Badger Read Online Free

reduce to yard repairs under your command. Do you know how many personnel died in that little skirmish of yours?”
    “Thirteen dead, four wounded.” The answer, delivered in as even a voice as Jacob could manage, seemed to surprise Upshaw. He watched in rising fury as the man ground to a halt, and then bulled onward.
    “That’s right. Thirteen people who don’t get to go home to their families anymore.” Upshaw pointed one blunt finger at Jacob as if it were a cattle prod. “Do you know what those freighters were carrying, Jacob Hull? Allow me to tell you.” He held up a sheet of loose paper, obviously a report on the ship’s manifest. “Four thousand pounds of various construction supplies. Thirty thousand cubic liters of water. More to the point, forty thousand metric tons of fertilizer.” Upshaw’s eyes left the paper and locked with Jacob’s. “Manure, Captain. Thirteen highly trained, diligent personnel of the Celostian Navy died for manure.”
    In the silence that followed, Jacob struggled to contain his reaction. He doubted it was the reaction that Upshaw had been aiming for. No doubt the pompous little bastard wanted him to be crushed and broken by the news. There was a thread of humiliation running through him, to be sure, but it was mostly the shame of sharing the same uniform and rank with such a useless sack of crap. To hear the sacrifice of his personnel used as some kind of ‘teachable moment’ tool was disgusting to him. Anger was far more plentiful in Jacob’s heart, filling his guts with ice. Jacob clenched his hands tight, fighting the urge to shout, to scream, to somehow reach through the transmission signal and strangle the fat little puss pot with his bare hands. Instead, he said nothing.
    After another moment, Upshaw sighed and turned away. “Your people are depending on you, Jacob. Your rank gives you the authority to order them to battle, but you have the duty to make their deaths mean more than this. More than some frontier manure on a rickety merchant barge.” He shook his head. “If you cannot convince yourself to do that, then at some point we will have to reconsider your commission. Perhaps assign you to the Reefhome Guard with others of your…perspective…on the nature of war. Do you understand, Captain Hull?” His veiled reference to Jacob’s frontier upbringing only made Jacob tighten his fists more. The knuckles on his hands stood out white.
    Upshaw, glaringly ignorant of the effect of his words, was still waiting. Somehow, Jacob managed to grind out the only appropriate answer. “Yes, sir.”
    “Good. I expect to hear better things of you in the future. Captain Upshaw out.” The screen went dark before Jacob could salute, but given his current state of mind that was probably just as well. It was hard to salute when his hands were balled into fists, after all.
     
    Jacob made it partway down the hall when an all-too-familiar voice caught him. “Looks like somebody had a few rounds with a superior officer.”
    He turned and saw Lieutenant Isaac Bellworth, the Gunnery command officer for the Terrier and one of the few officers on board who had gone through the campaign aboard the Wolfhound with him. The red-haired lieutenant smiled and shook his head. “Judging from the look on your face, Captain Hull, the guy’s lucky he came away with his skin intact.”
    “His skin maybe, but not his spine.” Some small sense of self-preservation prompted Jacob to look around and make sure there were no other officers or crewmen about. He had learned the hard way many times over that an indiscreet comment was almost worse than an armed torpedo when it came to the survivability of his career. That education had cost him far too many friends and allies in the Navy. “And don’t Captain Hull me, Isaac. I’m not in the mood.”
    His friend came to rigid attention. Isaac’s salute was utterly precise and filled with the particular kind of mockery that had always characterized