The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  He lowered his telescope and pushed it closed. “Organize a boarding party, Mr. Bonfors. I will lead it. You will take command of the ship.”

  “My God,” Emory said. “He didn’t waste a second.”

  They had known what Harrington was going to do. It was in his report. But nothing in the written record had prepared Emory for the speed of his decision.

  I ascertained that we could no longer punish their crew with our gun, Harrington had written, and I therefore determined to take their ship by assault, with one of our boats. The presence of the unfortunate innocents meant that our adversaries could repair their masts before our very eyes and perhaps slip away in the night. There was, in addition, the danger they would adopt the infamous course others have taken in such a situation and avoid prosecution by consigning their cargo to the sea.

  Terry volunteered at once. Davey Clarke wanted to go, but Harrington decreed they couldn’t risk another midshipman.

  “We’d have a fine time keeping the ship afloat with both of our young gentlemen laid up, Davey.”

  The hands obviously needed encouragement. Four men stepped forward. The expressions on the rest of them convinced Harrington he had to give Bonfors some support.

  “A double share for every man who volunteers,” Harrington called out. “Taken from the captain’s portion.”

  A ball from the slaver’s stern gun ploughed into the water forty feet from Sparrow’s port side. Bonfors’s arm shot toward the splash while it was still hanging over the waves. “It’s the easiest money you’ll ever earn, lads. You’ve seen how these fellows shoot.”

  In the end, fifteen men shuffled up to the line. That would leave ten on the Sparrow —enough to get the ship back to port if worse came to worst.

  Giva smiled. “He just doubled their profit, didn’t he? He didn’t mention that in his report.”

  Harrington placed himself in the front of the boat. Terry sat in the back, where the ranking officer would normally sit.

  Their positions wouldn’t matter that much during the approach. The slavers would be firing down from the deck. They would all be equally exposed. When they initiated the assault, however, he had to be in front. The whole enterprise might fail if he went down—but it was certain to fail if the men felt their captain was huddling in the rear. The assault had been his idea, after all.

  They had boarded the boat on Sparrow’s starboard side, with Sparrow’s hull between them and the enemy guns. For the first few seconds after Terry gave the order, they traveled along the hull. Then they cleared the bow.

  And there it was. There was nothing between him and the stern gun of the enemy ship but a hundred yards of sunlight and water.

  Terry was supposed to steer them toward the rear of the slaver’s starboard side. They had agreed he would aim them at a point that would accomplish two objectives. He would keep the boat outside the angle the slaver’s broadside could cover and he would minimize the time they would spend inside the stern gun’s field of fire. Terry was the best man to hold the tiller. No one on Sparrow had a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of nautical artillery.

  They had overcome their boat’s initial resistance as they had slid down Sparrow’s hull. Terry called out his first firm “Stroke!” and the bow shot toward its destination. Terry gave the rowers two cycles of stroke and lift at a moderate pace. Then he upped the pace and kept increasing it with every cycle.

  Every push of the oars carried them out of the danger presented by the stern gun. But it also carried them toward the armed men who were crowding around the rail.

  Harrington’s hands tightened on the weapons he was holding—a pistol in his right hand, a cutlass in his left. He was keeping his fingers on the butt of the pistol, well away from the trigger and the possibility he would fire the gun by accident and leave himself one bullet short and looking like a fool. Two more pistols were tucked into his belt, right and left. The men behind him were all equipped with two pistols, two loaded muskets wrapped in oilcloth, and a cutlass laid across their feet.

  The stern gun flashed. The impulse to squeeze himself into a package the size of his hat seemed irresistible but he focused his eyes on the side of the slaver and discovered he could hold himself fixed in place until he heard the bang of the gun reaching him from a distance that seemed as remote as the moons of Jupiter.

  “Stroke … lift … stroke … lift.”

  Was there anything more beautiful than the crash of a gun that had just fired in your direction? The noise had made its way across the water and you were still alive. You could be certain four pounds of iron had sailed harmlessly past you, instead of slamming into your bones or knocking holes in your boat and mutilating your shipmates.

  “That should be the last we’ll hear from that thing,” a voice muttered behind him.

  “I should hope so,” a brasher voice said. “Unless these niggerwhippers have picked up some pointers from Mr. Terry in the last half hour.”

  The second voice belonged to a hand named Bobby Dawkins—a veteran in his fourth decade who was noted for his monkeyish agility and the stream of good-natured comments he bestowed on everything that happened around him. Dawkins had been the first man to volunteer after Harrington had augmented the cash reward.

  Armed men were lining up along the rail of the slave ship. More men were falling in behind them.

  Emory ran his eyes down the rail picking out faces that looked particularly vicious or threatening. He had begun his recording as a weapon in his contest with Giva but he was beginning to think along other lines. He wanted a personal record of this—the kind of record a tourist would make. It wouldn’t be as sharp as Giva’s work but it would be his—a personal view of his ancestor’s courage.

  The slavers started firing their muskets when the boat was still fifty yards from its destination. Harrington had been hoping they would waste a few of their shots but he still felt himself flinch when he saw the first flash. Everybody else in the boat had something to do. The hands had to row. Terry had to steer. He had to sit here and be a target.

  He knew he should give his men a few words of encouragement but he couldn’t think of a single phrase. His mind had become a blank sheet. Was he afraid? Was this what people meant when they said someone was paralyzed?

  The slavers shoved two African women up to the rail. The men in the center of the firing line stepped aside and more slaves took their place.

  “The swine,” Dawkins said. “Bloody. Cowardly. Bastards.”

  Black faces stared at the oncoming boat. Harrington peered at their stupefied expressions and realized they didn’t have the slightest idea they were being used as shields. They had been pushed in chains along trails that might be hundreds of miles long. They had been packed into a hold as if they were kegs of rum. They were surrounded by men who didn’t speak their language. By now they must be living in a fog.

  “Make sure you aim before you shoot. Make these animals feel every ball you fire.”

  He was bellowing with rage. He would have stood up in the boat if he hadn’t been restrained by years of training. He knew he was giving his men a stupid order. He knew there was no way they could shoot with that kind of accuracy. It didn’t matter. The slavers had provoked emotions that were as uncontrollable as a hurricane.

  More slaves were shoved to the railing. Muskets banged. Slavers were actually resting their guns on the shoulders of the slaves they were using for cover.

  “We’re inside their guns,” Terry yelled. “I’ll take us forward.”

  Harrington pointed at a spot just aft of the forward gun. “Take us there. Between one and two. First party—stow your oars. Shoulder your muskets. Wait for my order.”

  They had worked this out before they had boarded the boat. Half the men would guide the boat during the final approach. The other half would pick up their muskets and prepare to fight.

  Giva had stopped making comments. Her face had acquired the taut, focused lines of a musician or athlete who
was working at the limits of her capacity. She was scanning the drama taking place outside the bubble while she simultaneously tracked the images on six screens and adjusted angles and subjects with quick, decisive motions of her hands.

  Emory had noted the change in her attitude and turned his attention to his own record. What difference did it make how she felt? The people who saw the finished product would see brave men hurling themselves into danger. Would anybody really care why they did it?

  Musket balls cracked in the air around the boat. Metal hammered on the hull. Four members of the slaver crew were running toward the spot where Harrington planned to board. The rest of them were staying near the middle and firing over their human shields.

  “Hold her against the side,” Harrington yelled. “Throw up the grappling hooks.”

  The four hands who had been given the job threw their grappling hooks at the rail. The man beside Harrington tugged at the rope, to make sure it was firm, and Harrington fired his first pistol at the ship and handed the gun to one of the rowers. He grabbed the rope and walked himself up the side of the hull, past the gun that jutted out of the port on his left. His cutlass dangled from a loop around his wrist.

  He knew he would be most vulnerable when he went over the rail. His hands would be occupied. He would be exposed to gunfire and hand-to-hand attacks. He seized the rail with both hands as soon as he came in reach and pulled himself over before he could hesitate.

  Four men were crouching on the roof of the rear deckhouse. A gun flamed. Harrington jerked his left pistol out of his belt and fired back. He charged at the deckhouse with his cutlass raised.

  The slavers fired their guns and scampered off the deckhouse. Harrington turned toward the bow, toward the men who were using the slaves as shields. His boarding party was crowding over the rails. He had half a dozen men scattered beside him. Most of them were firing their muskets at the slavers and their flesh and blood bulwarks.

  “Use your cutlasses! Make these bastards bleed!”

  He ran across the deck with his cutlass held high. He could hear himself screaming like a wild man. He had tried to think about the best way to attack while they had been crossing the water. Now he had stopped thinking. They couldn’t stand on the deck and let the animals shoot at them.

  The Africans’ eyes widened. They twisted away from the lunatics rushing toward them and started pushing against the bodies behind them. The slavers had overlooked an important fact—they were hiding behind a wall that was composed of conscious, intelligent creatures.

  The African directly in front of Harrington was a woman. She couldn’t turn her back on him because of her chains but she had managed to make a half turn. The man looming behind her was so tall she didn’t reach his shoulder. The man was pointing a pistol at Harrington and the woman was clawing at his face with one hand.

  The pistol sounded like a cannon when it fired. Harrington covered the deck in front of him in two huge leaps—the longest leaps he had ever taken—and brought his cutlass down on the slaver with both hands.

  Steel sliced through cloth and bit into the slaver’s collarbone. The man’s mouth gaped open. He fell back and Harrington shouldered the female slave aside and hoisted his legs over the chain dangling between her and the captive on her right.

  Emory was clamping his jaw on the kind of bellow overwrought fans emitted at sports events. Giva had shifted the bubble to a location twenty-five meters from the side of the slave ship. He could see and hear every detail of Harrington’s headlong rush.

  Half a dozen men had joined Harrington’s assault. More had fallen in behind as they had come over the side. Most of the men in the first rank were running at a crouch, about a step behind their captain. One sailor was holding his hand in front of his face, as if he thought he could stop a bullet with his palm. Emory had been watching combat scenes ever since he was a boy but no actor had ever captured the look on these men’s faces—the intense, white-faced concentration of men who knew they were facing real bullets.

  A slaver backed away from the pummeling fists of a tall, ribby slave and fired at the oncoming sailors. For a moment Emory thought the shot had gone wild. Then he glanced toward the rear of the assault. A sailor who had just pulled himself over the side was sagging against the rail.

  Giva had expanded her display to eight monitors. Her hands were flying across her screens as if she were conducting the action taking place on the ship.

  The slavers in front of Harrington were all falling back. Most of them seemed to be climbing the rigging or ducking behind boats and deck gear. On his right, his men had stopped their rush and started working their muskets with a ragged, hasty imitation of the procedure he had drilled into them when he had decided it would be a useful skill if they ever actually boarded a ship. They would never load and fire like three-shots-to-the-minute redcoats but they were doing well enough for a combat against a gang who normally fought unarmed primitives.

  The slaver captain—Captain Zachary?—was standing on the front deckhouse, just behind the rail. He stared at Harrington across the heads of the slavers who were scattered between them and Harrington realized he was pulling a rod out of the pistol he was holding in his left hand.

  It was one of those moments when everything around you seems to stand still. Harrington’s cutlass dropped out of his hand. He reached for the pistol stuck in his belt. He pulled it out and cocked it—methodically, with no haste—with the heel of his left hand.

  On the deckhouse, Zachary had poured a dab of powder into the firing pan without taking his eyes off Harrington. He cocked the gun with his thumb and clutched it in a solid two-handed grip as he raised it to the firing position.

  “Look at that!” Emory said. “Are you getting that, Giva? They’re facing each other like a pair of duelists.”

  If this had been a movie, Emory realized, the director would have captured the confrontation between Harrington and Zachary from at least three angles—one long shot to establish that they were facing each other, plus a close-up for each combatant. How did you work it when you were shooting the real thing and you couldn’t reenact it several times with the camera placed in different positions? He turned his head and peered at Giva’s screens.

  Giva’s hands were hopping across her screens. She had centered the gunfight in a wide-view, high angle shot in the second screen in her top row.

  Zachary’s hands flew apart. The tiny figure on Giva’s screen sagged. The life-size figure standing on the real ship clutched at his stomach with both palms.

  The captain of the slaver received a mortal bullet wound during the fray, Harrington had written. His removal from the mêlée soon took the fight out of our adversaries. There had been no mention that Harrington himself had fired the decisive shot.

  “Is that all you got?” Emory said. “That one long shot?”

  He had searched her screens twice, looking for a closeup of the duel. Half of Giva’s screens seemed to be focused on the slaves.

  Giva jabbed at her number three screen. Emory glanced at the scene on the ship and saw the African woman Harrington had shoved aside stiffening as if she were having a fit. The image on the screen zoomed to a close-up and the camera glimpsed a single glassy eye before the woman’s head slumped forward.

  Giva pulled the camera back and framed the body sprawling on the deck. The woman’s only garment had been a piece of blue cloth she had wrapped around her breasts and hips. The big wound just above her left breast was clearly visible.

  “You got him, sir! Right in the bastard’s stomach!”

  Bobby Dawkins was moving into a position on Harrington’s right. He had a raised cutlass in his right hand and he was waving a pistol with his left.

  More men took their places beside Dawkins. Nobody was actually stepping between Harrington and the enemy but they were all making some effort to indicate they were willing to advance with their captain.

  Harrington’s hands had automatically stuffed the empty pistol into his belt. He dropped i
nto an awkward crouch and picked up his cutlass. Most of the slavers in front of him were looking back at the deckhouse.

  “You just lost the most dramatic event of the whole assault—something we’d never have guessed from the printed record.”

  “I can zoom in on the scene when I’m editing,” Giva muttered. “I’m a pro, Emory. Let me work.”

  “So why do you need the close-up you just got? Why do you have so many cameras focused on the slaves? Couldn’t you edit that later, too?”

  Four hands were standing beside Harrington. Three more hands were standing a pair of steps behind them. Three of them had muskets pressed into their shoulders. The other four were cursing and grunting as they worked their way through various sections of the reloading drill.

  “Hold your fire!” Harrington snapped. “Train your piece on a target but hold your fire.”

  He heard the jumpy excitement in his voice and knew it would never do. Use the voice you use when the wind is whipping across the deck, he told himself. Pretend you’re thundering at the mast and Davey Clarke has the lookout.

  His right arm was raising his sword above his head. “Your captain has fallen! Yield. Lay down your arms. Lay down your arms or I’ll order my men to keep firing.”

  “Is that your idea of scholarship, Giva—another weepy epic about suffering victims?”

  John Harrington knew he would be talking about this moment for the rest of his life. He knew he had managed to sound like a captain was supposed to sound—like a man who had absolute control of the situation and assumed everyone who heard him would obey his orders. Now he had to see if they really would submit. He had to stand here, fully exposed to a stray shot, and give them time to respond.