The Guns of Two-Space (19 page)

* * *
 

I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay
Where they in battle died.
And the sound of that mournful song
Goes through me with a thrill:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
 

* * *
 

In an ideal world, all of Melville's elements would have converged on the enemy's upper quarterdeck at the same time. Melville's boarding party, the crews of the two cutters from the flanks, Ulrich on the jollyboat from the stern, the Sylvan topmen coming from above, and Broadax's marines from below, should all have hit simultaneously. But the real world seldom lives up to expectations.

In this case the Sylvan topmen in the upper rigging had been badly delayed by stronger than expected Goblan resistance. Whatever their personal, moral, and hygienic shortcomings, no one could deny that the ticks fought superbly in the upper rigging. In the end
Fang
's topmen were not able to provide more than a sporadic sprinkling of musket fire from above before the battle was over. The topmen and the
Fang
s down on the deck then picked off the remaining ticks at their leisure.

The Sylvans were delayed, but at least they were able to contribute something to the battle on the upperside. Lt. Broadax and her marines, on the other hand, arrived well after the battle was over. In the end it was anticlimactic when Broadax came smashing up through a secured hatch cover like some oversized, explosive, blood-soaked mole busting out from the bowels of the earth.

Thus arrives Broadax the Great
, thought Melville with true affection in his eyes. "
Herself a host,' to paraphrase
The Illiad
.
 

"Dammit!" she cried in disgust and dismay, her gore-soaked head darting back and forth like a deranged, rabid, rodent peering out of its hole. "Damn, damn, damn! Ye done hogged all the fun on this end, didn' ye?"

Melville stood up from beside the dead enemy captain and rested his bloody sword blade on his shoulder. "Is the Ship's Keel secured?" he asked her.

"Aye, sir. They ain' gonna scuttle the Ship. This Ship's ours, dammit, bought with blood and battle."

"Aye," Melville replied, and then he looked over at Archer, still kneeling beside the body of the fallen Guldur captain. "Lt. Archer, move down to the Keel and claim possession of your Ship." Then with a sad but faintly humorous smile he added, "It is good that you are bleeding. These Ships seem to like a bit of blood."

"Aye, sir." Melville could see the gleam in Archer's eyes and he knew what the young lieutenant was thinking.
His Ship, by God. It was
his
Ship.
 

"Aye, son. Now go claim your Ship."

Then Melville allowed himself to relax as he crouched down and rubbed his dog's ears. Boye had stayed faithfully by his side throughout the battle, and the little monkey on the dog's back had stopped more than a few bullets and sword cuts, judging by the condition of the belaying pin in the critter's true-hands. The dog's sopping red muzzle made it clear that he had tasted blood this day; and his tongue-lolling, doggie grin said that he
liked
it. "Good boy!" said Melville as he thumped his dog's side. "Good dog!" Boye looked up and licked his master's face, and for just a moment they both shared a sense of pure, undiluted pleasure as they reveled in their victory... and the sheer joy of being alive.

Victory. O sweet victory! Rapture gripped him with an intensity that most people will never know. But already, from a place too deep for words, sorrow began to groan.

He looked around at the mass of dead and dying, a carpet of misery that covered the deck around him, and all he could feel was the joy of living in the face of death that psychologists called "survivor euphoria." Melville looked at one Guldur lying on the deck with a great, gaping wound in its throat, staring into the sky and gasping out its last breath in terrible agony, and he was amazed to feel so good in the face of so much tragedy and suffering.

Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies
Between the pain of hell and paradise!
 

He knew from past experiences that remorse, post-combat exhaustion, and possibly even depression would come to visit him eventually, but for now it was good to be counted among the living and the victorious, and he lifted up his head and called out to the universe,

"
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
 

And all around him his
Fang
s roared their agreement.

Dwakins walks into the hospital with a big, yellow Guldur in his arms and tears in his eyes. They are both soaked with blood. The Guldur has been pierced through the right lung and is breathing in great, ragged gasps. "Please, mah'yam," he asks Mrs. Vodi, "can yew fix 'im?"

"Yes," she says kindly, examining the wound and guessing what must have happened. "Yep, I think we can help your furry friend here. Lay him down, and then you get back to your squad before you git into trouble. We'll do the best we can."

"Thankee, ma'am. Thankee. Ah think 'e's a good doggie, mah'yam. Ah really dew."

Vodi just nods. The battle was largely one-sided, and there are time and resources enough to be compassionate to the enemy. After all the killing, it feels good to make room for a little compassion.

We have come over a way
that with tears has been watered,
We have come treading our path
thru' the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
till now we stand at last
Where the gleam of our bright star is cast.
Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
high as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing"
James Weldon Johnson

Lt. Broadax had just brought one of her wounded marines into the hospital. The unfortunate wretch was slung over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes being carried by an ambulatory fire hydrant, his feet dragging behind her. The marine moaned as his ankles thumped

into each step as she came up the inclined ladder—which sailors refused to call "stairs."

"Quit yer bitchin', dammit," Broadax grumbled through her cigar as she flipped her cargo onto a bed. "Sweat dries, blood clots, bones heal, but glory lasts forever! So suck it up, an' be a marine!" she said encouragingly. The marine landed next to a wounded Guldur sailor with blood-soaked bandages sealing a punctured right lung. Then she stopped to watch as Vodi and Elphinstone prepared to operate on Asquith.

The earthling had taken a shard of wood in his left eye. Another had lodged in the palm of his left hand after severing the middle finger. The finger was hanging by a thread of flesh, and the stump was oozing blood.

Asquith had recovered consciousness, but he was in a state of extreme shock, looking dazedly with his right eye at the shard of wood in his hand. He was still oblivious to the splinter that stuck out of his left eye like a broken tooth.

"I guess that's fate's way of giving you the finger, my friend," said Mrs. Vodi with a cheerful laugh. As she said this she reached out to hold his good hand to stop him from touching the splinter that was protruding from his eye socket. If nothing else, Vodi's patented bedside manner was guaranteed to distract her patients. And they needed to keep Asquith distracted from the wound to his eye for as long as they could.

"Don't worry," Lady Elphinstone reassured the patient. "We'll get that splinter out of thy hand, and we'll get thy finger reattached, good as new."

"Splinter!" said Asquith, surfing the crest of hysteria as he looked at the mass of white wood protruding from his hand. "You call that a 'splinter'? A splinter is something I can take out with tweezers! And just how do you primitives intend to do the microsurgery required to reattach my finger?"

"We use leeches and maggots in our surgery," said Vodi happily, as the surgeon began to prep the patient. "Right up until the twenty-first century they were still using leeches in microsurgery, then they were replaced by all kinds of exotic, high-tech goodies. Out here in two-space that stuff wouldn't last two seconds, so we use these little piggies. They'll suck up blood and inject enzymes that will make your blood vessels dilate, engorging themselves and swelling up to ten times their original size in the process."

"Mmm. Sounds kinda kinky," said Broadax with an evil chuckle and a wink at Vodi. The marine lieutenant had decided to hang around for a minute to watch the show. "I love that kinda talk," Broadax continued. "Do tell us more."

"Plus it provides a mild anesthetic so thou dost not even feel its presence," continued Elphinstone primly, pointedly ignoring the other two females in the room.

"Ah, 'at takes all the fun outta it!" cackled Broadax.

"We use a slosh of beer to draw them to the surface," said Mrs. Vodi as Lady Elphinstone pointedly ignored the lewd commentary and concentrated on her work. "The little devils love beer. There you go. Here come some cute ones to the top. Aren't they just lovely?"

Asquith whimpered and Broadax craned her neck, watching with the voyeuristic excitement of someone who isn't on the chopping block.

"The primary thing we use them for is to reattach severed limbs," Vodi continued. "They inject bunches of nature's own anticoagulant. We just slap them onto any severed limb, and these girls do the housework for us. Sucking up all that nasty old used blood, so it doesn't cause gangrene. Dilating blood vessels so the good blood can flow. What more can you ask?"

Asquith listened to all this in horrified wonder. "What more can you ask! OhGodOhGodOhGod! I'll tell you what you can ask! To be released from the clutches of depraved, sadistic people like you! Maggots! Leeches! What kind of doctor
are
you?!"

"Hmm," replied Elphinstone distractedly, as she finished strapping Asquith to the operating table with leather-coated chains. "The kind that might just save thy finger. But 'tis another matter that concerns me."

"Yes? What is that?" asked the diminutive earthling.

"Wouldst know what it is?"

"I
said
so!"

"Then I shall tell thee."

"Yes? And...?"

"'Tis this," she said, pointing sadly at the shard sticking out of his eye socket. "I'm afraid there's no hope for thine eye."

On that note Asquith gave a distracted, cross-eyed look from his right eye, focusing on the splinter protruding a few inches from the left socket. Then he suddenly realized why he was not receiving any information from that eye. He spasmodically tried to reach up with his hands to feel the wound, but he was firmly strapped to the table. Then he sighed and fainted.

Later, with his eye removed, the empty socket bandaged, his finger reconnected, and his dirty drawers changed, Asquith came to bleary consciousness. Vodi and Elphinstone were hovering over him.

"Well," said Vodi, "that splinter damned near punched through to your brain. It almost got you, but it looks like you'll come out of this adventure with nothing worse than an eye patch. Very rakish and stylish-looking it will be. Any preschooler would tell you that the patch is the mark of a true sailing Hero, every bit as much as a peg leg or parrot would be."

Asquith nodded blearily, and started to drift off to sleep.

With a gentle smile Lady Elphinstone added,

"So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop

Into thy mother's lap."

"A healer's blessing," mumbled Asquith. "Thank you. But I don't think it's original. I think that's Milton..."

"Shh. 'Twill be our secret."

The two Ships remained lashed together as they exchanged crew members and supplies. Repairs were already begun and the wounded were all evacuated back to the
Fang
. The Guldur dead were dispatched with little ceremony, while the
Fang
s that had been killed were wrapped lovingly in sailcloth and brought back aboard their Ship.

The prize crew for Lt. Archer's new Ship was enjoying one last meal aboard the
Fang
while the final details were wrapped up. Melville whispered a little prayer for Archer and his men. Just a handful of good sailors could keep a Ship going in a straight line, but they would be doomed if they had to fight. Over lunch Archer filled Melville in on his telepathic contact with his new Ship.

"It was amazing, sir," said Archer. "My Ship told me I was a 'Good pup.'"

"Yeah,
Fang
told me the same thing," replied Melville with a laugh. "Congratulations, Buckley. You have won a Ship. She will be loyal to you, and there is no one in the galaxy who can take her away from you, short of killing you. Within a week you and your prize crew should be able to use the captured Guldur, just like we did aboard the
Fang
. Any idea what we should name her?"

"Well, sir," said Archer, gulping down a bite of Cookie's meat loaf covered in catsup, "like the
Fang
, she appears to have been named after a specific tooth in a Guldur's mouth." His next fork full came to his mouth empty as his monkey intercepted it with a lightning-fast flick of its truehand, and Archer never missed a beat as he sent his fork down for another bite. "Best I can figure, it's one of the back molars. So how does '
Gnasher
' sound?"

"Excellent! I now pronounce you captain of Her Majesty, the Queen of Westerness' Ship, the
Gnasher
. Now get on over there and get some sail up on her while we police up the other Guldur Ship. As soon as you can get under way, set a course for Nordheim. I think the Dwarrowdelf there will make us welcome and help us refit. We should catch up with you shortly. If we don't show, just go on to Nordheim and then to Earth."