Arabella of Mars(45)

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.