Arabella of Mars (20 page)

At that the midshipman looked grave. “Haven't you heard?” he said.

Arabella's heart, so recently lightened by victory, suddenly felt as heavy as lead.

“Quarterdeck took a hard hit just before that last shot,” the midshipman continued. “The captain was struck in the head by flying wreckage.”

He swallowed. The whole gun deck fell silent, all the men focused on his small pale face.

“We don't know if he'll make it.”

 

12

AFTERMATH

After the battle, Arabella's mood resembled the air around the ship, still fogged with dense, stale smoke and cluttered with wreckage and clumps of black, clotted blood. Any joy that might have remained from the victory over the French, and Arabella's small part in it, was extinguished by the reality of that victory and its aftermath.

The captain still lay in the cockpit, under the constant eye of the surgeon. The ship rattled with rumors as to his condition, but even when real news could be had it was inconclusive at best, discouraging at worst. The bleeding had stopped, it was said, and his injuries were supposed to be survivable, but he was still completely unconscious and his prognosis was uncertain.

The situation made Arabella sick with worry. If the captain were to die …

No. The idea was too terrible to contemplate, and so she would not do so. She would instead continue on, just as she had before the French attack, so that he would be proud of her when—
when
—he returned to command.

*   *   *

Fourteen of
Diana
's crew had been killed, including Arabella's messmate Hornsby. Though she hadn't known him well, he had been kind to her, always willing to share his considerable knowledge of the air, and his absence from her mess was like a missing tooth—an aching gap that would never be filled again in this life.

Hornsby and the other dead were given a traditional aerial burial: wrapped in canvas, splashed with lamp oil, set alight, and cast away aft, where the wind from the pulsers would keep the flame going until the body was consumed or drifted beyond sight.

Another of those whose flaming carcass had vanished abaft was Kerrigan, who'd been killed by the same final shot that had knocked the captain unconscious. Arabella's feelings on this loss were mixed. The man had been harsh to her personally, but the captain had plainly respected his talents as an officer, and she had to admit that he'd been no more demanding of her than he had been of any other crewman, even himself. Even though she'd never liked him, the lack of his strident voice from the quarterdeck somehow made
Diana
feel like less than herself.

So, with the captain incapacitated and Kerrigan dead, it was Richardson, the second mate, who found himself in command. Arabella had barely even met the man, a thin pale Irishman with dark eyes and a stammer, but from the other members of her mess she learned he was considered competent but inexperienced. And though he did his best to emulate Captain Singh's firm demeanor, even the most decisive command delivered in his reedy Irish tenor sounded rather like a question.

The ship Richardson commanded was in a sorry state. Every deck, every mast, every sail had suffered some degree of damage. One in three of the surviving men was injured, some very seriously; the surgeon had cast three amputated legs and two arms overboard. One of the arms still drifted along with the ship, caught in an eddy off the starboard beam, which some in the crew called a bad omen and Arabella found deeply disquieting. Whenever she was on deck, or on the starboard hull, laboring with the other waisters to cut away the shattered wood so the carpenter could replace it with spare or salvaged timber, she could not prevent herself from glancing at the arm, now black and twisted, which tumbled slowly in the air like some ghastly pub sign swinging in the wind.

*   *   *

As for the corsair's crew, only one had survived. Most of those who had not been killed in the explosive destruction of their ship had been picked off by sharpshooters; three who had hidden in the wreckage had died in a pitched cutlass battle with
Diana
's salvage crew. Their bodies had been sent abaft along with
Diana
's dead.

The lone survivor had been found unconscious in the corsair's wreckage, and though he had regained his senses shortly after the battle his condition had quickly worsened. Now, according to the scuttlebutt, he lay moaning incomprehensibly in the surgeon's cockpit and was not expected to live much longer.

One day as Arabella was sanding smooth a repaired section of deck with a pumice stone—a sweaty task that generated huge quantities of choking dust—Faunt came and tapped her on the shoulder. “Report to the surgeon,” he said, jerking a thumb aft.

Arabella grimaced even as she wiped the clinging
khoresh
-wood dust from her face and made her way down the ladder to the cockpit. Of all her dreary tasks, those dealing with the ship's surgeon were among the worst. She might be called upon to empty bed-pans, or change stinking bandages, or even hold down a thrashing airman while an arm or leg was sawed away. In that last case, she had barely retained her breakfast. The only good thing about a trip to the cockpit was that she might catch a glimpse of the captain—who still lay insensible, though at least his condition was not worsening.

The surgeon, a portly bespectacled man called Withers, seemed to smell of blood even when there were no spots of it upon his coat. “Ah, Ashby,” he said as she entered the dark and noisome cockpit. “Faunt tells me you've been tutored in French.”

“I have, sir.”

“Good.” The surgeon hesitated, his eyes glancing downward. “Our prisoner's condition is deteriorating, and I fear that he may not survive much longer. My own command of the language is not sufficient to … to convey this intelligence to him, and ask if he has any last requests.”

Arabella swallowed hard, recalling her French tutor's impatience with her. Yet she had found French more straightforward, and much easier to pronounce, than Khema's tribal language. “I will make an attempt,” she said.

The survivor thrashed weakly in his hammock, moaning, eyes darting about beneath their lids. His skin was pale and mottled, and his blood-soaked bandages stank of rotting meat. “
Monsieur?
” she asked, laying a hand on his uninjured shoulder.

One eye pried itself open. “
Oui?
”

For a moment Arabella's breath caught in her throat. This was a conversation she would have great difficulty beginning even in English. Yet her duty to the ship, and mere human kindness, demanded it of her. “
Le médecin … il dit que vous
êtes très malade.
” The surgeon says you are very sick.

At that the prisoner gave a weak chuckle, which quickly devolved into a hacking cough. “
J'y sais
,” he managed at last. I know that.

“
Il dit … il dit vous peut-être pas vivre.
” He says you might not live. She knew her statement was far too direct for politeness, and feared she had mangled the grammar, but hoped that she had at least gotten the point across.

Apparently she had, as the wounded Frenchman's already doleful face grew still more dire. “
Ah,
” he said at last. “
C'est dommage.
” That is a pity.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Arabella nearly smiled at this example of the famed nonchalance of the French. Then she composed herself. “
Avez-vous des … demandes finales?
” Do you have any last requests? Or some approximation of that.

He seemed to consider for a moment, then said, “
Je voudrais les derniers sacrements catholiques.
” I would like Catholic last rites. Not a surprising request.

“
Je vais voir … que je peux faire,
” she told him, and gently squeezed his shoulder. I will see what I can do.

She conveyed the man's request to the surgeon, who nodded with pursed lips. “I believe we may be able to accommodate him,” he said. “Thank you. You are dismissed.”

Before she left the cockpit, she paused briefly at the captain's hammock. Though he did not seem to be in quite such bad shape as the French prisoner, he still lay pale and sweating and insensible. “Come back to us,” she whispered.

He made no response.

*   *   *

Two hours later, one last corpse was set adrift, with acting captain Richardson muttering in Irish-accented Latin as it went over the gunwale.

As Arabella watched the fitfully burning bundle of rags float away toward the sun, she realized she had never even learned the Frenchman's name.

*   *   *

It was nearly a week—a week filled with the hard work of chopping and hauling and scraping and painting to bring the ship back to some semblance of her previous condition—before Arabella saw the captain again. Still under the surgeon's care, he had been moved from the cockpit to his own cabin.

Withers laid a weary arm across Arabella's shoulders before she was allowed to enter the cabin. “I've brought him up here in hopes that the air and light, along with the familiar surroundings, will help him recover himself. But he's not sensible, and requires constant care. As you are the captain's boy, I will be relying on you to help minister to his needs, and you must report to me
immediately
upon any change in his condition. Any change whatsoever, d'ye understand?”

Arabella nodded, not trusting her voice. Imagining the captain lying injured and insensible made hot salt tears pinch the corners of her eyes and the back of her throat, and she feared that any attempt to speak would instead bring forth nothing but a gush of sobs.

They entered the cabin. Half the great window had been smashed in the battle, the shattered panes now covered with rough planking, and the space was still disordered and stank of smoke. Aadim sat in his accustomed position to one side, face and clothing besmirched with soot but otherwise apparently unharmed. And in the middle, sprawled in his hammock, lay the long dark body of Captain Singh.

His head was tightly wrapped in a bandage, blood seeping through at his left temple. The face visible below that bandage seemed racked with pain, or perhaps merely bad dreams, and twitched at irregular intervals. His whole body, in fact, twitched and spasmed frequently, explaining the disordered state of his bed-clothes.

Every twitch seemed to tug at her heart. To see this fine, brave man reduced to so miserable a state raised such strong emotions in her breast that she could barely breathe. She knew at once that if there were any task she could carry out, any thing at all she might do which would aid his recovery, she would perform it unhesitatingly.

She had not, until that moment, realized just how deeply this man had fixed himself in her sentiments.

“The motion is a positive sign,” the surgeon explained, breaking into Arabella's brooding abstraction. “It indicates that all the connections between his brain and limbs are intact, awaiting only the return of consciousness. Until that occurs, you must keep him lightly covered, so that he remains cool but not chilled. Here is a sponge; you must squeeze a little water onto his lips every half an hour. Mark that he licks it off and swallows it, and take care that he not breathe it in.” He gave her further guidance as to the care of his bandages and other needs, and adjured her again to summon him immediately upon any change in the captain's condition.

“H-how long,” Arabella managed to stammer out, “will he be like this?”

The surgeon gave a small sigh. “The Lord alone knows.” He then excused himself to tend to his other patients, promising to return before the end of the watch.

*   *   *

After the surgeon left, Arabella stared into the captain's face—the dark, piercing eyes now hidden behind trembling lids—and gently stroked the sweating brow beneath his bandages. “You
will
recover your senses,” she whispered reassuringly. “You
will
.”

After one last glance at her unconscious captain, she busied herself in tidying up the cabin. Hundreds of tiny bits of glass still floated in the corners, and had to be swept from the air with a damp washing-leather. Even as she worked, though, she could not stop her eyes from straying to the captain as he lay insensible in his hammock. But though he still twitched and thrashed at intervals, he seemed neither better nor worse off.

She did notice that a lock of his hair had dislodged itself from under his bandage and now rested against his closed eyelid. Perhaps it tickled, causing at least some of his restless motion. Tenderly she brushed the lock aside and tucked it back under the bandage.

And then came a sound—a brief whirring of gears, somewhat reminiscent of the clearing of a throat—that made her look up.

The sound had come from Aadim, the navigator. His head had turned to face her, so that the green glass eyes sparkled in the sunlight slanting in through the unbroken panes of the cabin's great window.

Dismayed by the automaton's apparent attention, Arabella quickly drew back her hand from the captain's forehead.

For a moment longer the shining green eyes seemed to lock with hers. Then, with another sound of gears, the head swiveled back to its previous position.

Heart pounding, Arabella cast her gaze about the cabin. Amidst the clutter and damage, the automaton's lenses still glittered intact in their brass fittings. Surely the turn of the navigator's head was only a reaction to her own rather sudden motion, a purely mechanical response.

Surely.

*   *   *

The surgeon having expropriated Arabella to the captain's care, she was largely excused from her other duties, and for the next several days she spent most of her waking hours in the great cabin. Yet, despite the seriousness of the task and the diligence with which she performed it, it still occupied no more than half the day.