Balance of Power

by Stableford, Brian

  “What weapons do we have aboard?” I asked Al’ha. He shrugged. “Cross’ows,” he replied.

  “They can’t have many rifles,” I mused. “And hardly any ammunition if they’ve been shooting up the coastal villages. Lots of knives and the like—plus my dart gun. But given the advantage of our crewmen in hand-to-hand encounters, I reckon we can....”

  Then a nasty thought struck me.

  “You threw the contents of the armory overboard?” I said to Mariel.

  “Most of it,” she confirmed. “But there were at least half a dozen guns ashore, with some ammunition.”

  “And then you went to the hold?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t by any chance abstract from there the case containing the dynamite?”

  “Oh!” she said. “No. No, I didn’t.”

  “In that case,” I said, “we’d better pray that they haven’t rigged up a catapult.” It was meant to be a joke, however feeble. All they’d really need would be a man who could throw an object weighing a couple of hundred grams a couple of hundred feet. Not difficult.

  The New Hope was edging closer. Jan was still on top, waiting for an answer. It came in the form of a loud crack! and a little dart that struck the outer rail of the ship. It missed Jan by twenty feet, but it was the thought that counted. I decided that it was no use pretending any longer, and I swung myself out of the wheelhouse up on to the roof to join Jan.

  “Ogburn!” I yelled, still kneeling and trying to get some of the bulk of the mast between myself and the New Hope. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Ogburn had never been a talkative man. The next dart struck the wheelhouse only half a meter from my hand. I jumped down to the deck, and Jan jumped with me. He shouted a stream of orders in the language of Ak’lehr, and Al’ha spun the wheel to turn us away. Someone went below, presumably to mobilize our defenses, such as they were.

  “No firearms at all?” I asked Jan.

  “The army has first call on firearms,” he said dryly. “The entire supply is bought up as it leaves the factories. It’s a big army and it keeps busy.”

  “Why is he attacking us?” asked Charles, from the shadow of the wheelhouse.

  “Because he’s scared,” I replied. “He’s found out that the empire is bigger than he is, even though he has no idea how big. He wants to go home. My guess is he daren’t try to raid on shore any more, so he intends to plunder local shipping. The fact that there are humans aboard doesn’t alter his plan one way or the other. He must be pretty desperate.”

  “If it comes to a fight,” said Jan, “we can win.”

  “It is a fight,” I assured him. “But we’re going to have to play dirty to stop him using the explosives. We’re going to have to offer to surrender. Offer him our supplies—once he knows we’re fitted out for an ocean voyage he’ll have to bargain. It’s his best chance of getting home. He won’t mean it, we won’t mean it...but we can both pretend long enough to get us into a better position. Get your men ready, Jan. I’ll do the talking.”

  All the while the New Hope was taking the best of our wind. She was only forty or forty-five meters adrift of us, though she was almost directly behind us now, rocking in our wake. At any time she could drift to one side and come up abreast of us again, but Al’ha kept us turning while he could. There was only so far we could go without losing the wind altogether and setting ourselves up as sitting ducks. We only had minutes to play with—theirs was the better ship and they were probably the better sailors.

  I edged my way toward the stern, to get into a better position to hail the New Hope. Nobody followed me.

  “Ogburn!” I shouted. “Hold your fire. We’re unarmed. If you sink us you’ll lose our supplies. We have all your instruments and supplies for a journey to Lambda. You can have it all if you’ll let us go back to the river mouth unharmed.”

  That sounded like a reasonable proposition for an unarmed idiot to make. Ogburn would murder us anyhow, but if he thought we were at his mercy he might think we were stupid enough or desperate enough to try to buy him off. The prospect of getting Nieland’s instruments and all our food—not to mention his compass needle—must have really made his mouth water.

  “Heave to, then!” came an answering voice. “We won’t hurt you. Get the supplies and the instruments into your boats. We’ll take it aboard. Then you can go back.”

  I expressed my true feelings about that statement with succinct disgust, but silently. I shouted back instant agreement.

  Jan shouted more orders, and we came about to port, letting the New Hope come broadside on again. Long minutes passed while they maneuvered into the position they wanted. They didn’t approach much closer than they already had. They were taking no chances. There was less than fifty meters between the two ships, though. And we were unobtrusively drifting closer.

  “Come on!” howled the man in the rigging of the New Hope. “Start loading your boats! Move it, or we start shooting!”

  I moved back to stand beside Jan. We both stood clear of cover, as though accepting the situation. Along the deck, several Ore’l were poised out of sight, with crossbows ready. We couldn’t move them right up to the bulwarks, or even into any position from which they’d be able to move with the requisite speed. They were just too big.

  “Take it slowly,” I said. “Inch by inch.”

  “Al’ha knows what he’s doing,” he replied.

  He barked out further orders, and a couple of crewmen emerged from the hold carrying casks and boxes. They placed them ostentatiously in the boat on the port side—facing the New Hope. Jan and I went below with them, and Charles and Christian joined us. With six of us working it wouldn’t take very long to load up the boat, but it would take at least three trips to transfer the stuff from one ship to the other. It wasn’t a very big boat.

  When I brought out my second load I could see that the gap between the ships had shrunk perceptibly. And now there was an Ore’l, with a bolt already fitted to his crossbow, crouched in the shadow of the boat. As we carried the bulky bundles out of the hold we provided a shield for two more to get into the same position.

  “Use the other boat!” shouted the man relaying Ogburn’s orders. He was dangerously close, now—he was only a few meters up in the rigging, but soon he’d be able to see too much as he looked down and across at the deck of Ilah’y’su. Next time I went below I took Mariel with me.

  “Get ready,” I said to Jan, as I paused just beneath the hatchway.

  Jan looked out over the rim, judging the nearness of the other ship. He called out to Al’ha in a perfectly normal voice, safe in the knowledge that the crew of the New Hope couldn’t understand a word. Then he picked up a bundle and walked slowly out to the boat, letting Ogburn’s men watch him every inch of the way.

  Al’ha swung the wheel, and we headed straight for the New Hope on a collision course.

  They opened fire.

  I kept my head down and waited out the long, long seconds. At any moment there might be a bang loud enough to spell destruction. But none came. They had been too confident. Bullets and darts hit the wood of the deck and the wheelhouse, but did no damage at all. Arrows crossed the water in the other direction, and the man on the rigging tumbled from his post, screaming.

  The time seemed to drag on forever while we cut on and on through empty water. And then there was an appalling grinding sound as the timbers of the two ships met. Howling like a madman Jan leapt from cover behind the loaded boat and led his crewmen leaping across the sealed gap. Our men came out from everywhere, firing as they came and fighting to get an opportunity to board the enemy. I don’t know how many got across before the gap opened again, but it must have been seven at least, and one who didn’t make it landed in the water and began to swim through the loose weed to clamber up the side of the New Hope.

  Charles and Christian, with three more Ore’l, began lowering the boat, hurling out the casks and boxes as they did so. They worked so furious
ly that they had all but unloaded her in the half-minute before she was too low for them to hurl more back on Ilah’y’su’s deck. It hit the water with a great splash, and they too were off to join the fight.

  The reinforcements, I knew, would be desperately needed, although it was impossible to tell exactly how the battle on the New Hope’s deck was going. All was chaos, with the sound of guns going off mingling with shouts and howls of pain and anguish.

  As the boat turned to begin its journey one more crewman jumped over the side to join it. Then another figure appeared by my side and without a moment’s pause followed him. It was Piet, apparently as savagely keen to get into the fight as anyone else. I saw Charles haul him out of the water into the bobbing boat, which lurched and spun before resuming its passage across the gap that was widening with every second that passed.

  I moved back into the shelter of the wheelhouse, now inhabited only by Al’ha. He looked at me with an unfathomable expression. I couldn’t tell whether he was censuring me for not joining in the riot. I wasn’t really sure why I hadn’t. It had simply never occurred to me to do so.

  Mariel suddenly appeared by my side again.

  “You should have stayed below!” I hissed.

  “Can’t see what’s happening,” she replied.

  “Los’ win’ now,” muttered Al’ha, who was still trying to turn the ship toward the New Hope and keep us as close as possible. Despite his efforts the gap kept getting wider. There was twenty meters of clear water, now. But the boat had reached its destination, and humans and Ore’l alike were clambering up the side of the New Hope to get into the fight. Only one of the Ore’l was carrying a crossbow—the rest had big knives like machetes—even Piet. I guessed that they must have been transferred to the boat ready for the attack, in with all the other innocent bundles.

  When the reinforcements joined in the chaos seemed to abate somewhat. No guns were firing now—there had been no opportunity for anyone to reload. It was all blades and claws, and on that basis the colony men didn’t stand a chance.

  Five minutes, I knew, would have it won.

  But then I looked directly across into the bridge of the New Hope, and saw the one thing that I feared most of all. I could see Ogburn, not calling orders, not even getting involved in the fight.

  He was setting a light to a fuse dangling from a greasy-gray cylinder, and with perfect calmness he sighted it at me. Our eyes met, and in that exchanged glance there was perfect understanding of the whole situation.

  He raised his arm, aiming at the wheelhouse. It was a throw that anyone could have made, and I knew him well enough to know that his aim was going to be good.

  I tried to push Mariel out of the wheelhouse on the starboard side, but I was thrusting backward with my arms and making no effort to move myself. I just couldn’t take my eyes off Ogburn, and I had the sensation of being able to read his very thoughts as he went through the act of killing me.

  And then something rose from the deck beneath his steady arm...something that was already stained with blood from a blow with an axe that had ripped apart its left shoulder. It was Piet Verheyden, and his machete was already raised high, the sunlight flashing from its blade into my eyes.

  Piet stabbed with all the strength of his one good arm, and as the blade went into Ogburn’s belly my mind’s eye flashed a recapitulated image of a scalpel slicing into Anna’s neck. Then I had to look away because of the dazzling flash of reflected sunlight.

  I had no idea whether Ogburn had made his throw or not. I just dropped to the deck, still pushing at Mariel and pulling at Al’ha.

  I remember saying: “Get down!” in as loud a voice as I could, and repeating it as many times as I could before....

  There was one small bang.

  That was the stick of dynamite Ogburn had intended to throw.

  Then there was a big bang. That was the rest of the case.

  The small bang must have demolished the New Hope’s bridge. The large one blew the heart clean out of the ship.

  It took a long time for the booming in my ears to die away. Until it had, I wasn’t sure what had happened, or which ship had blown, or whether the rest of me was still attached to my head.

  Eventually, though, it was over, and I felt the awesome relief of wholeness.

  Al’ha, who had not dropped to the floor but had at least shielded his head with a furry forearm, said: “Blurry hell!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, weakly. “No need to fret. They were only savages...only savages.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  In the evening, I made the rounds of my various patients. We had picked up a reasonable number of survivors—mostly Ore’l. It had never before occurred to me to consider the advantages of light fur as a protection against blast-burns, but on comparing the injuries of the aliens with the humans we picked up I had to admit that it was a point well worth considering. I came to the conclusion that if God had intended us to invent dynamite he would never have allowed evolution to strip us naked first.

  Only two of Ogburn’s crew had failed to go down (or up, if one considers the explosion rather than the eventual fate of what was left of the New Hope). One was Malpighi, who had one broken leg and some unpleasant but not particularly desperate second-degree burns. The other was Thayer, who had been somewhat more badly affected by the blast—much of his left side was burned and I had taken a number of two-inch splinters out of his flesh. I wasn’t wholly optimistic about his prospects for recovery.

  We had recovered Charles’ body, but the only Verheyden who had actually lived through the attack was Christian. He had had the good fortune to be thrown overboard—deliberately—before the explosion. He had been cut about the arms by flying timber and slightly concussed, but had managed to stay conscious long enough to secure a piece of wreckage which kept him afloat. No one had seen what had happened to Jan. Piet had been blown apart by the explosion on the New Hope’s bridge.

  Apart from a few damaged limbs and minor flesh wounds, Al’ha still had a functioning crew. Only two of the Ore’l had actually been killed, and at least one had been shot dead boarding the New Hope. That seemed to me like extremely good luck—we could easily have lost six or seven.

  The first person I called to see was Thayer, but all I could do was look at him. Conditions weren’t exactly ideal for tending a man so badly wounded, and his fate was decidedly in the lap of the gods. He wasn’t conscious.

  Malpighi, however, was in full possession of what might charitably be described as his faculties. When I checked his burns he complained that I hadn’t set his leg properly.

  “I was a bit seasick at the time,” I said, not exactly oozing sympathy. (The leg was set properly.)

  “It hurts,” he observed.

  “You’ll walk again,” I assured him. “Though where to, I’m not sure.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  I shrugged.

  “Look,” he said, “I was against it. Leaving you like that. I didn’t want to do it. But I had to string along or they’d have dumped me too. It was me stopped them killing you. And I didn’t want to attack your ship, either. When I realized there were humans aboard I begged him to lay off, but that crazy Ogburn....”

  “All this,” I commented, wearily, “is about as likely as a duck-billed platypus swimming a four-minute mile.”

  He didn’t know what a duck-billed platypus was, but he got the gist of the argument.

  “What’ll they do?” he asked.

  “Not up to me,” I commented. “If it was, I’d put on a trial. A big show trial. You know, rather like a circus. I’d try you for crimes against humanity and the Ore’l. Human and alien witnesses, human and alien judges. A nice joint project to symbolize a new era of friendship and cooperation. Ritualize the spirit of unity and all that. I’d sentence you to the maximum possible term of extremely hard labor. The Ore’l will probably want a death penalty, though. They’re not as squeamish as I am.”

  He was scared. He was al
most as angry as he was frightened, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

  “Until then,” I said. “I’ll look after you. It would be a pity if there were no one left to put on trial.”

  After that, I went to see Christian. Mariel was in his cabin playing the ministering angel. He didn’t have any injuries worth looking at so I just sat down on the edge of the bunk and looked at him in my best bedside manner. “Tough day,” I said, tiredly.

  “Yeah,” he drawled. He looked pained and listless. In the space of twenty-four hours he had lost a family, and in a rather untidy manner. I suspected that he had always cared about them a lot more than they had cared about him. Alter all, he was the minority trying to win acceptance and approval. He’d also lost a part-share in an empire, but I don’t think that bothered him much. Maybe he was remembering that the last words he’d exchanged with his brothers had been leading up to a fight.

  “It’s all finished now,” I said gently. “Really finished. Take it easy for now. In time, you’ll pick up the pieces.”

  His dark eyes stared at me from beneath the brows that had nothing of the Verheyden mold.

  “They were right, weren’t they?” he said. “You certainly brought a wind of change into our affairs. Is it really over now, or do I go, too.”

  “They were right,” I admitted. “I didn’t know how right. I was sure as hell booked to play nemesis. But it is over.”

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I glanced at Mariel. She hadn’t told him and she shook her head to say so. Maybe she didn’t know—she hadn’t been in a position to see because I’d been so busy shoving her out of the way.

  “Ogburn was just about to start throwing dynamite at Ilah’y’su,” I said. “He should have known better. One of Y’su’s messengers got there first. It was Piet. Unfortunately, the dynamite was still lit. It went up on the wrong ship. Al’ha says that he saw a thunderbolt come down from heaven to guide Piet’s hand. Myself, I think it was the sunlight reflected off the blade—but you never can tell, can you?”