Star Blaze (11 page)

It was dawn on October 21st, 1805. The sky still bore a faint red tinge and the sea was calm. Johnny stood with a few others, including Admiral Horatio Nelson, on the wooden quarterdeck of HMS
Victory
. The great admiral was wearing his full dress uniform, with two huge epaulets on his shoulders and parallel rows of shiny brass buttons, while numerous medals randomly
adorned the front of his navy-blue jacket. Johnny couldn't help thinking that all this, underneath the trademark bicorn, made him a rather obvious target. He wondered why their leader wasn't wearing his sword. Nelson's flagship was bigger than he'd expected, though still loads smaller than the
Spirit of London
. Close up, everyone smelled like they'd not washed for weeks, though this was partly masked by the scent of rum and raisin ice cream that was coming from the galley. The night before, the admiral had briefed his captains about their new tactics—Villeneuve, the French admiral, was finally putting to sea, and wouldn't know what hit him. The British fleet would cut across the line of enemy ships, rather than sail parallel to the French and Spanish—the name “Trafalgar,” the Spanish cape off which the battle would be fought, was sure to go down in history. Now, as they tipped sand over the deck in preparation for battle, Nelson ordered Lieutenant Pasco, the Signal Officer, to run a message reading, “Nelson confides every man will do his duty.”

“If I may suggest, sir,” said Captain Hardy from the side, “instead of ‘Nelson confides' why not ‘England expects'?”

“It uses fewer flags,” added Pasco in agreement.

“England expects … England expects every man will do his duty. Yes, an excellent suggestion, gentlemen,” said the admiral. “Make it so.” Then Nelson turned and looked directly at Johnny, who felt his face turning beetroot red underneath his regulation round hat. “What are you doing standing there gawping, Midshipman? Get up the main mast and tell me what the devil's going on.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Johnny replied, not sure if he should salute or not. Instead he turned and half ran to the foot of the biggest of the three masts onboard, about as high as the
Victory
was long. Oh for a gravity assist, but Johnny didn't suppose his midshipman's uniform came with one installed. He stood
underneath the towering wooden pole and jumped, grabbing hold of the rope at the bottom of the rigging. Hanging there feeling pretty silly, Johnny pulled for all he was worth, but his arms weren't strong enough and he found his grip slowly slackening. By the time he was only clinging on by his fingertips it was clearly hopeless and, the next moment, he fell, ending up flat on his back with laughter ringing out all around him. His hands were burning from holding the rope, but that was nothing to how his face felt.

“Let's give 'im an 'and shall we, lads?” said a burly sailor from nearby. Four men approached, surrounding Johnny, each grabbing hold of an arm or a leg. Their breath reeked of stale alcohol. He wanted to tell them to stop, but nothing would come out of his throat. “On three, I think, boys,” said the sailor, before beginning the count.

“One …” Johnny was lifted up to near the bottom of the rigging.

“Two …” His arms were nearly wrenched from their sockets and his hat flew off, revealing his blond hair.

“Three …” He was shot upward, flying through the damp air, arms and legs flailing. As he leveled out and came to a stop, about five meters up, sheer terror gave Johnny the strength to twist his body and grab hold of the ropes to stop him crashing back down. The men beneath cheered and he managed to place his feet onto some ropes lower down. With arms and legs in position, he began to climb.

Looking up rather than down, Johnny was nearly thrown when the
Victory
suddenly changed course. They were tacking, sailing at an angle into the wind to establish the prime position for Nelson's attack. He clung on, steadied himself, focused on a platform partway to the top and set off again. By the time he reached it, his hands were raw and his arms aching, so he was grateful for a rest and the chance to take in his surroundings.
From his perch he counted twenty-six other English ships preparing to sail toward the French and Spanish lines. In front, through the rigging, were red and blue figureheads, leaning out over the ocean, either side of the bowsprit. The wind began to blow stronger and waves broke over the bows.

Johnny couldn't stay on the platform forever—there was another one twice as high again, from where he might be able to see the enemy. Nelson was counting on him and he wasn't about to let the admiral down. He began again, getting into a rhythm to match the roll of the ship which was far more pronounced the higher he climbed. It was exhilarating being so far above everything, but his arms were soon aching again and it was a huge relief to finally place his hands around the rim of the topmost platform and haul himself onto it.

The waves were gone … the ocean was gone. He was still on a ship, but sailing through space itself. The masts were thin and elegant, while the vast sails pulling the vessel shimmered silver, but almost liquid, like mercury. Looking down, there were only two people on the enclosed deck—a boy and a girl—and he only had to think it to float down, through the hull so he was standing just behind them. The boy held a large brass steering wheel, while the girl stood over a table covered in star charts, peering down, her long, purple hair brushing the surface.

Johnny moved forward and glanced over her shoulder. Projected onto the charts he saw the image of a tiny ship—instinctively he knew it was the one he was on—sailing through a narrow band of darkness. Surrounding the little craft were numerous circles of light, illuminating almost all of the mapped area, each centered on other, much larger ships nearby.

The girl turned round and looked straight through Johnny. Her eyes were orange, with long black slits for pupils. Johnny remembered his chemistry partner from school, Alisha Leow, wearing contact lenses that had made her eyes look reptilian like
that, until Mrs. Devonshire insisted she take them out. Alisha, though, didn't have the same glistening scales that were a trademark of these and many other aliens he'd encountered. Even on Earth, furry mammals would never have become dominant had the scaly dinosaurs not been wiped out by the asteroid impact that had been all Johnny's fault.

The very first time the
Spirit of London
had folded, he'd ordered the baby Plican to go much too far, stretching the space–time continuum so incredibly thin that a nearby explosion had punctured it, sending the ship spiraling into the distant past. When they reemerged, the force of their entry into normal space deflected the massive rock onto its collision course with the prehistoric planet. Due to Johnny's efforts, a group of rescued dinosaurs were now living happily inside Triton, Neptune's largest moon.

The purple-haired girl spoke: “Someone's here.” It wasn't a language Johnny had ever heard, but the rasping hiss made perfect sense to him. Next, from the girl's slightly protruding mouth, shot a very long, forked, silver tongue that darted back and forth as though trying to sniff something out.

The boy looked over his shoulder away from the wheel. He was shorter, very stocky with just a few wisps of orange hair centered on the top of his scalp between two, stubby horns. While he, too, had mainly light-colored glistening scales, his face was framed with six dark scabs forming a near perfect hexagon. “Don't be stupid, Zeta,” he growled. “There's no one here. Concentrate—I need you to help or they'll find us.”

“I thought you didn't want my help,” the girl replied.

“For once, sister, I was wrong,” said the boy. “Their search pattern's cleverer than I expected.” He turned round and looked across to the tabletop charts. Johnny realized the circular pools of light were sensor sweeps from the larger craft, which the sailing ship must be trying to avoid.

He floated over the heads of the two aliens so he could take a closer look himself. The girl's tongue shot straight out in his direction, passing right through him, but he felt nothing.

“Zeta—pay attention,” said the boy.

Zeta shrugged and looked down at the ever narrowing strip of darkness they were sailing within, but then she jumped back as the boy's fist hammered down onto the table, scattering the carefully constructed view of surrounding space. “That doesn't help, you know,” hissed the girl.

“It's too late,” said the boy. “Whatever we do now they can't miss us.” He kicked hard with his boots on the base of the steering wheel, generating a metallic clang. Johnny felt very sorry for the ship. “We've got about thirty minutes,” the boy said. “Then it's all over.”

“But we're so close,” said Zeta. “I can feel it.” She slumped onto the deck and buried her face in her hands.

The boy ignored her and floated down, with no obvious means of support, into a bubble protruding from the underside of the hull where he sat down behind what was unmistakably a giant gun. Johnny found himself following. The space was cramped so he hovered just to one side of the weapon. From his angle he could see complicated fractals engraved along the bottom of the ship.

“We're going down fighting,” shouted the boy. “I can take a few out with the cannon.” As he spoke, a black ball of swirling energy was somehow growing between his hands.

The girl looked down to where her brother was sitting. “No,” she said firmly. “We mustn't hurt them. It's not their fault.”

“I don't care. They're in our way and they're going to hurt us.” The boy brought the cannon round past Johnny so the barrel was pointing toward a distant black ship, slowly coming closer.

Zeta floated down in front of the gun and placed a hand over
its end. “No,” she said again and she blew on the black sphere, causing it to change color so it looked as if the boy was holding a miniature sun between his palms. The girl reached out a finger and touched the glowing orb, causing whatever it was made from to flow out of the boy's hands and into the long barrel.

“Light will always overcome darkness,” she said. “Fire between the ships. It can be a laser, a distress beacon. Someone could rescue us.”

The boy snorted but, with surprising strength, the girl pulled the long cylinder round so it was pointing directly at Johnny's head. Although it was only a dream, he started to feel uncomfortable.

“Now,” said the girl.

Everything turned bright orange.

Johnny sat upright with his eyes wide open. His heart was racing and everything was still orange. He wondered if the laser had blinded him. Sol was speaking. Something about an automatic response, an Andromedan fleet and prematurely ending the fold. It took a while but, as the fluid began to drain away, Johnny realized he was in the gel pod—that it was just a dream, already fading as the here and now demanded his attention. With his slightly inflated hands he wiped the goo out of his eyes and directed the vacuum trunk around his clothes to suck up the rest as quickly as possible. The lights on his left wrist flickered from red to green, but then they changed back. Johnny pressed the switch on the side of the pod and stepped out onto the bridge. Clara wasn't there. He'd never woken from a fold and not seen her before, but then he remembered she'd gone to the library on deck 7. Calming himself, he asked Sol, “What was that again?”

“We have unfolded prematurely,” the ship replied, “close to a
large concentration of unknown ships—almost certainly Andromedan.” As Sol spoke, bands of light on a large display near the main viewscreen flickered in time to her words.

Still groggy, Johnny seated himself at the center of the bridge. He'd not heard of anyone being able to track a ship while outside normal space, let alone pull it out of a fold. The air next to him shimmered and Clara unfolded close by, immediately asking, “What's going on? That was horrid. The poor Plican …” She hurried over to the tank behind Johnny's chair and placed her hands on it. Alf exited his gel pod, unusually with little patches of orange still covering his suit.