20 Million Leagues Over the Sea Read online

  "There are times," the technician said, with her own "skirt" buttoned into pants, "where the trousers will be more modest than the skirt. Trust me."

  The blouse itself was a double-breasted jacket in a drab workaday brown material that was warm and heavy but not stiff. Copper buttons marched in a double line down its front. From its mandarin collar down to the hem just below her waist, its design had function in mind, not fashion. Buttons on the upper arm allowed the wearer to shorten the sleeves or attach sleeve protectors as needed. She had seen both techniques in laboratories in the past. A small badge sewn onto the left arm shouted that she was a member of the SCIENTIFIC COHORT.

  A curious patch sat upon the right arm. In the shape of a shield, it bore a picture of a tiny steamship churning its way towards the Red Planet. The white poles of the globe shone in the harsh light of the station. Across the top of the patch was the name of her new home: Thunder Child's Fury. The bottom simply declared the ubiquitous war cry of Terra Vigila!

  She brushed the patch with her left hand and adjusted the top of the blouse. She tucked her locket in and buttoned up. She left her braid alone, as they did not have time for re-dressing her great mound of hair just now.

  Gemma released a resigned sigh. She did not mind the unfashionable plainness of the outfit, not really. She didn't even mind the lack of a corset or a bustle. This outfit had the stamp of the Rational Dress Society all over it. In fact, the RDS had been attempting to change the prevailing wardrobe recommended by the TIA's Ministry of Culture for years. Perhaps the RDS had finally had their way somewhere in the universe. Still, she would feel more comfortable once she was back in her own clothes. Two years in this dress would be intolerable. She was adaptable, but not that adaptable.

  She found Dr. Pugh and the captain waiting for her outside of the changing rooms. This time they were debating the relative merits and dangers of the rising Socialist movement. She looked up at Pugh, who was of a size with the captain; they both towered over her. They, too, had swapped the bulky jumpsuits for similar double-breasted jackets with matching trousers. But where Moreau was a bright blue jay, Dr. Pugh was a dull turkey. Dr. Pugh's coat was the same boring brown as her own, but the captain's uniform was a midnight blue with shining silver buttons and white trim lining the high collar.

  "We meet again, Miss Llewellyn," the Captain said. "I hope the clothing isn't too plain for your liking. I'm afraid we're mostly business up here in the sky. May I present Dr. Elias Pugh? Dr. Pugh, Miss Gemma Llewellyn, our new geologist."

  Dr. Pugh nodded and grunted at her by way of greeting. His sparse gray hair was long enough to gather into a ponytail; such tiny flashes of rebellion were a sort of style amongst his deliberately unstylish brotherhood. His eyes were bloodshot and weary. He turned his gaze to Moreau without a word to her.

  "Why are we wasting time standing here? Shouldn't we go ahead and board?"

  "I'm afraid that we must delay our embarkation for a bit," the captain replied. "I've been informed that they are conducting tests on the Oberths at the moment. It is not safe to cross the gangway right now. We have a little time to spare." He smiled at Gemma. "Would you like to see the ship from the outside?"

  Watch him, Mrs. Brightman had ordered. Whatever else you do, watch him. Keep his attention.

  "Yes, I would," Gemma replied.

  "I've seen it before," muttered Dr. Pugh. "But I would like to see our geologist's reaction to the view."

  Captain Moreau led them down a long hallway. The walls, doors, and floors were blindingly bright. Gemma was amazed at how very clean everything was. It was far removed from the grime and mud of ancient London. The air was laden with the smell of metal, India rubber, and another chemical odour that she could not identify. The ambiance wasn't exactly fresh from the country, but it had no soot to choke upon, either.

  She took time along the way to examine Dr. Pugh in more detail. He was certainly much older than in the photograph she had seen. While Moreau practically glided down the hallway, Pugh loped like a limp giraffe, poking his head ahead of him as the rest of him rushed to catch up. His hands were knobby and covered with the scars one got from years of exploring the uses of a scalpel. His lab shirt stank of formaldehyde. She was used to scientific aromas, so she did not wrinkle her nose as much as others might have. He glanced her way on occasion, but he said nothing.

  Moreau was full of energy as he chatted about the station. Pugh lowered his eyelids and silently mimicked the younger man's speech when he wasn't looking. Moreau waved off the older man's sullenness as if he were humouring his slightly senile grandfather.

  They entered a room on the station's outer rim. Light shone up from the baseboards along the walls. The dull thuds of their footsteps echoed as they approached the far side of the chamber. Gemma could barely see the others' faces in the semi-darkness.

  "Miss Llewellyn," the captain said, "may I present to you, the apex of human achievement, the TIAS Thunder Child's Fury."

  Moreau pulled a lever on the adjacent wall. The deck plates hummed as a section of the wall rolled back and revealed the dark space beyond.

  Gemma gasped. The ship was even larger than she had imagined. The schematics had not prepared her for this; they were just drawings and figures on paper. This beast was alive and floating below her like some magnificent creature of the sea. Enormous nozzles stretched out from either end of the ship, extending its length. It resembled a gargantuan crab ready to crawl sideways across the sky.

  "Why do we have nozzles on both ends?" she asked. "I understand why they would be aft, but--"

  "But why forward? For braking. We have to slow down at some point, so we can get into Mars' orbit. We'll start using those on Braking Day, partway through the trip. We figured that would be simpler than turning the ship around mid-sail."

  She blinked at him.

  "It's just like a sailing vessel, where one cannot just stop the ship like one stops a motor car. We're spilling wind from the sails, except we're doing it with the direction of thrust." The captain continued his story as she stared out the viewport. "She's a real beaut, isn't she? Victory Class. She's the first."

  "The only," muttered Pugh.

  A sea of rivets dotted its skin in straight lines of steel barnacles, broken every so often by intersecting circles of smaller nozzles. According to the schematics she had seen, these were the maneuvering thrusters, used to nudge the ship into new directions. The top of the ship was longer than the Gatwick Racetrack. The airships that she had flown in were enormous, but this behemoth dwarfed even them. It was a metallic monster suspended against waves of stars. It felt odd to see it just hanging in space, with neither ground nor water to support it. Just seeing it made her forget for a moment why they were here in this high and lonely place.

  There was a slight glow to her left. She supposed that was the engine test that the captain had mentioned.

  "Apex of human achievement?" Dr. Pugh snorted. "Hardly. Apex of thievery, more like. We made it the old-fashioned way. We stole it."

  "We made use of the spoils of war!" Captain Moreau replied. "They invaded us. It was ours by rights."

  "Bah. Theft!"

  "Reverse Engineering!"

  "How is it that we are not falling back to Earth?" Gemma interrupted.

  Dr. Pugh snorted at the question and mumbled something about the current state of women in the natural philosophies.

  The captain's voice swelled with pride as he answered. "Believe it or not, Miss Llewellyn, we are falling! We are moving fast enough sideways at the same time that we end up staying in place. It feels like we are standing still, but we are moving at an incredible rate of speed. We feel the pull of Earth beneath us as she seeks to pull us back into her embrace. That keeps the station from drifting away. The movement keeps us in place and prevents our falling. It is a perfect balance." He gave her a long searching look, and then he turned his gaze to the ship below them. "We are in orbit, my lady. Even when we are standing completely still, we are moving fas
ter than humans have ever moved before. We are so high in the sky that we should be floating inside the station. Do you know how it is that you can stand on the floor?"

  "More purloined technology," Dr. Pugh growled. "We know how to build it, but we don't understand the physics that makes it work."

  The captain waved him off. "Gravity plates. They are on the ship, too."

  "Thank the good Lord for that," Dr. Pugh replied. "If the ladies' skirts went flying up during tea, the Cultural Officer would be quite put out."

  "The wireless transistors in our suit helmets were all ours," the captain countered. "We managed to shrink those down all on our own." He smiled down at Gemma. "So, what do you think?"

  "She is ... unbelievable," Gemma stammered. Her voice was a hair above a whisper as she watched the glow of the test fade away. "Astounding. I believe she's larger than the Titanic!"

  "Ah, that lady's been plying the seas for twelve years, now," Dr. Pugh said. "This one could hold several of those old girls. She's over five hundred meters long, but most of that is for the Oberths. Do you know how she got her name, young lady?"

  Everyone knew the ship's history by now, especially those orphaned by the Great Invasion. It had changed the lives of everyone on Earth. Some things are so horrible that, once glimpsed, they cannot be unseen. The Invasion had been that horrible.

  It had changed everything.

  The Launch Coil, Shackleton Station, and the ship had all been born out of one horrible, all-consuming need: vengeance.

  In 1901, the last year of the long reign of Queen Victoria, they fell from the sky. The astronomers observing the flashes of gas on their nearest planetary neighbor had no idea what fire was about to rain down upon the Earth. Tentacled monsters in hollow cylinders had plummeted down onto all the continents. The creatures, all brain and no heart, had wrecked the countryside around London, destroying Woking, Leatherhead, and a hundred other villages. Other nations, from the European Continent to Africa to the Americas, had reported similar devastation across their territories.

  The Invaders had left widows, orphans, and suddenly childless parents in their wake. They had smashed homes with their tripods and burnt entire forests with their heat rays. They had captured mothers, grandfathers, and little babies and drained them to the last drop of their blood.

  The steamship Thunder Child had been one of the first vessels to fight back against the aliens. Her crew had sacrificed themselves as they destroyed one of the Martian machines that threatened a nearby vessel.

  After a month of wanton destruction across the globe, the aliens perished where they stood, struck down by common pestilence. Many had called their deliverance the Wrath of God.

  Gemma wasn't sure what to call it.

  The Invasion had put a cork in a powder keg of Earth's own making. Tempers had flared across Europe for years before the aliens had landed. The Hague Convention of 1899 had attempted to restrain the storm many had sensed was approaching. The appearance of the Martians not long afterwards had calmed the winds, but only for a little while as the nations recovered and rebuilt. Crowned heads realized that new technologies not bound by the Convention had fallen into their laps. A hastily convened Second Hague Convention, the Invasion Conference, was called in 1902 by peace proponents around the world, including prominent industrialists and philanthropists that had managed to weather the Invasion. Scientists and "peaceniks" had called for research into the alien technology for the benefit of all; war hawks had demanded the ability to defend their people against future Invasions, from within or without. The new Treaty had forged a compromise when it founded the Terran Industrial Alliance.

  Greater than a conglomerate, but not quite a superstate, the TIA had won from the Convention unprecedented rights and powers to act on a global scale. This included everything up to and including the right to declare war upon the Martians on behalf of the Treaty signatories.

  The new organization had confiscated all the Martian technology it could salvage in order to research it and re-engineer it for human use. They allowed bits of it to trickle out at a time, ostensibly preserving the bulk of it for when the world could use such treasures amongst themselves in a peaceful fashion, like good little children.

  Even as the TIA pushed the state of industry ahead with the Martian treasures, they fought to keep people's minds on the world that they had lost. The Ministry of Culture, a branch of the TIA that had a consulate in every capital, had frozen certain customs and sensibilities in place and time, but with the force of commerce (and the Convention's blessing) rather than that of law.

  Fashion, which would normally ebb and flow with the times, was at a standstill. Hats, parasols and other accoutrements that might have died out over the years on their own became costume de rigeur. TIA member corporations owned every facet of public life, from the House of Worth down to the last Jacquard loom, every publishing house and newspaper, and most laboratories that studied everything from biology to astronomy. They decided what was worn and what was seen. Newer fashions (lower waistlines, higher hemlines) attempted to surface from time to time, but most of those efforts were either home-brewed or disappeared from the market quickly as their designers were quietly bought out.

  In the meantime, the machines had been torn apart, examined to the last millimeter, and rebuilt to carry humans to the Red Planet. The resulting ship had been named the Thunder Child's Fury in memory of those who had first fought the Invaders. The official war cry of Terra Vigila! -- Earth, Awaken! -- marched across her hull.

  A passenger on the ship rescued by the Thunder Child had survived to record all that he had witnessed in a journal known simply as the Invasion Chronicle. It had, as the Invasion Conference had decreed, become part of every schoolchild's education in every nation and every language.

  That included the very private education of Gemma Llewellyn. Petunia Brightman had found her in the ashes of the Woking massacre, next to her parents' bodies. Gemma, just an infant at the time, had no memory of them. No other family members had appeared to claim her. The schoolmistress, in her kindness, had taken her in along with many other Invasion Orphans. She had given them a home, an education, and a purpose. Brightman's institution was more than just a school or an orphanage; it was home.

  Gemma trembled as she turned the story over and over inside her mind. History stretched out before her in this metal monster; here was her chance to avenge her world, her unknown parents, and the loss of so many lives. She was aware that the two men were staring at her, awaiting an answer, but she kept her thoughts locked in her heart. She simply stared at the ship, trying to drink it all in.

  Captain Moreau broke the long silence. "We carry part of the original Thunder Child with us, you know. They recovered some of the wreckage from the bottom of the Thames some time ago. They melted down the hull and used that in constructing the bits that were not part of the original Martian cylinders. Her bell is our ship's bell, cleaned, gleamed, and ready for war. We carry the heart of our predecessor with us."

  They turned at the sound of footsteps behind them. A crewman appeared in the entryway to the observation deck.

  "Pardon the interruption, Captain," he said with a salute. "The Oberth tests are complete, and it is safe to use the gangway now. You may board at your leisure."

  The captain saluted back. "Thank you, Ensign. Dr. Pugh, Miss Llewellyn, would you please follow me?"

  He led them down the corridor and took the lift to a lower deck. The upper deck had been nearly empty, but this one was aflutter with activity. Crewmen had lined up on the station side of the door during the tests; now they pushed wagons filled with provisions through the cavernous boarding area, which bristled with the blue uniforms of the crew.

  The crewman that had come to fetch the captain preceded them through the door.

  "Captain on deck!" he called out.

  Everyone froze in a tableau of salutes.

  "As you were," the captain said with a return salute. Even as the mass of people began mov
ing again, the small party was able to navigate freely as the crew made way. Moreau was a good head taller than most of the men around him, so it was easy to follow him in the crowd, which funneled down to a single line of people and carts on the gangway.

  The caravan passed through a pair of thick doors and entered a small windowless tunnel. Its floor did not feel entirely stable, and the walls looked as if they could collapse like an accordion at any moment. In an odd way, Gemma felt slightly lighter as she walked through it, almost as if she were wading through water. She felt heavier as they reached the other side.

  "Ah, they still haven't fixed the manufactured gravity here," Dr. Pugh grumbled. "And we're still entering through the cargo bay. They really were in a hurry to make the launch window, weren't they?"

  The other side was even busier than the station. Rows of crates and boxes marched on either side of her down the long sides of the cargo bay.

  "I am sorry, Miss Llewellyn," the captain said. Some of the shine left his eyes as they looked around. "They didn't have time to complete the formal entryways. We had a substantial refit after the shakedown cruise, and some things had to wait in order for us to make the launch window, as the good Dr. Pugh stated. However, later versions of the Victory Class should have a formal reception area."

  She nodded. Secretly, she was grateful for this peek behind the scenes, for this chance to see the inner workings of the Fury. Absent were the overwhelming aromas of tar, sea salt, and mildew that had been her constant companions since London, though the tang of hot, sweaty men was universal. A pungent undertone of barnyard crept beneath the scents of oil, rubber, and that strange fragrance that had followed her across the tunnel, lost somewhere between a seared chunk of beef and hot metal. Crates of every conceivable size lined the walls as far as she could see, and the buzz of barked orders to move this or shove that out of the way was a welcome cacophony after the stale quiet of the station.