Arabella of Mars(44)
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.