Commodore (29 page)

"Urgggggh!" I choked, pointing at Heinrich, who was still screaming mindlessly away.

"Yes," Jeffries answered, his smile fading. "He came around a moment ago; I doubted he ever would." He pushed the life-bubbles gently away from him, then turned to face my friend. "I was hoping to be spared this, you see. It's not as easy for me as you probably imagine. I don't kill either routinely or without reason, despite what others might think. And, by god, I've never yet
murdered
anyone. Including, I'll have you know, the former owner of this ship." Then he pulled his palm-blaster out of a pouch and pointed it at the dying marine. "Good-bye, jarhead," he said, his voice surprisingly soft. "You flew damned well." Then he pulled the trigger, there was a flash and concussion, and the screaming was over.

"Guuurrrgh!" I responded, trying to free myself again. But the pain in my leg, oh
heavens
the pain!

"I had to," Jeffries replied, his voice still soft and his eyes for once vulnerable. "Can't you see that? Here and now, with what I have to work with, I
had
to."

I looked away, then nodded. He was right—it was almost certainly a mercy. But… Poor Heinrich!

"Thank you," he replied. "I thought you were a goner too. But since you're still with us… Hold on, David. I'll be right back."  Then he grabbed the bunnies in their bubbles and disappeared. A long, long time passed, so long that for a moment I found myself back on Marcus Prime on Fire Lily day again. My father had begged me to rush to the spaceport, but I stayed and played on regardless until the sky was full of Imperial aerospace fighters and the soldiers came and took Frieda and I both away together and we became mindless ag-slaves on a planet no one ever heard of, where we filled our plain, hardworking lives with love and children and no one ever asked me to plot coups or defend hopeless fortresses or free my fellow Rabbits. It was a wonderful place indeed, was that world! "No!" I muttered when I felt something tugging on my hurt leg, trying to drag me back to the flashing lights and thin air and the corpse of one of my best friends. "Leave me be!"

"Don't fight me
too
much," Jeffries replied with a dark half-grin. "Or I might just take you up on it." Then he grabbed my leg again. "You're stuck on a bolthead," he explained. "Or at least I think you are. It's deep, it's big, and there's no time or tools to do this right. Do you understand me?"

"No!" I answered, more than half out of my mind. Then I choked some more."Urrrgh!"

"You've never understood me," Jeffries answered his own inquiry as he bent down to examine the entry-point. "No one ever has, really. Did you know that I'm a failed priest?"

Even then and there, my eyebrows rose.

"Hah!" he declared at my evident surprise. "Keep in mind, snottie, that I was assigned to Graves Registration too, and had been there for far longer than you had. In my case it was because I could conduct burial services." Then his face grew gentle again. "When I was a boy, the world was such a wonderful and noble place. I ate it all up, you see—how the king was a servant to his people, how the brotherhood of man was a big happy family, how wars were just temporary misunderstandings." Then his eyes narrowed and he grabbed my leg. "Think happy thoughts!"

The next few seconds were horrid. I screamed too, just as Heinrich had, over and over again in piercing lapine tones. And when it was over, the bolt was still in my leg. Partway out, but not all the way.

"I was an altarboy through high school, then graduated the seminary and joined the navy. Back in those days the Graves Registration ships were even smaller than they are now, so if there was a chaplain aboard he also had to be able to stand watches and such. As a result, I went through full officer training." He smiled. "I did so well they offered me a slot on a man o' war as a regular serving officer, but I was having none of it. Someone had to minister to the needs of the dead, you see, and that was my Calling." He sighed and shook his head. "My head was so full of crap. Think happy thoughts again!" This time he pulled even harder, so that I felt one of my legbones crack and split. The bolt, however, barely shifted.

"Stubborn damned thing," Jeffries observed. "Just like you. Which is part of why I've always hated you so much. I wasn't quite stubborn enough, you see." Then he shook his head and took another breather. "In time I lost my faith. God doesn't love us, I came to realize after cleaning up my tenth or fifteenth battlefield. If He existed at all, He'd never tolerate for a moment the kind of thing you find there." The lieutenant shook his head. "They're all pretty much like Zombie was, snotty. Full of idealistic and very dead young men whose heads were filled with lies by those they trusted, killed fighting battles that matter only to the ungrateful nobles." He shook his head. "But by then I was getting on in years, you see. I was still soft enough inside back then to quit the priesthood—it cost me money, so I was a fool—but I stayed on in the navy for the pension. And did as little as possible while I was at it—why on earth wouldn't I? Everyone freeloads, everyone steals, everyone takes and takes and takes, never gives. It took me long enough to figure it out, maybe. But finally I did. That's when I quit being such a sap." Without warning he grabbed my leg and wrenched again, this time twisting it hard enough that he groaned with the effort. Finally it snapped again…

…and I drifted free.

"It was a good life," Jeffries went on as he fitted a splint and pressure-dressing in the approved navy-first-aid-manual manner. "Boring and lacking somewhat in diversion, perhaps. But there were always new middies to introduce to the joys of Graves Registration service, so it was tolerable." Then he scowled again. "Until
you
came along!"

I managed to raise my head again. "Urrrgh?"

"You!" he confirmed as he worked. "With your bright heroic Sword and ever-optimistic attitude and most of all your pure, clean soul!
Gah!
It still hurts my eyes to look at it!" Then he threw down the first-aid kit and reached for a survival-bubble. "And the harder I rode you, the brighter it shone! Until finally the day came when you were facing hopeless death. I just
knew
you'd break then, come along with me and save yourself and be dirty inside like the rest of us mere mortals. But you
didn't
, by god! Then you somehow turned things around and came out of the manure-heap even purer and better than ever!" Carefully he opened the bubble's main seam and slipped me inside. His hands were very soft, for a human's. "And I
hate
you for it, d'ye hear me? Hate you, hate you, hate you! Because despite having seen at least as much ugliness and dirty double-dealing as I have, you're still good and clean inside! Where I was weak, you were strong. Where I was flawed and broken, you're beyond-reproach perfect. You even transcend the evils of war itself and make it worth fighting! And I was so, so close…" Tears streamed from his working eye.

"So go to hell, David Birkenhead!" he snapped as he sealed me inside my little pressure-envelope, then activated the tiny automatic distress beacon and enviro-system. "You go straight to your perfect-perfect hell, and leave me to rot in peace in my bent and broken one from here on in! I want nothing more to do with you—it hurts
far
too much!" Then he shook his head and wept outright, the sobs coming faint and distorted through the thick plastic bubble walls. "I'm giving up everything in atonement for my sins, you see.
Everything!
And yet it's still not enough; even at this of all moments my heart remains dead and cold. As I can only suppose it shall for all eternity, after so many years of falling so short of what I should've been." His eyes fell as he pushed my bubble down the short companionway to where my two fellow lapines lay waiting. Neither was moving that I could see. Then he tethered us all together. "Good-bye, David Birkenhead! And if someday you find it in your heart to pity me, well maybe in the end that's all I deserve."

"Urgh!" I choked, half-guessing what was coming next—after all, there'd only been three bubbles on the bridge that I knew of, along with Jeffrie's two pressure suits. As near as I could tell, he'd been unable to piece together a single good suit from the damaged remains of the two. That left him… Nothing. But sealed in and as fundamentally broken as I was, all I could do was gurgle. "Urrrrrrgh!"

Then Lieutenant Jeffries of the Graves Registration Branch of the Royal Navy, inactive, overrode the safeties and opened the main hatchway to hard vacuum. The ghostly puffs of the exiting air propelled us bunnies away from the dangerous sharp edges of the 483's ruptured hull. They also carried Jeffries right along with us as he danced and capered in the vacuum, his mouth fixed in a long silent scream until he used the palm blaster to put an end to his pain at long, long last. 

56

After that I slept, mostly. Sometimes I visited with Frieda, while at others James and I hiked side by side up long, endless hills. But even now the universe wouldn't leave me in peace; all too frequently the pressure-pack on my leg beeped insistently enough to wake me, while once there was a long series of incredibly bright flashes that I knew should've meant something to me but which somehow no longer did. Instead I smiled and drifted off again, this time to a trout cabin deep in the woods of Earth Secundus. There I finally remained, diving deeper and deeper until the darkness was roiling all through me and Frieda was beckoning with a fire lily and Father was smiling from behind his console and the King Alfred was raising a glass of chocolate milk in my honor. Then, just as I was reaching out for a cup of my own favorite tea to join the party...

...the cold, cruel universe snatched me back.

****

"Yes, sir!" a young voice was exclaiming. "It's really him! He's wearing his Sword! But the enviro-pack is flashing red!"

I blinked and looked up—somehow I was in a gravity field again, lying on the hard steel deck of a ship's boat. Near me were two other bubbles—one had already been opened, but its occupant hadn't been removed. Nor was anyone clustered anxiously around it. I knew what that meant, all right. If Nestor were dead, I decided, I'd as soon not make it myself.

"Aye-aye, sir!" the middie replied to the inaudible voice on the other end of his radio link. Then he turned to the proud, confident and neatly-uniformed Rabbit who stood leaning over me. "Don't open it, the doc says. It's too risky—he might go into shock. We're going to make a run for the ship instead." Then the young officer noticed my eyes were open. "We're getting you the heck out of here, sir! As fast as we can!"

I nodded and tried to smile, then pointed at the dead Rabbit lying alongside me. "Who?" I mounted silently.

"I don't know him, sir," the midshipman replied. "But he's gone."

"Nestor's still alive though!" the Rabbit added, though it was a minor breach of discipline. "And in far better shape than you!"

I nodded again. "The attack?" I mouthed.

"Victory, sir!" the officer replied with a boyish grin. "Total and complete beyond belief! The Imperials tried to break and run at the last moment. Their formation was disrupted and... Well, I wouldn't have believed it yesterday, sir, but the survivors are surrendering in droves! White flags, as far as the eye can see! What's left of their battle line is fleeing for Point Two even as we speak, and they're still putting up an organized fight. But we've won!"  He did a little dance of glee, to show how happy he was.

I let my head fall back onto the hard steel deck. "Gurrrgh!" I muttered.

Then suddenly the middie was all business again. "Just lay there and relax, sir. I'm going to take care of everything." He grinned nervously. "Don't you go dying on my watch, sir! Do you hear me? I'd never live it down."

I smiled back and nodded, which seemed to reassure him. Then he was gone, the gravity fluttered, and I heard the little vessel's drive engage at full power. I'd probably make it now, I judged. Which meant that I had to plan for tomorrow after all, and then all the tomorrows after that. So many had yet to die, so terribly, terribly many...

It was only then, when there was no one to see, that I finally broke down and wept.

David Birkenhead’s Adventures conclude in Book 7: Admiral

Available December 1
^st
, 2012

OTHER TITLES FROM LEGION PRINTING

By Phil Geusz
:

Corpus Lupus

Descent

Transmutation NOW!

Wine of Battle

Novellas:

Lagrange

Left-Handed Sword

The David Birkenhead Series:

Ship’s Boy

Midshipman

Lieutenant

Commander

Captain

Commodore

Admiral

By Fred Patten

Already Among Us, an Anthropomorphic Anthology

Table of Contents

Copyright

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