Arabella of Mars

by David D. Levine

  “What is the point of trimming the sails while pedaling?” Arabella asked the captain during one of their increasingly rare sessions together. She understood enough of aerial navigation now to know that the trim of the sails was normally adjusted only when passing through an unfavorable wind or to catch a favorable one, but now there was no hope of finding any wind better than the one in which they were embedded.

  “When we pedal,” the captain explained, “the ship gains a bit of way, which the sails can use to change her course. A good ship, with a strong and experienced crew, can turn one hundred and eighty degrees in less than ten minutes. And we must turn the ship smartly and accurately if we are to bring our cannon properly to bear upon the enemy.”

  Arabella swallowed. “So she is indeed an enemy?” The other ship’s behavior, drawing directly closer and closer, had been seen by all the men as an ill sign, but some still held out hope she might be another Marsman, bending her course to match Diana’s out of a need of supplies or succor.

  “She is no Company ship,” he replied, his expression grim. “We’ve signaled with cannon, and she has failed to respond in kind.” He stared past Arabella’s shoulder, his gaze directed through the hull at the other ship’s location. “And, as such, I am sorry to tell you that this will be our last session together until … until after we are well clear of her.”

  “I see,” Arabella said, and swallowed hard.

  * * *

  That night, swaddled in her hammock between the warm and snoring bodies of the other men, Arabella could not sleep despite her body’s exhaustion.

  What would the coming days bring? Would there be battle, or merely an encounter with another, albeit strangely uncommunicative, merchant ship? And if there was battle, what then?

  It was not only concern for Arabella’s own safety that kept her mind awhirl with desperate trepidation. After so many weeks aboard Diana, she had formed good working relationships with most of the crew, and despite her continued deception of them she considered many of them friends or at least comrades. The captain, too, had earned … her trust and professional loyalty, she told herself. If the other ship did indeed prove to be a pirate or corsair, any of them might be injured or killed in the coming action.

  But worst of all, if Arabella was killed, or if Diana was delayed or thrown off course, she might not reach Mars in time to prevent her wretched cousin Simon from carrying out his nefarious scheme. He would deceive the gentle-hearted Michael and do him in … and then, by the inexorable laws of entail, Mother, Fanny, and Chloë would be left penniless. As well as Arabella herself, of course.

  From beneath her stiff and grimy shirt she drew the precious locket with her brother’s portrait. Though the portrait was barely visible in the slivers of light that crept in through gaps in the decking above, still in the dimness that well-loved and well-remembered face seemed clear, and she thought with fond reminiscence of the warm and happy day on which the portrait and its fellow had been painted. “I will save you, Michael,” she whispered. “Somehow.”

  She kissed the locket gently before secreting it away.

  * * *

  Suddenly a thunder of drums startled Arabella awake. Despite every thing, she’d managed to drift off.

  “Action stations!” cried a voice—Kerrigan’s—as the drums’ booming rattle continued to echo throughout the ship. A clamor of other voices repeated the command. “Action stations! Action stations, ye lubbers!”

  Heart pounding, Arabella scrambled from her imprisoning hammock. All around her other men did the same, a confusion of limbs and scattered clothing flying every which way through the dimness. Warm and pungent bodies struck her from every direction as she struggled to roll up her hammock at the same time as every other man.

  Suddenly the confusion and clamor stilled, every man stopping with bated breath. Arabella too paused, straining her ears toward the sound she thought or feared she’d heard above the men’s noise.

  And then it came a second time.

  The ringing distant boom of cannon.

  With renewed vigor the men scrambled to ready themselves for battle.

  * * *

  Arabella fought her way through the tumbling crowd of floating men, up the ladder, and on to the deck to stow her bedroll. She emerged into a scene of furious chaos, topmen scrambling up the masts while most of the crew milled about on the deck. Despite all their drill, in the actual event they were acting more like a herd of frightened shokari than seasoned airmen.

  For Arabella’s own part, though she knew where she was needed, as she shoved the tightly rolled bundle of all her possessions in beside the others she paused for a brief moment to glance at the sky.

  The other ship now hung well above the beam, twice as big as even Earth’s enormous moon. A sleek four-master she was, the great cross of her sails showing she was pointed directly toward Diana, and rippling at her stern Arabella saw the French colors—blue, white, and red—marking her as no mere pirate but a deadly corsair. Even as Arabella watched, a quadruple flash and burst of smoke showed at the crux of that cross—four guns to go with her four masts. A long moment later came the rolling bang-ba-bang-bang of the report.

  Someone shouted, “Hit the deck!”

  Arabella dove below the rail, holding firmly to the edge of a scupper. A long, howling wail marked the passage of a cannonball through the air somewhere above her head, with others a bit farther off.

  She had just time to think they’d gotten lucky when the deck gave a violent jerk beneath her hands and a monstrous shattering crash assailed her ears.

  An incoherent babble of shouts and screams followed, including a long high shriek of pain that made the hairs stand up on the back of Arabella’s neck. She could not stop herself from looking.

  The ball had struck not fifty feet from where she cowered beneath the rail, tearing a long splintering gouge across a stretch of deck that Arabella had holystoned just ten hours earlier. Fragments and slivers of golden khoresh-wood, some longer than her arm, sped tumbling through the air in every direction.

  One of them had impaled an airman, the jagged splinter thrust like a sword right through his stomach. Screaming, his face contorted in agony, he rotated in midair, grasping tight to the splinter with both hands as though this could somehow halt his tumble.

  His name was West. He was proud of his fine white teeth, and he carved the most delightful little figures from Venusian scalewood.

  Red drops gouted from the wound, scattering into the air as he twisted and tumbled in pain.

  Paralyzed by this horrific sight, Arabella could do no more than gape, holding firm to the edge of the scupper. She knew her place was on the gun deck. Her crew needed her. Yet to budge from this spot would expose her to a fate as bad as West’s, or worse. Her fingers clamped trembling to the wood.

  But one voice made itself heard above the chaos: Kerrigan’s. “Action stations!” he called, firm and clear. “To your posts, d—n you!” Arabella looked to the quarterdeck.

  The captain stood there, feet planted on the deck as firmly as though Diana were a ship of the sea, long brass telescope fixed to his eye. A stout leather belt at his waist, fixed by straps to two turnbuckles abaft the wheel, held him in place against whatever maneuvers the coming battle might bring.

  If any one could carry them through this chaos, it would be he.

  If any one could.

  The captain lowered the telescope and cast a stern glance across the deck, assessing the condition of his ship and crew. For a moment he and Arabella locked eyes. The message of his stark expression was plain: Get to your station!

  She leapt with alacrity to the forward ladder, hauling herself hand over hand down the guide rope to her action station in the gun deck.

  * * *

  The situation in the gun deck was chaotic, all three gun crews struggling to free the cannon from the chains and bindings which kept them secure when not in use. Not one of the three gun crews was entire; West, the captain of number two,
was now writhing on the deck above, leaving that crew floundering and leaderless. For her own part, Arabella hung back, recognizing that adding another body to the scrum around the guns would slow rather than speed the process.

  Another bang and jarring shudder ran through the ship’s frame. Arabella risked a glance through the nearest gun-port, but the corsair was nowhere to be seen. Plainly the other ship had the advantage; Arabella prayed that situation would not continue long.

  At last one of the officers, not Kerrigan, appeared on the gun deck and began chivvying the men into some semblance of order. At his command Arabella clapped on to one of the hawsers and helped to haul the number three gun into position to be loaded. As soon as it was ready she sprang away for the magazine.

  Her traversal of the length of the ship had a nightmare quality. Shattered fragments of khoresh-wood spun and tumbled everywhere, a deadly litter of aerial flotsam. Men cried out in pain or floated limp in the air. Drops of blood spattered every surface; the very air tasted of iron. Bang-bang-ba-bang, came the quadruple report of the French guns, followed shortly by the howl of cannonballs through the rigging. A clean miss, this time, but as the ships drew closer together Diana could not continue that luck.

  At the magazine a new man worked nervously with the wooden scoop and bucket, filling the charges much less rapidly than his predecessor. Arabella, wondering what had become of the previous man and hoping the new one would learn his job quickly, grabbed a charge from the loose floating pile and leapt away.

  Returning to the upper deck from the magazine, she was shocked to find sunlight streaming in through a ragged hole in the hull. Smoke and slivers of wood made the sunbeams seem as sharp and hard-edged as the rough fragments that tumbled in the air within them, seeming to glow and flicker as they passed from shadow into light. A knot of frightened, confused men were trying to tend to the several wounded, their pandemonium of shouts and screams making the scene still more infernal.

  Then Higgs, the boatswain, appeared, sticking his head down from the main-deck above. “Get those wounded clear!” he shouted. “Where there’s one ball, a second won’t be far behind!”

  At once the men changed tactics, dragging the screaming wounded aft to the sickbay, and Arabella dashed down the ladder to the lower deck, hoping to find a clear path to the gun deck. A moment later, true to Higgs’s word, a second ball came crashing in behind her.

  Most of the crew on the lower deck were laboring at the pedals, grunting and straining more feverishly than she’d ever seen before. Binion exhorted them to still greater effort, hammering the drum brutally, but she paid him no mind as she shot the length of the deck and made her way to the gun deck.

  “There you are, d—n you!” cried the officer as she tossed the charge to Gowse. “Where are the others?”

  Arabella looked around. All three guns were now unshipped and awaiting their charges, but she was the only powder monkey in sight. “I don’t know, sir!” she cried, even as Gowse and the rest of his crew rushed to load the number three gun.

  “D—n!” the officer swore again. “Well, hop to your duty, lad!”

  Arabella hopped, speeding off to the magazine again. Behind her she heard the officer shouting to someone to find him two more powder monkeys.

  * * *

  Back and forth Arabella dashed, gun deck to magazine and back again and again. Forward, the gun deck was a sunlit Hades of smoke and noise and furious shouting, three hard rectangular shafts of light from the gun-ports sweeping the scene as Diana swerved and tumbled in her attempt to avoid the corsair’s shots. Abaft, the magazine was a dark Hades of quiet, desperate activity, two ill-trained crewmen gingerly scooping the dangerous powder into measured charges as quickly as they dared. Between, the upper and lower decks were a raucous Hades of flying fragments, tumbling casks, and airmen slick with sweat or blood scrambling hither and yon. A dozen holes or more pierced the hull, each a deadly forest of smashed timbers which had to be navigated past.

  On each traverse Arabella was forced to find a new route, as new damage or crowds of men or debris blocked her path. At one point she was nearly crushed by two crates that floated free, knocked from their lashings by cannonballs when the ship suddenly changed course and sent them crashing toward the starboard hull. Only her sharp eye and the fortunate presence of a heavy floating barrel, which she could use to change her course with a strong kick, had saved her then. Another time she collided with an airman who’d fallen unconscious at the pedals—struck in the head by flying wreckage or simply passed out from exhaustion—and drifted from his station unexpectedly.

  When she arrived at the gun deck, she joined with her crew to get the number three gun loaded and aimed. It was hot, furious work, full of shouting and swearing and peering through the ports in hopes of spotting the other ship. And when the corsair did appear, pulsers whirling as she moved rapidly against the clouds beyond, a great wordless growl burst from the gun crews as they strove to haul the heavy guns into position before she could get away again.

  To Arabella’s eye the French ship did not seem damaged at all.

  “Fire!” cried the officer, and Arabella leapt away to fetch another charge of powder. Behind her the immense triple crash of Diana’s guns was followed by a groan of disappointment—another miss.

  Exiting the gun deck she found her way blocked by a tangled knot of splintered wood, with a deadly cloud of nails spewing from a shattered cask like an angry swarm of chakti. A harsh, sharp smell of sawdust and iron assaulted her nose. Quickly she sprang off the coaming of the gun deck hatch, sailing with tucked arms and legs up the companionway to the upper deck just as the nails clattered against the bulkhead behind her.

  * * *

  Arabella shot out of the companionway into a bright, airy, screaming maelstrom. Blinking against the unaccustomed light, she caught herself on a stay and took a moment to orient herself.

  The deck was a tangled mess of spars, sails, and rigging that smelled of gunpowder and blood. One of the main yards lay diagonally across Diana’s waist, a shambles of rope and Venusian silk that blocked her passage and her view. Above, the mainmast still seemed whole, though several topmen floated limp and bleeding against a background of roiling smoke.

  And then, rising above the larboard rail like some malevolent moon, the corsair hove into view. Near enough that Arabella could easily make out the rapacious grins on the faces of her crew, she turned as she climbed, yawing about to bring her guns to bear on Diana’s midsection. The French ship was not undamaged—one mast was little more than a mass of splinters held together by shreds of silk—but plainly she was still very much able to maneuver. Abaft, her pulsers whirled like a windmill in a gale.

  The corsair’s four gun-ports gaped, black and malevolent, seeming to grow larger as the ship swiveled herself to point directly toward Arabella.

  With a shriek, Arabella flung herself away from those four hideous maws, flying aft, hiding herself in the tangled silk of the fallen yard. A moment later the corsair’s quadruple report sounded, the flash of her guns just visible through the waving silk, almost immediately followed by a shattering crash as the balls struck Diana. The ship jerked at the impact like a wounded living thing.

  Arabella disentangled herself from the imprisoning fabric, finding herself on the far side of the wreckage. She was near the quarterdeck now. Abaft, officers on the quarterdeck orbited the sun of their captain, who stood, still strapped in place, pointing and calling out commands.

  Arabella looked over her shoulder. From here the French ship could not be seen at all.

  The quarterdeck was officers’ country, inviolate—no mere airman could enter that sacred space uninvited. Nevertheless, Arabella sprang from her position immediately, sailing through the stinking, littered air directly toward the captain. “The corsair!” she called as she flew, pointing behind herself. “She’s right over there!”

  Kerrigan whirled to face her, anger showing on his blood-spattered face, but the captain called back, “
Where?”

  Catching herself on a stay, Arabella pointed through the obscuring silk. As though to confirm her observation, the unseen corsair’s cannon sounded again, directly in line with her pointing finger.

  For a moment Captain Singh’s brow furrowed in furious concentration. Then he said, “Ashby, report to the magazine. Tell them to provide you with an explosive charge. Carry it to your gun and instruct your captain to target the enemy’s magazine. I will endeavor to provide him with a clear shot.”

  Before she could even reply “Aye, aye, sir!” the captain had already turned away, barking commands to his officers.

  * * *

  Arabella hauled herself down the rail to the after hatch, squeezing past two men armed with cutlasses against an anticipated boarding attempt, belowdecks to the magazine. There she relayed the captain’s order to the wan and trembling men in charge.

  “This is the only one left,” said one of them, handing her a ball equipped with a ropy fuse. “Best make good use of it.”

  “Aye, aye,” Arabella said, and took the precious, deadly thing, along with a charge of powder.

  Recalling the nails and other wreckage in her path, Arabella realized she’d have to return via the upper deck. Tucking the ball under one arm and the charge under the other, she propelled herself with legs alone back up the after companionway and out into the light.

  The scene here was little different than before—scrambling airmen below, smoke and wreckage above, the corsair still hidden from sight by the fallen yard—but even as she made her way forward she heard a repeated call of “Hold fast! Hold fast for maneuvers!”

  She was just then passing the mainstays, thick diagonal ropes that held the mainmast in position, but with the ball and charge under her arms she had no hands free. At the last moment she reached out one foot, snagging the last stay and bringing herself to a sudden halt. Juggling her deadly cargo under one arm, she twined her legs and the other arm around the tense and heavy cable and held tight.

  “Strike all starboard and larboard sails!” came the captain’s next command. “Strike mains’l! Sheet home main royals and t’gallants! Pulsers full ahead!”