Commander by Phil Geusz Read Free Book Online

anywhere.
     
    I sighed as I tramped past the long-shuttered Sweetgrass Hay Market. The fact was that at a certain level I’d never gotten over Frieda, and broad hints had been dropped that I never would. I was illegally gengineered, His Majesty had informed me long ago, part of a very limited program. Because of this, it’d been arranged that I’d be attracted to a single, preselected mate. It’d worked all too well, so far as I was concerned. Frieda haunted all my fantasies and dreams—deep down, I burned for her in a way that I wondered if the non-gengineered could appreciate. While other does might catch my interest from time to time, only Frieda could ever really matter to me.
     
    And she was gone, gone, gone! Carried off to who knew where, and mated to…
     
    I scowled at the thought, then purged the image from my mind as best as I was able. It wasn't Frieda’s fault that she’d been kidnapped; most likely she missed me as badly as I missed her. Besides, contrary to the Master Plan I was locked in a war to the death with the Imperials. I couldn’t afford jealousy, even if it wasn’t really my fault—powerful, unreasoned emotion could be a terrible weakness. There were dozens of Rabbit-does who’d do almost anything to become my mate, I reminded myself. Maybe even hundreds. And for a time, that thought helped tame the blind beast within me.
     
    But later that night I woke up screaming and lashing out blindly in the darkness. In my nightmare I’d been slashing at a dozen Imperial Rabbit-marines with a highly phallic Sword, trying to rescue Frieda from imminent gang-rape. Nestor was so frightened that he called a navy doctor, and I didn’t get another minute of sleep. It was very powerful stuff indeed, that dream was. Too powerful, I decided. It represented a weakness, one that someday was liable to get me killed and perhaps others along with me.
     
    So I decided to do something about it.
     

9
     
    For the next few weeks I was terribly busy. My gengineering and its effect on my personal life was a sensitive issue indeed, one I couldn’t safely broach with anyone except Uncle Robert. Yet due to work overload, it took what felt like forever to set up a meeting. My staff was growing daily as the various personnel I’d requested arrived, and for a while it was all that Nestor and I could do just to keep up with the inflow. Housing was practically unobtainable, and work space more precious still. It was just as well that a Marcus ship-buying expedition left almost immediately. Heinrich left with it, so I was able to set Sergeant Piper, my one-time academy instructor-sergeant, up in his former digs. I’d been hesitant to even so much as ask the sergeant to leave his plum assignment and serve under one of his former snotties; where the others had received out-and-out orders to report to me I’d offered Frederick the option and this was part of why he’d arrived later in the game than the others. But he’d accepted, and his smile when I greeted him at the still-crippled spaceport seemed genuine enough. I’d selected him not only because he was an experienced trainer of raw recruits, but also because long ago he’d let it slip that he’d specifically asked to have me assigned to him. If he was open-minded and diplomatic enough to seek out a Rabbit as a cadet and then support me as he had without patronizing me, well… I was willing to bet that he’d do a good job doing non-traditional training work with civilians and slavebunnies as well. But that was still well down the road during those earliest of days; in practice what I needed most was more space to house my growing operation, and fast! In the next few weeks I was expecting a ground facilities expert and his staff of ten, a ship’s armorer with three assistants and a purser to keep our books and ensure that our indents were kept in proper form. I was looking forward to the arrival of each and every one of them—I wasn’t and couldn’t ever be