Arabella and the Battle of Venus

by David D. Levine

The escaped prisoners were fewer in number than they had hoped, but they far outnumbered the light guard which had been placed upon this stretch of wall. In mere moments all the French lay dead or insensible.

  “To Diana!” Captain Singh cried, pointing.

  “Diana!” the men echoed—Arabella along with them—and they all charged off in the indicated direction.

  * * *

  Making the best speed they could across unfamiliar terrain in the dark, the small party of Dianas and Touchstones moved quietly toward Diana, whose location within the ship-yard Mills had previously communicated to them via Brindle. Watson and Lady Corey, helping each other as best they could, followed, accompanied by one stalwart airman for their defense.

  Masts, hulls, and spars loomed about them on all sides, the armored airships under construction packed tightly together. Here stood the bare ribs of one awaiting its planking, like the carcass of a slaughtered wind-whale; there lay the long keel of another, freshly laid. If Napoleon had his way, these skeletons of ships would soon be clothed in flesh of wood and iron, a vast and invincible aerial navy before whose might even the vaunted English fleet could not stand.

  No Frenchmen, fortunately, accosted them; the troops at the wall had been vanquished swiftly enough that they had raised no alarm. The slaves and workers, they knew from Mills, would all be in their beds—all, they hoped, save Mills himself, who was supposed to await their arrival aboard Diana.

  Suddenly the mass of creeping Englishmen bunched up upon itself, and whispers of “Diana! Diana! There she is!” could be heard from the men in the lead. Arabella forced herself to the fore and looked upon the beloved ship.

  She floated serenely in a flat stretch of black water, with crates and barrels of supplies and stacks of lumber heaped up on the docks on both sides. They had arrived near her aft end, and what they could see of her seemed fit and ready for flight; her pulsers were stepped and set, her masts and stays cleared for action.

  “Grapnels,” Captain Singh whispered to Gowse, who passed the word to the other airmen who held the needed equipment. “We will board through the great cabin.”

  One, two, three, the grapnels sailed upward, each trailing a silken line and catching firmly upon the aft rail. Gowse and two other burly airmen shinnied up them, pistols in their belts and cutlasses in their teeth, then slipped silently through the great cabin’s broad stern window. A moment later Gowse waved the all-clear and the rest of the party followed them.

  It was the first time Arabella had climbed a line in gravity since her very earliest days aboard Diana, before she had even left Earth, but desperation and fear gave strength to her arms and legs. Lady Corey and Watson, she knew, would secrete themselves nearby, to be hoisted aboard as soon as the ship was taken … assuming she was.

  Arabella clambered through the open window, with Stross’s assistance, and stood panting within. The great cabin, which she had not beheld in nearly a year, lay dark and silent, illuminated only by a flickering dark-lantern held by Captain Singh.

  Captain Singh’s fine furnishings had all been cleared away, replaced by a clutter of saw-horses, tools, and papers. The once-familiar space loomed strange and empty … save for a large, lumpy form in the corner, shrouded by a sailcloth tarpaulin. Dare she hope?

  The captain was obviously even more anxious than she on this point, for he literally leaped the short distance to the object and whipped the cloth from it. This raised a great cloud of saw-dust, making every one cough … but despite her watering eyes and heaving lungs, Arabella’s heart leapt with joy.

  The shape beneath the cloth was Aadim, Diana’s automaton navigator. And though he sat unnaturally still, unlike the constant quiet hum and tick to which she was accustomed, he seemed in good repair. “Wind him!” Captain Singh whispered to her. “Quickly!”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Arabella responded automatically.

  As she jumped to her assigned task, the captain directed other men and officers to fan out across the ship and take her under control. Then, after checking the two pistols he had thrust into his belt, he too left the cabin, leaving Arabella alone with Aadim.

  Arabella opened the door at the side of Aadim’s desk and began to turn the handle there. In all the thousands of times she had wound the automaton’s mainspring, the task had never been so difficult—the spring was completely unwound, and each turn of the crank took all her strength—nor so urgent, nor so uncertain. After so many months in the not-so-tender care of the French, would Aadim even function? Would his many connections with the rest of the ship be intact?

  As she began to wind, shouts and pistol-shots came to her ears from elsewhere on the ship. Part of her desired fervently to join the other Dianas and Touchstones in freeing the ship from French control, but her captain had ordered her to wind the navigator.

  After the thirtieth turn of the handle, a whir and ticking sounded from deep within Aadim’s desk. But there was no further sign of life, and she kept cranking.

  After the fiftieth turn, Aadim’s head began to tremble and stir. It turned to one side and then the other, as though he were shaking his head to clear it, but otherwise showed no volition. She kept cranking.

  And then, after the one hundred and twentieth turn, when Arabella’s weary arms felt as though they were just about to drop off at the shoulder, Aadim suddenly shuddered to life, his slack arms rising into a more life-like position with an audible click. His head swiveled to Arabella, the unseeing green glass eyes seeming to fix upon her with an unspoken question.

  Arabella smiled and glanced to the lens, fixed in a corner near the broad window, which she knew to be Aadim’s true “eye” in the great cabin. “The captain is safe,” she said, not caring if any one heard or wondered at her speaking to a clockwork mechanism. “We are in the process of taking the ship back from the French.”

  Aadim’s finely-carved wooden hand tapped the desk before him, then gestured behind Arabella. She turned, following his pointing finger, and saw a plan of the ship spread out on a plank laid across a pair of saw-horses. Immediately understanding, she pulled the plan from the plank and laid it before Aadim, fastening down the corners with the clips built into his desk.

  With a whir and a ratcheting sound, Aadim’s arm swiveled through an arc; then the hand tapped repeatedly at a point on the map. Arabella peered at the indicated location: it was the base of the ladder which led from the lower deck up to the very doors of this cabin. “The French?” she asked. “Are they on their way here?”

  Aadim only rapped firmly on the desk—as though in a demand for immediate action—and pointed to the door.

  Arabella drew the little knife from her belt. Clutching it in her hand, she crept cautiously out the cabin door.

  * * *

  The ladder—which was not what she had formerly considered a “ladder” at all, more a very steep flight of stairs—led from the great cabin’s door down into the darkness of the lower deck. Grunts and sounds of struggle came distantly to her ears from below, but the peculiar echoes of the near-empty ship’s inner hull made it impossible for her to tell from whence, exactly, they came, or even how far.

  Gently, silently, she shut the door behind herself—cutting off even the tiny amount of light from the dark-lantern, which she had left behind—and stepped onto the ladder. Keeping one hand on the ladder’s rope railing, gripping her knife in the other, she slipped quietly downward.

  The darkness of the deck below seemed absolute at first, but her eyes soon adjusted; there was enough light from the torches and lanterns that illuminated the ship-yard outside for her to find her footing. Still, all was gray and vague, with many a dangling line or loose board to catch an unwary foot or neck.

  Then another grunt, this one from very close, caught her attention. At the bottom of the ladder, just where Aadim had indicated, two indistinct forms wrestled together. So intent on their combat were they that they had not yet noticed Arabella. Heart pounding, she moved toward them as quickly as she could without alerting t
hem to her presence.

  The two men were plainly evenly matched, the eerie near-silence of their struggle emphasizing the concentration and effort they brought to the fight. For long moments they strained against each other, then suddenly one or the other would gain a temporary advantage and they would shift position. But then the other would recover his grip and they would struggle, shivering but unmoving, against each other anew.

  Closer and closer she crept, the sweat-slick knife threatening to squirt from her clutching hand like a wet pumpkin seed.

  She would have one chance to strike, no more. Both men—surely one of them French, the other English—were far larger than she, and if by her interference she allowed the wrong one to gain the upper hand it would surely be the end of her. But which one was which? In the darkness, and with their frequent shifts and tussles, she could not make out their clothing or complexions.

  Nearly close enough to touch, now. If the two men were not so occupied by their struggle they would surely have noticed her by now. Yet still, even so close, she could not tell one from the other.

  Both men were tiring. Their fight would end soon. She could not afford to let the Frenchman win. But which was which?

  Then, with a grunt and a muffled curse, the two men tumbled over each other, nearly striking Arabella where she crouched in the blackness nearby. As they rolled past her, she noted that one—the one on the bottom as they slammed against a bulkhead—had his hand clamped over the other’s mouth.

  Of course! The Frenchman would be seeking to raise the alarm, the Englishman to stop him! She rushed into the fracas and stabbed her little blade into the back of the man on top.

  He snarled “Putain!” and, swift as thought, reached behind himself, seizing Arabella’s wrist in an iron grip—crushing it until she cried out and released the knife. But to do so he was forced to let go his hold on the man beneath him, and a moment later that other man struck upward—a sudden forceful blow with both hands to the Frenchman’s chin.

  The Frenchman’s teeth clacked together like billiard balls and he collapsed, unconscious.

  The three of them fell in a heap, all panting with exertion and agitation. “Are you … are you injured?” Arabella gasped to the Englishman, who lay beneath the insensate Frenchman, who lay in turn beneath Arabella.

  “I … am not,” the Englishman replied. “Thanks to you, my dear.”

  It was Captain Singh! “You can thank Aadim,” she panted, “for alerting me to your circumstances.”

  “I shall. But first you and this fellow must get off of me.”

  * * *

  They tied and gagged the Frenchman, and Captain Singh retrieved the pistols which had fallen from his belt in the struggle. Checking that they were still properly primed and cocked, he informed Arabella of the situation. “We have taken the ship,” he said. “I was in the process of checking for any remaining guards on board when this fellow leapt upon me from behind. But Fouché’s men will be here momentarily. We must launch as quickly as we may.”

  They made their way to the top deck, where the surviving Dianas and Touchstones—they seemed so few!—were engaged in unpacking the ship’s balloon envelopes from the great chests in which they were stored. Lady Corey and Watson, Arabella noted, had joined the boarding-party and now stood watch on the starboard and larboard rails. “We’ll have these balloons ready to inflate in a trice, sir,” Stross reported. “And we might have just enough men for the launch … though rounding Venus’s Horn is another matter, and fighting even more so.” He shook his head. “But without a launch-furnace, the whole question is moot.”

  “This ship is plainly nearly airworthy,” the captain observed, gesturing about. “They would not have gone so far in her reconstruction without a way to launch her.”

  “Aye,” Stross agreed. “The coal-stores and landing-furnace have been replaced with enormous iron tanks. Higgs the boatswain guesses they are full of hydrogen, and I concur. There must be some means to transfer it to the balloon envelopes, but we have not been able to identify it. Mind you, the frogs have rebuilt Diana almost entirely … there is much equipment on board whose function we have not yet been able to fathom.”

  “I saw her draughts in the great cabin,” Arabella said, referring to the ship plans which were now clipped to Aadim’s desk. “Perhaps there may be some clues there.”

  “Go and get them,” Captain Singh ordered. “Smartly, now!”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  But the draughts, once retrieved, proved incomplete, and what there was of them was written in obscure symbols and dense technical French. “We must try whatever we can,” said Fox, peering at a network of lines that converged upon the forward balloon chest, “and at once. Fouché could arrive at any moment.”

  “We must,” Captain Singh agreed, but the tone of his voice showed he was deeply disturbed by this necessity. “But I fear we may only succeed in blowing ourselves up.”

  “I will attempt to route the gas to the balloons,” Fox said, straightening … but plainly neither he, nor any one else in the group, had much confidence in his ability to do so safely. Arabella’s own experience with hydrogen had shown her how dangerously explosive it was. “I will go alone. Our crew is already too reduced to risk any more.”

  But just as Fox was headed belowdecks to try his hand at the incomprehensible French equipment, a cry from Lady Corey drew their attention to the starboard bow. “Oh! Oh!” she called. “Oh … drat! I forget how to say it in naval language, but someone is coming!”

  Every one took up pistols, rifles, and cutlasses and rushed forward. Captain Singh clapped Fox on the shoulder; the two men looked each other in the eye for a moment, then Fox nodded and dashed below. Arabella swallowed hard, took up a cutlass, and followed the rest of the men to the bow.

  “There!” Lady Corey cried, pointing.

  Gowse immediately raised his rifle and sighted along the barrel.

  But the group that was approaching Diana lacked the forceful rush and disciplined stamp Arabella would have expected of Fouché’s men, or even of the ship-yard’s less disciplined guard. They were, instead, a ragged and slow-moving crowd, and as they drew closer, the gathering dawn light showed Arabella that they were not even human.

  Venusians. Nearly fifty Venusians were advancing with cautious and hesitant step toward Diana. They wore shabby workers’ garb and carried only lanterns, pry-bars, and other tools; not a rifle nor pistol was to be seen. And in the lead …

  “Mills!” Arabella cried, waving both hands above her head.

  Even from this distance, and in this feeble light, she had no difficulty recognizing Mills’s wide white grin. He waved back at her, just as enthusiastically, and began running toward Diana’s gangplank.

  Captain Singh turned to Higgs. “Run below and stop Fox from tinkering with the gas-valves, before he kills us all.”

  * * *

  Mills and the Venusians dashed up the gangplank and immediately began pulling it up after themselves. Gurgling to each other in their own language, they swiftly divided into groups, which hurried to different parts of the ship … all save one Venusian, who accompanied Mills to meet with Captain Singh and the rest of the Dianas and Touchstones. Though, Arabella supposed, they were all Dianas now.

  “This is Ulungugga,” Mills said. “He leads the work crew. They know Diana, stem to stern.”

  “Not the way we do,” said Chips the carpenter, and Stross’s face showed he concurred with this assessment. “Diana is our ship, and no bunch of squishy froggies can say different!” Several of the other airmen growled their agreement, which raised Arabella’s ire.

  But before Arabella could spit out a heated comment on the men’s prejudice, Mills gave a measured response. “No, not like you,” he agreed. “They cannot set sails, plot course, fire cannon. But they rebuilt her. They know the new gas equipment. They are strong, and ready to learn.”

  “But can we trust them?” Stross said, and his question was directed equally to Mills a
nd Captain Singh. “They’ve been collaborating with the French for years!” The captain, for his part, waited patiently for Mills’s response.

  “They have been slaves,” Mills replied simply. “First to Gowanna, then the French. We are leaving. They will help us, if they can leave too.”

  “We will be leaving your planet far behind,” Captain Singh said, addressing the Venusian directly. Mills translated his words. “We may not return soon. Are you prepared to abandon all you know?”

  Ulungugga’s croaked response surprised Arabella greatly, to the extent that she questioned her own understanding of it, and even Mills hesitated before translating. “He is pregnant,” Mills said. “He does not want his tadpoles born slaves.”

  “He is pregnant?” Captain Singh’s eyebrow raised at this. “You are sure of this translation?” He seemed uncertain, even disquieted, by this news; some of the other Dianas appeared actively disgusted.

  Mills shrugged. “They are not like us.”

  This new information answered some questions Arabella had had concerning grammatical gender … though it raised others about Venusian biology. “We have every reason to trust them, sir,” she said, “and little alternative in any case.”

  Captain Singh seemed to be considering the question, but suddenly their colloquy was interrupted by a shout from Watson, stationed as lookout at the larboard quarterdeck. “Man ho!” he cried. “French troops, coming fast!”

  A subtle shift in the captain’s face told Arabella he had come to an immediate and firm decision. “Very well. Mills, direct the Venusians to fill the envelopes with greatest haste. Mr. Stross, choose ten men and prepare to cast off, again with greatest haste. And Mr. Fox”—for Fox and Higgs had just reappeared, panting, from below—“take the rest of the men and prepare to repel boarders … but for God’s sake keep all fire, flame, and gunshot away from the hydrogen.”

  “But we cannot even see the hydrogen!” Higgs protested.

  Without hesitation Captain Singh turned to Arabella. “Mrs. Singh, you are to work with, ah, Mr. Ulungugga to identify all fire hazards and communicate them to Mr. Fox’s party.” He cast his eyes swiftly about the group. “Is all clear?”