20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (42 page)

He had exorcised the demon, for the
moment.

He knelt down and pressed his fingers into
her neck. A ragged pulse still beat there. He checked Wallace next.
He sighed in relief as he felt the man's heartbeat. Bruises covered
the man's face, and a thin stream of blood trickled from his nose.
Bile rise in Christophe's throat as he realized that he had rescued
the villain in distress from the damsel.

He studied the crumpled figure next to him.
This fallen form was not the Gemma Llewellyn that he had come to
know. She was not the bold woman that had put everything on the
line to rescue a child. The beastly snarl that had defied him was
not the soft smile from the gazebo. The person curled up on the
cold deck was a complete stranger.

As he heard the clatter of the master-at-arms
in the distance, he wondered if the Gemma he knew even existed. He
pulled out his pocketknife, unfolded it, and sawed off a lock of
her hair. He stuffed the bundle into his pocket before the
master-at-arms could see him.

One limp tentacle peeked out from behind a
stack of crates. Christophe holstered his pistol as he ran to
Maggie and pulled the limb out of sight of the incoming crew. Her
beak clicked at him; she was coming around quickly. He looked down
at his jacket and saw the stains left by Nesbitt's blood leering at
him.

"You've had enough," he growled into the
forest of shadows. "So have I."

~~~~

Gemma

"Thank you for rescuing me," said the Man
from Shanghai.

Gemma started awake at the ghost's voice.
Rescue
? she thought.

"Not to worry," continued the whisper as it
faded, "Wallace is with me. Pritchard is on the job. We'll save the
ship, as you saved me."

"Maggie?" Gemma mumbled as she opened her
eyes, expecting to see the hieroglyph-splashed walls of the
Martian's nest once more. Instead, the bandaged visage of Mr.
Humboldt greeted her.

"Maggie?" he asked. "Who's Maggie?"

"Ahhh!" she shrieked.

"Oh, no, it's just me, Miss L," Humboldt said
as he patted her hand. "You're in sick bay, love. You look like
something the Martians dragged in. Decided to fight them all on
your own?"

Every single joint ached. The pain she had
felt upon her last waking was nothing compared to this. Her bruised
ribs throbbed and screamed. This was becoming far too common. She
struggled to remember what had happened to her this time. The last
few hours were a fog in her brain. A fleeting image of a furious
Christophe came to mind.

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 this 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."