The laughter doubled.
“And what else?” Hodgeman asked.
“That punching a grown man is far different from hitting one of the boys from the village, which I’d already suspected, by the way.”
Hodgeman gave her an odd look. “And why did you do it then?”
“You’re the instructor and told me to … I assumed you had a reason.”
“Aye, to drive that point home. You’ve not the size nor strength for a stand-up fight. It’s deceit and treachery for you.” He scanned the group of marines. “Culmer! You’re a sneaky one — teach our Mister Carew here some of your nastiness.”
Alexis sparred with Culmer for nearly an hour, then retired to the head when the marines stopped their unarmed training and began setting up the deck for firearm and sword-practice. She should start working on those as well, she knew, but she was worn out from the previous hour’s work. She was moderately skilled with a pistol, but the short, heavy cutlasses they used were new to her. Any combat practice other than with the ship’s guns was optional for the naval crew and officers, but she did feel she’d need every advantage in the event of a boarding action.
She came out of the head to a transformed deck. Large panels made of the ship’s strong thermoplastic hulling had been set up to form two shooting lanes the length of the deck. The air echoed with the crack of chemical weapons, along with the occasional high-pitched sound of a flechette gun. The latter, along with the few laser pistols the ship carried, were seldom used by the crew or marines. Their electronics wouldn’t work in darkspace where most actions occurred. Some officers carried laser pistols specially designed for darkspace, with each capacitor enclosed in gallenium, as the shot for the ship’s guns were, but the cost and the need to change the capacitor after each shot limited their use.
From the far side of the shooting lanes, she heard the clang of steel on steel and assumed the marines were practicing there as well, but when she rounded the far end of the deck she saw that it was Lieutenant Caruthers and Roland who fought. The two came together for a series of ringing blows, so fast that Alexis couldn’t follow what was happening, then Roland stepped back, nodding.
Alexis joined Philip who was seated on one of the gunroom’s mess tables, feet on a chair, where it was pushed to the side.
“What are they about?” she asked, taking a place beside him. She watched their blades as they engaged again. This time, it was Caruthers who nodded as he stepped back. “Those are longer than a cutlass.”
Philip nodded, not taking his eyes from the fighters. “Too long for outside the ship or if the gravity goes out. No, those are for dueling – just practice blades though. Dulled and no point.”
Roland knocked Caruther’s blade aside and followed through with the turn, swinging his elbow at the lieutenant’s head and then spinning past to slash at him from behind. Caruthers, though, spun quickly in the opposite direction, getting his blade in place to stop Roland’s. The two stepped apart, circling each other.
“I thought dueling was forbidden to officers,” Alexis said.
“It is.” Philip glanced over at her, then back to the action. “It’s complicated.”
Alexis laughed. “What isn’t?”
Philip grinned. “It’s technically against regulations, and absolutely forbidden within the chain of command. Can’t have lieutenants challenging their captain or a captain challenging his admiral. But there’s some leeway. If you’ve a title, then it’s allowed. And it would never do for an officer to challenge a civilian, that’s right out – best to let a magistrate handle something like that if it’s a serious enough offense.”
Philip was silent for a moment as he watched. Roland lunged forward, but Caruthers turned to the side and deflected his blade, at the same time running his shoulder into Roland and knocking him backward off his feet.
“But a captain has a great deal of discretion for handling other situations. If two lieutenants have a go at it on some remote station, what’s a captain to do? Clap the living one in the brig and be out two officers? No, he’d hand down some discipline, but not raise it to a court martial.”
“I see,” Alexis said. “Is it common then?”
Philip shook his head. “No, not common, but it’s happened.”
Caruthers offered Roland a hand and helped him up. “I count it seven and four, Mister Roland.”
“Yes, sir,” Roland said when he was on his feet. “I count the same.”
Caruthers reversed his blade and held it out to Roland hilt first. He smiled. “Loser cares for the equipment, but you’re getting better. A bit faster on that one pass and you’d have hamstrung me.”
Roland accepted the sword from him. “Thank you, sir.”
Caruthers nodded to Philip and Alexis then walked toward his quarters. Roland stepped over to them, a sword in each hand. He tossed one and caught it by the blade, holding the hilt toward Alexis.
“Fancy a go, Carew?”
“I wouldn’t, Alexis,” Philip said.
“If you’re going to play at being an officer, you should have the skills, don’t you think?”
Alexis eyed the hilt of the sword. “I’ve never even held a sword, Roland. I don’t think I’d be much challenge for you.”
Roland raised the hilt and tapped it on her shoulder. “Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Carew.” He grinned. “Sorry, can’t help but do that, can you?”
Alexis sighed. “I suppose you’ll never let it go if I don’t at least once,” she said, taking the sword from him. It was likely the path that would give Roland the least to bait her with later. If she refused he could call her afraid, but how much could he say about beating someone who’d never held a sword before? She hopped off the table and took her place in the area Roland and Caruthers had used. She held the sword in front of her in her best approximation of how she’d seen them do it earlier. How much could it hurt, really?
Roland lunged forward. Alexis tried to move her sword to where she thought his was. There was a loud clang and a jolt like an electric shock ran up her arm from her suddenly empty hand to her shoulder. The cold length of Roland’s blade pressed against her neck.
She stared at him, eyes wide. She couldn’t tell how he’d moved or been able to follow the motion of his blade. Roland slid the steel along her throat and tapped it under her chin.
“Dead,” he said, stepping back and lowering his blade.
Alexis swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “Quite.” She retrieved her blade and narrowed her eyes, determined to at least follow what he did this time.
“It’s customary to give your opponent a nod to acknowledge his point, Carew.”
Alexis took a deep breath and nodded.
Roland moved forward, his blade low. Alexis moved her own lower in an attempt to at least parry once, but with another jolt to her arm he knocked hers aside. She managed to retain her grip this time. Roland spun past her and she had a moment to recognize the move he’d used on Caruthers and think about turning herself, but then he was past and the flat of his blade slapped against her rear with a resounding smack.
Alexis leapt forward with an involuntary screech of pain and outrage. She clapped her free hand to her backside and turned to glare at Roland. She suspected he hadn’t held back much in the blow and she’d have more than one bruise in an embarrassing place.
“Sorry about that,” he said with a grin that belied his words. “That’d be the hamstring on someone of a proper size.”
She continued to glare at him, but nodded to acknowledge the point. She raised her blade again and waited. Roland grinned and rushed her. This time she saw what he aimed to do but couldn’t act in time to stop it. Her arm jolted as her blade was knocked from her hand again and Roland’s shoulder slammed into her, throwing her backward to sprawl on the deck. He slapped his blade against the inside of her thigh and drew it upward to mimic a cut.
“Dead again.”
Alexis nodded, but made no move to retrieve her sword. Roland grinned and s
wept her sword off the deck, turning them both in his hands to offer her the hilts. “Loser cares for the equipment,” he said. “The gunner can show you the way of it.”
Twelve
Alexis took a deep breath and gazed out into the Dark. Even the stale, sweaty odor inside her vacsuit wasn’t enough to dull the enjoyment of just watching the endless variation of flowing shapes in the distance. She was off watch, and so had some time for herself — choosing to spend it out on the ship’s hull, far back toward the stern, away from most of the lights and the bustle of the men working the sails.
She was floating free of the ship, legs crossed and gently drifting above the hull, secured only by her safety line, and the sensation of being completely free of anything but her vacsuit thrilled her. From her position, she could look aft, past the end of Merlin’s hull and past the flat planes of the rudder and elevators that bit into darkspace behind the ship. From here her view of the dark was clear and unsullied by the brighter lights forward.
She let out a startled yelp as she was grabbed roughly and sent spinning and twisting in place, dizzying visions of Merlin’s hull and darkspace flashed across her field of view. She threw her arms and legs wide, managing to slap the hull sharply with one hand and bring her momentum under control, then she was able to grab the guidewire and right herself, glaring at the figure retreating toward the ship’s bow who was rapidly pulling himself hand over hand along the wire.
“Philip!” she yelled, ignoring that he couldn’t hear her. She laughed with delight. She hadn’t expected Philip to come Outside this watch, but a good game of tag was far more fun than simply exploring the rigging on one’s own.
In a shot, she was off after him, pulling hard on the wire and gaining momentum with every moment. Philip and the other spacers might have more strength, but they also had more mass, giving her an advantage in accelerating and decelerating. Within a few seconds, she’d cut his lead in half and was rapidly gaining on him, the ship’s hull flashing past beneath her.
As she closed, she took a moment to hook her second safety line to another guidewire running parallel to the one she was on, unhooking her first once she was safely attached. Now she’d be able to pass him if she could gain more speed — or slow him down.
Which she accomplished handily just as she was even with his trailing feet, timing her move perfectly and slapping his leg with one hand just as his own hands were only loosely on the guidewire. Using her own grip on the guidewire to control the inertia, she pulled herself as close to the hull as she could and smoothly slid under his spinning, twisting legs.
“It!” she yelled, laughing as she sped by.
Alexis looked ahead and saw that she was rapidly approaching the bow of the ship. She deftly spun herself around so that she was traveling feet first and wrapped her gloved hands around the wire, letting it slide against her palms and gradually increasing her grip to slow herself. She could feel her palms heat from the friction even through the thick gloves of the vacsuit. She glanced back along the hull and saw that Philip had righted himself and even begun to catch up to her, but then he too had to turn and slow.
She came to a stop at the mainmast and planted her feet on the hull. This next bit would be trickier, for Philip had the advantage on her in traveling up the mast. His more muscular legs would give him an extra boost pushing off from the hull, but, she hoped, she had a deftness that would compensate for that. Clipping on to one of the mast’s guidewires with one safety line, she kept her hand on the carabineer and gripped her second line’s in her other hand.
Alexis bent deeply and pushed off has hard as she could from the hull. She could have also pulled herself hand over hand to gain more speed, but that wouldn’t have allowed her to keep both lines in hand. As she neared the top of the main course, she risked a glance toward the hull. Philip was just latching on and about follow her. She slid her attached line down, the guidewire sliding smoothly through the carabineer and reached up with her free hand, the carabineer open and waiting.
As she arrived at the top of the mast segment, she clipped onto the next with the spare line and deftly unsnapped the other, allowing her to continue smoothly toward the top of the mast. She looked down again and saw that Philip had made the transition as well, gaining on her slightly. She grinned widely. Topmast’ll stop him, or he’ll have to slow for the topgallant, and I’ll have more speed down the backstay.
She made the transition from topmast to topgallant smoothly as well and saw, as she was approaching the very top of the extended masts, that Philip seemed to be stopped at the topmast crosstrees, possibly with his lines tangled or unable to detach from the lower segment. Laughing, she slowed herself and clipped onto the backstay, gaining momentum as she pulled herself hand over hand down the line.
She glanced over at the mast to check on Philip’s progress and let out a startled yelp as she saw that he had, somehow, leapt into the space between the mast and backstay, flying across the meters of empty space, but tailing a much longer line behind him than her suit was equipped with. His body slammed into her, knocking the breath out of her for a moment, and he locked his arms around her waist and his legs around hers as his mass took her off the backstay, ripping the line from her grip.
“It!” she heard him yell as he pressed his helmet to hers.
The two of them reached the limit of her safety line and their momentum quickly translated into revolving around the backstay. Philip released her but not without a quick twist that sent her spinning as he attached a new line to the backstay to begin pulling himself toward the hull.
Finally righting herself, she set off after him. He’d gotten a good start, but she was confident she could catch him again, for the chase down the backstay and then back along the hull would be all arms and pulling where she had a bit of an advantage. She saw him fumble the transition from the stay to the hull, losing a meter or two to her and grinned.
“Umph!” She was stopped short of the hull by a sharp tug at her suit’s belt, breath yanked from her again and lost her grip on the stay. With a start, she realized she was drifting away from the backstay toward the mast, already farther from the stay than her safety line should allow. Her hands flashed desperately to her belt, searching for the line and her heart pounding at the thought of being adrift without any attachment to the ship. Oh, the spacers working elsewhere on the hull would surely get her back to safety, but it was frightening nonetheless — and would be quite embarrassing.
Her searching fingers found the line and she began pulling it in to find the loose end, gasping in surprise as it suddenly went taut and spun her around.
“You tosser!” she screamed.
Somehow, in the short time he’d had hold of her, Philip had managed to not only detach her line from the backstay, but clip his from the mast onto her belt. She was drifting in space between mast and stay, with no choice but to pull herself back to the topgallant where Philip had leapt from. And no hope of catching up to him.
“You cheat! You dreadful, sneaky, despicable cheat!” Alexis said, laughing. She raised her palms to Philip’s chest and shoved him back against the bulkhead in the sail locker. “Wherever did you get such a line?”
“I believe I’ll keep that my secret.” He laughed. “I need something to even things up out there, the way you scurry about the hull.”
“I do not ‘scurry’. I am … lithe and brisk!”
“Like a bloody squirrel out there.”
“Philip!”
The two of them, still laughing, opened the hatch to the quarterdeck and practically staggered through it. They sobered quickly, seeing Captain Grantham there. He and Lieutenant Caruthers were near the navigation plot with Roland who was pale and visibly shaking.
“I’ll have some decorum on my quarterdeck, gentlemen,” Grantham said.
“Aye sir. Sorry sir.”
Eyes downcast and faces sober, the two hurried through the aft hatch and up the ladder to the gunroom.
“What do you suppose th
at was all about?” Philip asked once they were well away from the quarterdeck.
“More drill, I suspect. That was surely the look Roland gets when he’s put on the spot for a decision. I do wonder why he has such trouble with it.”
Philip laughed. “Just glad he gets a comeuppance once in a while.”
“Philip, that’s unkind. It bothers him greatly, you can tell. I wish there was something we could do for him.”
“I wish there was something we could do to him. Honestly, Alexis, why you care he’s bothered after all the snide, evil remarks he’s made about you …”
They arrived at their compartment and retrieved clean, or relatively clean, given the ship’s laundry schedule, clothing, then walked toward the heads.
“Those are personal,” Alexis said as they walked. “And I doubt Roland and I will ever like each other personally … I doubt Roland and anyone will ever like each other personally, to be truthful, for he is a dreadful person. But shouldn’t we be trying to help each other learn what we need to know as officers?”
“Don’t see him offering to help us with navigation, do you?”
“No, but I dearly wish someone would.”
“Not a chance Roland will, that’s for sure.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Alexis eyed the cramped shower stall of the gunroom head longingly, then sighed and resumed washing with a damp cloth. After almost a fortnight in space with the two-minutes per day ration of running water midshipmen were allowed, Merlin was finally on her way back along her patrol and Alexis was looking forward to the expected liberty on Zariah Station. They’d be stopping at Dalthus again as well, but only briefly. Zariah, however, would mean a stop of several days, and the men talked longingly of pubs with beer that wasn’t two years in the keg before the purser brought it aboard, the other members of the gunroom yearned for fine dinners and real meat, and both groups were looking forward to … other things that they seemed to fall silent about whenever she came near. But, for Alexis, it was the thought of a decent shower, perhaps even with water that hadn’t been through the recycler more times than she wished to imagine. She knew that the recycled water was pure as could be but had to agree with the crew that it left one feeling almost greasy.
Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3 Page 14