“Never seen the like, exactly,” Edmonds said, “but they’re Martian-made for sure.”
“I thought the Martians were not allowed aerial ships?”
“Not interplanetary ships, ma’am. But some of ’em worked out the building of inshore vessels”—he gestured to the Martian boats—“before the treaties, and they were allowed to keep ’em.” He peered more closely. “They’re armed.”
Indeed, Arabella saw that each boat carried two large crossbows, each manned by an alert crew of Martians. Each bow—as long as a tall man’s height—was drawn back in a taut curve, with a massive arrow, or bolt, laid in the groove ready for firing. A flame flickered at the head of each bolt.
“Those are fire-bolts!” Arabella cried, alarmed. This type of weapon, she knew from her reading, was ineffective in interplanetary aerial combat; in free descent, flames tended to suffocate unless deliberately fanned. But in gravity, with the flames fed by rising air, a burning crossbow bolt could set a balloon envelope afire, sending the ship plummeting to the ground below. Even worse, as Diana’s balloons were filled with hydrogen, a single bolt could easily cause a tremendous explosion.
Immediately Edmonds reported this intelligence to the captain, who at once ordered “Back pulsers!” The ship slowed to a stop, still some distance from the port.
In the sudden silence that fell after the drums belowdeck ceased, Arabella made out a harsh sound from the nearest boat. It was a call from a Martian throat, she felt certain, but its meaning eluded her. She moved closer to Captain Singh.
“What is he saying?” he asked her.
“I do not know,” she confessed. “It must be khoreshte dialect. Khema would have a better idea.”
Captain Singh turned to Watson, one of Diana’s midshipmen. “Pray convey to Miss Khema my very best regards, and request her presence upon the quarterdeck.” Even as Watson scurried off, the Martian hailed Diana again, repeating her previous request with greater urgency.
“Khema was in a very bad way when last I saw her,” Captain Singh said. “She may not be in any position to assist us. Can you ask the Martian what he wants?” He handed her a speaking-trumpet.
“She,” Arabella corrected, taking the device. “I will try.” She paused a moment, trying to bring Martian language, unused in some years, back to the forefront of her mind, then formulated a reasonably polite request in Khema’s tribal dialect. Drawing in a lungful of the cool, fresh, dry air, she bellowed the request as loudly as she could … then bent over, coughing, from the unexpected effort. Martian language was not easily shouted by the human throat.
The boat replied almost immediately, and to Arabella’s relief it was in the same language. “They desire to come aboard and inspect our ship before we land,” she translated.
“Highly unusual,” Captain Singh muttered. “But I suppose a Company ship is unusual in this port.”
“I suppose they would be more used to privateers, and independent traders.”
“Tell them they must extinguish their fire-bolts before approaching.”
Arabella considered her grammar, then raised the speaking-trumpet to her lips to make the request, adding an explanation that the ship carried highly inflammable cargo. It was not exactly a lie.
The Martians did not reply immediately, debating amongst themselves. “If we were lifted by coal,” Captain Singh said quietly, “we would be running low on fuel at this point. Surely their strategy depends upon our desperation to land quickly.”
“Perhaps we should not yet reveal our advantage in this area.”
The captain’s expression soured. “With the fire-bolts in play, that advantage is also a disadvantage.”
Arabella glanced around, trying to imagine what her captain was seeing with his strategic eye. They were now completely surrounded by khoreshte air-boats, above and below as well as to all sides, though only the boat directly ahead lay close enough to be worrisome. The ground directly beneath was rocky and inhospitable—if they were forced down, it would be a rough landing indeed.
A rasping call from the lead khoreshte boat roused Arabella from her reverie. “They refuse,” she translated, even as the boat moved closer. Smoke rose from the flames of its crossbow bolts, and drips of flaming fuel fell toward the jagged rocks below.
Not taking his eyes from the advancing boat, Captain Singh took a step back to stand beside Edmonds. “Quietly, now,” he muttered. “Pass the word to the sharpshooters in the tops: target the Martians’ gunners. But do not fire unless and until I give the command.”
Arabella’s heart hammered in her breast. They were surrounded by eight or nine khoreshte boats, each bearing two crossbows with several Martians on each. Even if Diana’s sharpshooters fired rapidly and accurately they would not be able to take all the Martians out of action before they fired. And if even a single flaming crossbow bolt struck a hydrogen-filled balloon the result would be disastrous.
The gun crews in the lead boat readied their weapons, cranking the bows to their maximum tension. Captain Singh drew in a breath.
And then a call—a brief, loud utterance in the same rattling language the aerial boat’s commander had used—interrupted the proceedings, and Arabella looked over the quarterdeck’s forward rail to the source of the sound. It was Khema, who had just emerged from belowdecks. Her knees wavered, her fingers clutched the gunwale, and even her eye-stalks waved uneasily, but she was nonetheless vertical and capable of speech.
In the silence after Khema’s cry, nothing moved. The Martian crossbows and Diana’s rifles remained fixed upon their targets. Even the wind seemed to have fallen silent.
“What did you say?” Captain Singh asked Khema.
“I invoked akhmok-right.” Khema made her way carefully to the base of the quarterdeck ladder, creeping along the gunwale hand-over-hand. She was too large to comfortably ascend to the quarterdeck itself. “Our authority crosses boundaries of tribe and nation.”
Captain Singh blinked, but he said nothing, nor did his gaze stray from the gun crew in the nearest khoreshte boat. The Martian gunners, in turn, stared right back at him, their faceted eyes glinting in the summer sun. No one moved or spoke.
“Under most circumstances akhmok-right is accepted without hesitation,” Khema said uneasily. “Carts and canal-boats carrying akhmok are not subject to inspection, and it seems obvious to me that this privilege should extend to ships of the air as well.”
“The commander of this flotilla,” Captain Singh said, “may not agree.”
The silent impasse went on and on. Then the lead boat’s commander, who stood upon a small platform in the boat’s waist, called a question. Khema called back in the same language. This received what seemed to Arabella a very brusque reply.
“She asks why an akhmok travels upon an English airship,” Khema translated. “I told her that I have come from Fort Augusta with a matter of import to all Martians. She does not seem impressed.”
Finally, the commander waved a hand in a gesture of disgusted resignation. “Very well,” she called in Khema’s dialect. “You may proceed. Let Tura deal with you!”
None of the Martians on that boat or any of the others seemed entirely pleased with this outcome. But they backed away, pulsers whirling, and allowed Diana to proceed toward the port.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Captain Singh said to Khema. “I hope to have you on solid ground shortly.”
“I look forward to that moment with great pleasure. But I fear that even greater challenges may await us after we land.” Her eye-stalks drew together in concern.
* * *
On the one previous occasion that Arabella had encountered Tura, it had been in her audience chamber, a lofty and grandiose space designed to impress with costly materials, architectural magnificence, and the simple intimidation of a raised dais. But this time she, Khema, and Captain Singh were ushered into Tura’s private study—a smaller, closer, and yet somehow even more intimidating space. For here Tura was plainly at home, and every
curve of wall, every smallest item of furnishing, indeed every breath of the cinnamon-scented air, proclaimed this to be a Martian space, a space into which humans were rarely, if ever, even tolerated to enter.
Before this moment Arabella had not realized the degree to which the audience chamber, as awe-inspiring as it was, had been designed to welcome visitors as well as impress them … but this room granted no concessions to any one other than the ruling elite of Sor Khoresh, and Tura in particular.
As Arabella and her companions entered, Tura did not rise from the desk behind which she worked, her busy pen scratching. Though Martian books were inscribed upon coils of thin steel ribbon, many Martians had adopted pen and paper from the English for less permanent communication.
After allowing her visitors to stand for some minutes before her desk, with two armed warriors standing sentry behind them and no chairs for them to rest upon, Tura finally stopped writing and regarded them, turning the pen over and over between the hard and sharpened points of her fingers. “You claim to have come on a matter of import to all Martians,” she said. “Why have you come here on an English ship, and why do you bring these humans with you?” She spoke in Khema’s tribal dialect, but the word “human” was English, and in Tura’s mouth it was an imprecation.
“I bring them,” Khema replied, “because they have personal knowledge of the issue, which involves the Prince Regent.” This term, too, was English, and though to Khema it plainly lacked the rancid flavor that “human” held for Tura it was nonetheless apparently somewhat distasteful. Arabella suspected that this was, to some extent, a pretense for Tura’s benefit … but to what extent exactly, she could not be certain.
“These people have come directly from Earth,” Khema continued, “on a mission of the greatest urgency—indeed, they took an unprecedented and quite dangerous course to arrive as quickly as possible. As soon as they presented their information to me, I requested them to bear me here from Fort Augusta, because only Your Highness can save the entire Martian people from this threat.”
But Tura did not take Khema’s flattering bait. “Your story makes no sense,” she said. “It is unheard-of to take an aerial vessel for such a short journey.” Khema translated this to Captain Singh, and he began to reply, but Tura pointed one sharpened fingertip at him and snapped, “Silence, male.”
To his credit, Captain Singh correctly divined the intent of the Martian words and fell silent.
But Arabella realized that Khema did not know the answer, and so she took it upon herself to reply. “Our ship is lifted by a special gas rather than by hot air,” she said, and Khema translated her words. To this, at least, Tura did not object. “We can ascend and descend at will, without the requirement of a launch-furnace for ascent or coal for descent, making short journeys far more feasible. And the urgency of our mission required this unusual step.”
“Another triumph of human ingenuity,” Tura said, but she tapped the butt end of the pen impatiently upon her desk.
“Do you not,” Khema asked, plainly trying to gain the offensive, “desire to know of the threat which faces all of Mars?”
Tura sat back, now drumming the pen negligently upon the carapace of her abdomen. “You may attempt to convince me,” she allowed after a time. “Come to the point quickly, and do not attempt to distract me with unverifiable details.” Arabella found her hand clutching her captain’s. She had not even noticed herself reaching for it.
“The Prince Regent of England,” Khema explained, “having defeated the emperor Napoleon, has become the most powerful human in the solar system. Emboldened by this, he now intends to seize complete control of Mars.” She gestured to Arabella. “This human, my former ward, is well known to me and bears my every trust. She has more information on the situation.”
Tura leaned forward, setting the pen down and fixing her full and terrible attention on Arabella. “Speak.”
Arabella did speak. She spoke in some detail. Tura asked many questions, and Arabella replied to the best of her ability, frequently turning to Khema for translations and to Captain Singh for his particular knowledge of the Prince’s strategy—which Tura, thankfully, permitted.
“Even supposing I accept your story,” Tura said at last, sitting back in her chair, “I fail to see why I should be concerned. Not even the Martians have ever conquered all of Mars, and in three hundred years the English have occupied less than one-fourteenth of it—and that only with our forbearance. Even if these supposed armored ships can fly at all, I cannot imagine that the English will do any better with them than they already have.”
“It is not merely the ships,” Khema insisted. “Though the ships themselves, with their guns and aerial bombs, are threat enough, they will also bear troops, and cannon, and most disturbingly the drug ulka. Its deleterious effects are difficult to imagine.” In truth, Arabella herself had some difficulty envisioning them, but the terror that Ulungugga and the other Venusians in Diana’s crew held for the drug was clear.
“But the invasion,” Tura replied, “and the drug, will begin in Fort Augusta, and it is the feeble, English-dominated Martians of Saint George’s Land”—here she directed her eye-stalks significantly to Khema, who stared back with cold formality—“who will bear the brunt of it. The weakening of a neighboring state does me no ill at all, and I see no reason to oppose it.”
Arabella, Khema, and Captain Singh had anticipated this objection and prepared a response. “The English of Saint George’s Land will eagerly participate in the invasion,” Khema said. “And those Martians who cooperate—sadly, I expect they will be in the majority, at least at first—will not suffer from it. Saint George’s Land will rapidly form a base of operations for the invasion of the rest of the planet—with Sor Khoresh being first on the list. But Sor Khoresh, with its great wealth of raw materials, is also in a unique position to lead the resistance. To this end we have prepared a specific proposal.” She nodded significantly to Arabella.
Arabella gulped. They had originally intended the ship-yard and refinery plan to be described by Captain Singh, but now it seemed that Arabella must present it. She did so to the best of her ability. “But the fleet can only be completed in time,” she concluded, “if we begin work on the refinery immediately.”
“Where do you propose this … monstrosity to be constructed?” Tura replied.
“We had thought that Khoresh Tukath—”
“Here in my capital city?” Tura roared upon hearing the name, before Khema had even translated Arabella’s reply. “Impossible! Not only would it be a hideous stain upon my beautiful city, but it would make Khoresh Tukath an obvious and immediate target when the English fleet arrives.” She slammed her hand down upon her desk, scattering papers every where. “You have thrown in your lot with the English,” she told Khema, “and it has made you like them—pale, weak, and vacillating. Akhmok or no, I should have you cast from my presence immediately!”
One of Tura’s flying papers landed atop Arabella’s foot. Arabella, flustered beyond words by Tura’s outburst, bent automatically to pick it up.
As she did so she felt a crinkling at her waist.
It was the sketch-map tucked in her reticule.
Thank you, Aadim, she thought, finally understanding his purpose in pointing the spot out. For he had been present at all the discussions between Arabella, Lady Corey, Captain Singh, and Fulton, and was very much aware of the needs of the iron refinery and ship-yard.
Acting before fear or doubt could stay her hand, she drew the paper from her reticule and spread it on Tura’s desk. “Here is an alternative site, Your Highness,” she said, to the silent bafflement of both Khema and Captain Singh. “A location rich in minerals, and far from any center of population … the perfect site for a clandestine ship-yard. All it lacks is lumber and laborers.”
Tura’s eye-stalks bent downward, inspecting the map. “This wasteland is of little use to me,” she acknowledged, without ceding any more.
“Sor Khoresh is rich
in khoresh-wood, proud warriors, and skilled laborers,” Khema said, attempting to regain her composure. “If you could commit a very small portion of that wealth, we will build you an aerial navy which can stymie the Prince Regent and keep Mars free forevermore. And you will be for ever hailed as the satrap who made it possible.”
Khema gazed levelly at Tura. Tura stared back. Captain Singh looked on with a tense anxiety that, had she not known him so well, might have been mistaken for mere formality. Arabella, for her own part, merely held her breath.
Then Tura sat back in her chair, interlacing her fingers with a small clattering sound. “You have my permission to use that worthless scrap of desert and any thing you can scratch from the ground there. I will keep the project secret—so long as it benefits me to do so—and I will provide a detachment of forty warriors to help secure the site. The rest is up to you.”
Tura’s skimpy offer plainly took Khema aback. “May we perhaps request a loan for our initial expenses?”
“No. You are such a friend to the English … ask them for funding.”
Arabella found her breath running short and fast. This was far, far less than they had hoped for, but certainly better than nothing … and most likely better than they would get from any satrap to whom they were not already known. And time was very much of the essence. She glanced to Captain Singh, whose worried expression matched her own.
Khema hesitated a moment more … then gave Tura a deep respectful bow. “Thank you, Your Highness. We are happy to accept your generous offer.”
10
TEKHMET
“You must seal the bearings more tightly,” Arabella said, taking up a pair of pliers and demonstrating the technique. “If you do not, the sand will get in. Do you understand?”
Gonekh, the youngest student in Arabella’s grandly-named Institute of Martian Arts and Sciences—which was, in fact, little more than a drafty shed equipped with a few work-tables and an entirely inadequate collection of tools—nodded her assent. Though Gonekh’s comprehension of English was quite good, she did not speak the language very much. Arabella suspected she remained silent because she was more embarrassed by her lapses than proud of her ability, when the opposite should really be the case. For herself, Arabella was keenly aware of her own limitations in khoreshte dialect, but she nonetheless persisted in mutilating the language as necessary until she got her point across.
Arabella the Traitor of Mars Page 14