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arrived. “On the Marcus worlds, Rabbits live free and unsupervised—being owned isn’t much more than a formality for us. And that’s how I want things to be here.” I grinned. “Except that you’re not owned anymore, of course. So maybe things can be even better still.” There was some grumbling about this in the papers when word got out, but nothing serious. After all, people told themselves, I was a both a Marcus and a Rabbit myself. Of course I’d spoil the staff terribly—it was only to be expected. Slowly, bit by bit I withdrew myself from the day-to-day affairs of the property and let my bunny-trust make more and more decisions. Soon flowers—mostly fire-lilies—were blooming everywhere, and I found myself in possession of a beautiful, fragrant mountain meadow home that I wouldn’t trade for any six of the other Marcus palaces. My estate bordered on the mother-House’s grounds—if an emergency arose, my Rabbits knew where to turn for help. Thus I was able to live in a peaceful, worry-free manner, at least in regard to my domestic arrangements.
     
    So at least I had pleasant surroundings as well as peace and quiet to work in as I planned out the space fencibles. It was just as well, because I needed plenty of both. The problems were staggering in depth as well as in scope. For example, no one had any clear idea of what our mission and purpose was to be. It was obvious enough that a plethora of small craft would be immensely useful to the “real” navy in the event of an invasion. There were always urgent supplies to be shipped and personnel to be shuffled about if nothing else, and only a space neophyte would fail to realize what a continual, annoying drain these essential activities were on a warship of any size. Yes, my fencibles could assist with these matters in time of war, and if we did no more the line-of-battle types would be grateful as could be.
     
    And yet… Wasn’t there anything else we could do?
     
    Soon I was listing mission after potential mission for the fencibles, everything from emergency satellite repair under fire to manning listening posts to inserting spies behind enemy lines. In a few hours I had pages and pages of ideas, enough for me to understand that it was impossible for anyone to foresee all the potential situations that might arise. It was sort of liking trying to divide the infinitely unlikely by a limitless number of possibilities. In the end I’d recreated the navy’s mission itself, which was to control space and win wars no matter what circumstances arose. And for all His Majesty’s support and patronage, I doubted that I’d be receiving enough funding for battleships and drydocks! So it was going to have to be all about flexibility, I decided. I’d try to create the most capable, diverse small-craft fleet I could, and let the chips fall where they may. It wasn’t a good plan, perhaps, but as near as I could tell it was the only plan.
     
    Nor did I have any idea what might await me on Marcus Prime in terms of available equipment. Certainly the Imperials would leave at least some operational spacecraft behind; modern civilization depended upon them as thoroughly as it did on railroads. What they failed to leave would be replaced almost immediately, just as soon as it could possibly be managed. But… Where would things ultimately level off? I had the prewar statistics to work with, but how much had changed since then? What little solid intelligence data leaked out of the Empire these days never trickled down anywhere close to my paygrade, so I was working blind. And yet for my planning to be worth the paper it was scrawled upon I had to be able to estimate how much money His Majesty would have to offer in order to tempt a shipowner to sign up for the fencibles, and how many weekends a year I could demand the loan of his vessel and crew for training.  Then I had to calculate how many training session would be the minimum to make said crew actually useful to