“The profits to be realized from the sale of a drug so powerfully habituating,” Captain Singh continued, “are, of course, effectively unlimited.”
“Why did you not immediately bear this news to the Prince?” Arabella asked.
Captain Singh sighed. “That was my first thought as well. But Lady Corey, fortunately, stayed my hand.”
“Lord Reid, as you yourself discovered,” Lady Corey said with a nod to Arabella, “detests your husband. So he has prepared a considerable volume of false evidence—forged papers, suborned witnesses, and the like—implicating Captain Singh as the scheme’s author. If the plan is discovered, the drug is prohibited, or the whole scheme collapses of its own weight, your husband takes the blame and Reid walks away free. And if, at any time before that point, Reid desires your husband’s destruction, a few words in the right ears will accomplish that goal in short order.”
“If it came to my word against the Chairman of the Honorable Mars Company,” Captain Singh said, “I do not doubt who would be believed, and who dismissed as a Godless Saracen.”
“But now that you have departed,” Captain Fox observed, “Reid must surely have pulled the lanyard on that trap-door.”
“I am certain that he has. So now I have no choice but to throw in my lot with the Martians.” He closed his eyes and blew out a breath through his nose. “In any case, as I said, the rot goes all the way to the root. Once I became aware of Reid’s horrific scheme, I began to understand that, whether or not the Prince was party to it, it is part and parcel of his plan. Domination of Mars—imposition of the English will upon the Martian people—implies, indeed requires, domination of individual Martians by individual Englishmen. Even if Reid’s drug scheme could be prevented, some other scheme, equally foul, would surely spring up in its place.
“Once my eyes were thoroughly opened to the horror of the Prince’s scheme,” the captain continued, “I had no choice but to turn in my resignation at once. But I was fortunate in that I was able to leave my letter of resignation on the Prince’s desk shortly after his departure for Princess Charlotte’s engagement dinner in Brighton. Knowing he would not receive it for some days, I could take the time to recall my crew and equip Diana for a long voyage. I was also very fortunate to know your destination and general course”—he nodded to Lady Corey—“though not the astonishing details of your maneuver around Mercury.”
“I call it a planetary circumduction.”
“By whatever name, it is an extraordinary feat of interplanetary navigation.” He wiped his lips, folded his napkin, and tucked it under the clip which held it secure in free descent. “Now … we have the advantage of privileged information, and can expect to arrive at Mars some months in advance of the English. How can we best thwart the Prince’s scheme, with minimal loss of life and property?”
* * *
The Prince’s scheme, Captain Singh explained, was to take control of Mars in two stages.
The first stage of the invasion was a small advance fleet of some sixteen ships-of-the-line, each with a full contingent of Marines. “Their mission is to reinforce the existing Mars Company troops, perform reconnaissance, and prevent an effective resistance from forming. These ships lack Fulton’s improvements, and their captains are men of no particular distinction. However, they will arrive quite soon—perhaps even within the year—and among their number are several experienced with the Mars trade.”
“Within the year?” Collins gasped. “How can they possibly arrive so quickly?”
Captain Singh’s eyes grew distant. “Immediately after accepting the Prince’s commission,” he confessed, “I dispatched a fast clipper to the Ceres fleet with orders to send a detachment at once to Mars. The winds were favorable, and a fast, unladen ship with an experienced navigator can move far faster than a fleet.” His gaze dropped to the table between them. “I selected the very best navigator, and I also equipped him with Aadim’s most rapid course. And with the short distance from Ceres to Mars at this season, they will arrive within months after receiving their orders.”
Arabella was both impressed by her husband’s perspicacity and disturbed by the rapid pace of events. “But because they were dispatched before your … departure,” she said, “they will not be expecting an informed resistance.”
He hesitated briefly before replying. “We can hope so,” he said. “In any case, we must spend the time before the advance fleet’s arrival organizing a resistance. We will require as many allies as possible, Martian as well as English, and will need to establish stocks of materiel and train men for an extended siege. But our largest concern is the second stage: the arrival of the Prince’s fleet, which for reasons of planetary proximity can be expected in approximately twenty-six months.”
This fleet, he explained, made Napoleon’s planned fleet of armored men-of-war seem a mere flotilla by comparison. Though it had just begun construction when Captain Singh had left Earth, when complete it would consist of several dozen armored ships, the first-rates being larger and more heavily armed than Napoleon’s flagship Victoire, and based on a design improved by Fulton after that ship’s destruction. “The weakness at the stern,” he explained, “which permitted Diana to defeat Victoire, has been corrected in this new draught.”
Victoire, a single armored airship fresh from the ship-yard, had come close to defeating Lord Nelson’s entire fleet by herself. The thought of a fleet of dozens of Victoires—no, even worse, dozens of ships better than Victoire, all fully shaken-down and manned by the cream of England’s aerial Navy—descending upon Arabella’s home planet filled her mind with horrific visions.
“The one area,” Captain Singh continued, “in which the Prince’s fleet is inferior to Victoire is its source of hydrogen: the Venusians used animals, larger versions of our own beloved Isambard, to produce that gas, whereas the Prince is dependent upon chemical processes, requiring a large and expensive manufactory. By the time they reach Mars, inevitable hydrogen leakage may reduce the ships’ lift capacity to the point that some will be unable to descend safely to the surface.” Again he glanced downward. “I instructed the shipbuilders to spare no effort nor expense in finding a way to address this concern, and I have little doubt they will find a solution to the problem.”
“Do not berate yourself for doing your best,” Arabella said, placing her hand upon her captain’s beneath the table, “for the cause to which you had committed yourself at the time. Although we disagreed then, we are both on the side of Mars now, and I am certain you will do even better for us.”
“I thank you for your confidence,” he said, inverting his hand to hold hers. “I wish I could be as certain.” He closed his eyes. “I find myself contemplating a chess game in which, after a strong opening, I am compelled to change sides and defend a weaker position against my own very best strategies. I fear that even knowledge of those strategies may not be sufficient to carry the day.” He opened his eyes again, and they were filled with care. “The Prince’s Mars fleet will be the most powerful ever seen, and the most technically advanced. Even if we are able to interdict the drug and prevent the advance force from gaining a foot-hold, all Mars’s resources may not be sufficient to withstand his assault.”
“We can but make the attempt,” Arabella said. Beneath the table-top, she squeezed her husband’s hand in reassurance.
His hand pressed hers in return, but he did not meet her eyes. “Now … let us discuss our plans for resistance.”
3
MARS, 1817–1819
9
MARS
Arabella gazed forward at Mars, whose northern polar cap gleamed white against the red and orange of the deserts which covered most of the rest of the planet. From this unusual vantage, approaching via the Swenson Current from above the plane of the ecliptic, it presented the appearance of a disturbingly colored eye, with white pupil and red sclera glowing beneath the dark upper lid of the planet’s night side. And from this distance—the planet’s disc was merely the size of
a dinner plate, and showed no visible curvature—the ruler-straight silver threads of the canals which carried polar melt water southward to the cities were completely invisible even in Captain Singh’s best glass. But Arabella knew they were there, as she knew so many other things about the planet of her birth.
Saint George’s Land, the English-controlled territory in which she had spent nearly her entire life, spanned only seven per cent of the planet’s surface. Much of the rest was divided among hundreds of satrapies, princessipalities, and lesser fiefdoms, with the balance being uncontrolled territory roamed by uncivilized nomads. But now they faced a common enemy. They would have to join together against the Prince, or all would suffer domination together.
With a sigh, she turned away from Mars and regarded Touchstone, which sailed in convoy a few hundred yards away. With all sails spread to catch the current, guns run out, and airmen bustling about the decks and masts, she presented a handsome face to the world … but Arabella’s keen eye saw that she was an old ship, and tired. Her khoresh-wood planks were a mosaic in shades of gold, showing decades of repairs and replacements, and the copper of her hull was patched in many places. Her starboard and mizzen-masts, smashed by the kraken, were fished and jury-rigged, little more than splinters held together with cordage; her sails bore the scars of the kraken attack and many others before that. Her people, too, Arabella knew, were hungry, thirsty, and weary, still half-baked from their close passage to the Sun and parched by short allowances of water and grog. Even the usually joyous ceremony of crossing Earth’s orbit had been muted and perfunctory, not least because the ship’s position high above the plane of the ecliptic made the exact date of that crossing uncertain.
Diana and her crew were in somewhat better condition, largely because Captain Singh’s greater personal fortune had bought them more in the way of supplies before leaving Earth. But even though Diana was larger, newer, and better-appointed than Touchstone, she had still been sorely taxed by the difficult passage, and her officers and crew were looking forward with great eagerness to landfall on Mars—and to the return of full allowances of fresh water, meat, and vegetables.
Arabella, too, would be greatly relieved to stand once more upon the red sands of her home world. But she knew that any rest they would gain there would be transitory—perhaps even illusory. For the Prince and his men were already on their way and the struggle for the freedom of Mars must begin immediately.
Two ships, no matter how stalwart their men or brilliant their commanders, seemed no more than straws against the tide. But, as the Martians themselves were prevented by treaty from building their own, two ships were what they had.
For now, she reminded herself. They would find confederates and build alliances. Surely the inhumanity of the Prince’s scheme would compel ships of other nations, and hopefully at least a few Englishmen, to join in the defense of Mars.
Surely.
* * *
Days later, Mars had grown from a disc to a globe, a butterscotch-colored sphere which turned lazily below the ships’ keels as they approached the turbulent winds of Mars’s Horn. Though the dryness of the atmosphere near Mars prevented his Horn from developing the roiling storm clouds seen at Earth, and the planet’s smaller size made the winds less severe, the Horn still presented a tricky navigational exercise, one which must be solved precisely if one wished to land at one’s destination rather than in the trackless desert some miles away.
Fortunately, Aadim had been built with just this exercise in mind, and Arabella had very little difficulty setting his dials and levers appropriately to request a course for the coming approach. But when it came to designating the final coordinate, she encountered an unexpected obstacle. As she moved his hand toward Fort Augusta, she seemed to feel some resistance, indeed a veritable pull to the north.
Arabella looked with surprise into the automaton’s face—the green glass eyes peered neutrally forward, as always—and said aloud, “What is the matter? We must land at Fort Augusta. All our friends and allies are there.”
Aadim’s mechanisms ticked and whirred beneath his desk-top as always, but he made no reply—as, indeed, he had never done in all the time she had known him, save for one memorable occasion which had, almost certainly, been nothing but a dream.
But though Aadim hardly ever offered up advice of his own volition, he did seem to provide reactions to, or even criticism of, the courses with which he assisted. She looked down at the chart spread out upon his desk, which showed the Martian landscape beneath them … then closed her eyes and allowed Aadim’s hand to seek its own path across the map. After a motion of a foot or so, the moving hand stopped with a slight click.
She opened her eyes. Aadim’s finger was pointing to a spot in the desert north of Khoresh Tukath—a desolate area far from any settlement, canal, or overland trade route, and lacking in any notable feature. But there were a few small symbols in its vicinity, crosses and triangles and other marks with which she was not familiar.
Consulting the chart’s legend, she discovered that those symbols represented mineral resources—tin, iron, and limestone, among other things. Further, notations at the chart’s foot indicated that these deposits, just a small part of Sor Khoresh’s vast mineral wealth, were not currently being actively mined, no doubt due to their great distance from civilization.
“We cannot possibly land there,” she said. “Whatever do you have in mind?”
Then the panes of the broad stern window rattled, accompanied by a clatter of the sheets and braces against the sails, and the deck shifted perceptibly beneath Arabella’s floating feet. The ship was beginning to enter the Horn’s turbulent winds, and there was no more time for abstractions. With a whispered apology Arabella gently moved Aadim’s hand to Fort Augusta—it offered only token resistance—and pressed his finger to initiate the calculation.
While Aadim’s gears ground away, Arabella stared at the isolated spot he had indicated. Plainly he thought it was significant, but to what end? She tore a sheet from her note-book, drew a quick sketch-map of the area, and noted the indicated spot with an X, tucking the paper into her reticule for later study. And then the bell rang, indicating a completed course.
Arabella wrote out two copies of the course, one of which would be conveyed to Touchstone by the captain’s gig. But she gazed one more time into Aadim’s unseeing eyes before returning abovedecks. “What are you on about, you exasperating machine?”
The automaton, of course, was as reticent as ever.
* * *
Arabella came out on deck, where she requested and received permission to ascend to the quarterdeck. There she found Captain Singh already belted in for the passage through the Horn; a broad leather belt attached by straps to cleats on the deck held him down as though he were standing in gravity. A similar belt awaited Arabella, and after handing the sailing orders over to Stross, Diana’s sailing-master, she buckled herself into it.
“Is all well with Aadim?” the captain asked in a conversational tone, his eyes scanning the sky. “I was beginning to wonder what had become of you.”
“All is well, I believe. But you know how … opinionated he can be, sometimes.”
He gave her a brief thoughtful glance before returning his attention to the currents ahead. “We will discuss this later, but our immediate concern is descent to Fort Augusta. The proximity of Phobos”—he pointed ahead—“causes great volatility in the winds.”
Phobos, the closer and larger of Mars’s two moons, loomed beyond the bow-sprit a few points to starboard. So great was its orbital velocity that it grew visibly nearer even as they watched—but its angle was changing, indicating that no collision need be feared. Though the moon was a gray, barren, and lifeless rock, a few lights nonetheless glimmered on its dark side; it had a small permanent population, and served as a trading post and free-descent ship-yard for traders and privateers.
“Phobos moves so rapidly through the air,” the captain continued, “that it creates a substantia
l vortex—very nearly a second Horn within Mars’s own. I have attempted several times to incorporate this turbulence into Aadim’s calculations, but its small scale and great complexity make this a very thorny problem. Captain Fox,” he remarked conversationally, “told me that he was required to hire a pilot from Sor Khoresh for approach to Phobos. Apparently they have unique expertise, without which a ship risks being dashed upon the moon’s surface by the unpredictable winds.”
The existence of experienced khoreshte pilots was new intelligence to Arabella, and raised numerous questions in her mind. “Mills once provided the same service to the Portuguese,” she said, “piloting small boats through the choppy waves off Gambia.”
“I hope that some day automata may be able to serve this purpose, freeing men—and Martians too, I suppose—for higher pursuits.”
At that moment the deck lurched beneath their feet, as the winds of the Horn suddenly took hold of the ship. Their conversation was perforce curtailed, replaced by a more utilitarian exchange of observations, course corrections, and commands to guide the ship through those ever-changing winds, now made even more capricious by the passage of Phobos.
Arabella watched that moon hurtle past the starboard beam, then gave it no further thought. Even with Aadim’s help, the descent to Fort Augusta would be tricky enough.
* * *
After many hours of capricious, jarring, and sometimes even nauseating turbulence, Diana and Touchstone passed below the Horn’s fickle winds and into the calmer—though still variable—breezes of the upper planetary atmosphere. The planet below had turned from a globe to a landscape, curving away from them in all directions to a hazy horizon, and was echoed by the three great balloons, now filled with hydrogen, above. Touchstone too had deployed her balloon, a single envelope filled with coal-heated air.
The balloons were necessary now because, with their proximity to Mars, the force of gravity had begun to return; Arabella’s feet now pressed against the deck with her own weight as well as the force of her leather straps. With relief she unbuckled herself and handed the belt to an airman, though she kept a steadying hand upon the rail. Her weight at this altitude, still well above the falling-line, was as yet quite slight, and there was still some risk of being tumbled overboard by an unexpected gust. But the freedom to move about as she wished was delicious, and she desired to re-accustom herself to walking in gravity as quickly as she could. There would be much work to be done as soon as they alighted.
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