The House of Styx

by Derek Künsken

  Tétreau had never made the intuitive leap that would allow him to interpret radar maps without effort. Smooth flat things reflected radar and so they were bright. Rough things and slopes reflected radar poorly and so were darker. A contour map could be built of radar maps, but not by him; too abstract.

  Nasmith was shifting the view, neither fully long-wave nor short-wave. Fuzzy blobs formed in the projection. They looked like out-of-focus cells seen through a microscope. Tétreau squinted.

  “Focusing the radar emissions differently, we can resolve things in the clouds,” Nasmith said. “These are probably trawlers. Their surfaces are partly smooth and partly rough depending on how much they’ve been colonized by epiphytes. Here you’ve got some small wildtype ones and some bigger engineered ones, or several in a column, but at different altitudes. But here,” he said, pointing at the bright spot, “is the Causapscal-des-Vents.”

  The hard white blob was falling further and further behind the flotilla, and it was already deep, at the edge of a storm.

  “The transceiver from the habitat doesn’t look like it’s working, so we’ve confirmed this is the Causapscal-des-Vents with D’Aquillon’s transceiver.”

  “Missing parts,” Tétreau said absently. “What are these?” He indicated small bright shapes.

  “Your crew planes. The fainter ones are rescue drones,” Woodward said. “They’re following the transceiver signal and using their own cloud-penetrating radar, but the resolution might be lower.”

  “We can triangulate with this signal,” Tétreau said.

  “Please do,” Woodward said.

  Tétreau called Air Traffic Control from the Bank and began reading them coordinates for the Causapscal-des-Vents.

  “Thank you for letting us access this,” he said. “We’re very concerned with the safety and property of those living on the Causapscal-des-Vents. Additionally, the habitatwas... is,” Woodward corrected herself, “collateral for a loan. Should it not be rescued, some other material goods will have to become collateral, or the colonie will be in breach of the terms of its debt.”

  She said it evenly, neither harshly nor softly, but Tétreau didn’t mistake the intent of her words. Nasmith gave Tétreau comms access at the next work station. He had access to the common band and the encrypted channel the searchers were using for the radiation search. He hadn’t realized that Gaschel had shared that with the Bank.

  “Control, Les Plaines is collapsing,” one of the pilots declared on the radio. “We can’t get around the storm, or under it. Do you want us to come back?”

  “Negative, rescue team,” control replied amid the static. “Keep going.”

  “Roger, control,” came the resigned reply.

  “Control, this is one-five-six. I’ve got a signal!” a pilot said in the encrypted channel. “Straight under my position. It’s faint.”

  Woodward lifted one questioning eyebrow, observing him.

  “Start pinging, one-five-six, and start diving,” control said. “One-hundred-level units, converge on one-five-six and start triangulating. Two-hundred-level units, stay on search and rescue.”

  “One-five-six is a good constable,” Tétreau said.

  “Câlisse,” one-five-six said. “Okay.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  MARTHE’S MOUTH WAS dry. She’d blacked out. The world seemed to happen fast, and yet time also stood still. The storm played with her, and the world moved, yet nothing changed. Clouds surrounded her. Hot rain pelted. Heat pressed suit to skin. They all blended into a confusing set of feelings and images without order.

  Bright red smeared the inside of her faceplate. Her own blood. Acid bubbled at the cracks. That meant she was sinking. She was so hot. The worn plastic straw gave only air when she sucked. No water. Her head ached. And her shoulder. With her good hand, she slowly pulled the acid-resistant tarp out of a pocket and gingerly unfolded it, using her injured shoulder as little as possible. One-handed, she clipped it above her on the balloon cable and tried to extend it over herself. By this time her head was pounding so hard that blotches of black floated in her vision, the rain pattered onto the tarp and not her helmet, torso and arms. The rain washed over her dangling legs, but nothing was to be done for it. She couldn’t make her shoulder do more.

  She woke again. The rain had stopped. She didn’t know when she’d passed out, or for how long. The readings in her helmet were weird: temperature way up, close to a hundred, but pressure way down. Her barometer was broken.

  Thunder rolled in the formless world outside, strong enough to rattle her bones and set her head to aching harder.

  Edging close to a hundred degrees; that put her almost at the bottom of the lower cloud deck, just above the sub-cloud haze. Her safety balloon must be leaking. She moved the tarp out of the way and looked up, making her head throb so hard that she nearly passed out again. She couldn’t reach the balloon to patch or refill it. And the gauge on her oxygen tank wasn’t healthy. She had a couple of hours. Maybe less. At least Venus was leaking into her helmet rather than the reverse.

  The clouds still had shape, were still made of tiny droplets of sulfuric acid floating in the air, so she floated above the virga zone, but this wasn’t good. She tried activating her radio. She couldn’t tell if it was on. The HUD was buggy.

  “This is Marthe D’Aquillon,” she said, “calling anyone. SOS. Severe distress. Equipment failing. I think I’m at about forty-ninth rang, maybe deeper. Can’t fly. Safety balloon failing. Injured. Please respond.”

  She said this four more times before her HUD gave out. She couldn’t tell if the helmet’s CPU was working, but just not displaying. Acid might have gotten into the projector, or, more dangerously, beneath the seals and into the CPU, wiring or battery.

  She couldn’t talk anymore anyway. Breathing was hard, raspy, and for a time, her forehead pressed against the faceplate of her helmet. She only came to properly when it felt like her forehead was burning.

  Marthe couldn’t see any way out. She couldn’t use political cleverness here, no cunning survival maneuvers from the sunlit world or from the coureurs to get her out of this. Sometimes Venus just caught up to the slowest gazelle and pounced. Despite all the respect with which they treated their new world, her jaws sometimes snapped shut.

  Maman hadn’t died like this. She’d died at home, surrounded by crying children, a loving husband. No one knew how Chloé had died. Marthe hoped she’d at least been with Mathurin.

  Marthe didn’t want to die, but maybe it was easier like this. She was probably concussed, passing in and out of consciousness, unable to raise the panic that came before death. Her head hurt so badly she felt like she was going to throw up. She breathed the stifling air with eyes closed until the feeling retreated. She would hold on, until she passed out for the last time. She hoped it was painless.

  She hoped her new family was happy. Marie-Pier and Gabriel-Antoine deserved it. She hoped Alexis grew up smart and strong and happy. She’d hugged him hard on her last visit. She hoped he never forgot how much she loved him. She’d made peace with Émile, as much peace as they could make. Peace, brother. And she wished Pa some kind of peace. He’d tried so hard to give them what they needed. He’d succeeded and they’d grown up all right, but losing her would kill him. Let me go, Pa. And she wished Pascale all that she wanted and needed. Pascale had the hardest path in front of her.Goodbye, little sister.

  Blotches of black swam in front of the vision of plastic and cloud beneath her. She rested her head against the padded sides of the helmet. She needed water. So hot. She needed rest. For a little while.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  “ÉMILE WENT WHERE?” George-Étienne demanded.

  Pascale stood on one of Marie-Pier’s trawlers. It was bigger than their habitat, with two layers, the inner of which would be capable of maintaining a pressure of just one atmosphere and a livable temperature of about twenty-five, even at the bottom of the sub-cloud haze. Pa, Marie-Pier and Gabriel-Antoine were with her.


  “I don’t know, Pa,” Pascale said.

  “Crisse,” George-Étienne said.

  The clouds of forty-eighth rang drifted around them and Marie-Pier’s deep habitats arrayed under them.

  “We’ve got no one on the Causapscal-des-Vents,” Pascale said.

  Why was Émile going to Marthe? Pascale wanted to go too. But if Marthe had followed the plan, she might be as much as thirty kilometers northwest and ten kilometers higher. Whatever was wrong, Émile was closer. Who would go to the habitat?

  “I’ll go,” Pascale said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Gabriel-Antoine said, smiling behind his faceplate.

  “I will,” George-Étienne insisted.

  “You’re a better flyer down here,” Gabriel-Antoine said, “better than me or Marie-Pier. And I know habitats.”

  Pa looked like he wanted to object, but finally pressed his lips tight. “We’ll get ready here to catch the damn thing,” he said finally.

  Pascale scanned the area quickly, trying to think of what she’d need. They’d accomplished a lot in the days of sweating and dehydration and sleep deprivation. The hard part had been building a square frame with a hollow ring at each corner big enough to fit a trawler, and then to put the four trawlers into place. Pa had broken a finger, Gabriel-Antoine had ripped his suit and gotten a nasty chemical burn on one arm, and Marie-Pier had been knocked off a trawler and caught by her harness. Pascale had avoided injury, even though she was distracted by the world opening up for her. Now the trawlers creaked in the harnesses against cross-winds, like them, waiting to start.

  It wasn’t just the possibility of going to the surface and reaching the stars that gave Pascale hope. Marie-Pier had brought down two small packets of pills in a thermos case. She’d pulled Pascale aside and switched to a private channel and told her what they were. Elation and terror swelled in her chest.

  Yet there was nothing hopeful or safe about what would come next. Causing two floating objects to intercept in the immensity of the clouds was phenomenally difficult, and usually wasn’t attempted because of the danger of collisions. Most of the time, a wing-pack, airplane or drone did all the moving, treating both habitats as stationary objects. When the coureur habitats wanted to approach each other, they would match altitude first, which meant neutralizing wind speed and direction, before using propellers to approach. The problem here was that the Causapscal-des-Vents wasn’t meant to be at this altitude at all, and once the descent had begun, it sank unstoppably. Its steep descent angle helped evade detection, but if they missed the catch, the Causapscal-des-Vents would just keep falling.

  Gabriel-Antoine touched Pascale’s arm. The touch was hot. Everything was hot. Her suit’s refrigeration system was working hard, but spots of forty or fifty degrees just had to be taken in stride. “Everything we need will be on the habitat,” Gabriel-Antoine said.

  “Oui,” Pascale said.

  “Bonne chance, mon cher,” George-Étienne said.

  The mon cher gave her a twinge. Pa called Marthe ma chère. Pascale hadn’t told Pa anything yet. Or Gabriel-Antoine. She wasn’t sure of anything. No, that wasn’t true. Some inner realization had clicked, like something that had been missing all her life, the puzzle piece that would make everything make sense. She didn’t know how to tell anyone. She felt brittle, like the least anger or rejection would crush the fragile understanding she had of herself.

  “Merci, Pa,” she said.

  She stepped away from them, unfurled her wings, spun up her engine and leapt from the top of the trawler. She accelerated and climbed. She didn’t throttle up all the way yet. She looked back for Gabriel-Antoine. He flew well in the lower decks, cute in his occasional struggling. He climbed behind her. They were close enough that low-watt radio bursts, squawks not strong enough to leave the clouds, would start to trigger a low-energy homing beacon in the Causapscal-des-Vents, two kilometers higher. If not for smothering clouds, they would already see it. Pascale had a brief urge to tease Gabriel-Antoine, but she was too nervous about everything else going on. She revved her droning engine louder and rose.

  The Causapscal-des-Vents emerged from a dark cloud bank pregnant with rain, descending like a bloated caricature of a habitat, covered with stringy black cables and bits of old trawler husk, dripping fat drops that refracted dull light. It was ugly. It had never been beautiful, but it was particularly ugly now, masked, almost like a spiny cocoon to protect its transformation from one form to another. Pascale climbed, banked, and flared just as she crested the roof of the habitat, landing with a little hop. She turned immediately, stepping back to help Gabriel-Antoine land. In seconds, he looped in slower; unpracticed at making a pinpoint landing with these wing-packs at this pressure. He stumbled, but didn’t fall. Pascale steadied him and he smiled at her behind his faceplate. Émile had already tied three of six emergency balloons to the roof cleats. Two others were wound with their cables in the storage bin that he’d left open.

  “We can already blow the first and last,” Gabriel-Antoine said, pointing at the balloon lying flaccid at the sternmost cleat. He headed to the bow cleat. Pascale connected an oxygen hose to the balloon.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Vas-y!” Gabriel-Antoine crackled in the radio.

  They both turned the valves. Oxygen rushed into the balloons, immediately lifting them from the deck. The cabling was only about two meters long, so Pascale could stand under the distending balloon, and extricate the hose when it was full. The next sternmost cleat was tied to a balloon, but Gabriel-Antoine’s corresponding one wasn’t. His fingers moved quickly in thick gloves. Pascale accessed the habitat’s systems, initiating the sequences to close all the openings in the envelope and start draining carbon dioxide from the cells, replacing it with oxygen.

  “Prêt!” Gabriel-Antoine called.

  Pascale cast a quick verifying glance back. Gabriel-Antoine had done so as well. They didn’t trust each other enough yet not to double-check. Pascale cranked the oxygen feed and her balloon inflated, joining the first, bouncing lightly. The roof of the Causapscal-des-Vents groaned. The big emergency balloons weren’t made to do more than slow a habitat’s descent, to get families and equipment out, or maybe hold it up enough for a better rescue operation.

  The balloons strained the frame. They could still lose the Causapscal-des-Vents, and the ugly home would tumble all the way to the surface, leaving its transformation stillborn.

  They repeated the process for the next two emergency balloons. It didn’t feel like the Causapscal-des-Vents had slowed, and it would be ten to fifteen minutes of pumping until enough of the envelope was filled with oxygen to make a difference. But it was doing something. Math said it had to. The single middle cleat, with three balloons on each side of it, was empty, ready to be attached to the cable connecting to the floating harness.

  Are we close, Pa? Pascale sent.

  We’re driving towards you, Pa wrote back. About six hundred meters vertical to go, but you’re coming down fast.

  What’s the horizontal? Pascale asked.

  “Calvaire!” came through the helmet speakers. They were close enough for their low-wattage voice transmissions to make it. “You’re too low!”

  Pascale spun up her wing-pack and leapt from the roof of the Causapscal-des-Vents. Hazy below them, the four trawlers floated in their harness. They were too far. The cable wouldn’t reach. She banked. The props beneath the Causapscal-des-Vents churned at full speed. There was no more throttle to give.

  They would miss by just a bit. A hundred meters. But they would miss. It was the winds, the stupid, always-shifting winds.

  “Pa! Get ready with the cable!”

  She wasn’t going to let them miss it. They weren’t going to lose the stars, the true Venus.

  “I’m ready!” he said. “Can you get her closer?”

  Pascale revved her engine hard, swooped up, and then cut it. Her momentum carried her to an apex just over the roof and she landed between the taut cables ho
lding two balloons.

  “What are we doing?” Gabriel-Antoine said.

  Pascale looked through one of the lockers and heaved a coil of cabling so hard she fell back. Both ends had tough carbon nanofiber hooks. She shoved one end at Gabriel-Antoine.

  “Hook this into the main cleat and make sure it doesn’t come out.”

  “What are you doing?” he demanded again, even as he helped her make sure the cable wasn’t tangled.

  “We need more line.”

  “You can’t reach the frame from here with that.”

  “I can reach Pa with it,” she said, dragging the coils to where the envelope began to curve steeply.

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “You can’t meet someone in mid-air.”

  “Fly with the cable, Pa!” Pascale said. “We have to meet in the middle.”

  “Ostie,” was the only thing that Pa grunted back.

  “But...” Gabriel-Antoine said.

  “Don’t let that hook loose!” Pascale said.

  She leapt into space, holding the other hook with two hands. The cable was heavy and even as she throttled up, the weight dragged her Venus-ward. Her wing-pack engine howled, a long high alarmed note, and her suit began to feel hotter. When the engine ran hot, it did a worse job at transferring heat to the radiators. This was going to be tough. Pa was already in the air, about a hundred meters below her. His cable bowed downward, his own wing-pack barely holding him and the cable up.

  But Pa had read her mind, her crazy plan. He flew with his hook before him too. Now that they were within sight of the stationary harness and four trawlers, it was clear that the Causapscal-des-Vents was sinking faster than they’d planned, even with everything inflated.

  Pascale banked left and right, snaking as she approached him, the weight of the cable pulling her back more and more. She flew at the edge of stalling even at full throttle.