It was.
Napoleon!
He had been aboard Victoire, yet somehow had survived her destruction. And the two other passengers … yes, they were Fulton and Fouché!
Arabella hoped that the young empress Marie Louise was safe back on Venus rather than blown to bits with Victoire.
But she could spare no further attention for Marie Louise, as a bang and a crash sounded from below, together with a shudder that ran up the length of the mast and nearly flung Arabella away into the crowded air.
The bang had come from the quarterdeck, where Fox had moved to one of the two stern-chasers—small swivel-guns mounted to the taffrail—and fired it in the direction of the fleeing gig. The range was great, and there was much intervening wreckage, but still he fired, and fired again, and again.
The crash, meanwhile, was the sound of a large piece of wreckage slamming into Diana’s deck near the base of the mainmast. Other pieces, even larger and more dangerous, were approaching fast.
Arabella looked ahead. The ship was driving forward at full speed, ever deeper into the cloud of debris, and several more huge chunks of twisted metal were bearing down on her.
She shifted her gaze to Fox. He was still shooting at Napoleon, face twisted with rage, and had taken no notice of the danger into which the ship was heading.
“Ahoy the quarterdeck!” she called from the mast-head. “Flotsam ho!”
Fox did not acknowledge her hail. No one else was near him; the danger from flying debris had driven most of the other crew below for safety’s sake.
“Captain Fox!” she shouted, at the top of her lungs. “Captain Fox!”
He did not respond, nor even look up. Either he had not heard, or did not choose to hear. He simply kept firing the stern-chaser, sending two-pound ball after two-pound ball sailing toward the fleeing Napoleon’s tiny gig.
Arabella began making her way back to the deck, as quickly as she could. She was hampered by the code-book, heavy and awkward, and by the increasing number and size of fragments of Victoire that were filling the air. The men at the pedals belowdecks, unable to see the danger into which they were driving the ship, continued to pedal, following the last order Fox had given them. If the order were not countermanded, the ship would collide with the thickest part of the debris cloud and surely be wrecked.
“Captain Fox!” Arabella continued to cry as she descended the mainmast, dodging flying bits of wreckage, torn sails, and tangled lines. “Captain Fox!”
Then, just as she touched the deck, Captain Singh appeared from belowdecks. Leaping directly from the aft ladder to the quarterdeck and catching himself on the forward rail with one hand, he shouted some imprecation at Fox—Arabella could not make out exactly what he had said, but she had never before seen him so angry.
Fox, still enraged, became even more so at this interruption. He shouted back, something extremely rude, and continued firing at Napoleon.
Then a shadow passed across both men.
Arabella looked up. An enormous, twisted piece of metal was bearing down upon them at great speed. In mere moments it would strike the quarterdeck and smash both captains flat.
The two men had not noticed. They were still shouting at each other.
“Captains!” she cried, but neither of them took any notice.
Without thinking, she leapt—thrusting off the mainmast with the considerable might of legs strengthened by months of pedaling—and shot through the air, even as the wickedly edged chunk of wreckage drew rapidly nearer.
She collided with Captain Singh just before the debris fragment did, pushing him out from under the ragged metal even as it struck the khoresh-wood deck with a sickening, tearing crunch.
Sudden agony ripped through her leg.
Blackness.
26
VISITORS
Time passed. It was a dire time, full of fear and darkness and nausea; a sharp, bright pain and the dreadful sound of sawing; screams, moans, horrible smells—a nightmare from which she could not wake. But eventually the nightmare faded away, and she simply slept, without dreaming.
And then she awoke.
She lay in a hammock—a proper airman’s hammock, clean and straight, laid out in the midshipmen’s berth aboard Diana. Every thing about her told her that she was where she was meant to be, relaxed and calm, drifting comfortably in a state of free descent. She stretched luxuriantly and yawned.
“Welcome back, my dear.”
Arabella turned her head to the voice—the familiar, warm voice of her captain—to see him smiling down at her. His cheeks seemed thin, but he was clean and tidy and attired in a fine civilian coat. “Thank you.”
“Are you in any pain?”
She paused, attentive to her body. “No. Though my right boot is a bit too tight.” She reached to loosen the laces, but his hand gently stopped and held hers before it reached her foot.
“It is not your boot.”
“I … I am not sure what—” And then, suddenly, she knew perfectly well what, and the breath caught in her throat.
“Lie back and rest.”
She ignored him, moving her feet beneath the hammock’s light cover. The left toes were bare, and brushed lightly against the fabric. The right toes …
There were no right toes.
Her blood ran cold. “How much?” she asked, her teeth clenching and her hand squeezing her captain’s hard as she stared into his face, willing him to honesty. “How much have I lost?”
“The right foot, just above the ankle. Nothing more. There is no infection, and the stump is healing very nicely. You have Dr. Barry to thank for this; he did what I am told is an excellent job. It certainly was very quick.”
She went to throw back the covers and see what she had lost, but Captain Singh stopped her with a gentle touch, saying, “There will be time for that later.”
She nodded, swallowing, but still she gently rubbed the truncated limb against the cover, feeling where it ended. The missing foot … the missing foot still felt as though it were there, somehow, yet she could see and feel that it was not. The stump moved disquietingly under the cloth like some small burrowing creature, not a part of her at all.
Arabella was not a vain girl, but the unexpected loss of a part of her body was still distressing. She and her brother would be like book-ends, she thought, clumping about on crutches together. Still, if Nelson could weather a missing arm, she supposed she could learn to cope with a missing foot.
“I have some sketches I would like to show you, when you are ready,” the captain continued. “A prosthesis, with a clockwork mechanism to mimic the foot’s natural spring. I am having some difficulty designing the trigger for action, and I hope you will have some ideas. In any case, it will not be needed until we make planetfall; the lack of one foot should not be much of an encumbrance in free descent.”
“You are always so considerate,” she said, and smiled. “Thank you.”
“It is I who should be thanking you,” he replied. He raised her hand and kissed it.
“For what?”
“For saving my life.”
Arabella’s throat tightened suddenly as she recalled descending ragged metal—smoke and wreckage everywhere—and a sudden desperate leap. “Fox!”
Captain Singh squeezed her hand again. “He survived.” She relaxed the clenched grip which she had not even noticed herself applying to his hand. “Again, thanks to Dr. Barry. His injuries were more severe than yours, but Lady Corey has been diligent in his care and he is expected to recover nicely.”
“Lady Corey?” Arabella raised one eyebrow and smiled.
“Extremely diligent.” Captain Singh returned her smile. “And he has been most receptive to her care.”
Lady Corey had been assiduous in her defense of Fox as a potential husband for Arabella; it should not be a surprise that she, a lonely widow after all, might seek him for herself. “I wish them both the very best.”
“I am relieved at your reaction.” He kissed her
fingers again. “I had thought that there might be some … regret on your part.”
“No.” Now it was she who kissed his fingers. “There might have been some … uncertainty, at first.” His eyes widened at that, and again she squeezed his hand. “But when the critical moment came … when you both were threatened and I was forced to choose without thinking … it was you to whom my heart went out, only you. And my body inevitably followed.”
A little while later, a polite knock on a nearby stanchion caused them to break off their rather intimate embrace. It was Stross, whose expression was quite smug. Gowse, Faunt, and Mills were with him; they at least had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. “We heard you were awake,” said Stross, “and wished to pay our respects and inquire as to your health. I see you are doing quite well.”
“Quite well, sir,” she said, straightening her chemise. “I am pleased to see that you all came through the battle in good health yourselves.”
“Most all of us did,” said Gowse. “Thanks to you, and that amazing maneuver ye worked out. That French monster would for sure have put an end to every mother’s son of us elsewise. Though from all that spinning and tumbling, I nearly shot the cat…”
“Watch yer language,” groused Faunt.
“And the Venusians?” Arabella asked Mills. “Did they all survive?”
“Yes,” Mills replied, nodding slowly. “Every one. You should see them, ma’am. Swimming like guppies, in free descent. So happy to be free.” He bent in the air so that his head was close to hers, and spoke quietly. “I am free too, now.”
“How so?”
“I was slaver once. Then slave, then sailor, then airman … but never forgave myself. Now I have brought fifty slaves to freedom—paid back my debt.” He placed a hand on his breast. “My heart rests.”
“Mrs. Singh!” cried a happy voice. Arabella looked up to see Fox, heavily bandaged but with all his limbs intact, with his night-shirt floating about his feet. Lady Corey was with him, chiding him for leaving his bed without permission, but he hushed her with a gesture. His hand, Arabella noted, then rested briefly on her shoulder … and Lady Corey did not object to this intimacy.
“Mr. Fox,” Arabella replied. “I am very pleased to see you.”
“And I you!”
“It was a very close-run thing for all of us, to be sure.” She allowed a degree of opprobrium to enter her voice, then, to show that she understood his actions had jeopardized all their lives.
“It is true that my pursuit of the tyrant Napoleon was rather … single-minded. But though I nearly died, and Diana was nearly wrecked, I regret nothing! For one of my little cannon-balls managed to disable the gig, and Napoleon and his men were captured. Oh, except Fouché; he was killed. And good riddance!” He rubbed his hands together.
“Has any one told you about Fulton yet?” Lady Corey asked.
“What about him?”
“He is meeting at this moment with the admiral.” She gestured to the deck above, where the great cabin lay. “He has agreed to turn over all his designs to the Navy in exchange for leniency. The man is, to speak frankly, a filthy pig, but there is no doubt he is a mechanical genius, and his inventions will surely ensure that Britannia rules the airlanes for ever more!”
“Nelson is here?”
“Alas, no,” said Captain Singh. “Lord Nelson survived the wreck of Bucephalus, but was shot by a French sniper afterward.” Every one present bowed their heads in respect for the dead. “Dr. Barry deeply regrets that he was unable to save him. He did at least live long enough to know that we had won the battle.”
“I am so sorry to hear this. If he had not destroyed those two swivel-gun turrets, we would never have been able to defeat Victoire. I wanted to thank him.”
“Indeed. He is a great hero—possibly England’s greatest hero ever—and he will be greatly missed.”
“Aye,” mumbled the assembled airmen, and Lady Corey as well.
“The admiral in question,” Captain Singh continued after a respectful pause, “is Vice-Admiral Collingwood, now in charge of the fleet … or what is left of it. After the battle, Diana was the best and least damaged of the surviving ships and he transferred his flag here. Diana will be remaining in the vicinity of Venus, in the role of flagship, until our victory can be consolidated; a detachment of the European Fleet is already on its way to take control of the Venusian airlanes.”
Dr. Barry entered then. “I hear that my favorite patient is awake?”
“Indeed, sir,” Arabella said. “Thanks to you.”
“Tut tut,” the doctor replied modestly. “Only doing my duty.” He shooed out her visitors—except Captain Singh, who refused to leave—examined her briefly, and proclaimed her to be making excellent progress. “Vice-Admiral Collingwood will be here shortly,” he told her then. “He insisted upon being notified as soon as you woke. You are a hero, you know.”
“I?” she replied with unfeigned surprise.
“You. Your navigation, not to mention your personal bravery and sacrifice during the battle”—he gestured to her missing foot—“were absolutely critical to its successful conclusion. Quite an impressive feat, for a mere girl.” He winked then, a brief peculiar gesture which Arabella could not quite fathom.
She did not have a chance to ask him about it, though, as Collingwood himself arrived then. He had a high forehead and kindly eyes, and Dr. Barry bowed out to give them some privacy, closing the door behind himself. “I wish to congratulate you, sir,” he said to Captain Singh, “upon your wife’s recovery.”
“It was entirely her own doing,” the captain replied modestly. “As was our victory, and my own personal survival.”
Arabella was pleased at Captain Singh’s defense of her, but though the admiral’s description of her as merely the captain’s wife rankled, it also rang false … and now, she realized, she was in a position to do something about that. “Sir,” she said to the admiral, “I have a confession to make.”
“Surely the heroine of the hour has no need of confession!”
“I am afraid that I do, sir. I am sailing under false colors … Captain Singh and I are not, in fact, married.”
“Oh dear!” the admiral said, quite charmingly scandalized.
“I assure you, sir, that we have not engaged in any … untoward behavior during the months of this deception.” Captain Singh, she noted, actually blushed at this. “But we have long intended marriage, and every one believes we are married, and now at last we can change the reality to match the perception. Is it not true that the commanding officer of a ship in the air can perform marriages?”
“It is not true, I am afraid. It would go against the Navy’s regulations.”
“Oh!” Now it was Arabella’s turn to be discomfited.
“However, Royal Sovereign carried a minister, who survived the battle and is now aboard Diana. I believe he will be happy to correct this, ah, small error of yours, and do so quietly, so that no one will know it was ever other than the case. Shall I ask him to do so?”
“Yes, please,” said Arabella, and simultaneously Captain Singh said, “Immediately, if possible.”
“Very well. I shall put matters in train at once.” The admiral then took Arabella’s hand in his right, and Captain Singh’s in his left, and looked each of them in the eye. “Let me be the first to offer my congratulations to the both of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I suppose I should leave you alone for a bit, then, to compose yourselves before the ceremony.”
And so they did. Though not immediately.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was written and edited under extremely difficult circumstances, as my beloved wife, Kate Yule, struggled with brain cancer and eventually lost that struggle. It is only through the support of my friends and family—chief among whom are Sue Yule, Janna Silverstein, Michelle Franz, Shannon Page, Teresa Enigma, and Jason Engstrom—that I was able to survive at all, never mind produce a novel. Thanks a
lso to Mary Robinette Kowal, Allan Hurst, Brenda Cooper, Tom Whitmore, Karen Anderson, Mary Kay Kare, Dave Howell, Will Martin, Amanda Clark, Geri Sullivan, Cynthia Nalbach, Marc Wells, Paul Weiss, Ulrika O’Brien, and Catherine Crockett for helping take care of Kate and me, and to everyone else who came for a visit, provided assistance, or shared a meal. Special thanks to Clare Katner and Daniel MacLeod for service and friendship.
I’d also like to acknowledge the caring, professional doctors, nurses, and staff of Compass Oncology (especially Dr. Robert Lufkin, Jamie Newell, and Amber Case), the Oregon Clinic (Dr. Oisin O’Neill and Dr. Steven Seung), Providence Integrative Medicine (Dr. Kenneth Weizer), Providence Medical Group (Dr. James Kern), Sinai In-Home Care (Margie Amspacher, Brittany Berry-Hill, JJ Ahmed, Genesee Etter, Samantha Lambert, and Heidi Olson Jones), and Providence Hospice (Susan Beam, Tina Abich, Stacy Morgan, and Ranetta Aaron) for their expertise, dedication, and compassion.
For the book itself, I must extend my sincerest gratitude to the team at Tor (editor Christopher Morgan, head of publicity Patty Garcia, art director Irene Gallo, publicist Desirae Friesen) and my agent, Paul Lucas of Janklow & Nesbit Associates. Thanks also to everyone who provided advice and feedback on various drafts (Sara Mueller, Walter Jon Williams, Janna Silverstein, Mary Robinette Kowal, Doug Faunt, Sherwood Smith, Dave Goldman, Jennifer Linnea, Felicity Shoulders, Mary Hobson, Kate Yule, Oz Drummond, Kelly Horn, Jen Volant, Lawrence M. Schoen, Diana Rowland, Michaela Roessner-Herman, Kim Zimring, Nina K. Hoffman, Rick Wilber, and Alex Jablokow) and to everyone who joined me for writing at Rainforest Writers Village and various coffee shops. Writing is a solitary business, but the fortunate writer is never alone.
TOR BOOKS BY DAVID D. LEVINE
Arabella of Mars
Arabella and the Battle of Venus
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID D. LEVINE is the author of novel Arabella of Mars and more than fifty science fiction and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo Award in 2006, and he has been short-listed for such awards as the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, numerous Year’s Best anthologies, and his award-winning collection, Space Magic. He lives in a hundred-year-old bungalow in Portland, Oregon. You can sign up for email updates here.
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