Free Commander by Phil Geusz Page B

loosened for the purchase of fleet-support facilities and surface-based defense battalions. It was hoped that some of these latter could be made up of Rabbits, and though Henrich didn’t know it yet his next assignment would involve planning and implementing their training. Ground fencibles, they’d be called, counterparts to the part-time fighting men who’d once manned shore batteries.
     
    “They caught us by surprise last time, Heinrich. It was one of the saddest, most wretched things I’ve ever seen. But times have changed and the element of surprise is gone. If they attack us here again, they’ll damned well wish they hadn’t.”
     

14
     
    It came as quite a shock when one day I suddenly realized that I had well over a thousand individuals under my command. Some of them were part-timers, yes—the crews of the eight mining ships we’d so far welcomed into the fencibles, for example, as well as the Rabbits of the single ground-fencible unit that Heinrich was still struggling to bring into service. This last was still a long way from being combat-ready; it was to be scattered out among a dozen of Marcus Prime’s satellites, both natural and artificial, and equipped with old weapons that’d been scavenged from scrapped dreadnoughts. Both the nature of the job itself and the scattered condition of the unit demanded significant initiative and decision-making capabilities far down into the lower ranks—in some locations, there wouldn’t be a human to seek guidance from within many light-minutes.
     
    My classmate at first had great difficulty replicating my success with the Zombie Rabbits. It wasn’t his fault; he simply couldn’t bond with them in the same way that I could. So I not only sent out Fremont and Nestor to aid and advise him, but finally shucked off all the responsibilities I could manage and gave the matter my personal attention.
     
    The Rabbits in question, it didn’t take me very long to decide, were made of very good stuff indeed. Though they weren’t graves registration bunnies who perforce had a good grasp of what combat might be like, they were one and all experienced spacehands. No truly stupid individual—human or Rabbit either one—ever lasts long working in vacuum, nor do those deficient in the common sense department. And yet… It was the early days of Beechwood all over again. The Rabbits were too timid even to meet my eyes when I first arrived, much less ask questions, though every last one had begged for the opportunity to serve with the fencibles. I was certain that given time something could be made of them, but the fact was that there was only one of me and I had so many, many other fish to fry. It was a pretty problem indeed, and one that might’ve proven insoluble without Fremont and Nestor’s expert help. “Sir,” Fremont suggested when I held a private Rabbits-only meeting on the subject. “How about if we just show them?”
     
    So it came to pass that the three of us spent a week in class together with the other Rabbits, learning how to serve as crewmen on obsolete weapons that we’d almost certainly never have cause to operate again. It was fun, really—even though the patient, long-suffering petty officer in charge of the class was “in on the gag”, it was clear by the end of the first day that he was growing weary of the endless questions we three came up with. We even asked for an extra break now and again; the other Rabbits were frozen in shock! (Afterwards, I made sure that these breaks were incorporated into the schedule permanently, even if it did add a couple days to the course. These Rabbits weren’t merely learning how to fire guns. They were being introduced to an entirely new role in life and society, and it was obvious to me that we were attempting to move them along far, far too quickly.) I also turned-to for deck-swabbings and such with the rest of the mob, to demonstrate that one form of work was as important as any other. While they of