Arabella the Traitor of Mars

by David D. Levine

  Arabella had taken quite some time to come to terms with this “blood-money,” which—despite Michael’s insistence that it had been given voluntarily by weak men—she considered to have been stolen, or at least swindled, from victims who had been made dependent on the drug against their will. But Captain Singh had eventually convinced her that, rather than attempting to give the money back to those victims, the most appropriate use that could be made of it was to employ it to interdict further drug shipments and prevent the Prince Regent from taking complete control of the planet.

  And, indeed, they had done so, or at least were attempting to do so. The growing khebek fleet made frequent sorties to Mars, generally under cover of night but some times, in groups, in bold daylight raids. There they met up with the even more rapidly growing number of Martians, and even some Englishmen, who had joined the resistance after the Ceres fleet’s very public and quite destructive arrival. The khebek were invaluable in coordinating their activities and supplying them with arms, explosives, and other implements of sabotage. These were directed against the smooth operation of the Company and the Ceres fleet; the intent was to keep the English off guard and slow their consolidation of power in Saint George’s Land and beyond. The less territory they controlled when the Prince Regent’s armored fleet arrived, the longer it would take for them to overpower all resistance.

  But though Arabella was doing all she could—as was, indeed, every one on Phobos, including the twice-bereft Lady Corey—she was forced to admit, if only to herself in the darkness of her pathetic little shack, that a delay would be the best they could hope for. The resistance was already able to do little more than harass the Company forces, a well-armed and well-trained army with the enthusiastic support of nearly the entire human population of Mars; with the addition of the Prince’s fleet, she could not imagine any sequence of events which did not end, sooner or later, in complete defeat.

  The resistance did hold a few advantages over the English. The khebek fleet would be an unknown quantity to the Prince’s fleet when it arrived, at least at first, and they were drilling every day and constantly improving the automaton pilots to consolidate their skills in maneuvering and fighting within Mars’s Horn, especially the particularly tricky winds around Phobos. They had the sympathies of many Martians, perhaps even a majority, though how many of these would take up arms in a direct confrontation with the English was an open question. They had the advantage of home ground; the Martians were supplied directly from their own farms and plantations, while the English were forced to import much of their materiel all the way from Earth. And they held Phobos as a base, and controlled the skies in its vicinity completely; the moon’s ballistas made the region extremely dangerous to the English, and could also be used to drop boulders upon Mars’s surface. But though the boulders’ impact was devastating when successful, the tactic had proved not quite so decisive as Arabella had hoped; most of Saint George’s Land, including Fort Augusta and Woodthrush Woods, was too far from the equator to be reached from Phobos in its very low orbit.

  But these advantages, Arabella believed, would not withstand the Prince Regent’s fleet when it arrived. They would be numerous, exceptionally well armed, trained and equipped specifically for fighting at Mars, and entirely dedicated to their cause, with the firm backing of the Regent, Navy, and Company behind them. Furthermore, the fleet would consist largely of armored first-rates, of an advanced design lacking Victoire’s fatal weaknesses … and, even with those weaknesses, Victoire had very nearly defeated Nelson’s entire fleet single-handed. Captain Singh, she knew, had done his very best to prepare them for victory before turning his coat, and though he now found himself on the other side of the chess-board—which did give him some advantages, and he claimed confidence that the Prince could eventually be overcome—she was very far from certain that the resistance, even with Captain Singh’s active participation, could overcome the Royal Navy with Captain Singh’s strategies.

  Once Arabella had awoken in the night to find her captain, still awake, contemplating a chart of the skies near Phobos, with small lead weights of various sizes, representing ships, floating above it. The number of large weights, representing the Prince’s fleet, had seemed overwhelming, and his expression had been exceedingly grim. But when he had noticed her watching, his face had cleared, and he had reassured her that with luck they would win out in the end.

  With luck, he had said. If even Captain Singh admitted to depending on luck, she knew their chances were very slim indeed.

  But still, she reminded herself, pausing to watch a pair of khebek chasing each other through the Horn’s tempests, firing their cannon in dumb-show with wad and powder alone, the Aerial Navy of the Martian Resistance—to give its perhaps somewhat inflated formal name—was not entirely inconsequential. They had already defeated the Ceres fleet once, outnumbered nine capital ships to two after a devastating ambuscade, and recovered brilliantly thereafter. Of course, that victory had been a Pyrrhic one—all nine ships of the Ceres fleet had limped away, whereas the Martian side had lost more than half its fleet, including dear Touchstone.

  Sometimes she felt she must miss Fox just as much as Lady Corey did. At times such as this, alone with her thoughts and memories, she could almost hear his voice. Or voices, rather, as he had commanded quite a range of different voices due to his time in the theatre. His rumbling Scottish brogue as Macbeth, especially, had given her a most unseemly thrill. Macbeth’s last speech seemed particularly apropos to this moment: “I will not yield!” he had cried, his full-throated captain’s voice shaking the barracks’ rafters. “Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, yet I will try the last! Lay on, Macduff, and d—n’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’” And that dauntlessness had not been mere stagecraft, for even when the aerial kraken had first appeared—fading into view as though by fell magic, when Liddon and even Arabella herself had been paralyzed by fear—he had never quavered, simply leapt into action.

  Birnam wood, she thought then. And the kraken.

  The two memories, which had never happened to occur to her at the same time before, suddenly collided in her mind, and a new idea was born.

  Reversing herself in the air, she swiftly pulled herself along the guide rope toward her workshop. She must begin work immediately.

  * * *

  Three weeks later, Arabella found herself aboard Hetmesh, one of the newest of the khebek, on maneuvers designed to test some recent changes to the automaton pilot. Her captain and crew, though well-seasoned individually, had all recently been promoted to their current stations and were just becoming accustomed to each other.

  “Five points up,” said the Martian operating the automaton pilot to the first officer, who acknowledged and carried out the order with crisp precision. Arabella nodded and marked the exchange in her note-book, saying nothing … some of the changes were intended to make the automaton’s more advanced operations more accessible to the operator. So far the new dials and labels seemed to be having the intended effect.

  “Sail ho!” called the Martian at the masthead. “Many sail! Many, many sail!”

  Arabella and Hetmesh’s captain exchanged glances and hurried to the larboard rail, each of them scanning the sunward sky with her own telescope. Arabella’s instrument had a wider field of vision, but it was the captain who spotted the other ships first … and hissed something to herself in her own language. It was not a happy sound. Immediately she turned back to her first mate. “About ship!” she roared.

  Even as the crew leapt to comply, Arabella continued to seek the other ships with her own instrument … and, forewarned though she was, she could not suppress a gasp when she found them. For the tiny white flecks she espied were practically too numerous to be counted, spreading in a very precise square formation that spanned the full width and height of her field of view. Even as she scanned the glass from side to side she could not encompass their number; so many were they, and so exact their formation, that it was nearly im
possible to distinguish them one from another.

  But though their numbers were uncertain, their provenance was not. Only the English used a square formation, and here and there among them Arabella spotted bright glints … the reflection of the Sun behind them from the polished metal of their armored hulls.

  Arabella collapsed the glass and pushed off the rail, propelling herself to the nearest set of unoccupied pedals. There, without hesitation or commentary, she hitched up her skirts, settled herself upon the rough khoresh-wood of the saddle, and began pedaling.

  No one objected. They all knew that every hand—and every pair of legs—would be needed from this moment forward.

  * * *

  The Council was already in session when Arabella entered, having been alerted to the arrival of the English by flag signals from Hetmesh and other vessels. “We must assume,” Captain Singh was saying to the assembled group, “that they will proceed directly to Phobos, and will attack here before the day is out. How many khebek have we?”

  By good fortune Khema had just recently arrived at Phobos from the Martian surface, and this was information she could recite from memory. “Fifty-seven all told,” she said, “of which forty-four are in fighting trim. Thirty-eight of these carry Mrs. Singh’s latest innovations”—she pointed with her eye-stalks to Arabella, who nodded in acknowledgement—“and the automaton pilots of the remaining six are at most two weeks out of date.” Khema then returned her attention to Captain Singh. “Against how many English men-of-war must they sail?”

  “Thirty, more or less, including some unknown number of frigates and other noncombatant vessels.” These odds seemed reasonably good for the Martians, Arabella thought, except that each khebek had only two four-pound cannon whereas the English first-rates—and there would be at least five or six of these in the fleet—carried twenty-four eight-pounders, and all the men-of-war, even the second- and third-rates, were clad in steel armor which would be completely proof against a four-pound ball. “We await closer observation to determine the fleet’s exact composition and armament.”

  “By which time it will be too late to do any thing about it.”

  Captain Singh inclined his head in acknowledgement of this fact. “But not, perhaps, too late to do any thing with the information, if you catch the distinction.”

  “I do.” Khema sighed, a human habit she had picked up from Arabella’s late father. “I wish we had had more time to prepare.”

  “We have done what we can with the time given to us,” Captain Singh replied, philosophically. “That is all that can be asked of any man.”

  “Of any mortal,” Khema corrected. “Which reminds me…” From the satchel she had carried from Mars, which still hung on her armored and spike-encrusted shoulder, she drew a large package wrapped in brown paper and twine. “Mrs. Singh, I have brought you a present.”

  “This scarcely seems the time for presents,” Arabella said, even as she drifted over to Khema to accept the package. It looked incongruously like a dress from the high-street shops in Fort Augusta.

  “For this present, there is none better.” Without another word she handed it to Arabella, who immediately untied the twine.

  As soon as she saw the material beneath the brown paper she paused. “This is impossible,” she said to Khema. “My mother burned it.”

  “She did,” Khema acknowledged. “This is a new one. Lady Corey gave me your measurements.”

  At once Arabella tore the remaining paper aside, heedless of its reuse, and shook out the garment within by its shoulders.

  It was a thukhong. That beautiful, form-fitting, fur-trimmed leather garment which had kept her warm and uninjured through so many adventures with Michael in the desert, and whose shameful exposure of Arabella’s lower limbs had been so hateful to her mother.

  Those days seemed a lifetime ago. Ten lifetimes. Every thing had changed since then.

  Arabella’s eyes filled with tears and she clutched the leather—still carrying the chill of Khema’s ascent from the Martian surface, but butter-soft and smelling wonderfully of itself—to her face. “I cannot accept this,” she murmured into the fur trim, eyes closed.

  “Winter will be upon us soon,” Khema said gently. “And if I know you—and I do—you will require a warm and protective garment for your resistance work.”

  “Thank you, itkhalya!” Arabella cried, flinging herself heedlessly into Khema’s arms just as though Khema were her nanny and not a hulking akhmok, leader of entire Martian nations.

  Khema accepted Arabella’s tearful and overly demonstrative thanks with admirable restraint. “You are most welcome, tutukha,” she said, patting Arabella’s back with one hard and spiny hand. “Now go and put it on. We have much to do, and you must be properly clothed.”

  “Yes, itkhalya,” Arabella said, bowing in the Martian fashion.

  * * *

  Arabella was still in the grip of a thousand strong emotions as she floated beside her husband on Diana’s quarterdeck, clad in her new thukhong. Chief among these was anxiety, to be sure. No sane person could fail to be anxious at the sight of the rigorous square grid of sails, now plainly visible to the naked eye, which seemed to spread across half the sky—every one of those white flecks a fully armed man-of-war of the Royal Aerial Navy, packed with men and bristling with armor and weapons, and drawing closer by the minute. But that anxiety was joined by many other sentiments. Pride, for Captain Singh and for the work that he, and she, and all the rest of the resistance had done together to prepare for this moment. Hope, for despite the terrible odds against them, she still did find within herself some optimism that they might yet win out. Anticipation, for finally all their plans would now, at last, be put into action … and, win or lose, at least the interminable waiting would be over. And even that most peculiar emotion of all: love. Love not only for her captain, but also for Khema, Lady Corey, and every other member of the crew … even Aadim, though she had no idea whether his peculiar self-awareness included the ability to reciprocate. Indeed, she felt tenderly even toward hulking Isambard and his many children! They had all been through so much together, and she felt she owed them so much. In point of fact, she owed many of them her life, in some cases several times over.

  Diana’s people floated on the deck below, grouped by divisions and lined up nearly as tidily as though they had stood in gravity. Though the winds of the Horn batted them this way and that, they were all old hands by now and they moved with the ship almost unconsciously. Here were the waisters, including a few Martians, with dear old Faunt still scowling at their head; here the topmen, including Mills, once her messmate and now captain of the larboard top; there the gunners and the hydrogen hands, stalwart green Venusians in the main, led by Ulungugga; and all the rest, a veritable crowd of fierce determined faces. Lady Corey and Dr. Barry stood with Arabella on the quarterdeck, along with the other officers and idlers … including Watson, whose performance in the Battle of Tekhmet had been so exemplary that he had been promoted to second mate. Even Captain Fox was here, if only in spirit.

  Captain Singh stepped to the forward rail, looking out over his ship and his crew and the English fleet beyond them, and the people immediately fell silent. “You have the honor to serve,” he said in his ringing baritone which seemed to reach every corner of the deck without effort, “aboard a ship of impeccable distinction. The dear Diana was built in the Honorable Mars Company’s yards at Blackwall. She served the Company well for twenty-eight years before being captured by the French and refitted as a man-of-war. Recaptured by Company forces, she acquitted herself admirably in the Battle of Venus, and had the honor of serving briefly as Admiral Collingwood’s flagship before returning to England.” The captain did not, Arabella noted, acknowledge his own part in any of this. “But England did not deserve her loyalty, and now she serves Mars.” He straightened further. “As do we all.” He stared out at his people, his piercing brown eyes seeming to meet every single gaze; they replied in kind, gazing back in rapt silence
. “A great challenge has been laid before us this day. A greater challenge than any we have yet faced; greater, perhaps, than any single airship has ever faced at all. I cannot promise you that we will succeed, though we have done our best to prepare for this moment. But I can promise you this: I will do my utmost for you, if you will do the same for me. Do I have your assent in this?”

  “Aye!” they cried in unison, and Arabella shouted “Aye!” as enthusiastically as any of them.

  Once the cheering had died down, the captain stepped back from the rail and Khema stepped up. As head of the Council, and by dint of her brilliant strategic mind, she was also the Admiral of their fleet. As such she commanded Captain Singh as well as all the khebek, and was thus the superior of all the Dianas. Despite her continuing air-sickness, she carried herself with dignity as she looked out over the assembled Dianas in silence. “I am deeply moved,” she said at last, in English, “by your eagerness and zeal. Looking at your faces—red, pink, black, brown, and green—I see that you have come from many places and many creeds, yet all willingly offer your efforts, perhaps even your very lives, to Mars. And Mars welcomes your assistance, no matter from whence you come. Indeed, your very differences are your strength; by bringing together many voices from different lands, we open ourselves to new solutions to the problems that face us.” She raised a hand then, holding it horizontal above her eye-stalks in the peculiar gesture which had become an expression of respect for the entire resistance, whether Martian, human, or Venusian. “I salute you all.”

  With a great rustle of cloth and leather, every one on the ship, including Arabella and Lady Corey, returned Khema’s salute in kind. And then little Watson leapt up from the quarterdeck, catching himself with one foot on a backstay, and from this vantage he cried out in his cracking voice: “Three cheers for the Admiral! Hip hip!”