by K. T. Hunter
She had to invent an answer that the Boolean could comprehend. She doubted he would understand that his bastard of a captain had shot her with some unknown weapon as she defended the ship's resident ghost.
Gemma looked past him at the crewmen milling around the chamber. Some were injured and in various stages of treatment. Father Alfieri ambled among them, distributing prayers and pats on the shoulder. Humboldt followed her gaze.
"Power conservation protocol. Everyone not on a vital task has to take shelter in a warm area, so's we can make the batteries last longer. Looks like we're stuck with the Sick Bay Brigade."
She answered him a questioning look.
"Oh, never mind this," he said as he pointed to the strip of gauze wrapped around his head. "Old Rathbone isn't as strong as he thinks. Still, doesn't give him the right to hit on the ladies. Any word on what that was all about? Can you talk, love?"
Her throat felt dry and raw, and it hurt to breathe deeply. Her voice rattled as she answered. "Still... a bit... weak."
"I'll fetch you some water. If you think you can eat, we have some of the emergency rations here. They're a bit manky, if you ask me, but they'll keep a body going. You look a bit puny."
He wandered away and returned with a cup of water and a ration pack. He helped her to sit up and sip the liquid. To her relief, his brief touches were gentle and unobtrusive. The bored crewmen in the chamber stared at the pair. Humboldt pulled one of the unused screens over to block their view.
"Not trying any funny business, love," he explained. "It's just hard to rest around this lot. Too bad Caroline and Nigel are stuck in the Gardens. But, at least we're not on the stable deck like the Cohort. Phew, imagine being in there if the manufactured gravity goes out. Lucky that you're injured." He gave her another sip. "What d'you reckon about all this happening at once? The funeral, then Rathbone jumping the two of us, then the power outage? Crew's all cattywumpus. We hear from the other parts of the ship on the pipephone every now and then. They still work since they run on voice power, not the batteries. Wish the rest of the ship did. I could power us all the way to Mars and back!" He cackled. "Cap'n's on the Oberth deck with Pugh and Pritchard trying to get the power back on. Not sure why Pritchard's there when Nesbitt's the real genius, though. You ask me, things aren't cricket. Something's happened to the engineer, but they're not telling us what."
"What about Wallace?"
"Yeah, he's there, too, but I'm not sure why. Is there a proper way to hold one's pinky whilst turning a wrench?"
She managed a watery smile at the thought. She was sure she knew why Pritchard was on the Oberth deck in Nesbitt's place; Wallace's trail of blood had surpassed her own. She decided to let Christophe be the one to break the news of Wallace's treachery to the crew.
Humboldt retrieved a packet from the small bedside table and placed it on the bed beside her.
"Frau Knopf sent this to you, in case you get bored. It might help while away the time."
Gemma pulled some books from the packet. One was the Aronnax journal. Humboldt scanned it as she turned through its pages.
"Why do they have you reading up on old Captain Nobody?" he asked.
"'Nobody'?" she asked as she held up the other book and discovered it was the Smith journal.
He laughed. "'Nemo' is just a bit of Latin, love. Means 'nobody'. Didn't you do any Latin in your school days?"
"Enough for science," she replied, "but not much else. My instructors had other priorities. How do you--"
"Winchester. One of the few posh schools left after the Invasion. Would've been Head Boy if I'd kept me nose clean, but you know me. More lager and pig Latin than Plutarch and Homer. But it does come in handy every so often."
A certain notation on Maggie's wall flared up in her mind's eye. Mr. Humboldt was proving to come in handy.
He winced his way through a smile of his own. "Speakin' of which, haven't had any lager since we passed the moon." He sighed wistfully, then said, "If you don't mind, Miss L, I think I'll have a bit of a lie-down meself." He pointed at his bandaged head. "Headache."
She nodded at him and watched him settle in to the cot next to hers.
That's what Maggie was trying to show me, she concluded as Humboldt's snores reached her ears. She allowed herself one small smirk in spite of the full-body ache that would not leave her in peace. That son of a bitch is a son of a Nemo. Why am I not surprised?
~~~~
Christophe
"Captain," said Mr. Pritchard, "here's where we stand. The tralphium reactor is still going, so that's good. Carter's checked out the radio wave transmitter and the Oberths, and they appear undamaged. So that's good. Looks like that weasel -- begging your pardon, sir, Wallace -- did the most damage he could by himself in just a couple of minutes. In a pretty low-tech way, too. He took a fire-axe to the power converter. All the parts of the system are working, but without the converter, they can't talk to each other. We can't funnel power from the reactor to the Oberths and the flywheel batteries."
Christophe fought to hold his face steady. "Can we repair it?"
"I think so. We've got the extra parts and the people. Thank God Carter and Vemuri were off-duty! Question is, can we get it done before the batteries wind down? This could take a day or so, and we've only got a few hours on the flywheels. If we can't fix it before then, then we'll be the first Flying Dutchman in space."
"Understood. Crack on, then. Focus on the converter. Let us handle the batteries. I know a few tricks. Work as fast as you can, Pritchard. When we're done, first round of lager is on me."
As Pritchard left to organize his crew, Pugh said, "Some manual cranking on the flywheels might buy us a little time. It'd give the off-duty crew some occupation. It might keep them warm when we have to reduce the heat again."
Christophe nodded. "We'll see to it, then. The able-bodied can take it in shifts, starting with those taking shelter in here. It is a rather chilly space. The cranks are stored under the flywheels. Cunningham can organize it. It's not much, but Pritchard needs every minute we can give him."
"And what about you, son?"
Christophe stalked away towards the deck's head without another word.
"That's what I thought," Pugh growled.
Wallace -- what Miss Llewellyn had left of him -- lay cuffed to one of the exposed pipes. A hissing Maggie stood guard over him from the head's secret entrance to the hidden auxiliary corridor. His left eye was swollen shut, and he squinted with his right. His pince-nez was in a million pieces back in the cargo bay. Blood dribbled over his bottom lip; more than a few teeth had escaped from his mouth.
"Pritchard's confirmed what you told me," Christophe said as he latched and bolted the chamber's door. "Pretty efficient destruction, that. Any other damage? Besides the men you've already killed?"
Wallace attempted to get to his feet, but Maggie reached out with her tentacles and yanked him back down onto the frigid floor. The move knocked the wind out of him, and it took a moment for him to gather enough breath to speak.
"We have to get Maggie back to the Iron Wind," Wallace managed to wheeze between gasps. He exhaled mist into the cooling air, and his voice sounded huffy as it escaped his mangled mouth. "Now. Let me go."
"Let you go? Let you go?" Christophe snarled. "After you've murdered members of my crew, tried to abduct my mother, and endangered the ship?"
"Because you want to save her. Save Maggie."
"Save her? That's hardly saving her. Even if you could get her back to Earth, I'd rather see her dead than with you. I know how the other departments treat their second generations! No, no, Wallace. No matter what happens now, you will share our fate, so you'd better hope we can fix what you did before the flywheels wind down. If we can't, I'll feed you to Miss Llewellyn."
Maggie sputtered and reared up on her tentacles, ready to strike, as Christophe spoke. Wallace rattled the handcuffs against the pipe as he tried to crawl away from her.
"Let me go," he repeated. "At least th
is way you'll go out with dignity. If you make it back now, you'll go to the gallows." He pointed to the restraint with his other hand. "You know this is against regulations."
"Against regulations?" Christophe's choppy laugh blended disgust and disbelief. "Against regulations? And destroying the power converter isn't? And murdering engineers isn't? You changed the game when you did that, Wallace. You changed all of it. The question is, why?"
"I told you when Cervantes died, boy," Wallace spat. "You just didn't listen. We don't need victors. We need martyrs. We have nothing to gain by killing Martians. But we can prevent another war on Earth by creating heroes. Heroes that died for their cause."
"Heroes? Leaving the planet isn't heroic enough? Isn't space travel Herculean enough on its own? We might die anyway! A million different things could destroy us before we even get to Mars. We don't need any help in that department."
"No, it's not enough. It was never enough. Enough Directors felt that you had enough of a shot to fund the mission, but the rest of us knew that there was no chance in hell that the mission would succeed. You're a failure, Christophe. I've known that from the start, even if Pugh and the rest refuse to admit it. You're nothing. A figurehead. You have none of the memories, none of the skill, that we need to defeat the Martians. But Maggie! Maggie is a masterpiece. She's the only one of our second-generation Martians to have the Code of Life that we need. To try again. To get the leader that we deserve. You? You're just a mistake. An aberration. It would have been better if it had been you in the fire. Cervantes would have made a far better captain."
"Cervantes," Christophe repeated. Gemma had accused Wallace during her rant. He decided to press the point. "Was it -- was that you? Did you sabotage the heat ray?"
Wallace howled with laughter. "No, oh no, no, no. I didn't kill him. I just took the ray out of commission. He wasn't a specific target. That poor devil just got in the way. You're the one that signed his death warrant, Captain."
Christophe clenched his jaw so tightly that he thought it would snap. "And you've signed all of ours! Including your own, Wallace. Don't you understand? We cannot accelerate. We cannot navigate. We cannot avoid the growlers. We barely have enough power for the navigational shields. One good-sized chunk of rock can finish the job you started. And that's before we run out of heat and air. You already have the blood of Cervantes, Nesbitt, and four other men on your hands. Why do you crave more? Just to destroy me? It makes no sense. Why would you disable the heat ray when you were planning to do this?" With a curl of his lip, he snarled, "I should have let Llewellyn finish you off."
Wallace remained silent.
"You weren't thinking, were you, Wallace? You're a font of knowledge with intrigue and regulations, but you are an absolute dunce when it comes to the basics of space travel. Despite my apparent lack of inherited knowledge, I have managed to learn a few things along the way. The Iron Wind is just a shuttle, you fool, not a starship. Its engines aren't strong enough to get you back home. You would have died out there, and Maggie with you! Eventually the TIA will have a fleet that might be able to rescue ships in distress, but now there are no other ships--"
The venomous snake of a smile that slithered across Wallace's blood-encrusted face made Christophe's blood run cold.
No, oh no, he thought. Sweet mother of mercy, no.
"Let me go," Wallace hissed through his broken mouth. "Let me go, Moreau, or they will board you and finish the job. I'll make sure you go down in history as the rogue captain that we had to hunt down. That will still be enough to capture the world's attention. But if you let me go, you'll all die with dignity."
"Not when I wire back--"
"No one will listen to you now, Moreau. I've already received word. Thorvaldson is no longer in control. My people have taken over. If you turn around, you'll be blown out of the sky. Even if you make it back to Earth, Shackleton won't let you dock. There's nothing for you to go back to." He spit a gob of blood onto the floor. "The memorial CDVs are already on the presses. People will trade your death over lager and chips. The news stories and the memorial speeches are in the wings, waiting for the curtain to fall. You're already dead. You just don't know it yet."
"I don't believe you."
"Have you received any messages from him in the past few hours? Thorvaldson is not in a position to help you."
"Did he know? Did he know about the second ship?"
"It was under another admiral's supervision. Thorvaldson is as lost as you are."
"Another admiral? Who?" Christophe asked. When he received no answer, he went on. "If that is truly the case, then you're dead, too. Before they find us, I'll let my crew use you for a piñata. And they will, when they know you are responsible for Cervantes! If your friends board us, there won't be anything left of you to rescue."
"Temper, temper! Think of history, Moreau."
Christophe slipped a hand into his pocket and fingered the key to Wallace's cuffs as he listened to Maggie's growling. It was a menacing sound that he had never heard from her before. No, the growl told him, Maggie would refuse to go with Wallace, no matter what. In his mind's eye, he saw his Kiwi Clipper in flames; the life he had hoped to see again dissolved into the imaginary smoke. He thought of Chief Davies' little daughter and all the other things his people would lose if this weasel were somehow uttering the truth.
Something brushed his hand as he fumbled in his pocket. He pinched it, and he remembered the lock of hair that he had taken from Gemma. He thought of Pugh. If they were about to snuff it, the old man deserved some peace first. No matter how Christophe felt, and even if she were about to die with them, Pugh needed to know if he had found his daughter at last. Wallace would not take that from him, at least.
"Hang your dignity, Wallace," Christophe said at last. "If we go down, then you go down with us. Our fate is your fate."
Christophe turned to Maggie. He held the lock of hair to her beak and whispered, "Maggie, decode this, please. This is from Gemma."
Maggie warbled at him with a shade of chastisement in her tone.
"Yes, I know, I know. She won't be very happy with me for this, either. I did shoot her, after all. I didn't have much choice." The Martian opened her beak and allowed him to drop in the lock. "Compare it to the other codes you have. Tell me if anything is familiar. Don't tell Elias what you find, just yet, not until you've talked to me."
Maggie chirped a question back at him as she nibbled the hair. Christophe turned back to his prisoner.
"Maggie has a point. Is the other ship armed? How far away is it? How much time do we have?"
Wallace fell silent again. His only answer was to stare daggers at Maggie, who had settled down into a nest of her own tentacles, with only the occasional rumble emerging from deep within her.
"I leave you in her tender care," Christophe growled. "Maggie, bar the door."
He made his way back to the batteries, where a host of crewmen cranked away at the flywheels. Dr. Pugh puffed away at one of his own, moving at a quarter of the speed of the others. He paused, panting, as Christophe approached him.
"Doing your part, I see," Christophe observed.
"They've had to break out the overcoats in the other shelters, but we're managing. We'll need to swap people out soon." Pugh spoke between ragged gasps in the cooling air. He withdrew a kerchief from his pocket and wiped sweat from his brow. "Did you manage to get anything out of him?"
Christophe pulled him away from the bank of batteries towards the unmanned Oberth control panel. He helped the elderly man sink down into one of the chairs before he spoke.
"Yes," he replied. "It's as he said when Cervantes died -- someone in the TIA wants martyrs. Except they want all of us on the altar."
"Hrmph," Pugh said with a cough. "Explains why they only sent the Fury instead of a fleet. Especially one without a functioning weapon. It never made sense. Not really."
"I'm afraid we're falling even deeper into the fire, Elias. There is another ship."
P
ugh's face turned pale. "Another ship? Are you sure? But how could--"
"He was mum on the particulars, but it's the only way his attempt to steal the Iron Wind makes sense. He was expecting them to pick him up, presumably after the rest of us had moved on."
"I knew there was a faction that protested the mission, but I had no idea--"
"I believe that faction has taken over. Completely. He indicated that his people have usurped the Admiralty, that Thorvaldson is no longer in command. I'd like to confirm that, but I'm not sure how our wireless messages will be received, if what he says is true. If they've had a coup, I don't know who is in charge."
"A coup?" Pugh snorted. "Only of the boardroom variety. The TIA is not a state unto itself, as much as it might dream of such things. As far as the rest of the world goes, it's just a change of directorship, I'm sure." He twisted his lip in thought. "But to the immediate concern, what if the other ship discovers Wallace didn't escape?"
"I assume that they'll board us in an attempt to retrieve both Wallace and Maggie. He hinted at that, anyway. He's responsible for the heat ray disaster, too, probably in anticipation of something like this."
Pugh nodded. "I knew he wasn't just the ship's arbiter elegantiae. But this! Oh, poor Miguel! Our poor crew! Even if we live long enough to get back home, can we?" He shook his head and stared down at the scuffs on his shoes. He sniffed, wiped his nose with his sleeve, and looked back at Christophe with hard eyes. "Any other details? What should we tell the crew? How much time do we have? Will the batteries even last until then?"
"I don't know. I don't want to stress the crew any more, but we have to prepare them to defend themselves. I know my people. They deserve the truth. They deserve a chance to serve the mission they signed on for." He pounded his fist against the console. "I can't believe we'll have to fight our own people. The Martians are honest enemies, at least. They never pretended to be on our side."
"I agree. Wallace has to have been in communication with the other ship at some point. Especially if they are close enough to pick him up in a reasonable amount of time! They would have to be traveling at an incredible velocity to catch up with us."