Mission: A Venus Affair

by V. A. Jeffrey

  I told her I’d be back by the next day. My kids were disappointed but I promised them I’d be back soon, that this wasn’t another long excursion into danger. Yeah, right.

  I really hoped that wasn’t the case. I had just placed a call to Robin that I needed security sent out here as soon as possible to watch over the family. Before I left, Pam said something that made me feel slightly alarmed as to her knowledge of my journeys.

  “Bob, please make sure you bring a bodyguard with you or hire some security while we’re out here. I don’t mean for us, I mean for you.” She was right. But I did have some security. My sea pistol. I couldn’t take it with me to the convention center, with painful results, but I had it on me now. I’d learned from Diamond how to hide weapons at security checkpoints.

  I know, that’s bad. But in my case, necessary so there!

  My wife had bought me a snazzy new jacket the day before and I wore it, and under that, was my gleaming sea pistol. And my bionic arm, let’s not forget that! My wife looked at me with approval. I kissed her and the kids and left.

  “Have a good time at the aquarium guys.”

  “We will!” My kids yelled as I went out the door. My face fell into a grim expression as I left the hotel. I didn’t know what to expect. Would I’d be opening a can of whup-ass on this jerk or would the same be happening to me?

  But I was curious enough to find out what I supposedly needed so badly from this guy and how in the world they would know. I also wanted to smash the stuffing out of him for even mentioning my family. I wondered if this was a setup. The thought crossed my mind back and forth but something impelled me to find out what was happening here. I don’t know why, call it intuition. Or you know, Bene-Gesserit hyper-perception. Whichever.

  If this message wasn’t bogus then Diamond might know what he was talking about. He was an agent too now and I was sure that whoever sent me those messages, it wasn’t him.

  . . .

  I tried to find a company that would rent me a small civilian shuttle capable of leaving Venus and its bio-dome and withstand the extreme pressures of the planet’s atmosphere, if even for just a few minutes. I wasn’t able to find anything that would do in Vepaja. Contacting Vartan and getting a ship here that advanced in just a day wasn’t possible either. Frustration! I read the message again, the first one. I noticed something that I’d overlooked previously. Inside was an attachment that gave directions for a special ship for me to use. How thoughtful of them.

  This ship was a small armored ship and looked like it would seat at least four in the cockpit. Small but larger than a single fighter ship or a shuttle, it looked like an armored ship, a very old model I’d seen many years ago but from the images in the attachment, outfitted with an assortment of jerry-rigged, illegal modern equipment – a sign I was dealing with a smuggler. And maybe a murderous one.

  It was capable of doing the very thing they needed me to do; pick up/retrieve and put up a defense if I were attacked. Why would such a person take such pains to follow me here and send cryptic messages if they simply wanted me dead? Just deal with the facts, Bob. I decided that perhaps it wasn’t someone who actually wanted to kill me. They wanted something from me or wanted me to do something because they couldn’t do it themselves. I would have to find a way to capitalize on that. Besides, in order to get to this ship it now hit me that I had to brave going through the jungle outside of the city borders, or what people here termed “the wild” or the rainforest. I laughed to myself at first. Venus was engineered. What could possibly be the danger here? But I knew better than to ask questions like that by now.

  I was going to have to leap through all sorts of hoops to get to the speeder bike that would take me to a hidden hangar where this ship was located, according to the guide map and the directions in the attachment. Spying a web pub across the street I went to the pub and shot back a curt message, ready to go back to my vacation and my family.

  I ordered a beer and sat, waiting for a reply. I was going to give it a half hour before I was done. A reply came just ten minutes later:

  This must be done face to face. It’s too time sensitive and delicate a matter. We might be observed by enemies. Cythera’s Star is a safer place to meet and talk about this.

  “Okay, Diamond,” I muttered testily. But before I did anything to help this guy out I was going to get some information from him. Hopefully, he was in a position to give me what I wanted or else I might decide that I wasn’t in a mood to help, regardless of the consequences. Something beneath the irritation and suspicion pushed me to find out what this was about, what treasure might be had that might help me in my cause against the loyalists.

  I sent an affirmative message and also let them know that I wanted information about a particular enemy. I didn’t know what enemies he was referring to but I had my own and I had a wild guess that perhaps my enemies and this person may have crossed paths. It was a wild guess.

  Who? Came the reply five minutes later.

  I’ll let you know when I get there, Diamond. Was my terse reply. I shut my comlink off.

  I should have told Diamond about this little affair but I decided to investigate on my own. Who knew what I might dig up? If it wasn’t worth my while I wasn’t going to cooperate anyway and it would be better to not drag innocent people into this. Diamond would inquire anyway, knowing him.

  I sent a message off to Diamond as to my whereabouts and where my family was, as well to Robin. If anything happened to me they’d have a good idea where to find me. Or my remains.

  I studied the directions while slowly sipping my beer. It was still rather early in the morning, around eight o’clock. It should only take me a day to do this and get back. Maybe two. The hangar was a hundred miles south of the city. The speeder was only two miles from here at a rented house near the city’s south side energy perimeter. A key code was in the message to get into the house and garage. I drained the last of my beer, paid for it and left to find this house.

  I took an outdoor lift down to the ground level of the city and took a monorail to A Street. After a ten minute ride down A Street, it turned onto Quantum Street. I got off on the third stop on this street and walked south for about fifteen minutes until I discovered the street I needed to be on, a street called Star Fighter Circle. I came upon a light green, sleek, dome-like building, in fact, the entire street was really a long row of fancy row houses up and around the cul-de-sac. The one I wanted was the fifth one on the south side of the street. The cul-de-sac was quiet and seemed largely lifeless and empty, full of vacation houses for the rich or to be rented out to vacationers.

  I entered the key code and the doors unlocked and slid open. The house was empty as I had expected. I wandered through the rooms looking for the garage door, finally finding it. But my curiosity got the best of me. I investigated each bedroom. There were three of them. Rather dull looking. Pity. The house was on a secluded street, in a palm tree-lined neighborhood. I could see the golden pyramid far off through the upstairs bedroom window, looking like a small, glittering trinket. I checked the closets. I expected more. It really was rather middle-class looking, like my own house, but with less personality. I guess I was expecting a palace. I nosed around in the kitchen. Nothing in the fridge or the oven, nor the cabinets. I listened out for any device or alarm, or anyone coming around. I searched under beds, in the bathroom for anything interesting or out of the ordinary. Nothing.

  I started toward the garage door in the kitchen. But there was one more thing I decided to do before going into the garage. I searched and found a computer console and entertainment system in the den. My idea was a long shot but I turned it on anyway and searched for the phone program. Finding it in the directory I looked through the history folders deftly searching through it with a flick of my hands. In most of the folders there was no information about previous calls, no call history. But there was one folder marked: private. Naturally, it was locked. On a lark, I entered the key code number as the password for the folder
to try and unlock it. To my wicked delight it unlocked the folder. Looking through this folder I saw only a few phone numbers. None that I recognized. I could have investigated this from the computer, searching over screen and after screen but I didn’t have time. I sent the info over to Magnum through an anonymizer through my own mail program, requesting a reverse look-up on the phone numbers. There were only seven of them. Everything else in the house seemed cleaned. Too clean, as if no one had ever lived in here.

  It was furnished but not luxuriously so. And super clean as if a maid had been through here recently. I hoped I’d get back some useful information. Rooting around in the computer files for a little while I realized I’d been sitting here for at least an hour. Reluctantly, I shut the computer down and watched the screens die. I had no time to investigate like I wanted to. I wiped off the keyboard and the table to leave no prints. But there was this physical investigation I could do. I went to the garage. There, in the middle of the room sat a small, chrome speeder bike. I looked through the message again on my data pad. The speeder craft, according to the message, had a slight ghosting shield that worked for only a few minutes. This was to get me through the city’s energy perimeter.

  I climbed on the bike and turned it on. It stared silently and felt comfortable. Nice. I checked the controls and the computer readings. Sensors worked, check. Small blasters on either side, check. Computer is running through diagnostics and started up quickly. This and that. Check.

  I would be traveling through untamed jungle, as wild as it got when one was engineered. And predators were running loose out there. I touched my pistol and cursed whoever this was I’d agreed to meet. I wouldn’t be traveling all day. It would only take me about an hour and a half to get to the hangar. Right?

  There was a small bag in the compartment in the back of the speeder with tools, a helmet, micro-binocs and even a small charged-up blaster. A few other things were packed as well like a hand-held scanner. It was mid-morning now. I didn’t want to be caught out in the jungle after dark. Putting on the helmet, I turned it on and waited for the specs and sight screens to adjust themselves and waited for the vitals in the helmet’s software to start up and finish running through its programs. I adjusted the color levels. And then I put in the coordinates location of the hangar in the jungle into the bike’s geo-locator.

  Soon the little screen changed and lit up with a grid and the distance indicator in meters and miles appeared, showing how far I was from the hangar in the city. A thin yellow line indicating my location shimmered in sharp color. Opening the garage door by remote I sped out of the garage and out of the cul-de-sac. In thirty more minutes I had reached the energy wall. At the city edge it had become more sparse. There were more security installations here rather than destination spots and houses or hotels. Pedestrians, motorists, and other transit vehicles became sparse here. There were more garden park spaces out here, mixed with jungle too and a few military vehicles and security vehicles whizzed by. Overhead I saw a flock of colorful birds burst through the trees, aiming high overhead over the energy wall.

  The energy wall surrounded tall, steel security towers at one-mile intervals. I secluded my bike under a baobab tree. When the traffic grew quiet, as it did every few minutes, I started up the ghosting protocol. The air around me stirred briefly and I disappeared. The timer on the bike’s deck screen indicated that I had two minutes before it failed. Immediately, the progress energy bar came on screen and was inching down on energy as soon as I’d started the protocol. I steered and lifted the bike up sharply to reach the top, past the top of the wall. It went up nearly thirty-five feet. I flew the bike over the wall with no issue and dipped back down through dense brush breaking a few branches, nearly falling at the bike’s quick response and speed. I was surprised but I didn’t have much time before the patrolling mechs might pick up something just beyond the wall. I sped on, now some feet above the ground trying my best to avoid tree trunks, branches and large crushes of foliage that blocked my view. There was no path at all so far as I could tell but there should have been one coming up soon. I had thirty seconds left on the shield progress bar.

  Suddenly an object came zooming through the jungle just above me. I brought the bike to a halt, doing my best not to throw myself off from the suddenness of movement. A security mech on patrol was coming back towards the city perimeter and it flew over the energy barrier. I saw sudden, quick, bluish-white sparks swirl around it momentarily as it apparently had a special shield to allow it to cross the gate unharmed.

  Waiting to ensure the drone had gone on its way, I moved on. As I came upon a large space of open land and a watering hole I saw a huge herd of zebras drinking and wading there, a few running and leaping under my speeder bike. I made my way slowly toward the other end of the clearing and nearly collided with a large, winged creature. I couldn’t tell what it was, it had flown past so quickly. But the thing was huge! I lowered the bike. My ghost shield progress bar was now at zero. I turned it off. Behind me, I heard the distant sound of a booming shot like thunder near the city. A security mech shot at something just beyond the wall. Settling the speeder into a slow speed and then stopping I adjusted the geo-locator screen to the front again. I still had some way to go.

  I traveled on listening to the noises of the wild zebras at the man-made lake and gazed at other wild animals I couldn’t recognize immediately. The scanner sensor picked up various life forms, all animal kind, hidden and or far off from me. Odors of vegetation, feces, and rich soil, and rotting fruit was rich and thick in the air. The yellow dot that faded in and out, blinking quietly on my screen on the geo-locator grew slightly brighter as I drew closer to it though I couldn’t see it. The animal sounds grew quieter as I traveled farther out. I was now quite far beyond the city. The speeder began to shake and tremble under me. I slowed it down, frowning, lowering the speeder. I eventually came to a full stop again watching the screens. They were scrambled, buzzing in and out over some type of interference. Over me parrots and toucans flew by, nearly blotting out the bright sun, seen through the bio-dome as large and white in the sky. The screens corrected themselves as I switched the speeder bike off and then switched it back on again, restarting the systems. As I lifted off ready to go I noticed how quiet the jungle had become. The speeder had some trouble starting up. I looked to the side around me searching to make sure all was clear only to find a path a few feet over to my right. When the speeder finally re-calibrated itself I moved it to the path. The geo-locator map indicated that this was an easy and faster way to get to the hangar. I maneuvered and began traveling again back into the maze of lofty jungle, admiring the riot of color and profusion and promiscuity of plant life and bird life.

  Above me in the sky there seemed the gleam of a small moon but upon closer examination, it was a satellite of some sort. Probably the very one I was en route to. The jungle had become silent as a graveyard at midnight, the exception being the breeze of artificial winds created by the biosphere's climate program rustling through the leaves. I saw what looked like to large work ships flying high overhead. They looked like those large, lumbering mining ships I’d seen models of at work. They were relatively loud and made a distinctive roaring hum that sounded like an angry African bull elephant.

  I nearly crashed into a hollow when a baby gazelle leaped toward my speeder making me swerve and land in a ditch. A profusion of butterflies fluttered furiously away after my disturbance of their hollow. There were thousands of them, creating a wall of black and electric blue color. They swirled in a whirlwind, with a few starting to settle back down from where I’d disturbed them. A thought of my wife suddenly came to me upon seeing them. I nearly tripped, finding a metal sign lying in the dirt, the word: “Moon” embossed across its surface. The rest of the words were covered in dirt but it struck me like a hard slap. I glanced around nervously. The gazelle was long gone. As I turned I heard a terrifying sound that explained why the gazelle had been fleeing in the first place. A creature, about nearly as
tall as me, and lizard-like, darted through the brush toward me. Through the swirling wall of butterflies I saw the brown and green blur grow more distinct. Its upper hide was brown and its underbelly green as dark jade and it had green and shimmering gold markings on its face. It was a raptor.

  With my heart in my throat I jumped on my speeder bike and tried to escape only for the creature to leap up and come down right on top of me, biting at my head. One of its teeth slashed my scalp but the force of the creature’s weight was so powerful and its speed so great that it knocked me from the speeder and went tumbling over the speeder and down what had remained hidden to me until now – an unseen cliff into a narrow ravine below, housing a hidden river. The creature nearly took me with it. I glanced over the edge.

  Now dangerously close to hanging over the cliff I grabbed hold of some green vines, climbing up the cliff. The bike was tangled in the vines right underneath me, with my leg caught up in the vines as well. The lizard was hanging onto the bike, its sharp and deadly toe talons scraping off the metal from the speeder into curly spirals that flew off and floated down. Whipping its long snake-like tail in agitation it roared and bared its teeth, looking very much like a hungry and very irritated velociraptor I’d seen in one of my son’s books.

  Reaching for my pistol I shot it twice as it quickly reoriented itself right side up, getting ready to position itself to rip a chunk out of my leg. All the shifting and moving caused the bike to slide and fall on top of the beast and they both dislodged from the carpet of vines and plunged into the blue-black waters of the river below. I quickly fastened my pistol back to my belt, fearing I would fumble and lose it forever. I felt my own sweaty arms and hands slide down and the smaller vines snapped under my weight and then I, too, fell into the waters of the hidden river below.