“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 th
e 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