whispered as the snuggle-hug finally broke up. “For everything.”
9
We held a staff meeting the last night before Jumping into the Zombie Cluster. For the most part, everything was going according to plan. Lieutenant Jeffries reported that the Sweeper had tested out properly during the last dry run, which was a bit of a relief since one of the primary coils had been giving the engineering department fits. This was excellent news. Without the big magnets of the Sweeper to clear local space of all the ferrous debris of battle, maneuvering would be a lot more dangerous. Long experience had shown that four out of five bits of orbital debris created by modern weapons tended to be at least partly magnetic. Dodging the rest looked plenty exciting enough in my book. I was able to report that my own department was one-hundred percent ready, no ifs, ands or buts. The captain raised his eyebrows at this and Lieutenant Jeffries scowled, but in order to prove me wrong they’d have had to physically come down to the ‘smelly’ work-decks and look things over themselves. Which they were welcome to do anytime they liked, of course, as I really was a hundred-percent ready. But they and I both knew that it’d never happen. “When you get into trouble,” the first officer declared with a smirk, “come bawling to me and I’ll bail you out. Just like all the other cocky middies that’ve come and gone.” With that kind of support behind me, how could I fail?
The worst part of the meeting was seeing Nestor for the first time since I’d watched the captain fondling him in his cabin. He didn’t look at all good. Sure, he was well-fed and his fur was neatly brushed. Physically he was fine. But he moved slowly and listlessly, and often had to be told twice what to do. Strangest of all, he absolutely refused to meet my eyes. It was so blatantly obvious that I found it hard to believe that no one else noticed, and distracting enough that once the meeting was over there were large parts I couldn’t even remember. It wasn’t until we were almost ready to break up that I finally figured out what was going on. The captain might’ve been too drunk to realize that he’d paraded his little secret right out in the open in front of me, but Nestor had been as sober as I was. He knew that I knew, in other words. And that must’ve been just awful for him. While Rabbits understand better than anyone that they have no options about such matters, they also tend to look askance at those who lead the ‘easy’ lives of sex objects and see them as ‘brown-nosers’ of the worst kind. It makes no sense, of course—it’s not even logically consistent. Yet Nestor had every reason to fear that I’d already spread the word of his shame far and wide down on the work decks, so that his mob-mates—his entire social universe!—would never treat him as an equal again. And this was on top of the psychological damage that the captain’s repeated violations must surely have caused. No wonder he was so ashamed that he could barely function!
“Sir?” I asked the captain when the meeting was over. “Can I see Nestor for about an hour down below? I need him to help settle a dispute.”
Captain Holcomb’s eyebrows rose. “A dispute?”
I nodded. “It’s about bedding-down space, sir. Since Nestor’s never there anymore, the other Rabbits in his section have divvied up his straw allotment. So they have more than the others now. That’s not right, sir—straw’s important to a bunny. And they said Nestor was okay with it. So I thought that—“
“Fine, fine, fine!” my commander interrupted. “Don’t bore me with trivial details. But if it were me, David, I’d just lay down the law and take away all their straw for a while. You shouldn’t be so easy on them.”
“Exactly what I had in mind, sir!” I lied, knowing he’d never bother to double-check. “But they should have to confront Nestor, too. In the end, that’s who they’re
9
We held a staff meeting the last night before Jumping into the Zombie Cluster. For the most part, everything was going according to plan. Lieutenant Jeffries reported that the Sweeper had tested out properly during the last dry run, which was a bit of a relief since one of the primary coils had been giving the engineering department fits. This was excellent news. Without the big magnets of the Sweeper to clear local space of all the ferrous debris of battle, maneuvering would be a lot more dangerous. Long experience had shown that four out of five bits of orbital debris created by modern weapons tended to be at least partly magnetic. Dodging the rest looked plenty exciting enough in my book. I was able to report that my own department was one-hundred percent ready, no ifs, ands or buts. The captain raised his eyebrows at this and Lieutenant Jeffries scowled, but in order to prove me wrong they’d have had to physically come down to the ‘smelly’ work-decks and look things over themselves. Which they were welcome to do anytime they liked, of course, as I really was a hundred-percent ready. But they and I both knew that it’d never happen. “When you get into trouble,” the first officer declared with a smirk, “come bawling to me and I’ll bail you out. Just like all the other cocky middies that’ve come and gone.” With that kind of support behind me, how could I fail?
The worst part of the meeting was seeing Nestor for the first time since I’d watched the captain fondling him in his cabin. He didn’t look at all good. Sure, he was well-fed and his fur was neatly brushed. Physically he was fine. But he moved slowly and listlessly, and often had to be told twice what to do. Strangest of all, he absolutely refused to meet my eyes. It was so blatantly obvious that I found it hard to believe that no one else noticed, and distracting enough that once the meeting was over there were large parts I couldn’t even remember. It wasn’t until we were almost ready to break up that I finally figured out what was going on. The captain might’ve been too drunk to realize that he’d paraded his little secret right out in the open in front of me, but Nestor had been as sober as I was. He knew that I knew, in other words. And that must’ve been just awful for him. While Rabbits understand better than anyone that they have no options about such matters, they also tend to look askance at those who lead the ‘easy’ lives of sex objects and see them as ‘brown-nosers’ of the worst kind. It makes no sense, of course—it’s not even logically consistent. Yet Nestor had every reason to fear that I’d already spread the word of his shame far and wide down on the work decks, so that his mob-mates—his entire social universe!—would never treat him as an equal again. And this was on top of the psychological damage that the captain’s repeated violations must surely have caused. No wonder he was so ashamed that he could barely function!
“Sir?” I asked the captain when the meeting was over. “Can I see Nestor for about an hour down below? I need him to help settle a dispute.”
Captain Holcomb’s eyebrows rose. “A dispute?”
I nodded. “It’s about bedding-down space, sir. Since Nestor’s never there anymore, the other Rabbits in his section have divvied up his straw allotment. So they have more than the others now. That’s not right, sir—straw’s important to a bunny. And they said Nestor was okay with it. So I thought that—“
“Fine, fine, fine!” my commander interrupted. “Don’t bore me with trivial details. But if it were me, David, I’d just lay down the law and take away all their straw for a while. You shouldn’t be so easy on them.”
“Exactly what I had in mind, sir!” I lied, knowing he’d never bother to double-check. “But they should have to confront Nestor, too. In the end, that’s who they’re
Similar Books
