Arabella of Mars (18 page)

Suddenly the reason for the crew's agitation became clear. “Pirates,” she breathed.

“Or worse,” said Hornsby.

“What could be worse than pirates?”

“Could be a French frigate. Our little guns haven't a chance against a full-blown man of war.” Again he peered into the distance. “Mind you, she don't swim like a frigate. Might be a corsair, though. Nearly as bad.”

“What kind of ship is that?”

“No particular rig. Corsair's just what the French call a privateer.”

The naval terminology was making her head spin. “What might be the difference between a privateer and a pirate?”

“Pirates take honest men's cargo for their own profit, and if they're caught they hang. Privateers do the same, but they have a license—a letter of marque, it's called—from the French, and they share what they take with Bonaparte, all legal-like. They're better funded, better equipped, and just all around more dangerous.”

“Avast that lolling about!” cried Kerrigan from the quarterdeck. All the men returned to their duties, along with Arabella. But though she did her best to concentrate on her holystoning of the deck, a part of her attention was always directed to the men and officers peering over the starboard side, eyes and telescopes trained on the unknown airship.

It seemed to her that the direction of their gazes—the angle on the bow—was not changing with time. And the expressions on the officers' faces betrayed concern.

*   *   *

During the midday meal, Arabella's mess talked of nothing but the approaching ship and what might occur if she did prove to be an enemy. Of the group, only Gosling and Young had seen action, and the others peppered them with questions.

“There's no sinking a ship in the air,” Gosling declaimed, stabbing the air with his finger. “No battle is over until every man on one ship or t'other's dead or captured.”

“Nay,” said Young. “When I were in
Columbine
we met with a French frigate. Cap'n Clive shot away her pulsers and we got away clean.” He took a bite of his biscuit, chewed noisily. “Nary a casualty on either side.”

Hornsby shook his head. “It's a dangerous tactic, getting in close enough for a shot like that. Ye might find yer own pulsers shot to h—l. And if
neither
ship can pedal away, well then it's hand-to-hand combat, with the survivors left to piece together one good ship from whatever's left.”

“But
Diana
's such a fast ship,” Arabella said. “We are traveling at a rate of over seven thousand knots! Why can't we simply outsail them?”

Young grinned, though without humor. “It's not so simple, lad.” He carefully placed two bits of biscuit in the air above the mess table. “This is us, and that's them.” Then he blew a puff of breath at them, causing both bits to waft gently in the same direction. “We're both in the same current of air, ain't we?
That's
what's moving at seven thousand knots, carrying both of us along with it. For either ship to outrace the other, both being in the same wind, means pedaling. And though she's fast for a Marsman,
Diana
can't out-pedal a corsair with one-tenth the tonnage.”

“Can't we change course? Find some other wind?”

“This ain't the Horn, lad, where the winds blow every which way. We're in the trades. Nearest other wind might be a hundred mile off.”

Taylor angrily punched the air. “It's the g
______
d
waiting
I can't stand! On the sea, ye can't see another ship until she's hull-down on the horizon.” As his tattoos attested, Taylor had served as a seaman for years before joining
Diana
. “But out here … it could be weeks from first sight until she gets within cannon range.”

“Be careful what ye wish for,” Gosling admonished. “From what I hear at the scuttlebutt, she's closing fast. We could be in battle within five days.”

At that all the men, including Arabella, fell silent, morosely chewing their salt pork.

*   *   *

As the other ship drew near, they drilled and drilled, spending hours each day at gunnery practice. While Arabella's and the other gun crews strove to increase their rate of fire, the topmen dashed from sail to sail, and all the other men slaved at the pedals. The other ship was now clearly visible to the unaided eye, though not yet close enough to make out her provenance.

“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.