reporter asked the other bunnies about me and they all solemnly pointed in a dozen different directions—“Yes, sir! David was right over there just a few minutes ago!” Once a desperate-looking young man even asked me , and I practically giggled as I pointed. Eventually one of the professional nuisances would get smart enough to look past the fancy Sword and uniform and carefully examine what I really looked like. Among humans, however, the idea of adopting a lower-status identity in public was so repugnant that I didn’t expect them to tumble to my trick anytime soon—even the open-minded Marcuses would never willingly do such a thing. In the meantime I was perfectly safe from annoyance and even having a lot of fun, so long as I was satisfied to enter and leave my office via the loading dock.
Organizational work is essential to an establishment of any size, military ones more than most. Yet it’s dull, boring, and thankless. Therefore no one was more grateful to Nestor than I was when he, of all people, found us our first actual, honest-to-goodness ship. She was the mining-service vessel Richard , abandoned and placed in a cometary orbit by her crew when the Imperials came. My insatiable reader of a personal aide came across a story in the paper about how she’d still not been recovered, and brought it to my attention. While the fencibles as a rule wouldn’t outright own its own vessels, from the getgo we planned to buy a few. Eventually we’d need our own salvage tug, for example, and at least one full-time gunnery-training ship. Another void we needed filled was for a sort of flagship and general errand-runner, and Richard looked like the perfect vessel for us. Meant to shuttle relatively small cargoes of supplies and high-value ores between asteroids and Kuiper bodies and such, she was also fully capable of planetary landings. I spent hours poring over her specs—her engines were powerful and of modern design, and if her holds were modified a bit she could remain in space for months. Best of all, due to an oddity of the Marcus Prime system she was Field-equipped for hyperspace jumps. My home system, it so happened, had more jump-points than any other. However, for many years it was believed that only one of these led to another star-system—the rest connected only with each other. (The Imperials had proven that a second could somehow be made to lead elsewhere by invading us through it—we still hadn’t figured out how, why, or where.) Therefore, Richard had been equipped with a Field-type drive—jumping was far quicker than thrusting, when things were lined up just so. In short order I was practically drooling over her. Richard ’s owners let her go for a song—chasing her down would cost a small fortune if you didn’t happen to have several destroyer captains at your beck and call, all of them eager for a worthwhile mission to break the tedium of garrison-work. I expected her home just about the same time that my freshly-repaired drydock would be ready to receive her, and my barracks-facilities prepared to train her crew.
After that, all of the tedium and paperwork got a lot easier. For with our first ship, at last the fencibles found its true purpose.
12
"Tench- hut !" Sergeant Piper bellowed three short months later, as Richard' s commissioning flag rose up her absurd little mast and burst open at the top. "Hand salute!" Only naval vessels carried masts these days; flags and their related ceremonial were a distinct anachronism aboard vessels that fought in places where there could be no breezes. But they were much-beloved anachronisms as well as legally-required ones; not for a moment did any of us so much as consider dispensing with them aboard fencible vessels.
Then James stepped forward to the microphone. "It is with great gratitude and honor," he began in his nasal voice, "That I welcome His Majesty's Auxiliary Vessel Richard into the king's service..."
For all his
Organizational work is essential to an establishment of any size, military ones more than most. Yet it’s dull, boring, and thankless. Therefore no one was more grateful to Nestor than I was when he, of all people, found us our first actual, honest-to-goodness ship. She was the mining-service vessel Richard , abandoned and placed in a cometary orbit by her crew when the Imperials came. My insatiable reader of a personal aide came across a story in the paper about how she’d still not been recovered, and brought it to my attention. While the fencibles as a rule wouldn’t outright own its own vessels, from the getgo we planned to buy a few. Eventually we’d need our own salvage tug, for example, and at least one full-time gunnery-training ship. Another void we needed filled was for a sort of flagship and general errand-runner, and Richard looked like the perfect vessel for us. Meant to shuttle relatively small cargoes of supplies and high-value ores between asteroids and Kuiper bodies and such, she was also fully capable of planetary landings. I spent hours poring over her specs—her engines were powerful and of modern design, and if her holds were modified a bit she could remain in space for months. Best of all, due to an oddity of the Marcus Prime system she was Field-equipped for hyperspace jumps. My home system, it so happened, had more jump-points than any other. However, for many years it was believed that only one of these led to another star-system—the rest connected only with each other. (The Imperials had proven that a second could somehow be made to lead elsewhere by invading us through it—we still hadn’t figured out how, why, or where.) Therefore, Richard had been equipped with a Field-type drive—jumping was far quicker than thrusting, when things were lined up just so. In short order I was practically drooling over her. Richard ’s owners let her go for a song—chasing her down would cost a small fortune if you didn’t happen to have several destroyer captains at your beck and call, all of them eager for a worthwhile mission to break the tedium of garrison-work. I expected her home just about the same time that my freshly-repaired drydock would be ready to receive her, and my barracks-facilities prepared to train her crew.
After that, all of the tedium and paperwork got a lot easier. For with our first ship, at last the fencibles found its true purpose.
12
"Tench- hut !" Sergeant Piper bellowed three short months later, as Richard' s commissioning flag rose up her absurd little mast and burst open at the top. "Hand salute!" Only naval vessels carried masts these days; flags and their related ceremonial were a distinct anachronism aboard vessels that fought in places where there could be no breezes. But they were much-beloved anachronisms as well as legally-required ones; not for a moment did any of us so much as consider dispensing with them aboard fencible vessels.
Then James stepped forward to the microphone. "It is with great gratitude and honor," he began in his nasal voice, "That I welcome His Majesty's Auxiliary Vessel Richard into the king's service..."
For all his
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