The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (29 page)

The old man sat looking at the gun in her hand. “I was the president?”

“No,” said Evans. “I made it up.”

His eyes seemed to sink farther back in the network of lines surrounding them.

“I started a war?”

Evans felt her heart race. “Stop lying! You sent the strike force; you ordered the preemptive launch.”

“I’m old. How old am I?”

“You know how old—” She stopped. She could hardly catch her breath. She felt a sharp pain in her breast. “You’re sixty-one.”

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph.”

“That’s it? That’s all you can say?”

Havelmann stared hollowly, then slowly, so slowly that at first it was not apparent what he was doing, lowered his head into his hands and began to cry. His sobs were almost inaudible over the hiss of the radiation detector. Evans watched him. She rested her elbows on the desk, steadying the gun with both hands. Havelmann’s head shook in front of her. Despite his age, his grey hair was thick.

After a moment Evans reached over and switched off the loudspeaker. The hissing stopped.

Eventually Havelmann stopped crying. He raised his head. He looked dazed. His expression became unreadable. He looked at the doctor and the gun. “My name is Robert Havelmann,” he said. “Why are you pointing that gun at me?”

“Don’t do this,” said Evans. “Please.”

“Do what? Who are you?”

Evans watched his face blur. Through her tears he looked like a much younger man. The gun drooped. She tried to lift it, but it was as if she were made of smoke – there was no substance to her, and it was all she could do to keep from dissipating, let alone kill anyone as clean and innocent as Robert Havelmann.

He reached forward. He took the gun from her hand. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Dr Evans sat in her office, hoping that it wasn’t going to be a bad day. The pain in her breast had not come that day, but she was out of cigarettes. She searched the desk on the odd chance she might have missed a pack, even a single butt, in the corner of one of the drawers. No luck.

She gave up and turned to face the window. The blinds were open, revealing the snow-covered field. She watched the clouds roll before the wind. It was dark. Winter. Nothing was alive.

“It’s cold outside,” she whispered.

There was a knock at the door. Dear god, leave me alone, she thought. Please leave me alone.

“Come in,” she said.

The door opened and an old man in a rumpled suit entered. “Dr Evans? I’m Robert Havelmann. What did you want to talk about?”

STORMING HELL

John Lambshead

“Steampunk” applies Victorian technology, attitudes and scientific theories to a future that might have been, perhaps; in this case a sparkling yarn of interstellar naval combat …

John Lambshead is a semi-retired research scientist in the fields of ecology, evolution and biodiversity. He has always had another life designing computer games and writing fiction and military history. Married with two adult daughters, he lives on the North Kent coast of England. A lead story in
Baen’s Universe
magazine, this became a Best of the Year choice.

T
HE SUN ROSE
slowly on another long day. Crystal showers of frozen air fell gently, sublimed upwards under the sun’s rays, only to refreeze and fall again. Fine snow littered the surface like baking sugar, lending the splintered landscape a surreal beauty. This was a place of dialectical extremes, of hot and cold, of light and dark and of stone and dust.

The only splash of colour came from Sarah’s multiple reflections in the viewing port. Convention decreed that her long dress and tailored jacket be Royal Navy blue, her blouse cream, but she was allowed to express some individuality in a neck tie and the band around her straw hat. She elected to wear a defiant red.

Sarah was too keyed up to enjoy the bleak landscape. She gazed out of the porthole, lost in her thoughts, disinterested in the view.

“Ma’am?” a piping voice sounded behind her.

She turned, moving carefully so that her skirt would not fly up.

A boy in a midshipman’s uniform half made a salute then thought better of it. “Is that your sea trunk, ma’am?”

She nodded in assent and he clicked his fingers at the porters. Two Selenites scuttled forward, sharp claws tapping on the stone floor. Like all lunar natives, they were six limbed but their exoskeleton was without the tripartite division that characterized the insect body. The size of a large dog, they stood mostly on four legs so that their front claws could be used as hands. The Queen Below bred them for Port Bedford’s use as part of the Cooperation Pact with the British Empire. A not unpleasant wet-straw smell drifted off the creatures as they grappled with her luggage.

“The captain presents his compliments, ma’am, and asks you to accompany me to the ship.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Lead on.”

They made a strange crocodile through the narrow corridors, the midshipman in front, her behind and the Selenites bringing up the rear. Convention decreed that they should walk in single file on the right. This necessitated one of the Selenites walking backwards, something that seemed to discommode him not at all. She thought of the Selenite as ‘him’, though ‘it’ was probably a more accurate pronoun for a sterile worker.

Sarah stepped over the lip of a double-doored hatchway into the aethership, revealing far too much ankle for her liking. The porters banged her trunk against the hatchway. She admonished them and they listened politely, clacking lateral mouth mandibles in reply before forcing her trunk through the narrow opening. The midshipman walked on without pausing, causing her to half run to catch up. It was so undignified; her instructors had impressed upon her the importance of comportment for a lady but what was one to do?

The air inside the aethership held a sharp tang of carbolic soap, like a newly scrubbed hospital. The ship had recently been refurbished so it did not yet smell of stale sweat seasoned with the aroma of ripe latrine but, given time, it would. Port Bedford’s air was clean and natural in comparison, if a trifle musty, refreshed as it was from fungal forests below.

She was soon completely disorientated in the maze of cramped passageways and staircases. Sailors hurrying about their duties gave way when her party needed to pass. She ignored their interested glances. A final spiral staircase gave access to the bridge. The midshipman stopped in front of a man wearing a captain’s uniform and smartly snapped to attention, saluting.

The captain, who was deep in discussion with one of his lieutenants, ignored them. She took the opportunity to study the man who would be in control of her life for the foreseeable future. He was about thirty-five, tall, slim and fair-haired – a typical member of the Anglo-Norman ruling families. She resigned herself to being patronized when he finally acknowledged her existence.

“My dear Miss Brown, welcome aboard Her Majesty’s Aethership
Cassandra
.” He pumped her hand vigorously and grinned. “I trust that they made you comfortable at Port Bedford while you waited for us. I am afraid we had a little trouble with our cavorite panels, which delayed our departure.”

“Thank you, yes, I was quite comfortable,” she said.

“Either I am getting older, or the pilots are getting younger and prettier,” said the captain to the officer beside him.

She blushed: the interview was not going precisely to her expectations. “This is my first independent posting but I assure you that I am properly qualified, Captain Fitzwilliam,” she said. She tried to sound brisk and efficient but it came out as pompous.

“I never doubted it, dear lady,” he said. He cocked his head to one side and looked expectantly at her.

For a second Sarah’s mind blanked and then she realized that she had unaccountably forgotten to carry out her first duty. Fumbling in her bag, she finally managed to remove the two critical pieces of paper. Why did everything take twice as long when one was flustered? “My posting and pilot’s certificate, sir,” she said, handing them to him.

He cast a quick eye over them as convention decreed before handing the certificate back.

“Show the lady to her room, Mister Chomondely,” he said to the midshipman.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

She made to go but the captain stopped her with a raised finger. “I hope to have the pleasure of your company at dinner tonight, Miss Brown, but in the meantime, stow your gear quickly and strap yourself in, as we shall be lifting shortly.” He glared at the other officers as if defying them to contradict him.

The midshipman showed her aft to a small cabin, taking his leave of her without entering. The click-clack of Selenite claws disappeared down the corridor as she shut and locked the door. Pilots had a special status on Queen Mary’s ships because the Royal Navy still struggled with the concept of a lady in the crew. Ruling queens were a long accepted tradition in Britain, ever since Queen Boudicca told her groom to sharpen the scythe blades on her chariot wheels while she looked up London on the map, but ladies on a Royal Navy bridge were anathema.

The Senior Service had settled for a typical British compromise. She was classed as an officer and so bunked aft and ate in the wardroom. However, it was strictly understood that she most assuredly had no place in the chain of command. One of her instructors had compared the position of Royal Navy pilots with that of the Army’s regimental mascots – and not to the detriment of the latter.

Stowing her luggage took little time as there was very little storage space to put anything in. She left most of her possessions in her trunk, which she pushed with some difficulty under the bunk. Then she arranged herself on the narrow bed and fastened herself down with the safety webbing. She stared blankly at the featureless grey walls, trying to control her breathing. Terrors nibbled at the edges of her mind like hyenas around a wounded beast but she was determined not to give way to hysteria. She inhaled and held her breath for a count of two, then again to a count of three and so on. Slowly, she brought her rebellious body under control.

Sarah balanced a watercolour miniature on her stomach that depicted the likeness of a cavalier sitting upon a rearing horse. He waved his hat high over his head with one hand while the other pointed a pistol at a coach. A speech-bubble depicted him saying “Stand and deliver all enemies of the crown”.

She composed herself and prayed, slipping gently into a trance, but she was nervous and could not quite achieve enthasis. When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but featureless light grey haze, like sunlit fog.

“Captain, Captain, are you there?” she asked.

White rings formed cloud-like shapes, sharply defined on the outside edge but fading into mist in the centre. They developed, imploded, and were replaced in a repetitive moving pattern. She prayed harder and for a moment thought she saw the shadow of a figure but it drifted away when she reached out. Her stomach lurched and she disconnected, suddenly back in her cabin. She was upside down, hanging by the webbing, which alternatively pulled and relaxed at her body as she became lighter and heavier. The three coloured galvanic warning lights over the cabin door shone steadily; the ship was lifting from the lunar surface.

Her stomach lurched again as she first became weightless and then fell back into her bunk as down reasserted itself. Obviously the engineering problems had not been entirely addressed. She grabbed the bowl that a steward had thoughtfully clipped to her cabin wall and was violently and horribly sick.

She was a fashionable five minutes late, as befitted a lady. The gentlemen failed to stand when she entered the captain’s cabin. Naval surgeons had become exasperated at patching up young officers injured while making ever more gallant gestures of respect to the ship’s pilot, so the usual niceties were ignored.

“Sit opposite me, Miss Brown,” said the captain, gesturing to an empty place at the table. “May I introduce my first lieutenant, Mister Brierly, my engineering officer, Mister Fadden, and Lieutenants Crowly and Smythe. Major Riley here is the commander of our marine contingent.” He gestured at an officer dressed in red rather than the otherwise ubiquitous navy blue.

She exchanged polite greetings with the men. Brierly was a good ten years older than his captain and his accent suggested a modest north country background. He must be competent to rise to first lieutenant, but not quite good enough to be posted captain without patronage.

Fadden was a cheerful, round-faced character whose figure suggested that he was an accomplished trencherman. Engineering officers, like pilots, were a relatively new innovation in the Royal Navy. The complexity of operating aetherships demanded specialist skills, something only reluctantly conceded by the traditionalists who tended to regard any change as a source of potential ruin to the service.

One of the young lieutenants sprang up to seat her, his breeding as a gentleman momentarily overcoming official regulations. She was not sure which lieutenant was which, so she murmured vague thanks.

“May I congratulate you on your splendid gown, Miss Brown? It brings a welcome splash of colour to our grey existence,” said the captain.

“Yes, top-hole,” said a lieutenant, eyeing her enthusiastically. She thought it was the one called Smythe.

His captain quelled the young officer with a glance.

Actually, she was pleased that they had noticed how much effort she had expended in dressing for dinner. She had always considered that the maroon evening dress showed her modest figure off to best effect.

Now that the party was complete the steward served soup. She looked down at the complex array of cutlery and glasses in front of her and felt the familiar surge of panic. A woman in a Royal Navy wardroom had to look, behave and think like a lady – had to
be
a lady. She had been extensively trained at the Academy to play the role but deep down she feared that one day someone would point the finger and publicly denounce her as a fraud.