Ship's Boy (4 page)

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. “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 fifteen-hundred 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 his son 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! May the Lord grant him 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 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. After many potential survivors were killed by punctures as their rescuers attempted to extricate huge, delicate spheres from amidst twisted wreckage, 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 was forced to remove his medbox even though two lights were flashing yellow again. “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 both the bubble and myself to the bed, which was bolted to the floor. 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!”