; it was _Fire Lily Day_ , and there was my good friend Frieda waiting for me with an armful of delicious blossoms, just dying to be caught so we could share them. _No one_ worked on Fire Lily Day, not even Dad. "Uh..."

"Please, son!" he hissed. "Don't ask questions. Just run here now, as fast as you can."

"Uh..." I repeated, eyeing Frieda. Her ears were drooping too, and somehow she wasn't half so bubbly and bouncy anymore. "What's wrong? Do you need help with something?"

"Yes!" my father declared. "That's it! I need your help, right now! With the biggest, most important job I've ever had. Come to me, son! And come _now_!"

I blinked and looked down into the phone—something must be badly wrong. But... What? "Sure, Dad!" I answered unenthusiastically. "I'll be right there."

"Hurry!" he hissed. Then the connection was broken.

"What's wrong, David?" Frieda asked. We slave-bunnies had notoriously good hearing, and she'd probably heard every word.

I looked at her and shrugged my shoulders. "He's gone out of his mind, I guess."

My friend smiled, then shook her head. "No, not _your_ father. He's got the best and most important job of any slave on the planet." She looked at me oddly. "And you're his apprentice. Which means you have an important job too."

I nodded and looked down at my big, bare feet, then thrust my hands in my pockets. "Yeah. I guess."

"So," Frieda asked. "What are you waiting for?" Then she smiled real wide and handed me several of the fire-lilies—they made a nice little bouquet. "Take these," she surged. "We'll share the rest when we see each other again. I promise!"

I felt my ear-linings redden. "Thanks."

"Now go!" my classmate urged me, stamping her foot in emphasis. "You're an important Rabbit now, just like your Dad! Which means that you don't have time to stand around woolgathering, David Birkenhead!" Then, to my astonishment, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek!

"Uh... "I stuttered when she was done. "I... uh..."

"Go!" she urged. "I'll still be here when you're done! Promise!"

# 2

Dad wanted me to run and I guess I did, sort of. Part of the way, at least. Everywhere I looked there were families out pitching horseshoes, picnicking, and generally having a good time. And oh, the holiday foods smelled so heavenly! I'd never known Mom, and Dad wasn't much on horseshoes or holiday cooking or any of that kind of stuff. So I was feeling a little sorry for myself by the time the big hanger at the spacefield came into sight. There weren't any picnickers in the immediate area—while the grass was green and as meticulously manicured as it was anywhere else on milord's personal estate, access to the area was restricted for security reasons. Still, I felt a little better about things when the guard waved me through without even looking at my pass-card. Deep down, I _liked_ being part of such an important installation. "Hello, David!" he greeted me with a big smile. "So you have to work the holiday too, eh?"

I grinned back and nodded, wishing I could remember the Dog's name. Then I was through and running again, now maybe even feeling a bit eager. The spacepad was the coolest place on Marcus Prime so far as I was concerned, and even when the work was hard it was still fun to be there. Maybe not as much fun as chasing Frieda and eating her flowers, but fun nonetheless. Back when I was little Dad brought me in to visit all the time so that I could stare goggle-eyed at all the cool starships lined up in a row and watch the men and women and even slavebunnies dressed in funny clothes come and go. Lord Marcus was one of the richest and most powerful men in all of settled space, and people from practically everywhere had business with him. All of the spacers knew Dad, and often swapped spare parts and advice with him. Frieda was right—my father just might've been the most valuable slave on the planet. Even milord knew him personally and spoke with him sometimes.

The launch-warning sounded when I was halfway to the hanger, and that was the first thing that told me something was wrong. " _Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!_ " the siren screamed, and I had to run extra-hard to make it inside before whoever was departing up-shipped. Even though I was in a hurry I wasted a moment to watch out the nearest window— almost everyone watched takeoffs whenever they could, even Dad! It was a New Genevan pinnace, a tiny thing by starship standards and gracefully laid out to boot. Her hull flashed into molten silver as the Field took hold, then she leapt skywards as if pursued by all the demons of hell. " _Boom-BOOM_!" the ravished sky cried out in protest, then it was gone.

And suddenly I was a very worried young bun. Because captains didn't normally up-ship without waiting to verify that the Field was stable. Nor did they dare create annoying sonic booms anywhere near milord's personal residence. Besides, where even one takeoff per day was uncommon from such a small spaceport, six other vessels were taxiing out to the hardpoint. One was actually trying to pass another on the overcrowded taxiway...

Dad was in his usual place when I found him; standing just outside the main engine room hatch of _Broad Arrow_ , milord's personal yacht. My engineering classes were held there, and normally he'd be wearing ordinary coveralls and smiling. Not today, however! This time he was wearing a deactivated Field suit minus the helmet, and his expression was more akin to one of terror. "David!" he cried out, relief flowing across his features. "Thank god, son! I was afraid you weren't going to make it!"

By then I was growing a little frightened myself, so I fell into his arms and we hugged a moment. Far too soon, Dad pulled away. "Put your suit on, son, and step lively about it. We'll be on our way in minutes."

"But... But..."

He shook his head. "There's no time to explain. Put on the suit _now._ Or else I may have to leave you yet!"

And that was that, I was beginning at last to understand. So I climbed up the little gangway and raced along a narrow ship's passage to the locker where Father stowed his spacing gear. Then I stripped naked, dusted far too much conductive powder all over myself, and tugged the ugly gray-green material over my body. This was only the fifth or sixth time I'd ever put on my Field suit; and I still felt a little thrill at the sensation. Most of my classmates were destined to become valets or cooks or gardeners or farm laborers. But milord was convinced that we Rabbits could make far more out of ourselves given sufficient support and education, and Dad was his most successful project to date. My custom-made Field suit cost more than the total amount of wealth that most Rabbits would produce for their masters over an entire lifetime, and the investment was doubly-impressive because I'd soon outgrow it and need another. So I certainly had a lot to live up to.

Things hadn't changed much by the time I emerged from the sparkling-clean engine room to stand beside my father. I'd heard three more of the waiting ships take off, each leaving a sonic boom in its wake. He nodded and looked me over, then smiled and hugged me close to his side. "I'm so proud of you, David," he whispered. "And I love you!"

"I love you too, Dad," I replied, still mystified as to what all the fuss was about. "But..."

Just then there was a terrible explosion, and both my father and I were knocked down the entry-stairs by the concussion. Then there was a second even larger blast, followed by another series of sonic-booms—so many of them that I couldn't count. "Dad!" I asked in the sudden darkness. "Are you..."

But he was already dusting himself off. ''...may've knocked the core-rods out of calibration," he said. "You stay right here! I've got to—"Then another bigger explosion drowned out the rest of his words.

My heart was racing, the air was full of smoke, and a dozen different warning klaxons were sounding in every direction. For a moment I could only lie where I was and gape, then I finally realized that my helmet had rolled off somewhere. A Field suit is useless without the helmet, so I climbed up onto my feet and frantically looked this way and that. There it was! Lying right under a window! I dashed over, picked it up...

...and froze in my tracks at how much the world had changed beyond the cracked pane. There was a big hole in the ground where the hardpoint had been, and two of the ships I'd seen taxiing earlier were crumpled, burning wrecks. Another, the one that'd been trying to pass another where no sane pilot would've tried, was trundling off towards the security fence, apparently to attempt an unsupported open-field takeoff. Sure enough the ship turned silver as the Field energized itself, then began clambering its way skyward at the best rate possible without a harpdpoint's support. It was maybe a hundred feet off the ground when something flashed by and pumped a single missile into its guts. The mortally-wounded vessel staggered and fell back to the ground in a ball of flames. Then before my terrified eyes the sleek fighter-plane rotated once about its longest axis in a victory roll and sped away.

But not before I caught a glimpse of the three hash-marks on the fuselage that marked the aircraft as belonging to the forces of the Boyen Emperor.

# 3

"...no, no, no!" I suddenly heard a familiar voice declare behind me. "I'll not leave without Stephen and Maria."

"You _must_ , milord," a deeper voice replied as I spun around, tearing my eyes away from the spectacle of destruction outside. It was Lord Marcus, who'd somehow been wheeled into the hanger without all the customary trumpet-flourishes. Milord had barely survived a war-wound in his youth, caused by an illegal weapon so terrible that even modern medicine couldn't restore the use of most of his body. Therefore, his wheelchair was a badge of honor. "I'll not be run off of my own world without my wife and eldest son!" he repeated.

The man pushing the wheelchair sighed and rolled his eyes. He wore a military uniform, apparently a high-ranking one because it was covered with medals and gold braid. "We've completely lost aerospace superiority," he explained, apparently not for the first time. "And we're not likely to get it back. Every spaceport on the planet is being hammered, and the rest of your family is half a world away. How can we possibly get them here?"

"Your family is an important one, sir," added another man. This one was dressed in the royal purple of a King's ambassador. "You have higher duties. We simply _must_ have someone representing your interests back at Court. Or who knows how much more will come unwound?"

Milord's brow lowered, and his mouth formed a hard, thin, line. "Don't remind me of my higher duties!" he snapped. Then at last he nodded and half-turned towards the military man. "But Carlos is correct, regardless." His face softened. "Keep them safe for me, Winston?"

"Or I'll die trying. My sacred word of honor, milord," the officer replied. Then he turned towards the men of the _Broad Arrow_ , who were mostly standing around and staring wordlessly. "You heard milord!" he roared. "Emergency departure! Now! Now! Now!"

That was enough to snap us into motion. Instantly I dashed for the ship. My path took me directly past milord's wheelchair; with a gesture he stopped me. I froze in place, eyes wide and jaw agape. I'd never spoken to a nobleman before, not even a knight! "Well," milord said with a smile. "How's my latest special project coming along?"

My mouth worked, but I wasn't able to answer. So he smiled and fozzled my ears. "For luck," he explained. Then he turned to a well-dressed and pleasant-looking boy standing a pace behind him. "James," he said, waving his youngest son forward, "this is David Birkenhead, apprentice ship's engineer."

The boy bowed his head slightly and smiled. "Pleased to meet you, David. From what I hear, someday you're liable to be in charge of my ship's engine room."

My mouth worked again. I knew that Dad talked to milord like this, but... but... "I certainly hope so, sir."

He smiled again. "I've read a few books on warp tech, David, and heaven knows I'll never be able to make heads or tails of them. Apparently you're much brighter than I am."

My jaw dropped again, and I noticed that the Royal Ambassador's eyes had turned cold as ice. It wasn't good for a slavebunny when a human looked at him like that, even on Marcus where whipping and collars and the other really bad parts had been done away with. So I decided it was time to make an exit while I still could. "I'm sure I'm not nearly as smart as you must be, sir," I reassured milord's son. "But... I need to go. I have a console, you see."

"Of course," milord replied, smiling. "And tell your father I said hello!"

Then I was racing up the companionway again, shaking like a leaf and yet eager as could be to tell Dad what'd happened!

But Dad wasn't in any position to partake in conversation. An emergency takeoff without the benefit of a hardpoint was no joke—even I knew enough to appreciate that. So when I arrived at my duty-station he merely glanced at me and smiled. "Watch the coil readings," he ordered as I strapped in and synched the console. I nodded back; there wasn't much else for me to do, no matter how badly Dad might need the help. I'd only been an apprentice for a few months, after all, and the only two subjects I'd had enough time to learn anything useful about were coil readings and how to wear my Field suit. The rest of my time was either spent on sweeping the floors or math, math and more math. "Everything's in the green," I reported eventually. "Number five's edging towards the amber, but you already know about that."

"Yeah," my father agreed, his smile fading. Actually, number five was well within normal limits by the standards of any _real_ ship's engineer. Or so the representative of the company that'd just overhauled the unit had made the mistake of claiming in front of Captain Saunders, milord's personal pilot. Said company's contract was canceled within minutes, and the rep had been required to personally apologize to Dad. It was one of the most impressive things I'd ever seen. Especially since the company rep was at least technically correct—it wasn't legal for a slave to be a ship's officer. That was why Captain Saunders was listed on the ship's papers in both capacities, even though it was physically impossible for him to perform them at the same time.

"All hands!" the ship's annunciator suddenly declared. "Attention all hands! This is First Officer Prescott speaking. Up ship in three minutes. I repeat, up ship in three minutes."

I blinked. That wasn't half enough time for Dad to go through his preflight routine, and the very first thing he'd taught me was how vital it was to always do everything by the book. Then, I blinked a second time as he tossed the checklist into his desk drawer. "Engineering aye-aye," he replied.

It was impossible to hear any more battle-sounds through our hull, but just then another rolling series of detonations took place, the last one severe enough to knock me off of my feet if I hadn't already been strapped in. And somewhere in there we also must've cast off the chocks and begun rolling, because _Broad Arrow_ was now alive and moving.

I was supposed to be an engineer in training, yes. But watching the coil readings didn't take more than a fraction of my attention. Dad always encouraged me to split-screen them with stuff I hadn't been trained on yet, like Field anomalies. But this time I turned on the tactical plotter instead...

...and then immediately wished that I hadn't. It was a virtual sea of red pips, half of them converging on us. "Dad!" I exclaimed, swiveling the monitor to face him. "Look!"

He glanced over, then his eyes widened. "God above!" he muttered. Then he turned back to his own duties.

"But..." I complained before biting off the words. I was crew now, not just a silly passenger. So it wasn't for me to judge if our captain was about to get us all killed.

We rolled and rolled, then suddenly the ride roughened as _Broad Arrow_ left the taxiway and sought a clean patch of grass to take off from. Meanwhile, something very strange happened on the tactical display. All the blue— and therefore friendly— pips were racing towards us! It was a stupid thing to attempt on some levels; even as I watched half a dozen or more of our fighters vanished from the display as they attempted to turn away from their enemies in mid-dogfight and concentrate in order to clear a patch of sky for the _Arrow_ to fly thorough. Men were willingly accepting death in order to save milord, I suddenly realized. For the first time in my life, I wondered why anyone would do such a thing.

Then a new voice spoke up from Dad's intercom speaker. It was Captain Saunders. "Tobias," he asked softly. "How're we doing?"

Father bared his incisors for an instant before replying. "As well as can be expected," he admitted eventually. "We'll either fly or collapse into a quantum black hole, one or the other."

"You run a tight engine room, Tobias," the pilot replied. "Obviously, there'll be no verification checks."

"Yeah," my dad said, nodding. "I'm liking what I'm seeing so far, all but number five rod. And that'll do, unless we're damned unlucky indeed."

"Good," Captain Saunders agreed. There was a long pause while he conversed with the control tower. Then his attention returned to Dad. "In that case, I suppose you won't mind if we also unship 'A' turret during the initial translation."

My father's mouth dropped wide open, and so did mine. A hyperfield's natural state was to project itself skin-tight over the entire outside of the ship; while it was indeed possible to create small holes at the muzzles for the guns to fire through, each such exception complicated the engineer's task enormously. Out in flatter space it wasn't so bad. But during a takeoff, and an emergency one at that..."Are you... I mean..."

"We won't make it without at least some of the guns," Captain Saunders explained. "And the Imperials won't be expecting them either." He sighed. "You're good, Tobias. The best I've ever seen. Wing it; that's an order. I don't expect the results to be pretty. And if you can't manage, well..." He left the rest unsaid.

Suddenly Father's eyes were wide and the stink of lapine terror filled the engineering spaces. It wasn't all Dad's—some of it was mine, too. His jaw worked once, then a second time as if he were about to object. Then his fingers began flying across his control board like I'd never seen before and I knew better than to interrupt him even for an instant. So I looked at the tactical display again—the blue dots were still converging on us, and sure enough a red-free area was developing as the Boyens were forced out of the developing kill-zone. Then the ground shook again and the crimson dot nearest us vanished.

"Sync navigation to Field core... Mark!" Captain Saunders declared as Father ignored the command to verify the automatic hookup. Clearly he had other fish to fry, and just this once I thought our commanding officer might forgive him. I turned all my attention to the control rods—they were doing fine, just like always, but looking at them was the only way I could help Dad.

"Energize your Field, David," Dad muttered, and my ear-linings flushed a deep red—in the excitement I'd almost forgotten. Engineers always turned on their Fields during takeoffs and at other key moments for protection from possible radiation surges.

"Five," the First Officer declared as Father continued to punch keys and change screens and otherwise attempt to make a week's worth of complex adjustments in mere seconds. "Four, three, two, one..."

Then the lights dimmed and _Broad Arrow_ screamed in agony, her poorly-adjusted coils twisting her in directions that no living mind could perceive. And I screamed as well, nightmare visions of contorted space and a collapse into forever slashing across my own suddenly deformed soul. Then Father was screaming too, though he didn't slow down a bit, "A" turret was blasting away at something...

...and we were at last lurching across the sky.

# 4

I'd been inside an unbalanced Field before; Dad had rigged a little setup in the back of the hanger so that I could pass the adaptation test before being formally approved as an apprentice. A few unlucky individuals went temporarily insane under chaotic warp conditions and therefore couldn't be held responsible for their actions. These poor souls had to be strait-jacketed during all translations for everyone's safety, even as mere passengers. In order to pass my test I'd undergone total disorientating misery for over an hour while performing a task that required my total attention—playing a complex videogame, in my case—and while my score had suffered a little I'd passed easily. But even _that_ experience was poor preparation for what I was undergoing now; Dad's testing-Field hadn't been rigged nearly so far out of true as this one, and I also hadn't been scared out of my wits going in. As it was I tested the sick-tube in my suit for the very first time—it worked amazingly well—and tried to focus my wayward, ever-shifting consciousness on the Field coils. Even as I did so, number five edged up into the amber.

"Dad!" I cried out, though through my warped perceptions it sounded more like deep-voiced giant saying _Dard-de!_ There was a prescribed way of phrasing reports to avoid confusion due to the distortion, and I used it even though it probably would've sounded funny to an outsider. "Double-ewe cee! Rod! Fiv-ver! One-Oh-Thu-ree!"

My father nodded, but otherwise didn't respond at all. A hundred and three—one hundred was the yellow area's border—wasn't all that bad. Probably the unit was stressed as could be due to the out-of-balance condition, and since he was already doing all he could to fix that, well...

Just then I heard a series of rapid-fire explosions above my head—they were amazingly sharp and loud. It was 'A' turret, which was located only a few feet above us. I'd never heard it fire before, and the sound rather frightened me until I realized what it was. What scared me even more, though, was the way that number-five rod's temperature shot skyward as the Field warped even further out of true at the insult. "Dad!" I cried out again!"

"I already know," he replied, deceptively calm as his hands flew over the keyboard. "Compensating now." And sure enough, the temp dropped almost as quickly as it'd risen...

...until suddenly a new string of explosions raced down the hull, this time well forward of us. "Shit," Dad observed, his voice calm and flat. Once more, the temps shot skyward.

"We've been hit, Tobias," Captain Saunders informed us unnecessarily. "Compensate with everything you've got! I can't afford to reduce power— we're borderline on making orbit and I expect we'll need every erg."

"Aye-aye, sir," Dad responded as all the core-rod indicators soared into the red. "Understood." Then he turned to me. "David, I'm going to need a spare EVA tank; I fear that we're going to have to open up the engine room to vacuum. Go get one for me, and another for yourself."

My jaw dropped. I'd never heard of letting vacuum into an engine room on purpose before, not for anything!

"Do it, son!" he urged. "I've no time to argue!"

I nodded; orders were orders and this was hardly the time to question them. "Closing board," I acknowledged. "All rods are in the red, sir."

"All in the red," he acknowledged. There was something terribly sad in his voice, though I couldn't quite grasp what or why. "Go get me those tanks, son! On the bounce now!"

There were spare EVA cylinders stashed here and there all over the place; if Dad had only asked for one I'd have had to go no further than the engineering spaces lock. But because he specified two I had to make my way into passenger country, where a dozen of the things were stowed near the main lock. It was a long, difficult trip even under ideal conditions; _Broad Arrow_ was pretty large as personal VIP spacers went, though of course any space-to-space cargo vessel would dwarf her. Even worse, as in most passenger vessels there were only a handful of places where the ship's "working" corridors intersected with those frequented by the civilians. So I had to go well-for'ard before working my way back to the lock, then make the same round-about trip on the return leg carrying the cylinders. Fortunately no one challenged me for being away from my station; either Dad had let folks know I was coming, or more likely everyone was just too busy just then to worry much about a mere stray apprentice.

I was right in the middle of passenger country with an EVA tank in each hand when the artificial gravity failed. Suddenly the half-gravity that was ship's standard during takeoff transformed itself into the five or so gees of actual acceleration we'd finally worked up to after our no-hardpoint liftoff. I was lucky as could be in that I was caught at the bottom of the main companionway instead of halfway up it, and when the two normally hefty but manageable tanks suddenly turned to lead I simply released them and let myself flop forward, just as the training manual advised. The impact hurt, yes. But I was still a kid and it wasn't so bad. For heavier and less-flexible adults, I knew, such a fall could often be deadly. Then and only then the klaxon that should've gone off _before_ the system failure began to sound. "Catastrophic Field failure imminent!" an automated voice advised. "Take shelter! Take shelter!"

"Dad!" I cried out into my comm-link. If the Field failed under load, no one in the after sections of _Broad Arrow_ could even _hope_ to survive. "Get out of there!"

"I love you, David," he responded. "Make your mother and me proud!"

Then there was a brilliant flash. I felt the torn, unbalanced Field waver sickeningly...

...and everything aft of the emergency buffer bulkhead collapsed into another universe. Including Dad.

# 5

I didn't have much time to think about Dad being gone just then—as catastrophic as a Field collapse was for the engineering spaces, the disaster was plenty brutal on the rest of the ship, too. It was sort of like an unbalanced liftoff in that it torqued the hull more ways than ordinary beings could perceive, only about a bajillion times worse. Not a single ship had ever been salvaged once her engine rooms collapsed, not even billion-credit liners. Proud _Broad Arrow_ was now little more than scrap, even her tiniest component parts too distorted for re-use.

The first thing I had to do, being caught in passenger country at the time of the disaster, was to make certain of the hull integrity of whatever compartment I found myself in until receiving definite instructions from a fully-qualified spacer— my textbook on dealing with space emergencies was very clear on the subject. I pushed myself up off the deck and half-spun in mid-air. The wall indicator was strobing brilliant red, and fast—there was major leakage taking place somewhere! I bounced off the ceiling— a bit clumsily because I'd hadn't gotten around to advanced null-gee maneuvering training yet— and grabbed the bundle of tarpatches stored behind the telltale. But it wasn't long before I realized my efforts were hopeless. I'd placed perhaps my dozenth patch when I looked further forward and saw that at least ten structural members had somehow been driven through the main for'ard bulkhead. They were still protruding, so no mere tarpatch could hope to stop the resulting gaps. Reluctantly, for the main companionway was a key ship's thoroughfare, I grabbed my spare EVA cylinders, fell back and sealed the emergency airlock.

By then I was almost halfway through my patches, and for what gain? While I might've been able to maintain pressure in the corridor I was standing in, I stopped and asked myself what the point would be? My prime duty was supposed to be ensuring the safety of the passengers, after all, and there weren't any around to breathe the air I might or might not save. Dad had taught me that when in doubt following the book was usually the best thing to do. "Usually" wasn't the same as "always", he'd also explained, and I figured that maybe this was one of those times.

So I looked up and down the corridor for inspiration, and my guts froze. I was in the VIP area now, where the over-large cabins were built right up against the outer hull so that they might be equipped with oversized viewports. That also meant they were up against hard vacuum...

...and sure enough, every single telltale was solid red, save milord's own! And even it was blinking fast!

Cursing myself for a stupid fool and blindly following the rules, I leap down the passage and pulled myself up when I reached milord's lock. The solid red cabins held only dead men, it was virtually certain, while here there was still at least faint hope. The pressure-door refused to cycle until I entered my crewman's override code—it was telling me that the air was unbreathable on the far side, on the assumption I was a passenger too silly to read the telltale. Then finally the door rose...

...and there arose the most ungodly wind I'd ever known as the already-thin corridor air rushed into what couldn't have been more than a fifth of an atmosphere or so.

There wasn't time to think; as the gale eased to a mere strong breeze I released the fitting I'd been holding clamped between my hindpaws and let the flow draw me under the still-rising door and inside. Instantly it was clear what was the matter—a line of six evenly-spaced hand-sized dents, presumably the result of hits from an atmospheric fighter's cannon, ran at an angle just blow the largest viewport. Each was tarpatched—apparently someone had thought and acted quickly, for a passenger. But the cracks at the center of each dent were too large and had sucked the patch-juice on through. Without raising my head I peeled and slapped two more patches on each dent. The two toughest were the last ones on the far end, where some intelligent but untrained person had tried stuffing their socks down into the leaky juice—it'd probably helped some, but of course wasn't nearly good enough. I yanked the ruined silk out, then glommed on my double-patches and pushed off for the pressure door. It closed without making a fuss, and was almost all the way down when I yanked open the 'dump' valve on my one of my EVA tanks to restore pressure. Next I opened my helmet-visor and listened intently—there was a distinct whistle emerging from the closet, which was set against the now-vacuum-filled cabin next door. I floated inside, closed my eyes, concentrated...

...and almost without looking slapped my last patch on a stress-crack perhaps half an inch long. For an instant, I let my head hang in relief— milord's cabin was sound again, or at least sound enough for the moment. But...

...instantly I was in motion again, my conscious mind registering what I'd previously shut out in my single-minded—and quite proper—focus on restoring pressure. I looked down at the King's Ambassador as I floated by—he was messily dead, apparently from the five-gee fall. So was Jenkins, milord's beloved manservant and a Rabbit like me. He was halfway into a survival bubble but hadn't quite made it. Nearer the viewport lay a now-collapsed bubble that'd been all nice and puffy when I'd first arrived; now that the outside pressure was back up, it'd collapsed. In it lay James, milord's son, who oddly wasn't wearing any socks. He was also slowly turning blue.

And so was milord himself, lying in his bed inside yet another collapsed bubble!

# 6

My Field suit was equipped with an otherwise standard-issue spaceman's knife that was made out of warp-resistant material. Not that warp-resistance mattered at the moment; my Field had been off since the visor was cracked. Being careful not cut either victim, I slashed open their bubbles so they could breathe good, clean air. Almost instantly their color improved, which was a good thing since I'd still not had any first-aid training yet. It wasn't until I got around to removing the bubbles entirely that I realized milord was wearing a med-unit strapped to his chest, which was flashing red in two places and yellow in a third.

And I didn't have a clue what to do about it!

Just then James coughed and began to throw up; glad of the distraction I snatched a sick-kit off the wall and helped milord's son make use of it, then used the attached vacuum bottle to snatch the little gobbets where he'd missed out of the air. There was nothing worse than loose vomit under freefall; the stuff was so corrosive and nasty that extraordinary precautions were justified when accidents happened. By the time I was finished James was floating by his father's bedside, looking at the same blinking lights that I'd noted earlier. He didn't seem to have any idea of what to do about them, either. Finally, one of the reds went yellow on its own and the yellow quite blinking entirely. "That's a good sign, I hope," he said to me.

"Yes, sir!" I agreed, not quite certain about how to address milord's son. I'd never been much on etiquette and things like that. Unlike most passengers, milord had a ship's computer at his desk; I pulled myself into a sitting position and began pulling up screens, trying to find us some help.

"The gravity failed," James offered, sounding younger than his true age. Which was about the same as mine. "Jerome fell, and his neck went at a funny angle. Then Dad had a seizure, and while Jenkins was getting the 'doc unit running there was a big explosion! The air was already getting thin, and that was enough for Jenkins! He stuffed Dad in a bag, then me. But he... He..." James looked down at the Rabbit's stiffening corpse.

"I know," I answered softly. The computer wasn't cooperating at all—even the ship's core systems were mostly down. But I didn't let the frustration show in my voice. "Who patched the holes?" I asked.

"I did!" James replied brightly, obviously glad of the distraction. As I'd rather hoped, actually. "Each and every one—I learned about tarpatches from my tutor, Mrs. Plainsfield. She used to be a space-marine!" Then his face fell again. "Everyone else was too busy. But I didn't do a very good job, I guess. They still leaked. Even after I used my socks too."

I nodded again—some of the cockpit systems were still running. I got a nice, clean close-up of a gore-smeared suit-visor that was still boiling off liquids into space. Captain Saunder's name was inscribed just above the bloody mess. I switched back to a blank screen before James could recognize the image. "You did good work, sir," I countered. "But without specialized training you had no way of knowing that you needed to double the patches." I looked up and smiled. "And when I saw the socks, I knew someone had thought quickly."

James smiled back at me, clearly uncertain if he was being flattered or not. "Doctor Lewis was taking the day off," he explained, turning back to his father. "That's Dad's special doctor. So, we had to leave without him."

I nodded and checked off another mental box. There was no point searching for milord's personal physician.

"I don't know what to do," James said eventually, still looking down at his father. "I mean, I really and truly don't. But... Look! The other red light's gone back to yellow!"

I nodded and smiled. "He must be getting better then, sir!" I offered in the most encouraging tone I could manage.

"Yes!" James agreed, doing a little backflip of joy. Then his face sobered. "Isn't your dad aboard too, David? He's the Chief Engineer, I think?"

I froze, unable to move or think for a moment. But my face must've said plenty.

"Oh no!" James gasped. He turned away. "I'm so... I mean..."

"It's all right, sir" I answered, though I knew that things could never, ever be all right again. "It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known."

Then at last James left me alone for a bit while I rummaged through the cockpit systems. For a while I thought the flight deck camera might've been the only system left working on the entire ship. Then I found a working navigational screen as well. I wasn't trained in astrogation, and a lot of it I couldn't have figured out on a bet. But, the only part that really mattered, I could read just fine.

"Warning! Catastrophic re-entry in twenty-four minutes!" a flashing message read in large, blinking letters. "Increase relative vector immediately!" Which I couldn't do, of course, had I actually been trained for the job. For even Dad couldn't have gotten so much as a single erg of thrust out of a ship with no engine room.

# 7

After that I found a working life-support feed. It indicated that the vast majority the ship was in hard vacuum by then, and what wasn't didn't show anything alive, milord's cabin excepted. Which was just as well, I decided—there was no way I could open the pressure door without letting all the air out again, and I didn't think milord would survive the stress of another survival-bubble inflation.

Somehow I found myself floating at James' side, gazing down at milord. Even as sick as he was, there was a regal, even royal air about him. There were those who claimed that he was a bastard son of the King himself, and perhaps it was true since the House of Marcus had been upgraded to a dukedom. Because the formal investiture hadn't taken place yet, however, milord was still a Lord. The King was otherwise childless, people whispered, and if the much-beloved and soon-to-be Duke of Marcus was actually acknowledged as being of the blood royal, well...

I looked over at James, and suddenly saw him with new eyes.

He misunderstood me. 'I'm so sorry about your father," he repeated, reaching out to take and squeeze my hand. "Father loved to chat with him—he told me that his yacht's engineer was the only person in the universe who spoke to him honestly and told him dirty jokes." James looked away. "I think he loved him most of all."

I felt my own eyes tear up; barring a miracle there was only twenty minutes or so left for any of us by now, though I hadn't dared say so yet. "And Father loved him back," I answered. "All of us bunnies do. We appreciate how well we're treated."

Then there was a great coughing and wheezing, and milord's eyes opened! Instantly James dropped my hand and took up his. "Father!" he cried. "Oh Father! I thought you'd _never_ wake up!"

Milord reached out with his other arm, and James crawled into bed with him. Then they embraced and wept for a seemingly endless time, as best as the big medbox perched on the old man's chest allowed. Then he looked up at me. "Did I hear correctly?" he croaked. "Tobias is dead?"

I nodded and looked down at the deck. "Everyone is, milord. We're the only survivors."

He closed in eyes in pain. "I'm so terribly sorry," he replied. Then his eyes hardened again. "Report, son! Starting with the warp failure—I was in touch right up until then."

I snapped to attention, which I imagine looks rather silly in free-fall. "Milord!" I began. "At approximately 15:00 Zulu time..." Then I continued with the standard shipboard formula, detailing everything I'd seen, done and learned except for the bit about us re-entering soon. When I came to that part, I looked suggestively towards James instead. Milord's eyebrows rose and I knew he'd understood. "James!" he declared when I was finished. "Does that jibe with what you know?"

"Pretty much," he answered. Then it was his turn to look away. "Jenkins... He saved our lives, Dad. And died doing it."

Milord's eyes closed in pain. "So many good friends lost," he muttered. Then he used his arms to lever himself upright, something I supposed he was incapable of in anything but freefall. "I'm thirsty, James. Can you get me a drink of water?"

"Sure, Dad!" he cried, kicking off the bed and drifting towards the lavatory.

The moment he was gone, milord turned to me. "What did you hold back?" he demanded.

I looked down again. "We didn't achieve orbit, milord. I'd have to look again to be sure, but we have about ten minutes left before uncontrolled re-entry."

"No!" Milord whispered, his eyes closing in pain. "Not my youngest son too! Not _that_ way!" Then he opened them again and looked at me. "There's no hope?"

I shrugged. "No, milord. Not unless someone attempts a pickup in the middle of a firefight. Besides, the last time I looked, practically everything in the sky belonged to the Emperor."

Milord nodded. "And the Emperor doesn't take prisoners—not even noble ones." He closed his eyes again. "When you're absolutely certain, you're to vent the atmosphere and spare us the burning. You hear me? That's an order!"

I nodded just as James bounced back, smiling and happy despite the corpses hovering just above the floor. He was carrying a cup half-full of liquid, and was using the palm of his other hand to hold it inside. "Be careful, Dad!"

Milord smiled, though his eyes were so full of tears that he had to wipe them before he could see. "Thank you, son!" He sipped with obvious pleasure, then turned back to me. "Have you seen my datacorder? I have important business."

I nodded—it was tucked under the covers right beside him. He smiled and stuck his signet ring in the little receptacle, activating the device. A Lord's datacorder was a very important thing, and enormous efforts were made to safeguard them from tampering and damage. What was recorded on them carried the force of law, sometimes on many planets. "God save the King!" he enunciated formally. "God save King Albert the Eleventh and his bonny Queen Mary! May the Lord grant them health and wisdom!"

He paused and smiled at me before continuing. "Let it be known that due to extraordinary services and sacrifices rendered upon this dark day the following of my servants are to be elevated and rewarded. First, a special pension in the amount of five thousand credits per annum is hereby awarded to the surviving families of all crew members of my late vessel _Broad Arrow_. They did everything that could be done to save her, and fought her to the very end. It was no fault of theirs that the battle was lost."

I gulped—five thousand credits a year was a small fortune!

"Second, I hereby elevate Captain Tasker Saunders posthumously to the Most Honorable Order of the Knights of the Bath. His elevation is symbolic in that his honor reflects the heroic nature of his entire crew.

"Thirdly, I hereby posthumously manumit two old friends, slaves Jenkins Sowell and Tobias Birkenhead. I've wished to free them for years, but the pressures of my position have prevented me from doing so." He scowled. "I'm deeply ashamed that I bowed to these pressures and waited too long."

Then he turned to me. "Fourth, I hereby manumit slave David Birkenhead, son of Tobias. This is done not merely in deference to his father's memory, but because despite his youth David's resourcefulness and courage are truly remarkable. He preserved the lives of both James and myself where many other more experienced spacers would in my judgment have failed. I also allot him a special pension of five thousand credits per annum in addition to the similar amount to which he's entitled as a _Broad Arrow_ crewman." He smiled at me and bowed slightly. "David is further named a Friend of the House of Marcus, and is thereby entitled to seek refuge and protection at the doors of my House forevermore. All of this is insufficient to express my true gratitude. So it has been spoken, so mote it be." Then he closed his eyes, switched off the recorder, and let his head hang, exhausted.

"I wish it were more, David, he muttered. "Truly I do. God knows I'd love to free you all. But I fear that this is all I can manage just now."

# 8

My head spun for a good little while after that—I'd never heard of anyone being manumitted until they were old and gray and unable to work, so that it didn't matter anymore in any real sense of the word. Then I realized with a jolt in my stomach that it didn't particularly matter in _my_ case, either. I had mere minutes to savor my freedom, and no one else would ever know. Unless of course the datacorder was sufficiently armored to withstand a meteoric re-entry, which was entirely possible. In which case my classmate Frieda might someday soon attend a little funeral service in my honor, weeping over my fire-lily bedecked photograph and telling everyone about how close she'd been to a Rabbit who'd been set free so young...

Then I sighed and looked around the cabin to see if perhaps something else needed to be done. _Anything_ was better than _that_ image! But sadly there was nothing. So, after smiling at the sight of milord and his son snuggled up in bed hugging each other, I floated over to the viewport to watch...

Well, the end I supposed.

The final Field collapse hadn't done would-be stargazers any favors—we were spinning on all three axis, though not particularly rapidly on any of them. The result was that even though Marcus Prime took up almost half the sky, the planet zipped by at seemingly random intervals and odd angles. It was sick-making, yet I stood and watched anyway. For all its shortcomings, this was the best show on.

Was it just my imagination? Or were we growing visibly closer with each sweep?

I was still standing there with my mouth hanging open thinking about what it meant to be free when I heard a knocking sound. Instantly I was alert and attentive again, listening for leaks. Perhaps a bit of debris had shifted somewhere? Then the knocking came again, this time in the five slow and evenly-measured raps of the trained spacer. My mouth dropped open again—someone was out there! Instantly I drew my knife and used the hilt to signal back with five raps of my own...

...and a spacesuited man swam across the viewport!

"Milord!" I cried. "I... I mean... We..."

"I saw," he answered gently.

I rapped five more times, then turned on my helmet-lights. I don't know which of the two did the trick, but almost immediately the figure was back, pressing its visor up against the 'port and cupping its hands around its eyes to stop the glare. I flashed my lights five more times...

...and the figure waved! Even better, it gave a thumbs-up, pulled out a vacuum marker pen and scrawled a big fat "X" on the glass. Best of all, when it turned away to go get more help we were all three able to clearly make out the Royal Marine emblem on its shoulder.

"Good God!" milord muttered. "I wonder where they came from?"

I wondered too. But I also knew that our rescuers were going to have to cut their way in, and do it in a hurry. "We need to get you two into bubbles!" I explained. "The more pressure there is when we do it, the easier it'll be for you to breathe."

Milord nodded. "Get us a pair, please."

That proved a problem. The cabin had originally been equipped with five bubbles. Someone had ruined the seals on two of them, probably Jenkins. He didn't normally travel with milord, and was therefore unfamiliar with space gear. Milord and James had used up two more; bubbles weren't reusable even when they hadn't been slashed wide open. And the last...

...was still wrapped around poor Jenkins' corpse, covered with reprecipitated boiled-off goo and clutched tightly in cold, dead hands. But still perfectly usable.

# 9

We might've gotten the survival bubble halfway clean, given more time to work with the bedsheets. But James and I only had long enough to rather disrespectfully separate Jenkins from his shroud and gloop out a few handfuls of liquid as milord sat helplessly by and watched. "I'm sorry good friend!" he sobbed at one point, clearly near tears at such disrespectful treatment of an old, dear comrade. "I wish there were another way!" The result was a stinking, filthy parody of the sterile-packaged emergency gear of an hour ago. But the seal still looked good and there weren't a lot of choices left.

Despite my outward calm, I was still deeply worried about the whole situation. Survival bubbles looked simple enough, but there was a lot more to them than met the eye. For example... Over the years they'd varied in size enormously as their designers grappled with the relative importance of various features. At first the answer looked obvious—one should make a survival bubble as large as was practical so that the occupant would have more air. But, exactly how large was "practical"? Under actual spacing conditions it'd soon become evident that most survivors ended up trapped amidst the wreckage, not floating out in free space. So many potential survivors had been killed by punctures as their rescuers attempted to extricate huge, delicate spheres from amidst twisted wreckage that the next generation of bubbles were made as tiny as possible. Over time a sort of compromise had developed, and _Broad Arrow_ 's bubbles were shaped like fat, elongated mummies. But they were still fairly close to form-fitting, and I didn't really know if milord and his son were both going to fit inside or not. Again, if we'd had more time we might've managed it. As things were, however, milord had to remove his medbox, even though two lights had already begun flashing yellow again the moment he exerted himself. "Seal us up, David," he ordered calmly from inside the reeking mess. "No one else could've done any better."

No one else could've cut it any closer, either. I'd just tugged twice on the closed seal to help it set, like the manual said, when five taps sounded from the viewport. This was followed by five more rapid taps, which was spacer's shorthand for "Something important's about to happen—and right now!" I just had time to lower my visor and energize the Field before there was a low, dull boom...

...and a terrible wind was blowing out into space!

Fortunately I'd thought to anchor the bubble to the bed, which was bolted to the floor, and myself as well. For a moment we felt like fish shooting a set of rapids, then everything was silent and the air was gone. There wasn't any time to waste—I slashed both of our tie-offs in one quick preplanned motion, then grabbed the bubble— which was already oriented longways— and pushed off towards the shattered viewport with it. Or at least I _tried_ to push off with it; my zero-gee training was still badly deficient, and I'd never attempted to move anything so heavy before. But that was okay—already the cabin was swarming with space-suited figures, well-provided with ropes, slings and pulleys.

At first I was a little miffed that they didn't help me at all, then I understood that they were paying me a compliment—no one had realized that I was just an apprentice. So I did my best to tag along, making long, terrifying free-leaps alongside the experienced vacuum crew, leaps that even Dad would've cringed at. They seemed to take it for granted that I'd make it, despite the fact that only lubberly Engineers wore Field suits.

Or else maybe they just weren't _interested_ in saving me?

At any rate I made it, though once or twice it was very, very close. The Marines had come from a revenue cutter, I saw once we got close enough—a tiny ship built for speed above all else, meant to catch blockade runners. _HMS Hummingbird_ , the name emblazoned above her stern read. I'd never been aboard a King's ship before.

And I almost didn't board this one. The main airlock was cramped as could be, as was natural given such a narrow hull, and I arrived last due to my relative clumsiness. When I finally planted my magnetic boots on _Hummingbird_ 's plating milord and James had already been cycled through, and the last two spacers were squeezing in. The hull was beginning to silver as well, which meant they didn't intend to cycle it again. At the last moment, however, one of the Marines climbed out of the hatch with me, so that they _had_ to wait. As we squeezed into the lock together I slapped his shoulder in a spaceman's thank you, and he smiled and nodded behind his visor.

When the inner lock finally opened, it was on bedlam. The foul survival bubble lay shredded on the floor, while milord himself lay not far from it. His face was white as chalk, and a doctor was kneeling beside him.

"...still no pulse!" a white-coated assistant declared. Or once-white-coated, at least. Now the garment was smeared with all sorts of unspeakable filth from the inside of the bubble. Just as the doctor's was.

"He needs his special medicine!" James cried, even more filth-caked and standing barefoot on the painted steel deck. "He's had another seizure, and needs the special medicine!"

" _What_ medicine, son?" the doctor pleaded. "His case is unique!" The doctor turned to a man wearing a splendid uniform with lots of gold braid on it. "I can't know what he means, sir! This patient is the only person to ever survive being shot by a warp vortex rifle!"

"Purple pills!" James wailed, bouncing up and down in frustration. "The big purple ones! He doesn't need them very often, but..."

The doctor shook his head, clearly baffled.

"We're losing brain wave function, doctor," the assistant announced.

"Do something, you fool!" the man in the fancy uniform hissed. "His Majesty is _counting_ on you!"

The doctor looked heavenwards, as if for inspiration. Then he pulled out an autoinjector and pressed it over milord's ribcage. It hissed...

...and the assistant's board transformed itself into a swirl of red. "Doctor!" she said, "I don't think..."

Suddenly milord's eyes opened wide and searched out those of his son. "You made it," he whispered. "Always know that I love you." Next he turned to me. "David! Come here, please?"

I bounced over, then bent my head down low when he beckoned again.

"For luck," he declared, reaching out and brushing my ears with his fingertips." Then he smiled. "Thank you David. Because of you, all is well in the end."

Then his lordly head crashed back onto the deck with a terrible thud, and he died.

# 10

It wasn't quite _that_ clear cut, of course. The medical-types kept working milord over for many long minutes, though it was clear they no longer believed in the project. Meanwhile James ran over and hugged me as tight as he could, weeping into my right ear all the while. And the captain—for that was who the man in the fancy uniform was—paced back and forth with a foul expression on his face, slapping his thigh with an expensive-looking stick of some kind. Finally the annuniciator buzzed. "Bridge to Sir Leslie!"

"Sir Leslie here," the fancily dressed man replied, eyes closed. "What is it, Number Two?"

"Sir, I've worked out an escape vector. But... It's impossible to evade all combat, sir. We're going make a near approach to an Imperial cruiser."

"Damnit!" Sir Leslie complained, slapping his thigh again. "Must I do your job for you, Number Two?"

There was a long pause. "If you so please, sir. But the computer says that no better vector is achievable. Sir."

The captain scowled and nodded. "Execute, then. I'll be right up to see what tweaking there is to be done." Then stepped over to James and I. "My Lord," he said softly, dropping to one knee and waiting to be recognized.

I blinked. All the sons of a duke were by definition lords, though their own children wouldn't inherit the title. Milord hadn't quite been a duke yet; Sir Leslie was jumping the gun. Finally James stiffened a little, patted my back in a sort of "thank-you", and looked up. When he did so his eyes were clear and firm. "Whom," he asked, "have I the pleasure of addressing?"

"Sir Leslie Blaine, Baronet of Equatorial Tamboria," he replied, his voice practically a purr.

"Ah," James replied. I tilted my head my head a little; suddenly he didn't seem like such a child anymore. Perhaps this was because now he was more in his natural element? Then he returned the bow, not bending nearly as low as the captain had. Finally, Sir Leslie stood up. He was practically glowing. "I regret... I mean..."

Pain flashed across James' features again, but only for an instant. "My father is dead," he said evenly. "The doctor did his best. I'm grateful to him."

Sir Leslie looked over to where the sick bay crew was still doing its dutiful best to reanimate a corpse. "Belay that," he ordered. "His Lordship has doffed his mortal coil."

James' face screwed up again, but via sheer willpower he forced his expression back to normal. Then he turned to me. "By tradition," he explained, "an exceptionally loyal and beloved family retainer removes the dead Lord's ring. Will you do my father this one last service, David?"

For the first time since I didn't know when, I bowed deeply and formally. "Of course, sir. I'm honored." Then I hesitated. "Now?"

He nodded. "Now."

The ring slid off surprisingly easily. It wasn't bad at all after removing poor Jenkins from the survival bubble. Because it seemed to be the right thing to do, and because I meant it, I lifted milord's hand and kissed it afterwards. No one seemed to mind.

James accepted the ring and bowed three times to milord's corpse. Then he slipped the emblem of nobility into his pocket. "I'll hold this for my brother," he declared

"Of course you will," Sir Leslie declared loudly. "And I'll keep you safe to get it to him. Just you wait and see!" He smiled and patted James on the back. "Now, we'll settle you into my cabin and get a nice pallet set up for your footman in the galley—"

Suddenly James' eyes went hard and he twisted out of Captain Blaine's grasp. "David Birkenhead is _not_ my footman and never will be!" he declared. "He's a free Rabbit. Father manumitted him, you see! And he'll _not_ be treated as a slave! David saved our lives!"

The captain's jaw dropped. "I... But..."

"You'll treat him exactly as you would anyone else closely associated with my family!" James ordered. "Or else you'll learn that I inherited more from my father than just his surname!"

# 11

At first, I couldn't see all that much difference between being a free Rabbit and an enslaved one—instead of a pallet in the kitchen, I got one in the captain's cabin on the floor alongside James. But after the first couple nights, once James settled down a little after the shock of watching his father die, he and I started trading off night-and-night. It was his idea and he absolutely _insisted_ on going through with it. I was surprised at the result. Once the captain found out what was going on a spare bunk appeared out of nowhere.

James and I spent all our time together in the cabin. This wasn't as bad as it might've been because the terminal there had unlimited access to the ship's computer systems. No one ever figured out that I knew how to access vital systems, so we boys spent most of our time watching the upcoming battle develop. The maneuvering was terribly complex and drawn out because so many possibilities arose out the combination of _Hummingbird_ 's superb turn of speed and the numerous hyper-points scattered all about Marcus Prime's solar system. Even five days into the chase we were still capable of hitting four different translation points directly, plus we could gravity-sling to two others. Only the fact that we'd heard the first officer talk about passing near a cruiser told me that we were going for Point Five—eventually, that was, after misdirecting as many other ships as possible. One of the enemy's light cruisers had suffered an engineering failure and was crawling for Five at very low speed; I predicted to James that this was the cruiser in question and he refused to bet against me. We probably could've gotten away clean, save that Captain Blaine had poured on full emergency power for ten long minutes in order to match courses with the dying _Broad Arrow._ This had warped a core rod, something which couldn't be repaired short of a shipyard. Still, we were the fastest thing in the sky. Which was just as well, because by then there wasn't another King's vessel left in local space.

Finally about the sixth day I got to where I couldn't stand being cooped anymore; Captain Blaine had quit visiting us after seeing me lying in his bed, so the only person we ever had any contact with was Pedro, the ship's boy. He was a Rabbit like me— property of the navy—and I guess that if he hadn't been aboard I'd have starved to death for lack of hay. Pedro took good care of us, but he wasn't much to talk to. He didn't seem to understand very much of what was going on outside of his tiny area of responsibility, and he was busy, busy, busy all the time shining boots and polishing brasswork and running back and forth with coffee and tea. Worst of all, however, he seemed terrified of me. "Sir Leslie says I'm not to speak with you any more than absolutely necessary," he told me at our first meeting. Whatever other faults he might have, Pedro was a very obedient Rabbit indeed.

"Especially obedient" was never a virtue that had applied to we Birkenheads, or so family lore claimed. Dad was meticulous about following regulations when lives were at stake, of course, and in that regard I was trying hard to follow in his footsteps. But supposedly our ancestors had been troublesome Rabbits indeed, so much so that had we not also been extra-bright our bloodline would've been pinched out. No one had actually _ordered_ me to stay in the cabin, so....

It was quite easily done when the time came. Once James was snoring nice and regular from the other bed, I grabbed my Field suit and unlatched the cabin door. A quick look revealed no one coming or going, which was predictable enough given that I'd chosen the third watch for my wandering. Even in warships, the third watch was a fraction the size of the others unless a battle happened to be going on or something. Then I began tiptoeing my way aft to find a proper suit locker. The suit was my excuse, of course—it needed recharging and replenishing. Besides, it was continually in the way—aboard a vessel as cramped as _Hummingbird_ , even the commanding officer lacked enough room to take more than two paces in his cabin.

At first my trip was disorienting— _Broad Arrow_ was the only ship I'd ever known well, and her layout was completely different. Even after having studied _Hummingbird'_ s configuration on the computer I made a couple wrong turns. But eventually I found the companionway down to the engineering spaces. And I practically had my foot on the top step when a deep bass voice froze me in my tracks. "Ahoy there!" it called out. "And where might _you_ be headed at this late hour?"

I gulped and froze, then turned around. Confronting me was a huge man in a space-black marine uniform, immaculate except for his stockinged feet. In one hand he held a nearly-polished boot. "I..." I stuttered. "I.... " Then I raised the Field suit hopefully. "I need to stow this somewhere," I finally forced out.

"Oh," the marine replied. Then he smiled. "Well, then... You caught me in the middle of a bit o' housekeeping." He held up the boot. "How about if you wait for me to finish with this, and then I can show you a spare locker?"

I felt my guts loosen a little. "Thank you," I answered. "That'd be very nice."

His smile widened. "My name's Percy," he explained. "Never did catch yours."

"David," I answered. Then he led me into a small, compact locker room with a long bench down the middle. One of the lockers was open; the plate on the door read "Lance Corporal Percy Middleton". My new friend sat down beside it and patted the bench companionably. "Take a load off," he urged. "This won't take two shakes."

I smiled silently and sat as Percy spat on his boot and then buffed it over and over again with a soft white rag. "I'm pulling extra duty," he explained. "All the crap jobs, and formal inspection twice a day besides." He shook his head and sighed. "You wouldn't mind brushing that other boot for me, would you? The sooner we're done, the sooner we can stow your suit."

I nodded and went to work—I'd never polished boots before, but the process was self-explanatory. Percy smiled and nodded in thanks. "It's rough, I tell you! Clean the blasters, scrub the toilets, there's lint on your uniform, Lance Corporal Middleton, that's five demerits!" He shook his head and sighed. "I should never have re-upped."

"Where are you from?" I asked, mostly to be polite.

"Marcus Four," he replied, and my ears rose a little in surprise. "Yes," he answered with a smile. "I'm under the protection of milord as well." His face softened. "You actually knew him, did you?"

"A little," I acknowledged. "At the end."

Percy nodded. "Was it true what they said? That he was a genuinely great man, I mean?"

"I think so," I said after mulling it over a little. "And I think his son may have the makings of one as well. Though of course I'm nobody to judge."

Percy shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not." Then he slid the freshly polished boot onto his left foot and accepted the one I'd been brushing. "Milord manumitted you, did he?"

I felt the linings of my ears darken. "I don't think he expected me to live to enjoy it very long."

"Heh!" he barked. "Quite frankly, I didn't expect you to either. And I was there." He looked at me strangely. "You're space-trained."

I turned away. "A little. Father was chief engineer on _Broad Arrow_ , and I was his apprentice."

Percy whistled a long, low note. "Well," he said at last. "You might want to keep that under your hat, David. At least aboard _this_ ship."

My ears rose again. "Why?"

"Heh!" he laughed. "Because a rated engineering apprentice— even a merchie apprentice— is considered a cadet, see? And, well... I'm supposed to salute you."

My jaw dropped. Dad had never, ever left the immediate vicinity of the ship while off-world, and now I understood why.

"Not that _I'd_ mind saluting you," Percy continued. "Not after seeing how well you handled yourself in the middle of so many troubles. But the rest of them, you see..."

I nodded sadly. He didn't have to draw a map. Besides, I didn't _want_ to be saluted. Just left to do an important job in peace.

Percy worked silently for a little while before speaking again. "It's different, with me being from Marcus Four. I mean... It's only recently settled. And what a job it was!"

I nodded in agreement. The House of Marcus had colonized eighteen worlds, but Marcus Four was in many ways the most recent despite its low sequence number. This was because three previous efforts had failed, two of them perishing to the last man.

"I grew up..." He sighed and started over. "There was a Rabbit family next door, see? I played with Chadwick almost every day, and, well..." He shook his head. "My neighbors may technically have been milord's property. But they were also richer than we were."

I nodded—Dad and I had been well-off, too.

He studied his boot intently for a moment—it gleamed like a mirror. "You don't want to let anyone know that you're a cadet," he repeated softly. "Even though they'd figure it out on their own if they ever gave it two thoughts. And... I don't think you ought to visit engineering at all. Ever. They play nasty tricks on Pedro down there."

I gulped silently. That was where I'd just been heading, to stow my suit with the other Field units. I'd sort of hoped that... "I see."

Percy nodded glumly, then stood up and clasped my shoulder. "In fact, maybe you ought to just stay in your cabin from now on. It might be better for everyone involved." Then he sighed and looked at my suit. "We have a spare locker in the back room. It has a top-off outlet, too. Sergeant Wells never touches it—I think that'd be a good place for your gear."

I nodded. "Thank you," I said. "For everything." Then I looked up and met his eyes. "Why were you assigned extra duty?" I asked, already half-guessing the answer.

"Disobeying orders," he answered, turning away. "It seems that I deliberately stepped out of an airlock a few days back, causing an unnecessary delay and thereby endangering the entire vessel." Then he smiled at me and scratched an ear. "Cost me a month's extra duty and two stripes. But don't you worry, David! I don't regret it for a second. And I'll have my rank back in no time—you can bet the farm on that!"

# 12

I took Percy's advice after that and stayed in the cabin all of the time, even though sometimes the walls pressed in so hard that I thought they were going to smother me. I kept a backup file of my schoolwork in the suit's computer, so at least I had plenty of math problems to keep me busy. And James read history from the ship's library—he liked social studies almost as much as I liked math. Dad had never had much use for "timewaster" classes like psychology and history; he told me once that it was a good thing that milord had chosen ship's engineering as his career, because he'd never taken enough humanities even to earn the lowest-level literacy certification. Finally James out-and-out _made_ me read a textbook entitled "Humanity's Heritage—The English-Speaking Peoples". It was one of a series and, well... it explained all sorts of stuff I'd never even thought to wonder about, like where my culture's sense of right and wrong came from and why too much democracy always fails in the end. It also discussed the history and economics of slavery in British-derived cultures, though not nearly in as much depth as I'd have liked. And, it sorta just stopped dealing with the subject at all once we anthro-slaves arrived on the scene. I knew that Dad would've killed me if he'd ever known, but after that I spent as much time reading James's books as I did my own. It was like I'd discovered a raging thirst I never even knew I had.

Captain Blaine eventually visited us again one evening. This time he made a genuine effort to be nice to me, too. "My Lord," he explained to James once he'd dealt with the pleasantries. "It's occurred to me that I've been neglecting my duties somewhat." He smiled slightly. "Though of course I'm in command of a King's ship currently surrounded by enemies, so I suppose it might be excused."

We both nodded, even though I'd pointed out to James long since that almost all of the ship's business that should've been dealt with by Sir Leslie originated with First Officer von Selkim instead.

His smile widened. "I've only now come to realize that I'm essentially in loco parentis to a Lordling. And that this involves a whole new set of responsibilities." His face hardened. "Are you in the sixth grade, milord?"

James shook his head. "I had tutors. They let me study pretty much whatever I wanted to."

Captain Blaine blinked. "How... Indulgent." Then he forced another smile and nodded down at James's datapad. "May I see what you're reading now?"

My friend beamed, offering his most childish grin and turning the pad around to face the captain. "Sure! It's a story!"

"What about?" he asked, in a very adult-to-child manner.

"It's called 'The Aeneid'," James gushed. "By a guy named Virgil. Dad loved it, so I read it sometimes too."

Blaine scowled, examining the pad. "That's gibberish!"

"No it's not," James answered, his grin fading. "It's Latin."

Blaine's scowl deepened, then he sighed. "Well... James, I fear that I must ask that you return to a normal school curriculum henceforth—I'll set up the computer accordingly, and you'll be tested every week." His face went hard. "You're a very important young man, and I'll have no one claim that I allowed any of your best learning years to go to waste. I'll be monitoring your progress personally."

My friend's jaw dropped for a moment, then he simply nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Good!" Blaine declared, his voice hearty for the first time since entering the room. Then he turned to me. "And now you, David." He smiled insincerely. "I must admit that your situation has caused me even more worry than that of his Lordship's. I mean, no one anywhere knows how to properly raise a free Rabbit. Or at least not that I know of."

I nodded and said nothing.

"Well..." he said eventually. "I see that you're playing with a datapad too. Can you actually read?"

I nodded slowly. "Uh-huh."

Blaine beamed. "Excellent! Far better than I feared. _Good_ bunny!" Then he reached out for the instrument and I handed it over. He stared at it for a long, long, time. "What in the world?" he asked eventually.

"That's an equation representing the current state of your engines, approximated to six dimensions," I explained. "I'm trying to figure out how much power we've actually lost due to that warped control rod in the number nine warp generator." I blushed. "It's only an approximation, sir. To obtain reliable figures you need to work an n-dimensional formula. And I don't know enough calculus to do that yet."

"I see," the captain replied, his voice flat and hard. He handed the datapad back, then crossed his arms. "Well... What I had in mind was to offer you the chance to learn something more practical for a Rabbit. Something that might actually help you earn your keep as a freedman, in other words."

I let my ears rise in curiosity. "Sir?"

Blaine sighed. "Pedro is overworked," he admitted. "I meant to buy another Rabbit, but that cursed factor on Magus Prime..." He shook his head and frowned. Then he turned to James. "It's good for a Rabbit to work," he explained. "They _must_ work, you see, in order to be truly happy. It's how they're designed. If they don't work they go to seed and die young." He looked away. "I'll rate him the same as a human ship's boy—he _is_ free, after all. Wages and everything. And I'll make a special note in the log that he's to be discharged when you leave the ship. But.. My Lord, you'll ruin him if you let him lie about all day in here and..." He pointed at my datapad. "Draw squiggles."

I turned to James, who was already looking at me with eyebrows raised. "I _am_ bored," I admitted. "Nor afraid to work. He's right about that part."

James nodded. "I only wish I could go with you. It sounds like it might be fun, at least sometimes." Then he turned to Captain Blaine. "He agrees."

The baronet looked immensely relieved. "Excellent!" he declared. "David will report to the galley at the beginning of the first watch tomorrow for instruction in his new duties." He looked down at my "squiggles" again, his eyes blank. Then he smiled one last time. "I'm sure you'll make something of yourself given a chance, David. After all, milord clearly thought well of you." Then he was gone.

There was a long, long silence in the cabin before James finally spoke again. "What do you know about the ranks of nobility, David?" he finally asked.

"Not much," I admitted.

"Well..." James continued. "Do you know exactly what a baronet is? Or how somebody gets to be one?"

I shook my head.

"A baronetcy is a purchased rank. A hereditary title that can be bought and sold. Usually those who buy the silly things are incredibly vain and small-minded. It seems to run in the families, too. For generation after generation."

"I see," I replied, understanding beginning to dawn.

"You can also purchase rank in the navy," James observed. "Though those who buy it are usually assigned to jobs where they can't do much harm. Like commanding revenue cutters, for example, teamed with highly-experienced and long-suffering first officers who can be trusted to carry them along." He shook his head. "Dad absolutely _despised_ some things about our system, David. Baronetcies and purchased rank among them. He said we needed wholesale reform. And I begin to understand why."

I nodded wordlessly.

"Well," he said eventually, snapping off his datapad. "I suppose I'd best get some rest—I'm supposed to tackle the sixth grade tomorrow, after all! And you have to get up early to go learn a trade appropriate to your capabilities."

I smiled and nodded again. "Yes, sir."

James sighed and turned out the lights. "David?" he asked a few minutes later.

"Yes, sir?"

"Please quit 'sir'-ing me. At least in private, that is. After the fun we had with poor Sir Leslie tonight, I expect that we're going to be best friends for life."

# 13

Being a ship's boy wasn't too bad, though I'd have hated being forced to make a career of it. Sir Leslie liked me a lot better when I was serving him tea than when I was sleeping in his bed, for example—sometimes he even smiled and fozzled my ears. Pedro was extra-nice too, now that he was allowed to speak to me. While he might not've been a very bright Rabbit, he was certainly a good, decent and above all patient one. "Everything's _so_ much better now that you're working with me," he declared over and over again while bustling about making sandwiches for the officers on watch. "A free Rabbit, living in the captain's cabin with no work to do!" He huffed. "Imagine that!"

Pedro always explained everything over and over again; he was still telling me how to properly carry a serving tray, for example, almost a week after I'd mastered the art. And every time I washed dishes, he told me about eleventy-billion times to make sure I kept the silver and steel flatware separate. Being a ship's boy might be a lot of hard work—I'd grant anyone that. But it wasn't exactly rocket science.

One of the very nicest things Pedro did for me was keep me well away from engineering and some of the other less-pleasant parts of the ship. My friend Percy the marine had been right to steer me away from there. Pedro handled all the engineering coffee runs himself, and often came back a long time later looking tired and drawn and carrying a tray full of unspeakably filthy china. He never told me about what'd happened, even when I asked. Instead, he just groomed himself and muttered afterwards.

James had it considerably worse than I did—he was required to sit at his console all day long and pretend to actually be challenged by the sixth grade. It must've been excruciatingly boring, because the moment I came back every day his face lit up and he immediately tackled me, so that we could wrestle and laugh for a while. Then he made me tell him about everything that happened, sometimes twice. Usually I was pretty honest with him, though I edited some things. Like how the Purser already had my name signed on an induction form, for example, so that I could scrawl an "x" alongside it to make it legal. That was bad enough, but the form had also been made out for a five-year enlistment, with no mention of my being allowed to leave the ship at the next opportunity. I might've made a big stink out of it, I suppose. But in the end, what good would it have done? So I simply asked to fill out a new form and correct the "mistake". He didn't argue, so I suppose he knew all along. This one I signed with a flourish, smiling up at the legal-document recording camera that was purring away. My penmanship is especially attractive, or so Dad always said.

I might've had to work hard, and there might've been people eager to take advantage of me, but at least I got to know most of the ship and its crew. They were pretty nice, for the most part—Dad always said that most people were, once you got to know them. First Officer von Selkim, for example, turned out to be a very good friend indeed—he always seemed to be smiling, except sometimes when Captain Blaine was around. Pieter, as he asked me to call him, took his coffee with lots of milk and sugar and drank four or five cups per watch. Best of all, he'd actually met Dad and thought that he was a fine ship's engineer indeed. Percy had warned me not to let anyone know that I was an apprentice engineer, but one day Pieter out and asked me if I was interested in the subject myself. I told him the whole story, since we were alone just then. He sort of smiled at first and seemed happy for me, then he grew more thoughtful. In the end he agreed that it was indeed probably for the best if I kept the matter quiet, but also promised to help me any way he could. From then on whenever he sent for coffee he ordered an extra little cookie for me to eat myself—I liked him a lot.

But it was the marines I liked best of all, I think. Even their sergeant, who on such a small vessel was in charge of the entire contingent, went out of his way to be nice to me. This was a little strange, since according to Percy he hated everyone. The black-uniformed men treated me almost like one of the family, tossing boots at me and telling me all sorts of nasty jokes I'd never heard before. Percy told me once that this was because they'd worked with me under emergency conditions and liked what they'd seen—apparently I'd impressed the sergeant in particular. He kept talking to me about signing up as a batman, which was sort of the marine equivalent of a ship's boy, and said that he'd put in a good word for me if I did. Someday, he hinted, things might change enough that I could hope to become a _real_ Marine—nothing would make him happier. He liked me so much that he asked Captain Blaine to assign me exclusively to marine duties for two weeks, so that I could learn how to properly launder and stow uniforms, arrange lockers, and of course shine boots. It was probably the best part of the whole voyage, except that I missed seeing Pieter the whole time. James was envious—he was considering becoming a Marine himself someday, when he did his required service. And, I decided, if I did finally end up having to become some kind of servant even though I was free, well... I could do worse than the marines myself.

Maybe I might even end up as James's batman?

I was still working in the barracks compartment learning how to properly sew ribbons onto tunics when _Hummingbird_ made its last alteration of course in Marcus Prime space. Then she went back to maximum thrust, committing us finally and irrevocably to making our intersystem Jump at Point Five.

Where a crippled Imperial light cruiser was still inching her way towards her own translation, in a perfect position to take potshots at us as we flashed by.

# 14

Space battles are long, drawn-out and boring affairs, except when they occur in the immediate vicinity of a Jump point. That's where the vast majority of them take place, however, and our upcoming struggle was to be no exception. This was because the Points serve as navigational choke-points. While in theory a ship can translate into hyperspace anywhere and at anytime, only at Jump points is it even close to being real-world feasible for objects with any noticeable mass. A few labs had successfully Jumped subatomic particles deep in gravity wells, sometimes even all the way down on planetary surfaces. But these were mere scientific stunts. Practical interstellar navigation mandated the use of Jump points, and the use of such points created bottlenecks where battles often took place. _Hummingbird_ and the enemy cruiser were now headed for precisely the same point in space at almost exactly the same time; our ship would eventually beat the crippled Imperial warship there by a margin of several hours. First, however, we had a gauntlet to run.

Captain Blaine cleared for action a good hour before we moved into range of the enemy's guns. James, Pedro and I all three were ordered to remain in the lower stores hold, which was as deep within the hull of such a small, fragile ship as it was possible to get. Someone had set up crash couches for us there. Since we had so much time to get ready, I borrowed a portable console from the marines so that we could at least watch the action as it unfolded.

The cruiser began firing as predicted almost down the second; while her engines might've been badly damaged by whatever accident had befallen her, the vessel's guns still worked just fine. She was equipped with eight medium-caliber naval blasters that vastly outranged our little popguns, and their crews belted out salvo after salvo in beautiful synchronization. The range was long and _Hummingbird_ both small and agile— the odds were overwhelmingly against the enemy so much as scorching our paintwork. I'd just finished explaining this to Pedro for perhaps the seventh time when suddenly our ship staggered violently, then shook herself like a wet dog. The enemy had gotten lucky after all!

"I knew we'd be hit!" my nominal supervisor declared, his eyes wide with terror. "We'll all be killed!"

"Everything's fine," James replied, his voice low and soothing. Pedro, we'd already learned, accepted reassurance far more willingly from a human than he did me. Especially a noble-born human. Meanwhile I fiddled with the console. It didn't have anything like the level of access we'd enjoyed in the captain's cabin, but I was still able to call up generalized damage reports. "They hit us in the engine room," I reported once I was certain. "Did some damage, too."

"Really?" James asked, keeping his voice level and calm for Pedro's sake.

I nodded. "The number nine warp coil is down entirely now. So are three, four, and six. One and two are warming up fast."

James raised his eyebrows eloquently, but said nothing.

"We're slowing down," I explained. "A lot. Because we have to. Now they'll have a lot more time to shoot at an easier target."

We rode on in silence after that for a while; once a slight shudder marked a grazing impact that didn't do any further harm so far as I could see. "We're almost to the Jump point," I reported at long last, finally breathing a bit easier. "Translation in three, two, one-"

Then, just as everything began to gray out for the Jump, another blast struck home square in our center of mass and penetrated deep into _Hummingbird'_ s guts.

# 15

I'd never been in a ship struck squarely by a naval-caliber blaster before, and I rather ferverently hoped I never would be again, either. Unlike the earlier hits, this one ripped through our weakened Field as it were tissue paper, and the result was rather akin to taking a hard right to the jaw even buried so far down in the ships' innards. Plus the lights flickered and died, the gravity cut out for a moment, and huge electrical arcs flashed and flickered about like lightning as _Hummingbird_ equalized all her potentials. And all of this was on top of the warp translation effect, which was more than a little stupefying in and of itself. Engineering held together just long enough to complete the Jump, then everything on my little monitor flatlined. The only systems left working seemed to be the backup lighting and the gravity, though the latter was only at about a quarter power.

"Damn!" James swore as he and I climbed out of our acceleration couches, though neither of us had the faintest idea of where to go or why. "We're in for it now!"

I couldn't help but agree as I toggled through the ships' systems over and over again. Engineering must be little more than a scrapheap; all we had left was battery power. Even worse, we were floating powerless directly in front of the Jump point, helpless prey for the next enemy to come through. Which would be in less than two hours, according to the last estimate I'd made. We didn't even have any pre-existing vector to work with—Field-based drives operated under an inertialess effect, so that once a ship's drive ceased to function it's pre-existing inertia reasserted itself. In our case, that meant we stopped dead right where we were.

Which rather effectively described our situation, actually. Dead, that is.

"Oh!" Pedro keened, as even his rather dim mind began to really understand. "Ohhhhh!"

"Hush!" James ordered him. Then my friend stepped over to where the still-strapped-in Rabbit sat gaping at him with wide, terrified eyes. "My family takes the very best of care of its servants. We pride ourselves in it." He smiled and scratched Pedro's ears. "Now, I want you to just sit here very quietly like a good bunny until someone tells you it's okay to get up. Till then, just remember that I've given you my word of honor that you're going to be all right. D'ye hear me?"

I looked at James and blinked as Pedro smiled and nodded and fawned over my friend. One the one hand, I was sort of ashamed of Pedro— as much as I liked him for the kind, gentle creature he was, well... I could never be so easily led. _Or could I?_ another part of me wondered. Because there was indeed _something_ about James's voice, when he played the nobleman. Something that reached deep inside and touched me to the core. And, left me sort of wishing that he'd scratch _my_ ears and call _me_ a good bunny too.

Most of the ship was still holding pressure, though the bridge had been evacuated and engineering was Swiss cheese. The ship's auxiliary command center was two compartments down from us, and when the senior officers came trooping past we just sort of naturally glommed onto the procession ourselves. Captain Blaine actually smiled at James for a moment, though the expression was clearly forced, and First Officer von Selkim patted me on the head with his good arm—the other was dangling in a bloody medkit sling.

"All right," Sir Leslie reported once everyone was gathered in the crowded little room—James and I stood just outside, and no one complained. "Status report, please."

"The drive is hopeless," my friend Pieter replied. "I've been chatting with the Chief on my earpiece. The coils are all slagged—every last one of them. We're totally helpless."

The captain nodded. "And the other ships' systems?"

Pieter's eyebrows rose, then he shrugged. "Life support will be up and running again in twenty minutes—there's no need to broach our bottled air. Our weapons will come back online about then, too. Such as they are, of course." He shook his head. "And the battery was full-up when we switched over to it."

Sir Leslie nodded gravely. "Your recommendation, Pieter?"

He shook his head, then winced as the motion joggled his wounded arm. "We'll have to strike our colors, sir." He looked away. "It's said that the Imperials don't take prisoners. But sometimes they make exceptions for VIP's..."

Blaine's face hardened. "Belay that talk! And, belay it _right now_!" For an instant I thought that Sir Leslie was about to strike Pieter, but then he turned away. "We still have functioning weapons," he declared. "We still have air. Most of all, we still have a fighting crew." He turned to Sergeant Wells. "How are your marines?"

"Still in good shape, sir. Private Michaels was in sick bay with a fever earlier, but now he's suited up and standing ready with the rest."

"Excellent," the captain replied. Then he scowled again and strutted back and forth, tapping his thigh with his silly little stick. "We'll carry her by boarding, then," he declared.

Pieter's mouth dropped open, then he remembered himself and said nothing. Captain Blaine saw it, however, and strutted over just as quickly as his bandy little legs would carry him. "You don't think we can pull it off, do you?" he asked.

Pieter scowled, then spoke the truth. "No, sir."

Blaine smiled and nodded. "In fact, you think I've gone mad with the stress."

"Perhaps, sir," the first officer admitted.

"Excellent!" Blaine roared in reply, grinning fiercely. "Because then just maybe the Imperial bastard about to ram a light cruiser up our arse won't see it coming either." Then Sir Leslie's face sobered. "Pieter," he said gently. "I'm not a _total_ fool, you know. I'm fully aware of what you've done for me throughout this entire commission. In my way I've tried to be properly grateful. And now I need you more than ever. Because, you see, no Baronet of Equatorial Tamboria has in the entire history of our House ever surrendered to the enemy. Not in four long centuries, and I can assure that I'll not be the first!" He reached out and touched the first officer's good shoulder. "So... are you with me, Pieter? Because _Hummingbird_ needs you more than ever."

# 16

The Imperial cruiser was a good two hours behind us, so we had plenty of time to make our plan and ready ourselves to implement it. Or we _should've_ had plenty of time, rather. The whole thing almost came unstuck when the captain learned that there wasn't a single trained man left aboard the ship healthy enough to don a Field suit, nor any undamaged suits left for them to wear even if they could. For several long minutes Sir Leslie stared off into the distance as his skin turned a ghostly shade of white— attempting to grapple an enemy vessel without the protection of a Field suit was just a fancy way of committing suicide. And, of course, in the absence of proper gear it'd just about have to be Sir Leslie himself who made the crucial, lethal hookup—he could never ask anyone else to do _that_. Then Sergeant Wells reminded the captain that I still had a working unit, and suddenly everyone was shouting at everyone. "He can do it, sir!" Sergeant Wells declared over and over in the face of every objection. "I've seen him on EVA with my own two eyes. He's a brave little bunny, that one is! And smart as a whip, too!" Finally I got tired of them all being so silly about it and told James that if anyone asked for me, I was off suiting up. Which proved to be easier said than done, because a lot of corridors were closed off and one unavoidable passage was half-flooded with drinking water. I tripped over something while trying to make my way down that one, so that I ended up sopping wet from my eartips to my toes. At first I was going to dry myself off, then I realized that I didn't have any special conductive powder to dust myself with. Humans don't need powder when wearing a Field suit, because their body-hair is practically non-existent. But we fur-wearing types were capable of building up quite a charge between our suits and skins. Dad had the stuff specially made for he and I, and the nearest bottle had long ago burnt up in re-entry over Marcus Prime. Maybe the wet fur would work instead? There was only one way to find out for sure. Besides, I didn't have time to go back and find my blow-dryer anyway.

They were still arguing about me when I arrived back at the auxiliary command center, though Chief Engineer Leeds was polite enough to cut himself off in mid-sneer when I stepped around the corner.

"We have no choice, Pierre," Captain Blaine declared, his face once more flat and hard. "Your objections are duly logged and noted." Then Sir Leslie turned to me and ran a critical eye up and down my gear. "Is he wearing that thing correctly?" he finally asked the Engineer.

"Silly fellow's soaking wet!" Pierre declared, shaking his head. He was sitting in a wheelchair, with both legs in splints. "What kind of fluff-brained idiot gets into a suit like that?" Then he scowled. "But otherwise... Yes."

The captain scowled and began to speak, but I beat him to it. "The main barracks corridor is flooded, sir," I explained. "There wasn't _time_ to dry off."

"Sounds perfectly sensible to me, sir," Sergeant Wells interjected.

Captain Blaine closed his mouth and looked away. "He'll have to make the attempt," he repeated. "There's simply no other choice."

Then Pieter smiled at me. "Do you know anything about superconductors and Field dynamics?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Any two objects connected by a superconductor effectively become one, so far as a Field is concerned." I wrinkled my brows, and suddenly a light dawned. "You want me to hook a superconducting cable to the cruiser, then?"

Pieter's smile widened. "That'll anchor us together, sure as can be. Plus, the resulting Field geometry will be so unfavorable that their coils will be useless. So they won't have any shield effect, either."

I blinked. "But, if they try to energize anyway..."

Chief Engineer Leeds smiled up from his chair, his blue eyes like ice. "Then the connections'll arc like Satan's own fireworks display. Which will kill anything within ten or twenty meters. Unless it's wearing a Field suit. And even then, the splash effects won't do them any bloody good."

Then Sergeant Wells spoke up. "I'll be right there with you, David. Just as close by you as I can stand to be."

I shook my head, confused. "But why, sir?"

The Sergeant's face grew hard. "Because, son, it won't take very damned long at all for the Imperials to realize that they can't maneuver so long as they're grappled. Which in turns means that unhooking the superconductor is going to be their prime objective." He leaned over and laid his hand atop my helmet. "So... I bet you don't know how to use a hand blaster, do you?"

I shook my head, still a bit confused. "No, sir."

"No worries," he reassured me. "It's not that hard." Then he turned to the captain. "Permission to leave the bridge, sir? For both of us? We've got a lot to do."

# 17

Sergeant Wells was right—using a hand-blaster _was_ easy. Or at least it was easy when you equipped it with a triple-magazine and set it to "full-power, wide-dispersion". "This configuration is bulky as all hell," the head marine explained as he handed me the kludged-together result. "And much too heavy for most purposes, as well. But since you won't be boarding with the rest, you'll be fine. It's just the thing for fighting in null-gee." He smiled and showed me how the trigger and safety worked. "Normally we spend a week training a recruit on one of these things, and even then he's only authorized to use low power. But in the end it's all about common sense, see? Don't point the weapon at anything you don't mean to kill, ever. If you can manage to keep that straight in your mind, well... The rest will come naturally."

The grapple itself didn't require much explanation, either. It was simply a long, braided carbon-fiber rope with a superconducting core. As soon as we went EVA the sergeant would clip one end to Hummingbird's hull; then he and I would leap together across space to connect the other end to the enemy cruiser. Then, it'd be our job to _keep_ it connected for as long as was necessary. The sergeant half-filled each of our EVA pouches with spare clips, just in case.

Then, it was time to go. There was quite a line at the main airlock when Sergeant Wells and I arrived there—everyone on the ship who both possessed a working suit and was able to wear it had been told off for the boarding party. Not a single able-bodied soul was being left behind save for James and Pedro, neither of whom had proper gear. "Oh, my heavens!" Pedro gushed when he saw me all gussied up and ready for vacuum. "Ship's boys aren't supposed to even _touch_ the suits, David! Put that back where it belongs, right _now_! Or else you're going to get into _terrible_ trouble!"

Fortunately James was standing right there. "This is special," he explained, reaching around the lapine and offering a reassuring squeeze. "And David is a very special Rabbit."

"I don't know..." Pedro complained, shaking his head dubiously. I couldn't help but smile—he hadn't even recognized the bulked-up blaster among all my other gear. Which was just as well; if he had, the poor old bun might've had a heart attack and died on the spot.

Then James was looking at me. "I wish I could come help," he said.

"I know, sir," I replied, looking down at my feet. "If there was any possible way, I'm certain you would."

"I'll take good care of Pedro," he promised. "My family developed slavebunnies, you know. Long, long ago. So nowadays we consider you all to be our special responsibility. Every last one of you."

My head tilted to one side, despite myself. "Really?"

He nodded. "Really. And it's a responsibility that we take quite seriously, I assure you. So we have another special connection, besides just being best friends." Then he smiled. "I know better than to tell you to be careful, David. So..." He shrugged, clearly at a loss for words. "Good luck."

Then out of nowhere Captain Blaine appeared, wearing a gleaming gold-ornamented suit. "My lord!" he complained. "You belong down in the hold, where it's safe!"

James smiled, and for an instant I felt as if I could read his mind. _Nowhere's truly safe_ , he wanted to reply. But perhaps for the first time on the whole voyage, James bowed to the baronet with genuine respect. "Of course, sir," he replied. "I just wanted to wish David here the best of luck. And you as well, of course. You're both being very brave, and I'm sure my father would be proud of you. I only wish I had a suit so I could go with you."

The captain's eyes glittered in steely pride as he returned the bow, adding a graceful flourish. "Someday I'm certain that milord will make an excellent officer," he replied. "You'll command thousands if not millions, and if your noble bloodline runs true you'll lead them well indeed." He smiled and placed his gauntleted hand atop James's head. "But for now, you're much too young for combat. The heart may be willing, but the flesh has yet to grow strong."

Once again I could see that James wanted to say something, most likely regarding the fact that he was a bit older than I was. But again he was able to see that it wasn't the correct time or place, so he just bowed again, smiled at me, and left to go hide with Pedro.

"Bye!" the Rabbit cried out to me as James gently led him away. "I hope you don't get into too much trouble for wearing the suit!"

The captain snorted at this, then looked down at me. His face was once more distant and cold. Then, self-consciously, he squatted down so that we were eye to eye. "Do you understand what you're to do?" he asked eventually.

"Grapple the enemy cruiser, sir," I replied. "As soon as Sergeant Wells gives the signal. Then _keep_ us grappled."

He nodded, scowling faintly. "I wish... I mean, this should be..." Then his scowl intensified and he stood up again. "It isn't going to be easy for any of us," he explained at last. "I mean... The odds are against us going in—no one's ever pulled off a successful opposed boarding against a naval vessel, you see. Just merchies and pirates, and not very damned often even against them."

I nodded, even though I didn't really understand what he was getting at.

"Your job, well... It's the riskiest of all. In some ways, the position of honor. And..." He shook his head again.

I looked away and shrugged. "Don't worry, sir. I know full well who and what I am. And what I'll always be, even if I survive."

Sir Leslie blinked, then looked down and for the first time seemed to actually see _me_ , instead of just another slave-bunny. "Many a long-time veteran, given the job I've assigned you, would be quivering in terror," he observed. "Perhaps you deserve better than what life's handed you. Though you've done amazingly well for yourself already, by Rabbit standards. I mean, you're free! And unless I miss my guess, the House of Marcus will always see that you're well cared for."

I looked away—Sergeant Wells was approaching after briefing his marines one last time. "All I ever wanted was to be a ship's engineer, sir," I said softly. "Nothing else matters."

The captain's eyebrows rose. " _You?_ A ship's engineer?" Sir Leslie sighed and shook his head. "Help me take that ship, and I'll do everything I can for you. I mean every bit of that—I'll pull strings to get you into overseer school, or databunny training, or any other appropriate field you might choose. My word of honor on it! But..." He shook his head again as he began walking away. "A Rabbit as a ship's engineer? David, you simply _must_ be reasonable about certain things!"

# 18

Sergeant Wells and I were among the first through the airlock, since we had special equipment to set up. There were any number of eye-hooks on _Hummingbird_ 's outer hull to anchor our grapple to, and one was pretty much as good as another since the line wasn't expected to come under much in the way of physical stress. The marine seemed surprised, however, when I snaked the line to three more anchor points and added connectors at each one. Yes, one single connection would indeed be enough to do the trick, most likely. But if all went well both the cable and the anchors were soon going to be carrying most of the power output of a medium-sized warship's engineering plant, and more drain-points the better.

From then on our job mostly consisted of waiting, though our crewmates had plenty to do. _Hummingbird_ 's lights went out sector by sector as the engineers shut down even emergency lighting, while the space-adept marines helped their less-nimble crewmates locate odd niches here and there to conceal themselves in. One place they _didn't_ hide, however, was inside the airlocks—open airlocks on a warship were an official signal of surrender, which was the last thing on Captain Blaine's mind. Finally, as crippled and busted up as they were, the ship's mechanical staff improvised a big, showy electrical arc not far from where the enemy's last, most critical hit had penetrated our hull. They even set up a slow air leak to make it visible in the vacuum—it was a work of art, really. It must've made tons of radio noise on virtually any frequency one might name, while at the same time generating enough heat to mask the presence of functional life-support in those few areas of _Hummingbird_ we'd left habitable. The thing was a masterpiece, in short, and I had to admire the skill and tenacity of the men who'd pulled it off despite having sustained so much damage to their own persons. Even if I still didn't like them very much. Sergeant Wells punched my shoulder in glee at the sight, and I thumped him back twice by way of reply. Then something ripped through our souls as the enemy cruiser popped through into normal space, and there wasn't any more time for casual jibber-jabber.

I'd spent hours studying our antagonist through the ship's computer, just as every other man aboard probably had. She was a _Revolucion_ -class vessel, equipped with a battery of eight medium-powered naval blasters mounted in twin turrets and crewed by perhaps two hundred men. Fifty years ago the _Revolucion_ s, as befitted their class-name, had been truly revolutionary vessels. They'd introduced a new, previously top-secret control-rod configuration, and in their day had been the fastest things in deep space. They were still damnably quick by any measure, but otherwise their time was long past. Their blasters took too long to recharge, their Fields were finicky and established themselves slowly, and worst of all there were incurable developmental bugs in the control-rod geometry. While practically every high-performance ship in the sky today used an improved version of the new setup, including both _Broad Arrow_ and _Hummingbird_ , the _Revolucion_ s remained prone to sudden, massive engineering-plant failures—indeed, three of the class had vanished without a trace during translation. Most likely this particular example of the type had suffered a similar breakdown.

Certainly her translation was a miserable and poorly-synched one. She popped through a good fifty miles away from where _Hummingbird_ lay seemingly inert in space, which was about as sloppy as the physics of the situation allowed. Space absolutely screamed at the insult; for a moment my vision blurred and twisted demons seemed to march against the stars. Then it was over, and my heart began to thump-thump-thump in excitement. Would the cruiser come and investigate? Would she take the bait? I snugged myself even closer to _Hummingbird'_ s hull and waited as the enemy vessel zoomed along, seemingly ignoring us. Then, just when the vessel was about to fade from sight entirely...

...she came about to check us out!

_Thump-thump!_ Sergeant's Wells's fist went on my shoulder, almost hard enough to hurt through the thick fabric. He'd been terribly disappointed to learn that my suit's communications gear wasn't compatible with RN stuff, but so far I thought we'd gotten by plenty well. I thumped him back, then watched as my fellow crewmen, some of whom hadn't been able to find hideouts as good as ours, slithered through the shadows to take up positions out of line of sight.

Then, almost before I knew it, the cruiser formed up with _Hummingbird_ and gave us a good, long looking-over. Her Field remained up and strong for what felt like forever; so long that I got a little fidgety and Sergeant Wells thumped me for my trouble. Then she closed in further, further, further, into easy spacer's jump range...

...and finally let down her Field so that she could send over a salvage party to search for secret papers and the like.

# 19

_Sword of the People_ , I was able to read emblazoned on the cruiser's flank in proud, blue letters. Up until then none of us had known her name—the Field had rendered our antagonist anonymous. In nothing flat all four twin turrets were slewed around facing us and their boarding party was gathering on their outer hull. I gulped as the lock cycled again and again and again, until a good twenty men were standing on _Sword'_ s hull awaiting orders. Most of them were wearing specialized combat suits, which rather frightened me at first. Then I thought things through. This was the group we'd ambush first and hardest—the more marines there were among them, the better.

The battle was still being planned when Sergeant Wells and I exited _Hummingbird_ , and while he was still in touch with the captain via secure micropip link I had no way of knowing what was to happen next. So I looked up into his faceplate and shrugged my shoulders. He replied by shaking his head and pressing me down harder against the hull. I scowled and nodded back—the message was clear enough. We were to wait.

And wait, and wait, and wait it seemed, though my heart was still trying to beat its way out of my chest. It was _hard_ to just float in place, while my target loomed so close it took up half the sky! But I had an excellent view as one of the Imperials, some sort of officer judging by the gold-painted symbols on his suit, suddenly saw something he didn't like and kicked himself around to use his jetpack. The instant he did...

...something unexpected happened. Suddenly stirring to life, _Hummingbird_ fired her chemical maneuvering jets, which were normally only used for docking. She surged under me, and I was so surprised by the sudden vector that I might've floated helplessly away if Sergeant Wells hadn't grabbed hold. Indeed, well for'rard I saw exactly that happen to someone caught off-guard in a bright-orange lubber's suit—whether they ever made it back, I'll never know. In the same instant _Hummingbird_ 's main armament—blasters no heavier than a large land-fighting vehicle might carry— vomited forth with all they had. _Sword_ fired back, but most of her broadside missed because even though _Hummingbird_ was barely crawling by interstellar standards, she was also very near at hand and the heavy mountings could only track just so quickly. For an instant I watched the fireworks, transfixed by the terrible majesty of it all. Then Sergeant Wells whapped me a good one, and it was time to go!

I felt very naked indeed as the sergeant and I stood up side-by side amidst all the blaster-fire— space itself seemed to be aflame! I powered up my Field, which hadn't been done earlier because it would've shown up on the Imperial's sensors. Meanwhile, as my protective shield stabilized, Sergeant Wells bound us together with an umbilical and clipped on the reel of superconducting rope. Then we were ready, but my companion decided to toss a couple shots of his own into the melee before we pushed off towards the enemy vessel. Both struck home on Imperials who were attempting to escape the terrible crossfire; one was a certain kill, while the second caught its target in the calf. I was watching gape-mouthed as the wounded Imperial first writhed in agony and then began an a desperate attempt at patching himself when my companion cuffed me again. First he held up one finger, as I braced myself for the big leap. Then two...

And _three_!

_Squish!_ my still-damp feet went as I shoved off just as hard as I could towards _Sword of the People_ , and then I was on my way. Both the sergeant and I made good leaps; though he was by far the larger and stronger of us we Rabbits were extra-strong in the legs, so our efforts weren't too terribly mismatched. He got us stabilized in nothing flat, something he had to take care of for both of us since Field suits carried their generator in the place where a jetpack was normally mounted. And then...

...we simply floated along.

While there were probably safer places to watch a battle from, there's probably never been a better one. _Hummingbird_ 's light mounts were all firing independently now, just as fast as their chargers would feed them. The rounds might not've been very heavy, but there sure were lots of them! And, in the absence of a protective Field, they were absolutely shredding _Sword_ —one of her big twin turrets was already out of action, while the others still weren't hitting much of anything. Perhaps they'd never been calibrated for such a close-in target? And yet... _Sword_ 's skin was already starting to develop a silvery sheen as her engine-room staff strove desperately to get her underway. The sudden new holes appearing all over her skin weren't making her chief engineer's job any easier, I knew. Nor were the already-damaged engines. And her plant was finicky, I reminded myself.

But still—we weren't moving half fast enough to suit me!

Sergeant Wells might've—and possibly even should've—nudged us along a little faster with his jetpack. But he was plenty busy dealing with our other immediate problems. Chief among them were a group of Imperials who, having escaped the crossfire, had seen my silvered-suit and rope and put two and two together with commendable speed. Six or seven of them were jetting our way, letting fly with everything that'd shoot. All I could do at first was watch—my blaster was configured for short-range work only. Sergeant Wells picked several off, then took a glancing hit on the back of his left glove that required a patch. He was quick, Sergeant Wells was. But not half quick enough. The Imperials kept right on closing, accelerating all the way as he worked. Finally, still certain they were too far away, I drew my own blaster and let fly. The result was... amazing! At first I thought the weapon had exploded in my hand, the discharge was so intense. But at least a dozen bolts blasted out in a fanlike pattern, killing two of the remaining three Imperials outright and holing the third's boot. This last one kept right on firing despite the fact that he must've been breathing something closely resembling vacuum—there were gold emblems on his suit and maybe that was why. The recoil from the first shot knocked me silly so that Sergeant Wells and I were now spinning slowly around each other; it wasn't easy at all to line up for another shot. But somehow I managed, and my second over-powered discharge caught the stubborn Imperial square in the chest, ripping him into pieces. My gun was hot now, even through my Field-protected glove, and a yellow light was blinking. So I re-engaged the safety and holstered it, even though there was more to shoot at.

Besides, by then Sergeant Wells was back in action and with him at my side I didn't _need_ to fight. He was like a remorseless precision machine, carefully aiming and then squeezing off one carefully-directed round after another. He killed at least seven men while we made our long drift, which was a very good thing because everywhere I looked _Hummingbird_ 's crewmen, particularly those not trained for advanced maneuvers—much less space combat!— were dying in droves. Inert orange lubber's suits filled the sky, so many that I gulped at the sight.

Then at last we were close-aboard _Sword_ , and Sergeant Wells spun around feet-first to make his landing. I did the same with considerably less grace, and then we slammed onto the rapidly-silvering hull with enough force to knock the wind out of me; belatedly, I realized that I'd forgotten to account for the initial vector provided by _Hummingbird_ 's maneuvering-thrusters. In fact, I slammed home so hard that it was actually Sergeant Wells who unclipped the rope-spool from my belt and handed me the bitter end to clip down. I stared stupidly at him for a moment, then smiled and nodded. He clapped me on the shoulder again and smiled back, then scrambled away a few yards to avoid the inevitable warp flux.

We'd already mounted a clip on the end of the rope, so all I had to do was find an unused eye of some kind on _Sword's_ outer skin. This was easier said than done, since apparently the Imperials were much less enamored of the things than Royal shipbuilders. _Hummingbird_ and _Broad Arrow_ were festooned with tiedowns—now that I really needed one in a hurry for the first time in my life, there wasn't one to be found anywhere! And the hull was almost fully silvered!

Finally I found a place where a steel pipe of some kind connected two long, low structures whose purpose I couldn't discern. It was far from ideal—the connection would be loose and uncertain and thus spark continuously. And even worse, because I didn't know what I was hooking up to, for all I knew I was setting up the biggest explosion I'd never live to see. But there wasn't anything for it; _Sword_ was about to stabilize her Field despite all her handicaps. So I reached out with the cable...

...the Field arced with a brilliant eye-stabbing flash, draining all the accumulated ship's power from countless dimensions...

...and I screamed my lungs out as my non-conductive and unpowdered fur blocked the proper eddy-flow inside my personal Field and, in places, burst into flame.

# 20

Field suits are different than other kinds of vacuum gear in many ways. For one thing, they're routinely worn for many hours a day by comfortably seated engineers in pressurized spaces, surrounded with perfectly good air. Plus, they're almost never used in null-gee. So their climate-control systems are rudimentary—if one needs to go EVA, the designers reason, one can always don a less-specialized suit. The air tanks are also relatively small—when on engine-room watch, we simply topped off frequently. And the joints are stiff too, especially in the buttocks region where there's plenty of padding. There are other technical differences as well, all of which go far beyond the Field generator itself. Most of them center around the safety-systems, which are both extensive and well thought out. This is due to the simple fact that despite all modern innovations engine rooms remain very dangerous places—that was why we wore the suits to begin with, after all. And with each accident, the designers learned more and made the suits that little bit better.

I think I'd have died right then and there if my Field suit hadn't been brand new and absolutely up to the minute. As it was, I suffered charring burns over so much of my body that I don't ever want to know how bad it actually was. My suit was ready for such an eventuality, however, and immediately filled itself with medical foam from the neck down. The stuff both extinguished the flames and killed the pain. Meanwhile a little injector shot me up with a generic (and in my case, Rabbit-approved) anti-shock drug, and initiated a forced IV to restore the fluids I was probably losing faster than the machine could pump them in. Meanwhile a cherry-red flashing light appeared on my chest to let my comrades know how badly I was hurt.

I don't know how long all of this took, because I too busy screaming myself silly the whole time to register the passing of minutes and seconds. Being simultaneously electrocuted and flash-fried _hurts_ , I can assure anyone who wants to know. It hurts more than there are words in any human language to express, and it goes on and on and on until the cool, soothing foam finally whisks the pain away. And even then I was still in agony because the suit designers foresaw that foaming the inside of my helmet would kill me even more effectively than any conceivable burns. (You can't breathe healing-foam!) My ears felt like they were both about half-gone with the stubs shredded to ribbons, and there could be no medication for them. But the happy-happy feel-good stuff in the shot helped. Or at least eventually it did. A little.

So, as I said, I screamed and screamed for a very long time. When finally I stopped and began to be able to think again, my first problem was that my visor was all fogged up on the inside, from where the water I'd been soaked in had flashed into steam and then recondensed. Only half-aware of what I was doing, I followed my training and dealt with that by venting the suit's atmosphere directly into space until it cleared, which also had the side benefit of clearing out most of the awful stink as well. Then, unable to hold out any longer, I used the sick tube.

When I was done, my head was a lot clearer and I was actually able to look around me and take in what was going on. Sergeant Wells was crouched behind good cover about thirty feet forward of me, pinned down by a veritable waterfall of auto-blaster fire. The bolts were striking everywhere, all around him, some just an inch or two away. The marine didn't have enough space to do much more than turn his head, which he did frequently to look back at me. I finally caught his eye and waved. He waved back, clearly pleased that I was conscious. Then he pointed at the grapple, the unconnected end of which still floated near the half-melted steel bar.

Wasn't I supposed to do something with that? It seemed terribly urgent, but somehow I couldn't quite remember...

I shook my head to clear it, which was a mistake because this jarred my ruined ears something fierce and I fear I wasted more time screaming. But maybe it was just as well, because when I was done I was truly myself again. I had, simply _had_ , to reconnect that grapple! It seemed so simple, but...

...I didn't want to burn again, either. Not that! Never, _ever_ again! And _Sword_ 's hull was already all silvery, almost like before!

Somewhere along the line Sergeant Wells had activated my sandal magnets so I wouldn't float away. Wincing because I knew it was going to hurt, I raised my right foot and took a wobbly step forward. It wasn't so bad, really—no worse than the time when I was little and fell down a flight of steps, smashing three teeth and breaking my jaw. So I ignored the agony and did it again. And again and again and again, squish-squish-squish in the medicated foam. I was ready to weep by the time I grabbed the loose end, but shook it off regardless. This _had_ to be done, and that was that.

Even though I was quite certain that this time the back-eddies would kill me.

Since I couldn't afford a second failed hookup I opened the connector with nearly numb fingers, then lined up my swing carefully so that with any luck at all the fitting would snap shut and grasp the pipe on its own, without my having to be around to close the thing manually. Then I made a couple practice swings, again to ensure that everything was just-so. A couple blaster bolts zinged by—apparently someone had finally seen me. But they were too late. I swung the grapple one last time, lined up everything just so...

...and slammed the fitting home onto the twisted, burned pipe!

Once again there was a terrible flash as the ship's accumulated power was shunted down the endless, geometrically-impossible drain that was the grappling-line and _Hummingbird_ 's hull, and I screwed my face up in anticipation of the terrible burning. But this time all that happened was that I felt a sort of electrical tickle pass up and down my body five or six times. I blinked, shocked to still be in existence. What on earth? Then suddenly I understood. It was the first-aid foam! It must be electrically-conductive, like Dad's powder!

There wasn't much time to celebrate, however. Suddenly the ever-thickening blaster-rounds were a lot more important than they'd been just seconds before; I used my sandal-magnets to creep around behind one of the little protuberances whose purpose I still hadn't divined. Once there I was almost all the way aft, so that for the moment at least all the fire was coming from one direction. Sergeant Wells was still pinned down, and I didn't see any way he was ever going to extricate himself without help. Though in turn, I also didn't think anyone could force their way past him without paying a terrible price. My red light was blinking faster now, which meant I was getting worse. Though I didn't need the indicators to know it—I was seeing black spots sometimes, and the problem didn't lie in my suit's oxygen density.

I looked back at the grapple, which was holding fine. Then I looked up towards _Hummingbird_ , and my jaw dropped at how crowded the space between the two vessels had become. There was debris everywhere, of all sorts and description. Blown-out hatches, abandoned weapons, bits of cable, and a veritable snowstorm of ships papers. Worst of all, there were suited figures everywhere, many mutilated and some still feebly struggling to survive. _Hummingbird_ herself was a near-skeletal wreck, though most of her guns were still blazing away. Which was more than could be said for _Sword'_ s mounts—her huge fireballs would've been quite visible, had her major weapons remained in action. But...

I gulped. Yes, the navy's engineers were very good indeed at repairing battle damage. But if _Sword_ was in as pitiful a condition as my own ship, well...

_None_ of us would be going home. Not ever.

# 21

I popped my head up again to check on Sergeant Wells—he was still pinned down, but very much alive and in the fight. His flanks were at least somewhat protected by intense covering fire from _Hummingbird_. And yet...

I scowled to myself. Surely I wasn't the only one to notice how quickly _Sword_ was deteriorating. The Imperials themselves had to know her condition better than anyone. Yet, it was becoming clear, they could no longer win this battle so long as the grapple was in place. So... If I were the enemy commander, what would I be doing?

It didn't take long at all to figure _that_ out, what with my sitting where I was and staring dead aft. Which was, as near as I could figure, the best place left for the Imperials to mass for a decisive counter-attack.

This time when I tried to lift my feet against the tug of the sandals, I couldn't manage it at all. It wasn't just the pain—that was tough, yes, but I'd conquered it before. The problem was that I was growing weaker by the second. Which was all the better reason for me to do what had to be done and get it over with, before I became totally helpless.

So I turned off the magnets and drifted slowly towards _Sword_ 's stern, easing my way from handhold to handhold and keeping an eagle-eye out for the sudden massed attack that I was certain _had_ to be coming. And sure enough, when I was just a few feet short of the end of the ship a whole gaggle of suited men, many of them marines, popped suddenly into my line of sight with their jetpacks roaring away at full power. I didn't have time to think, which was just as well. Instead I hooked my leg around the nearest stanchion, drew my blaster, and let fly without aiming just as fast I could pull the trigger. _Blam! Blam! Blam!_

And three shots it was, no more and no less, because that was more than enough to empty my weapon. Indeed, the third blast was noticeably weaker than the previous two. But with them all catching the enemy drifting in the open, three were more than enough. Suddenly space was filled with writhing and twisted figures, all spinning in contrariwise directions as the survivors attempted desperately to evade the further rounds which they couldn't know I was unable to fire. And in mere seconds all of _Hummingbird_ 's heavy guns, alerted by my oversized discharges, were blazing away at the disorganized mass with all they had.

In the end only one Imperial marine really drove home his attack on the grapple. He came gliding directly at me, blaster aimed and ready as I tried to ward him off with my now-empty weapon. My bluff failed, however. He came boring in regardless, until the hole in the end of his own weapon looked like the entrance to a tunnel. By then I understood that it really didn't matter much whether he fired or not— I'd had it regardless. So I held my gun up steady and proud, then lined the sights up directly on the Imperial's helmet. " _Bang!_ " I whispered at the moment when I should've fired, and so help me if I'd had even a partial charge left I'd have killed him. Instead he grew larger and larger and larger, until I wondered if he was bluffing too. When he was almost on me I looked down at _Sword_ 's hull and closed my eyes. At least I'd held up my end, I reminded myself. And maybe now James and Pedro and the rest of those who'd been so kind to me might get away.

But somehow my enemy never fired. Instead something heavy landed on my back, driving me face-down into the hull. I screamed again at the insult to my poor, suffering ears, and in turn the screaming was effort enough to make the universe first fade, and then spin away into total darkness. After that I must've sort of faded in and out of consciousness for a while, because I remember being tugged along at an incredible speed by a group of marines, and then my helmet being removed in what I suppose must've been _Sword'_ s sick bay.

"...only so many Tanks to go around," someone was saying. "And we're going to need every one of them! There's no way that I'm displacing a _real_ person who needs intensive treatment for—"

"Shut your bloody trap!" I heard an enraged Sergeant Wells bellow. In the distance, blasters were still firing. "I don't have to take any shit from a goddamn Imperial just because he happens to be a doctor!"

"Sarge!" I heard my friend Percy say from somewhere nearby. "Settle down a little. We'll get the kid taken care of; there's no need—"

"You shut _your_ mouth too, Corporal!" Sergeant Wells shouted. "If you'd seen what I saw, well..." Then there was a click, which I recognized from my brief training as a standard-issue blaster's safety being released. "Put him in the Tank! Right now, before it's too bloody late! He can't have more than another minute or two."

I finally managed to open my eyes a little; sure enough Sergeant Wells was holding a gun in his bloody, burned left hand—the right one was now missing. "I..." I tried to say. "Uh..." But of course no one ever listened to a mere Rabbit.

"All right, Sergeant," the voice agreed. "Have it your way. But I assure that _I_ won't be the one who..."

And then a far deeper blackness than any I'd ever known before surged up from somewhere within me and carried me far, far away.
David Birkenhead's adventures continue in Book 2: Midshipman

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