Arabella threw down her file in disgust. “It is no good at all!” she cried. “We must absolutely start over from the beginning.”
The ruined gear lay upon her work-bench, seeming to stare back at her like an accusing eye. The idea of casting gears from brass had seemed so promising, but the hand-work required to file the teeth into their final shape was so great that the expected improvement in efficiency had become a net loss.
Still, several of the other innovations she had developed for the rapid construction of automaton pilots, with the help of Captain Singh and the graduates of the Institute, had borne fruit. Fifteen of the devices had already been completed and installed in khebek, and seven more lay in various states of assembly on the benches around her, each being diligently shepherded toward completion by a team of Martian technicians. But many more would be needed, and Arabella and Captain Singh were constantly in search of ways to produce them more rapidly and with higher quality.
The automaton pilot, despite the anthropomorphic implications of its name, was more closely related to Arabella’s greenwood box than to Aadim. It was in appearance a simple affair, a trapezoidal brass frame filled with clockworks and having no semblance whatsoever of humanity. Also, relative to Aadim, every bit of extraneous mechanism had been pared away, including all functions of interplanetary navigation … all the device’s components were concentrated upon navigating near Mars, in particular in the winds of the Horn. And flexibility had been discarded in favor of ease of operation, to permit successful use by a Martian with minimal training.
But despite its simplicity, in some ways the automaton’s capabilities rivaled Aadim’s. At the heart of the machine lay a block of lead, suspended in a steel cage by wires from its six faces. These wires led to mechanisms that used the block’s motion relative to the ship—which, by Newton’s inexorable laws of inertia, reflected in reverse the ship’s motions relative to the fixed stars—to calculate from the general course laid in by the operator a sail-plan which compensated for the winds in the ship’s immediate vicinity.
The design was full of compromises. The mechanism sometimes jammed, sometimes produced impossible results, and sometimes refused perfectly good settings. At times Arabella felt that the clockworks, however well she understood them, were deliberately resisting her desires, like a willful adolescent. But still she did not truly believe the device was self-aware as Aadim was.
“I am going for a walk,” she declared to Gonekh, “to clear my head.”
Gonekh, although still one of the youngest of the Martian technicians, had proven herself so invaluable that she was now Arabella’s chief assistant. She was already a skilled machinist and would some day, Arabella was certain, become the first Martian inventor. But she still spoke very little, preferring to communicate via precisely-rendered diagrams and through the elegance of her manufactured items.
She strode off along the dusty street, allowing her feet—the natural one and the new artifical one—to follow their habitual path while her mind worried at the technical problem of gear manufacture. If casting would not work, perhaps the raw discs could be ganged together, so that several accurate gears could be machined simultaneously …
“Ahem.”
At the sound Arabella looked up and stopped short, inches from crashing into Fox, who stood in her path with a bemused expression. “Oh!” she cried.
“You really should watch where you are going, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat.
“I beg forgiveness,” she said, genuinely flustered at her own inattention but nonetheless pleased to see Fox, who had been away from town for several weeks on a scouting cruise. She took his arm and they continued walking together. “When did you return?”
“Just now. We landed in Khoresh Tukath day before yesterday, but before returning here I wanted to make sure dear Touchstone was properly victualed and watered.” His expression fell serious. “And well provided with shot and powder.”
“Did you learn any thing on your cruise?”
He shook his head. “There is barely any traffic from any of the asteroids any more.” His gaze drew inward. “I never would have thought the English could keep a whole fleet secret, but I suppose that if one is willing to give up commerce for a time…”
“That is worrisome. But Captain Singh calculates that they are still unlikely to arrive for some weeks.”
“I know; I have just come from discussing this with him. But the skyward breezes have been quite brisk of late.” He paused, and Arabella paused with him. “I am concerned,” he said.
“Oh?”
“I believe that we are in more danger here than Captain Singh acknowledges, and I suggest that you consider removing to Khoresh Tukath.”
“Impossible! The Institute shares too much—people and materials—with the hydrogen manufactory, and that absolutely cannot be moved.”
“I did not mean the Institute. I meant yourself. For safety’s sake.” He took her hands and looked into her eyes with deep sincerity. “I will be shifting Lady Corey and our household thence later to-day, and I strongly advise you to accompany her.”
“I will not!” She pulled her hands from his grip. “Our work on the automaton pilots is too important. Even if—especially if—the arrival of the Ceres fleet is imminent, we must concentrate all our attentions upon that until the last possible moment.”
“Your devotion to the cause is admirable.” He inclined his head in respect. “But I fear the last possible moment may be too late.”
“I thank you for your concern, sir, and I shall give your suggestion due consideration.” But she stepped back from him as she said it, and both of them knew her mind was made up.
For a moment Fox seemed about to follow her … but then he, too, took a half-step backward. “Very well. But I am certain you would be welcome chez nous.”
“I thank you for your most generous offer, but please do not be too worried. In case of danger we are prepared to evacuate to Tekh Shetekta.” Tekh Shetekta, an uninhabited but defensible canyon in the deep khoreshte desert, was the place they had chosen as a fallback position in case Tekhmet was exposed. Arabella curtseyed. “Good day, sir.”
He lifted his hat. “Good day to you, ma’am.” But as she turned away, he called out, “If you wish to accompany Lady Corey, I expect that she will depart from Common Hall no sooner than three o’clock. We can have your things sent along later.”
She almost turned back to him. But instead she straightened her back and returned to the Institute.
* * *
Back at her bench, Arabella stared down at the gears before her—the prototype and the several failed copies—but did not truly see them. Instead, she considered Captain Fox’s warning.
Every thing she had said to Fox was true, she was certain. But every thing he had said to her, she knew, was equally true, at least in his estimation. And for all his faults, Fox was neither an unintelligent nor an unobservant man …
“Gonekh,” she called. “I should like you to make a list, ordered by importance, of what we would take with us if we were required to evacuate the Institute to Tekh Shetekta.”
“Ma’am?” the Martian inquired, eye-stalks rising in alarm.
“There is no danger at the present time,” she said, putting more confidence into her voice than she actually felt, “but it would be foolish not to plan for every eventuality.”
“Ma’am.” Gonekh curtseyed and turned to her assigned task.
Arabella, for her part, looked about and gave her own consideration to the question. They were fortunate in that they knew the fleet’s orders, which had been transmitted to Ceres by Captain Singh before his departure. The fleet would land at Fort Augusta for resupply and to coordinate with Company forces already in place. Even if the Company already knew Tekhmet’s location—which she fervently hoped they did not; the resistance had taken every possible step to keep the town’s location secret—the earliest an attack could occur would be several days after the fleet’s arrival, so they would have some time for an orderly evacuation. The draughts and the tools, she thought, would have to be the first priority, then the complete and near-complete automata, then the more complex and precise sub-assemblies.
But where would they go? Tekh Shetekta was no more than a fallback position; it was not a place they could stay for long. And surely if Tekhmet were exposed, Khoresh Tukath would be equally vulnerable to attack.
Should she have accepted Fox’s offer?
Arabella glanced at the clock. It was a little past two in the afternoon.
She should, at least, give Lady Corey her best wishes before her departure for Khoresh Tukath.
* * *
Arabella found Lady Corey and Captain Fox in the midst of instructing their servants in the loading of her cases atop a coach. Gowse, Arabella’s old messmate, was managing the huresh. “Oh!” Lady Corey said as Arabella approached. “Are you coming along after all?”
“I am not, unfortunately. I merely came to bid you farewell.”
“I do wish you would accompany me,” Lady Corey said, taking Arabella’s hand and walking a few steps away. Captain Fox continued supervising the loading of the coach. “We have engaged quite spacious rooms in Khoresh Tukath, and it is ever so much more civilized there than here. You would be far more comfortable, and I would so welcome your company.”
“I do regret the necessity, Lady Corey. But my place is here.”
“Oh yes, the automata, I completely understand. But … but Captain Fox is concerned that we are so very exposed here.”
“Do not be anxious on my behalf,” Arabella said, pretending more confidence than she felt. “All will be well here.”
At that moment one of the servants came up, touching his hat brim. “All is in readiness for departure, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Lady Corey said, then turned back to Arabella. “Well, if you are determined to remain, I suppose this is adieu.”
“Au revoir,” Arabella corrected with a smile. “Until we meet again.”
“Until we meet again,” Lady Corey replied with a matching smile. But then something caught her attention and she looked upward … and her smile faded, quickly replaced by an expression of alarm. Arabella, seeing Lady Corey’s face, turned to follow her gaze.
A fleet of ships—a dozen at least, under a full spread of silk—was descending toward them from the zenith. The early-afternoon sun, shining directly behind them, must have hidden their approach until the last moment. Even now Arabella, shading her eyes with a hand, could not see them clearly and certainly could not count them all. But she did spot the English ensign fluttering from the stern of one of the nearer vessels. “Raise the alarm!” she cried in her best airgoing voice. But she was not the first to do so, and already shouts, rattles, and bells were sounding from all around, Martians and humans running in every direction.
It was the Ceres fleet. Somehow they had come directly to Tekhmet … a town whose very existence, not to mention its location, was the resistance’s greatest secret.
How had they found it?
“Michael,” Arabella said aloud, and her lips drew back from her teeth in a grimace.
Lady Corey’s servants—they had come with her from Fort Augusta and were not in the least military—were staring all about, wondering what to do. “Get her to Khoresh Tukath!” Captain Fox called to them, rushing to Lady Corey and propelling her toward the coach. The servants hastened to comply, though their actions were disorganized. Gowse tried to marshal the coach-huresh into some kind of order.
And then something black and round dropped from the sky, landing between the coach and Common Hall with a deafening explosion.
Arabella was thrown to the ground by the blast. A moment later she shrieked and covered her head with her arms, as clots of dirt and bits of metal and wood rained down upon her, striking with fierce impacts upon her back and legs. But the rain of debris did not last long, and as soon as she could gather her wits she raised her head, ears ringing, coughing from the dusty air.
Common Hall was burning. A huge hole had been smashed in the near side, shattered timbers spreading from the point of impact like some harsh, dangerous flower, and at the heart of that flower a fierce orange flame was spreading, sending black smoke billowing upward. The coach, between Arabella and the hall, was also smoldering. Though not so badly damaged as the hall, it had been knocked askew, and the huresh hitched to it were squealing and thrashing in their traces. Whether they were injured or merely panicked Arabella could not tell.
“Lady Corey!” she shouted into the chaos.
“Here, child!” came a reply from the vicinity of the coach. Arabella could barely hear the voice over the ringing in her ears, but she followed it as best she could, finding Lady Corey half-pinned under a pile of cases which had fallen from the top of the coach. Captain Fox, his clothing filthy with dirt and ash, was already trying to unearth her. Servants rushed about in confusion, like thurok whose nest had been kicked over.
Arabella and Fox together managed to get the cases off of Lady Corey. “Are you hurt?” Arabella asked, helping her to her feet.
“I do not think so. But the coach—!”
The coach, indeed, was in no condition to go any where. It looked as though both its axles were broken, and the traces were all in a tangle. Lady Corey’s cases and possessions were scattered all about, some smoldering or in flames.
Then a second explosion sounded from quite close at hand, causing every one to cry out and duck, shielding their heads from the rain of fragments.
Fox looked upward and cursed, and Arabella followed his gaze. The English ships were much closer now, appearing to descend still more rapidly, and many black dots fell from them … more aerial bombs. Tiny glimmers of light and puffs of smoke in their rigging showed rifle fire as well. At this range the bullets were unlikely to find their targets, but that distance was closing quickly … and soon the fleet would be low enough that their great guns could be brought into play as well.
“I must get to Touchstone!” Fox shouted in Arabella’s face. Explosions were now bursting all about them, far and near, accompanied by cries of pain and panic from Martians, humans, and huresh. Touchstone, requiring a launch-furnace as she did, was berthed at Khoresh Tukath, an hour away for a fast rider.
But the coach was smashed, and Fox, raised on Earth, was no huresh-rider at all. Nor could he ride a Draisine.
“Gowse!” Arabella shouted.
Gowse—who had served for over a year as Arabella’s huresh-groom—turned from where he was assisting Lady Corey’s servants in getting the panicked animals under control. “Aye, ma’am?”
“Take one of these huresh and get Captain Fox to Touchstone as fast as you possibly can!”
“Aye aye!” Gowse immediately moved to the lead beast, leaving the others to the rest of the servants, and began unhitching him from the coach. He was a fine specimen, a lean fast runner called Hardy.
“I will get Lady Corey to safety,” Arabella told Fox.
Without a word Fox nodded to Arabella, then took Lady Corey’s hand and kissed it. “Be safe, my love,” he told her.
“And you,” Lady Corey replied, the second word ending in a choking sound as tears clogged her throat.
Fox then ran to Gowse, who had already unhitched Hardy and leapt up upon his back. “Have ye ridden bareback before?” Gowse said to Fox, extending a hand.
“On a horse…” Fox replied, taking Gowse’s hand and pulling himself up behind.
Gowse shook his head. “This might be a bit different, sir. Hang on tight.” Then he clucked his tongue at Hardy, digging his heels in at the soft spot behind the beast’s thorax, and the huresh surged forward. Fox whooped and clamped his hat onto his head with one hand, clinging with the other to Gowse’s waist as they vanished into the smoke.
“Come with me!” Arabella said to Lady Corey, putting an arm around the older woman’s waist and urging her forward.
* * *
“Where are you taking me, child?” Lady Corey asked after a time.
The two women were running through chaos. Explosions and rifle fire sounded at irregular intervals from all around. Black smoke smudged the sky, rising from the fires that burned uncontrolled here and there, and panicked people and beasts of every description dashed about without visible method or organization.
“To Diana!” Arabella said.
As they ran they gathered up others, humans and Martians alike. Those with experience flying khebek she encouraged to get to their ships—or, indeed, any they could reach—and take them into the air as quickly as possible, for on the ground they were immobile and nearly defenseless. The rest they brought along with them toward Diana, though some were panicked or injured and had to be helped along or even carried. Arabella soon forgot her own cares and concerns, concentrating all her attentions upon helping as many others as she could.
But when they rounded the corner of the rope-walk and saw Diana standing tall in her berth—seemingly undamaged, with her three great balloon envelopes already fully inflated and straining at the network of cables which tethered them to the ship’s hull—her heart leapt into her mouth from simultaneous exaltation at the ship’s safety and fear for her captain. “Hurry!” she called to Lady Corey and the others who accompanied her, just as though they were not already all pushing themselves to their utmost pace … and, somehow, they did manage to eke out a bit more speed, racing toward Diana as bombs continued to burst on the ground and in the air all around.
Diana, though not yet airborne, was already defending herself, with the swivel-mounted chasers on the forecastle and quarterdeck firing as rapidly as they could. This fire accounted for her as yet undamaged condition, as it discouraged the English ships with their aerial bombs from approaching too closely. Yet Diana was still quite vulnerable … if a single bomb or shell should strike her balloons, it would make a rapid end of her as well as every thing around her.
Up the gangplank Arabella and her companions ran, tumbling exhausted into the waist. The situation they found aboard ship was nearly as much of a bedlam as on the ground, but this pandemonium was at least more organized, with airmen rushing to defend the ship and simultaneously prepare her for an immediate ascent. With relief Arabella handed Lady Corey and some of the others—those injured, exhausted, or otherwise incapable—to the surgeon, Dr. Barry, who shepherded them below. The rest of her people she sent to Faunt, the captain of the waist, to offer whatever assistance they could. Plainly not all of Diana’s usual crew had managed to return to the ship in the chaos of the attack, and every hand would be welcome.
Having discharged her immediate responsibilities, Arabella did not even pause for breath before hastening to the quarterdeck … where she immediately spied Captain Singh, safe and in command!
Requesting and receiving permission to ascend the ladder, she rushed to her husband’s side. The expression of panicked relief on his face matched her own sentiments, but they had no time for more than a brief embrace before he pulled away. “Thank Heaven you are here! Now get below and have Aadim plot us a low-altitude course for Tekh Shetekta.”
But though Arabella longed to be away, she could not do so without one assurance. “Has Gonekh come aboard with the automata?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
Arabella held her breath, peering over the rail at her Institute, which lay between Diana’s berth and the hydrogen manufactory. It seemed as yet undamaged, and if the automaton pilots could be rescued they might make all the difference in the fighting to come.
But every minute Diana remained on land was another opportunity for the English to destroy her.
“I will send some one to collect them,” Captain Singh said, seeing her hesitation.
But contemplating this alternative made Arabella realize just how important the automata were to her and to their cause … and how much she had come to depend upon Gonekh. “I must do this myself! I will return as quickly as I can.” She kissed him on the cheek and ran.
* * *
She found Gonekh and the other technicians scrambling about the Institute, gathering papers and tools and piling them upon an already overloaded cart. Plainly it would not even cross the threshold without spilling its contents. “This will not do!” she cried. “Chekta, I saw another cart on my way here, near the water-trough. Go and bring it back. Torkei, Gonekh … you two and I will shift some of this onto the second cart. The rest of you … each take one of the completed automata and run to Diana immediately!”
As the technicians leapt to comply, Arabella looked about. Gonekh had done a good job of locating the most important items … except that she had missed the set of metal files, which Arabella had been using in her work on the cast gears and now lay on the shelf beneath her work-bench. Arabella snatched the set up and crammed it into a gap near the bottom of the pile upon the cart, even as Chekta returned with the second cart. “Hurry!” Arabella cried.
Quickly they moved materials from the first cart to the second, until Arabella judged that neither cart was in danger of overturning. Then the four of them shoved the two carts to the door. As Gonekh and Torkei pulled the heavy double doors open, Arabella looked around the Institute one last time.
In the last months the Institute—this filthy shed—had become something like her home. She had certainly spent more time here than in her bed, and it was a place that, in some ways, she had built with her own two hands. Every thing here had been brought to this place and put where it was because she had needed it for the sake of her home planet. And now she was abandoning it … driven from her home by force of arms.
By the Prince Regent. By her own sovereign lord.
No! He was not her sovereign. Perhaps he never had been.
She was a Martian.
Arabella was a Martian born and bred, and she would not let any King or Prince, no matter how powerful, do to her people what he was doing to her right now.
Not if it was within her power to prevent it.
* * *
The pandemonium without had grown still more chaotic during the few minutes Arabella had been inside the Institute. Flames roared on every side, filling the air with choking black smoke, and explosions sounded at irregular intervals … the continuing barrage of English bombs now accompanied by detonations of gunpowder and hydrogen from the ship-yard as the fires spread. Diana added to the noise with the reports of her guns, and shouts and commands in a variety of languages came to Arabella’s ears through the murk.
Coughing, eyes running, Arabella put her shoulder to the cart and helped Chekta propel it across the irregular ground. The distance to Diana was not great, no more than two hundred yards, but the sand was littered with debris and even the body of a fallen huresh, around which they were compelled to detour.
Even as she struggled forward, Arabella kept an eye turned upward, where English ships floated like malevolent copper-bottomed clouds. They were now being joined in the sky by khebek, the light small vessels rising swiftly from the ship-yard beneath their single balloons, and some of the Royal Navy vessels were turning to bring their great guns to bear upon these new targets. But the Martian ships, though their crews were not yet fully trained and some of them lacked guns and even complete hulls, were so small and nimble that the ponderous English first-rates could not target them effectively. Even the English frigates, smaller and more maneuverable, were unused to such agile adversaries, and though they fired again and again, most of their shots went wide.
But not all. First one of the rising khebek was smashed to flinders by a well-timed English broadside, and then another’s balloon was pierced—the cannon-balls’ hot metal causing the hydrogen within to explode with a tremendous bang. A wave of heat rushed out from the falling ship, so intense that Arabella felt its flush upon her face even half a mile away.
Fortunately she could not hear the crew’s screams over the many other sounds of the attack.
Grimly Arabella returned her gaze to Diana, now just one hundred yards away, and her heavy heart lightened as she saw a mixed crowd of people—waisters, topmen, Venusians, and some of the Martians she had gathered on her run from Common Hall—rushing down the gangplank to assist her and her technicians in unloading the carts. With renewed vigor she pushed her cart the last few yards.
Within minutes all the precious automata, plans, tools, parts, and assemblies had been brought aboard. But as Arabella checked to make sure that every bit of material had been collected, she noticed one significant absence. “Has any one seen Gonekh?” she shouted.
“She went back for something that fell off the cart!” came the reply.
Casting her eye back along the cart-tracks that wobbled across the sand, Arabella soon located her assistant, struggling to drag a heavy metal lathe across the wreckage-strewn ground. “Gonekh!” she cried, and rushed toward her.
But then Gonekh jerked, fell over, and lay still, red stains spreading across her clothing.
Arabella shrieked and looked upward, soon finding the English first-rate from which the fatal shots must have come. Red-coated Marines hung in its rigging like evil, overripe fruit, aiming their rifles down toward the running figures below.
Another wordless cry of anger and indignation was wrenched from Arabella’s throat as she ran to Gonekh’s aid. But before she could move more than a few steps, something struck her from behind. She fell to the filthy sand, with a moist and heavy weight landing on top of her and driving the breath from her lungs.
A moment later the sand before her eyes fountained up from the impact of several bullets. If she had continued running, those bullets would have struck her instead.
The weight that had knocked her over was Ulungugga, the Venusian waister. “You cannot help her,” he croaked as he hauled her to her feet. “We leave now.”
Stunned from exhaustion and grief, Arabella did not protest as Ulungugga half-carried her up the gangplank, which was immediately drawn up behind them. Every one else was already aboard, or lay unmoving on the sand below.
* * *
Moments after Arabella and Ulungugga came aboard, she heard the cry “Dump all ballast!” from the quarterdeck. Immediately a shuddering, rushing hiss sounded from belowdecks and the ship shot skyward. The sand-anchors and other moorings must already have been taken up.
The ship’s precipitous rise was accompanied by shrieks and whoops from all aboard, along with cries and thuds as some people, unprepared for the sudden lurch of her departure from the ground, fell to the deck … Arabella among them. She hoped as she struggled to her feet that no one had fallen very far.
Shooting upward as rapidly as she was, Diana quickly rose above the level of the English ships; Arabella found herself looking right into the eyes of an astonished airman for a moment as she swept past him. So swift, in fact, was Diana’s rise that not a single cannon shot was fired during the brief period when she was within their firing angle. The great guns on English aerial men-of-war were designed for use in free descent, not near a planetary surface, and relied upon turning the entire ship for aiming. The individual cannon had only a few degrees of upward and downward motion within their gun-ports, so beneath the falling-line the great guns were useless on any target substantially higher or lower.
But the English ships were also equipped with swivel-guns on their decks and snipers in the tops. The crack and flash of gunfire burst out from the ships all around, and shot large and small whined past above Arabella’s head. Several of these connected with masts or the hull, sending splinters flying, and Arabella quickly ducked down beneath the gunwale, covering her head with her hands. But she could not bear not knowing what was happening. Keeping low, she scuttled aft until she could peer through the scupper.
The sight that met Arabella’s eyes was truly astonishing. Dozens of balloons loomed above, below, and in all directions, filling the murky sky like pickled eggs in a bottle of vinegar. The smaller single ones, rising rapidly, were Martian khebek; the larger ones, in groups of eight and ten, were those of the English fleet. By contrast with the khebek, these hung steady in the air or were sinking slowly, and the ships beneath them were magnificent specimens of the shipbuilder’s art, with spectacular carved figureheads and gleaming copper bottoms. And beneath those …
The town of Tekhmet, which Arabella had beheld from above so frequently in the past months, was scarcely recognizable as itself. The pleasant curving streets of Martian buildings, now devastated by bombs, resembled a vegetable patch that had been trampled by giant beasts. The ship-yard, formerly an organized bustling hive of activity, was now nothing more than a collection of cavities—some empty of ships recently departed, others filled with smoldering wreckage. Fires burned every where, spreading like spilled acid, eating up every thing they touched and blackening the air above with smoke. The sight was devastating.
But worse was yet to come. For the flames were already licking at the hydrogen manufactory, and even as Arabella watched the thing she feared most was beginning to occur. With a tremendous boom, loud even at this distance, the nearest corner of the manufactory to the fire exploded, sending visible pressure waves washing through the filthy air and fragments of roof and beam spinning upward. A moment later came a second explosion, and then a third—each one more devastating than the last, as each damaged the structure more severely, causing yet more hydrogen to spill into the air, feeding the fire, and leading to yet more and larger explosions. Soon the entire manufactory had burst into bits in a paroxysm of explosions, reducing one of Fulton’s most amazing engineering achievements to a smoking, shattered ruin in less than a minute.
Arabella could only hope that Fulton and his manufactory workers had escaped before the disaster.
“Idlers and waisters to the pulsers!” came the command from the quarterdeck, and for a moment Arabella’s old habits came to the fore, compelling her to rush below with the other waisters. But she immediately corrected herself, and reversed her course for the great cabin where Aadim awaited her.
Shaken and unnerved she might be, but she had her orders, and she would not fail her captain as she had failed Gonekh.
* * *
Aadim sat, imperturbable as always, facing away from the great curved window at the cabin’s stern. He was, she reflected as she unrolled the chart of Sor Khoresh upon his table, somewhat the worse for wear from when she had first met him. The callous treatment he had received in the hands of the French had left the painted wood of his face and hands scarred and chipped, and the hurried modifications she and Captain Singh had made to him since their arrival on Mars had added significantly to his bulk with little attention to aesthetics. A large box of gears and levers, close kin to the automaton pilot, had been crudely bolted to one side of the desk which formed his lower body; it spoiled his symmetry and hid some fine inlay work, but added considerably to his navigational capabilities within Mars’s Horn.
They would likely need every one of those new capabilities before this day was out.
Quickly she laid in the course Captain Singh had requested, a low-altitude path to Tekh Shetekta. But before she could press down Aadim’s finger upon the chart a second time to begin the calculations, the ship was jolted hard by a sudden impact, throwing her across the cabin. Bruised and shaken, she ignored the shouts, cries, and thundering footsteps that followed the blow and hauled herself back to Aadim’s desk. But when she pressed on the finger, a dull click was the only response she received.
Cursing, Arabella threw open the access panel on Aadim’s desk and inspected the clockworks therein. Feverishly she worked to find the problem, swinging hinged brass assemblies aside and inspecting the gleaming works thus revealed with a lamp and a practiced eye. There were so many moving parts within, and nearly any one of them could have been jarred loose by a blow like the one the ship had just received. Or even worse … Aadim’s mechanisms extended throughout the ship, and if the damage were elsewhere there would be little she could do to repair it in the midst of battle.
Outside the window the pulsers whirled, the great triangular sails rushing past more than once per second as the men and Venusians belowdecks literally pedaled for their lives. Beyond the spinning pulsers lay the English ships, their own pulsers whirling as they rose in pursuit. Lifted by hot air as they were, rather than the more buoyant hydrogen used by Diana, they could not match her speed of ascent … but their crews were far more numerous, and battle-hardened by years of war with Napoleon. By dint of vigorous pedaling they would quickly overcome Diana’s advantages in maneuverability, and once they matched her altitude their great guns would come into play. Each one of the English first-rates threw twice or more Diana’s weight of metal.
Watson burst in the cabin door. “The captain asks, have you the course?” he half-shouted.
“Hold this” was all the reply Arabella offered, handing him the lamp and putting her head entirely inside Aadim’s desk. Was that a sliver of wood jammed in the mechanism?
It was! And, with the aid of a pair of fine needle-nose pliers, Arabella was able to prise it free. It must have been knocked loose by the impact from the inside of Aadim’s case.
Quickly she put every thing back in place. Then, holding her breath, she pressed down upon Aadim’s wooden finger … and with a satisfying whir his gears began to turn.
“Tell the captain I shall return momentarily with his requested course,” she told Watson as she closed and latched the access panel. Watson knuckled his forehead and hurried off.
A moment later a bell sounded and Arabella copied down the sail-plan from the dials on the front of Aadim’s desk. This course would not have been possible a year ago, she reflected as she hurried up the companion ladder with the paper clutched between her teeth. It was, in fact, only within the past few months that they had completely incorporated the capabilities of Diana’s hydrogen balloons into Aadim’s calculations.
* * *
“Here is the course, sir,” Arabella said as she presented the paper—slightly damp and tooth-marked—to her husband.
“Thank you, Ashby,” he replied absently, taking the paper and reading it over. Immediately he translated the sailing-plan into instructions to Edmonds, who relayed them to the captains of divisions and thence to the crew.
Edmonds spun the wheel hard as the larboard stuns’ls flashed out, sending the ship into a steep, diving turn propelled by the still-whirling pulsers. Arabella clung to a backstay as the deck tilted precipitously beneath her feet, the world seeming to spin around as the ship turned through twelve points—more than a third of a circle—while rapidly losing altitude.
For a moment they seemed to be driving directly toward the pursuing English fleet, and even as the enemy ships came into view ahead they began firing, gouts of flame and smoke reaching out toward Diana. But Diana could descend far more swiftly than they, by drawing hydrogen from her balloons back into her tanks, whereas the English were forced to either rely upon the slower cooling of their hot air or take the risky choice of venting it. She quickly dropped below their range, leaving their shots to whine overhead and damage only a few sails and lines.
“It will take them a little while to match our altitude change,” Captain Singh remarked to Edmonds, nearly conversationally. “We should take this opportunity to chastise them.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Edmonds replied with enthusiasm, then cried, “All hands rig for pitch!” Arabella had never heard this command before, and grasped her backstay more tightly, wondering what might follow. Her answer came a moment later, as he called out, “Set main-royals and t’gallants! Haul up on the for’ard balloon-stays! Idlers and waisters aft!”
This unprecedented and perilous series of directives had the effect of tilting the ship back upon her heel by a good twenty degrees, leaving every one holding tight for their lives to whatever they had happened to be closest to when the order “rig for pitch” had come. For, unlike the usual circumstances of aerial battle, they were still well below the falling-line, and a fall overboard would be rapidly fatal.
But the maneuver brought Diana’s great guns, located in her bow and facing strictly forward, up to target the nearest ship of the English fleet. “Fire!” cried Edmonds, and at once the cannon spoke, deafening Arabella even as the ship jerked beneath her from the force of the discharge. Flames lanced toward the English fleet, and a moment later the lead ship’s bow shattered under the impact of Diana’s twelve eight-pound balls, to resounding cheers from Diana’s people. “Fire!” cried Edmonds again, and a second English ship suffered the same fate.
But two such salvos were all they had time for, as Diana continued to drift forward and down, passing below the English fleet and taking them above the range of her guns. Soon Diana had settled back to her original attitude, and the pulsers began to spin again—the idlers and waisters returning to the pedals from the after end, whence they had crowded to help tilt the ship backward with their combined weight—driving the ship forward toward Tekh Shetekta.
But though Diana and her English adversaries were no longer able to harry each other with their great guns, their chasers and rifles were still in play, and many a ball pinged and whined through the air in both directions. As the distance between them grew—Diana again descending more rapidly than the English—Arabella’s confidence grew as well. They were still badly outnumbered, and though the English were struggling to turn and give chase to the rapidly-receding Diana, they would soon get themselves in order. “Do you think,” she asked Captain Singh, “that, having seen how we pitched the ship to attack them, they will do the same to us?”
“They may attempt it,” he replied, examining the damaged ships through his telescope. “But I doubt they have practiced the maneuver as we have.” He lowered the glass. “I devised it last month, while you were occupied with the automaton pilots.”
Arabella considered this as she watched the English forming up on their leader. They did not appear to be attempting to duplicate Diana’s maneuver, but with the greater number of men they could put to the pedals they were no longer falling behind, and indeed were already beginning to catch Diana up. But not all of them, she realized, were attempting to do so. “Some of the English fleet are separating from the main force,” she observed to her captain.
He grunted and raised his telescope again. “They are pursuing our khebek,” he muttered darkly. Even an unaided eye could see that the greater part of the fleet was now rising upward in pursuit of the ascending khebek, while the three most heavily-armed first-rates were continuing to drive toward Diana with all the force of their rapidly-spinning pulsers. “I had hoped to distract them with a larger prize, but Admiral Thornbrough is apparently too wily for that stratagem to succeed.”
“So what can we do?”
Captain Singh’s expression was as grim and determined as she had ever seen upon his face. “We must turn and attack.”
Arabella was astonished. “One ship against three?”
“One frigate-class ex-Marsman against three first-rates, to be specific. But we do have a few advantages.” He turned to Edmonds. “Fox and hounds, Mr. Edmonds.”
“Aye aye, sir. Fox and hounds.” He then bellowed to the men at the pedals to put their f——g backs into it, and offered similar friendly encouragement to the gunners and topmen. Abandoning the course Arabella and Aadim had just worked out, Diana immediately turned about and drove upward, heading directly toward the three English ships. They were still well above her altitude, but descending rapidly.
“What shall I do?” Arabella asked, still clinging tightly to her backstay.
“Once we dispatch these adversaries, we will immediately ascend to the winds of the Horn. I will require Aadim’s assistance then … and no one understands his new mechanisms as well as you. You will remain on the quarterdeck to appraise the currents until your services are required below.”
“Aye aye, sir,” she replied.
Shortly an airman appeared with the leather belts and straps which would hold the officers in place on the deck in free descent; these were not yet needed but would soon be. Arabella quickly strapped herself in place, but deliberately did not fasten the second set of safety buckles, for she anticipated that a rapid departure might be required.
Diana became a riot of noise as she and the English rapidly drew nearer each other. Belowdecks, men chanted and grunted rhythmically at the pedals and powder monkeys dashed back and forth to the gun-deck. Aloft, topmen called back and forth as they positioned themselves for rapid action with the balloons and sails. In the waist, men and Venusians—and a few of the brave, inexperienced Martians whom Arabella had brought with her from the ship-yard—rigged fearnought screens: lengths of dampened burlap stretched across the hatches, to prevent splinters and sparks from getting below. All the while Chips the carpenter and his crew hammered and sawed away in the forecastle, making hasty repairs to a great gash in the hull there. This must be the result of the impact that had temporarily disabled Aadim. Despite the rushing air of their rapid ascent, powerful scents of powder, sawdust, and sweat assaulted Arabella’s nose.
Distant bangs and flashes of flame were coming from the English now, but the shots howled far overhead. Captain Singh, more sparing of his shot and powder, held his fire.
And then, suddenly, some invisible line was crossed and they were in the midst of battle.
All three English ships let fly at once, their simultaneous broadsides forming a continuous wall of flame and smoke and noise that momentarily obscured the ships themselves. “Get down!” some one shouted, and Arabella ducked down where she stood, covering her head with her hands. A moment later came the rising screams of incoming cannon-balls—many of which diminished as quickly, falling in pitch as they flew past, but some ended in shattering crashes that shook the deck beneath Arabella’s foot and rattled her stump in its straps.
“Return fire!” cried Captain Singh, and the deck jerked again, accompanied by the thunderous roar of Diana’s twelve eight-pound guns. As Arabella raised her head, she heard the cries of injured men—none appeared to have been struck by shot directly, but flying splinters could be just as deadly—and the shouts of carpenters and captains of divisions struggling to repair the damage to ship and course. Then a second command to “Fire!” obliterated those sounds as well.
The sky all about was a mass of smoke and flame and destruction, with howling shots and spinning fragments of khoresh-wood flying at unpredictable intervals out of the murk. The noise and confusion were far greater even than in the midst of the Battle of Venus—the number of ships had been greater there, but the quarters here were far closer, and the influence of Mars’s gravity added the fear of falling to all the other perils of aerial battle.
Arabella’s duty was to monitor the winds, the better to direct Aadim when his navigation would be required, but in this madness—the ship turning, diving, and lurching upward seemingly at random, with Edmonds calling out commands faster than she could follow and the sky an impenetrable murk—she barely knew which direction was skyward.
But then she realized the howl and crash of incoming shot had been replaced by howls alone—the English cannon were no longer finding their target. How was this possible? Even with her hydrogen balloons, Diana could not have risen so rapidly through the deadly stratum of English fire, and the English were too experienced to simply miss their target due to the smoke.
Then a stray breeze blew a momentary hole in the smoke and the answer became clear: the English were not below, but above! Diana had ascended to their level only briefly, then descended again—hidden by the fog of war. “Fox and hounds,” muttered Arabella to herself.
“Pulsers double time!” shouted Edmonds, and the drumbeats from belowdecks increased their pace. Diana surged forward, leaving the English ships above and behind. But the English reacted quickly, turning and descending still more rapidly in pursuit. Diana’s lead was not large and they would soon catch her up.
“Five hundred feet, sir,” Edmonds muttered to Captain Singh—referring, Arabella inferred, to the difference in altitude between Diana and the pursuing first-rates.
“A moment longer, Mr. Edmonds.” Captain Singh raised his glass and carefully inspected the oncoming English ships. “Davies…” he muttered to himself, “Mason … and Scott.”
“Three hundred feet,” Edmonds said, visibly growing nervous.
“Maintain course. Those three captains will not be easily fooled.”
“Two hundred feet, sir!”
“Steady.”
Indeed, Arabella now found herself barely raising her gaze at all to take in the looming English ships, which were falling swiftly toward her, closing the distance both horizontally and vertically with distressing rapidity. In just a few moments she would be looking directly down the barrels of their large and very numerous cannon. Already the crack of small arms fire could be heard, so close had they drawn.
“One hundred feet!”
But even in the face of the rapidly-approaching English men-of-war and Edmonds’s near-panic Captain Singh remained imperturbable. “Now, Mr. Edmonds,” he said in a quite normal voice.
“Start the water!” Edmonds howled. “And ease off on the hydrogen!” The unanticipated command startled Arabella nearly as much as the sudden upward thrust of the deck below her.
With a rumbling rush, a fountain of clear water burst from the hull below Arabella, arcing off in an elegant stream to disperse on the desert below. Three more such streams of water appeared at the same moment … jettisoning the drinking water Diana’s people would need to survive a long journey, but also lightening the ship suddenly and substantially. At the same time, at Edmonds’s command the Venusians belowdecks were working the hydrogen pumps, slightly reducing the pressure in the balloons. This operation would only increase the ship’s buoyancy if they had been run at a slight overpressure for the entire battle up until now … which meant that Captain Singh had been holding that additional lift in reserve for just such an occasion as this. The overall effect of the two commands was to send Diana flying upward still more precipitously than her original departure from the surface.
The English, meanwhile, remained committed to their swift descent toward Diana … the inescapable facts of physics and their construction preventing them from matching her rapid reversal in altitude. They fired upon Diana as soon as they noted her maneuver, but nearly every ball passed harmlessly below her. One shot did strike her hull with a splintering crack that made the whole ship jerk, but damage to the lower hull or keel would cause little problem unless and until they next landed upon a planet. Within minutes Arabella found herself looking down upon the English ships, their hulls eclipsed by the numerous white moons of their balloons.
“They will have to shovel coal for a long time to match our rise,” Captain Singh remarked to Arabella. “They may be compelled to call off the pursuit, due to lack of coal. But even if they do not, by the time they catch us up we shall be well embedded in the Horn.” He peered upward, and Arabella matched his gaze.
The first khebek to escape had already reached the falling-line and were collapsing their envelopes, drawing the precious hydrogen—irreplaceable now, with the loss of the manufactory—back into the tanks in their hulls and relying on the winds of the Horn to carry them further upward. “Where are they bound?” Arabella asked.
“Phobos,” he replied, returning to inspecting the English through his telescope.
“Phobos!” Arabella gasped. “But it lies in plain sight!” She gestured upward, to where the moon did, indeed, stand visible to all of the sky and half the planet. “We cannot hide there!”
“We cannot hide there,” he acknowledged, “but we can fight there. And your work on the automaton pilot may prove critical to this effort.” He collapsed the glass and tucked it into his tail-coat pocket. “Phobos’s winds make it very difficult to approach safely. But with the help of the automaton pilots, I believe our khebek can overcome this natural barrier, take Phobos, and hold it. Once we have done this, the moon’s natural defenses will become an advantage rather than an obstacle for us. Therefore, before departing Tekhmet I signaled the khebek fleet to make their way there by any means possible, relying on Diana to draw the English away to Tekh Shetekta.”
“But that subterfuge failed, and now the English are in pursuit.”
“Exactly. Our work this day is not yet done.”