The Venusian Gambit

by Michael J. Martinez

Again.

  “So kind of you to join us, my lord Count,” a young woman said with a smile and no little sarcasm. She wore the clothing of a servant girl, one of many who attended to the needs of students and tutors alike. She did not, however, wear the bearing of such a woman. Intelligence shone from her eyes, and her face, framed by dark brown hair, bore determination upon it.

  “I apologize to all,” said Philip, the second Count St. Germain, returning the smile. “I had a most promising student come to me with the potential for an alchemical experiment in the mentis school, and I felt it wise to dissuade him from undertaking it without revision, lest his brains ooze from his ears.”

  Another young man, dressed in the more colorful robes of Trinity College, frowned at Philip. “If he were a Frenchman, then let his brains melt, I say.”

  “He was not, Mr. Lloyd, I assure you,” Philip replied tersely. Alfred Lloyd was the scion of a prominent London banking family, and as such conducted himself with a great sense of ownership of all about him. He was also studying Classics, which to Philip’s mind, was a profound waste of time and energy. However, Philip found Lloyd to be a true English patriot, despite whatever other shortcomings he possessed, and they were among the few members of Oxford’s secret resistance—a group of students and townsfolk dedicated to harassing the French as best they could. Philip knew there were other such groups spread throughout England, engaged in clandestine efforts to thwart England’s invaders.

  “Gunn and Mathers will be along in a few hours,” the woman said. “I can help Toby upstairs for a time, then inform them of the latest when they arrive. So shall we begin?”

  “Of course, Lady Elizabeth,” Philip said. It was, of course, due to the presence of Lloyd they referred to each other so formally, for they had known one another for a decade, since Philip was a teenager who had just lost his father, and Elizabeth Weatherby was but an eight-year-old who, to her great delight, was on her way to regaining a mother. “What have you heard out of Trinity, Mr. Lloyd?”

  The young scholar stretched and put his feet up upon the table, sipping his wine before responding. “The principal is quite up in arms. Apparently, he has been told by his superiors that there are some very important people coming from London, and they wish to consult with many of the principals, and use the library. All upon short notice as well.”

  Philip looked over to Elizabeth, who nodded in agreement. “Many of the staff have been told to make ready for ‘distinguished visitors’ as well, and to find the best rooms for them,” she said. “Apparently, they shall be here at any moment. The preparations are all underway.”

  Frowning, Philip took up a seat at the table as well. “Their purpose here?”

  “Consultations, apparently,” Lloyd replied. “I should’ve thought they’d seek you out, or at least your college. Hertford is known for its alchemists, and the French bastards are all quite enamored of it. That such a ‘Great Work’ could create such sacrilegious monstrosities upon our very streets!”

  Philip slumped slightly; this was a very old argument between he and Lloyd, who enjoyed an absolutist view of the world that seemed reserved for the comfortable and privileged. “There has been no such word within my college, nor among the tutors and professors in my field,” Philip said. “So it stands to reason that these visitors wish to consult upon other matters. But what?”

  “Trinity is best known for its Classics work,” Lloyd said, with evident pride.

  “But it is also known for its work in history among the Known Worlds,” Elizabeth replied. “If you’ll remember, I had been accepted to read on the topic before the town of Oxfordshire was overrun. We must assume that the knowledge they seek is rare enough to warrant travelling here, and experts on other worlds are few and far between—and usually already upon other worlds.”

  “And your father, Lady Elizabeth, is doing a fine job of keeping the French confined to Europe, let alone Earth,” Philip offered with a smile, which was returned with a nod. “This makes the most sense. Do we have anyone with ties to those tutors, or even readers?”

  “Gunn might,” Lloyd said. “I believe he may have mentioned it.”

  “I’ll ask them both when I see them,” Elizabeth offered.

  Philip finished his glass and stood. “Very well. And I shall spend some extra time within the library, because as we know, all academic inquiries will lead there eventually. And with that, I had best get back. Lady Weatherby, a word if I may?”

  Lloyd rose and, with a curt nod, stalked out of the room before they themselves could leave. Lloyd had once fancied Elizabeth, but in the way the gentleman-commoner fancied servant girls everywhere rather than in a way appropriate to the eldest daughter of a Baron. His advances earned him a broken nose at Elizabeth’s hand, and a dire warning of permanent alchemical malevolency from Philip, even as the son of the famed Count St. Germain healed his nose with little more than an elixir created in the space of minutes.

  “How are you faring, Elizabeth?” Philip asked when Lloyd’s footsteps receded up the stairwell.

  She shrugged and smiled. “I make their beds, bring them tea, and read all their books when they’re not looking. I dare say I’ve made a finer education for myself than they’ve bothered to receive here.”

  Philip bestowed a small smile upon her. It had been her fervent desire, fully supported and encouraged by Philip’s mother, to study the histories of the Known Worlds at the university. However, when they found themselves behind enemy lines, it seemed far more prudent for the children of such English luminaries to disguise themselves—Philip as an anonymous tutor, and Elizabeth as a servant. Only Lloyd and a handful of others knew their true identities. Indeed, they had hoped to keep their true names secret to all, but knowing that the son of St. Germain and the daughter of Weatherby were leading the resistance was a fine tool for recruitment.

  “The students are preoccupied, many of them,” Philip said. “If they are here, then their parents have collaborated with the French occupiers, or else they are as much prisoner here as if they were in prison, for their parents are outside England and of no help to them.”

  “And no few are preoccupied with drinking and whoring,” she replied bluntly.

  “Elizabeth!”

  She smiled sweetly back at Philip, having received the indignation she sought. “If I am to be engaged in the manly work of espionnage, then should I not be able to talk like a man when with my stepbrother?”

  “I remain surprised Lord Weatherby allowed you to stay here at all,” Philip scowled. “But…I do think he was wise to do so. I shall report in this evening. Do you have a message you wish to pass on to him and Mother?”

  Elizabeth grabbed Philip’s empty glass and made for the doorway. “Send them my love, of course, and tell them whatever falsities you feel will assuage them as to my activities here. Tell them I have steered well clear of trouble, such things as that.”

  Shaking his head, Philip followed Elizabeth out of the cellar room. They embraced briefly in the manner of siblings, and she allowed him to mount the stairs first so he could leave quickly; it would do neither of them any good to be seen together overmuch. While both had assumed different identities, they nonetheless proceeded separately whenever possible.

  It was a walk of but a few minutes that took Philip back to Hertford, a drab presence upon Catte Street, across from the finely wrought Bodleian Library. While the library was of superlative construction, Hertford was known as the “paper building,” for it was in such disrepair it seemed it might be torn asunder by a simple breeze. Entering his hall, he stopped to chat briefly with his students—it would be noted if he did not—before ascending to his room. His quarters were Spartan at best, with but a bed, bureau, desk and washbasin as his companions, and guttering candles his only light. There were better rooms within even such a building as Hertford, but this particular room faced the library—and made it ideal to see the comings and goings of all, especially the French, and especially as darkness drew near.


  This night would not disappoint.

  As Philip planned his lessons for the following day, he heard the clatter of hooves and wheels upon the cobblestones outside his window. Extinguishing the sole candle in the room with his fingers, he rose from his desk to look. There was a carriage, of course, by one of the less conspicuous entrances to the library. This was itself notable, given the hour, but more so due to the dozen Corps Éternel soldiers flanking the carriage, staring ahead blankly as they waited for their living officer’s commands.

  Two men emerged from inside the carriage. One was an older gentleman, rotund but seemingly in fine form, while the other required assistance from the footman to simply disembark, and appeared quite ancient and frail indeed. The gentleman possessed of stronger health waited with seeming impatience for his companion, looking around for want of anything better to do.

  And that’s when Philip saw his face. While he had never met the man personally, he knew those who had. And furthermore, the man was considered the foremost alchemist the French Empire had produced, and had graced both the Royal Academy and the newspapers prior to the invasion.

  Philip continued to watch as the two men made their way—slowly, due to the older fellow—into the library. He considered rushing out to follow, but knew that he would need time to prepare for further action. Given the hour and the importance of the library’s visitors, this would not be a simple visit. They likely had business in Oxford that would keep them on for several days, at least.

  Business that Philip was determined to discover.

  Once the French party was well inside, Philip returned to his desk, re-lighting his candle with a match—an alchemical invention of Andrew Finch’s, it should be noted—and opened the bottom drawer of the desk. Philip quickly emptied the books and papers from the drawer, then tapped thrice at the back edge of the bottom, which dutifully popped open to reveal a hidden compartment.

  Philip withdrew the small sheaf of papers hidden therein, dipped his pen in ink, and proceeded to write upon the topmost.

  Father and Mother,

  I trust both of you remain well and in the care and grace of the Almighty. I do hope you this letter reaches you soon, for I know you will be curious as to how I spend my days here at Oxford. I think you will be proud.

  Please give my regards to my dear uncle when next you see him. I believe I have seen an acquaintance of his this very evening, in fact. I remember the most amusing details of his researches back in ’98, and I believe Uncle may have mentioned him prominently in a few of his stories. I hope to introduce myself to this worthy gentleman at the earliest convenience.

  I miss you both very much, and I hope you are able to visit soon, for I would very much like to show you our Bodleian Library. It is a wonder, a vast repository of knowledge. They say the secrets of the Known Worlds are there inside, though I cannot say for sure. It is very large, though, and would take days to search for the most obscure things.

  And before I forget, I have seen E. lately, and all is well. You have our love.

  -Philip

  Philip smiled slightly as the ink settled upon the page, then changed from black to a dark blue before his eyes. The message was sent. Within mere moments, Lord Weatherby and the dowager Countess St. Germain would see the message appear on a similar page in their possession.

  And through the subtle code only families can truly understand, they would know that Andrew Finch’s old nemesis, the alchemist Claude-Louis Berthollet, was in Oxford, and was seeking something within the library.

  CHAPTER 4

  January 3, 2135

  Shaila and Archie sat side by side in Armstrong’s cockpit as the ship approached Tienlong. The Chinese ship looked unremarkable from the outside—a bit blocky, perhaps, as was the current Chinese aesthetic, but certainly not as though it carried an invasion force.

  Yet as Armstrong approached further, inching relatively closer despite the ships’ speed of 25 kilometers per second, Shaila could see some of the results of Tienlong’s drift through Enceladus’ debris field. Nearly every square meter of the ship bore the marks of micrometeor impacts; it looked as if it had been clawed by thousands of angry cats.

  “Look at the windows,” Archie said, pointing through their shared virtual imagery.

  But Shaila wasn’t looking. Instead, she whispered quietly, “…by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom…”

  She then sat up straight and immediately focused, ignoring the look of bemused confusion on her colleague’s face. With a glance, she saw what he was talking about. The windows were all fogged up. “What the hell did they do to the environmental controls?”

  “They had their external locks open when they sailed through Enceladus,” Archie said. “They probably took on a lot of ice crystals along with whatever damn critters they brought aboard. Probably humid as hell in there.” The old engineer shook his head sadly, his bushy white hair and mustache seemingly moving on their own. He hated whenever machines were unduly abused, it seemed.

  “All right. Going in for manual docking,” Shaila said. “Let me know if those fuckers try anything.” She stretched her limbs inside the bulky pressure suit she wore. Diaz had ordered them both to wear full pressure suits for docking, though Shaila would’ve taken that precaution anyway. They were treating the parasitical alien life forms as an “infection,” which was a nice, sanitized word that, in Shaila’s opinion, really failed to capture anything useful at all. But she was sure that “possession by alien intelligence” was pretty much a non-starter for the higher-ups.

  Archie smiled. “They don’t have the fuel. Just worry about the dock.”

  There was little need to worry. Shaila expertly worked Armstrong’s chemical thrusters to align the two ships’ airlocks. The computer could’ve lined things up just as efficiently, but Shaila wanted the stick, trusting in her reflexes and reactions in case Tienlong—she still couldn’t think in terms of Stephane in command there—decided to make the docking difficult.

  Yet there was no apparent reaction from Tienlong as the universal docking tube extended from Armstrong and latched onto Tienlong’s hull. Armstrong shuddered slightly, and then all was silent.

  Shaila sat staring at the readouts for a few moments longer.

  “You OK?” Archie asked.

  She turned and smiled at him slightly. He cared deeply about her after what happened, she knew. He was a good guy, the grandfather she needed on the long voyage home, and she sometimes felt she gave him short shrift in return. “I’m fine. I’m going to see if anybody’s home over there and secure the lock. Put your helmet on and stay here. Lock the cockpit door behind me.”

  She unbuckled from the seat and double-checked to see that her sidearm—another microwave emitter—was secured at her hip, then floated out of the cockpit into the rest of the sterile, deserted ship. It had been so full of life and promise on the trip out to Saturn, so utterly devoid of hope and joy on the way back. She was pretty damn sure she never wanted to set foot on this ship again when they finally got back to Earth.

  Shaila shunted her thoughts aside as she reached the airlock, putting on her own suit helmet and activating the holographic heads-up display. Data scrolled across her field of visions, followed by a variety of alerts—her suit seal was good, she had several hours of oxygen and power remaining, and the ship’s network reported the airlock link between Armstrong and Tienlong was secure. There was no link between the two ships’ computers, however, which didn’t come as a complete surprise. Tienlong—Stephane—wouldn’t make this easy, and it wouldn’t be surprising if someone aboard the Chinese ship might try to hack Armstrong.

  “Going in,” she said over her comm. She knew both Archie and the folks on Hadfield would be listening in. “I’ll secure the other side of the docking tube.”

  With a few keystrokes on the control panel next to the airlock, she overrode normal docking procedures so that the tube itself wouldn’t be flooded with atmosphere from either ship; she wanted a vacuum between the
two ships in case something tried to get across. Shaila then stepped into the airlock, closing it behind her, and felt the familiar whoosh of air as the atmosphere around her retreated back inside Armstrong. Red lights shifted to green, and the door in front of her opened into the tube now linking the two ships. She floated down the insulated, plastic corridor until she reached the outer airlock hatch on Tienlong’s hull.

  Like the rest of the ship, the hatch was scored with meteorite impacts, black streaks upon the grey metal. Nothing appeared damaged, however, and the controls were helpfully labeled in both Mandarin and English—the Chinese took plenty of corporate exploitation missions, and English remained the de facto language of business around the world. Sadly, there was no window on the hatch through which she could see inside the ship.

  “All right. Archie, send me the entry codes we got from the Chinese,” Shaila said. A moment later, a series of numbers and Chinese characters appeared on her HUD. She flipped open a panel on the right side of the airlock hatch, exposing the keyboard she needed, and plugged in the codes, hoping the Chinese weren’t suddenly feeling bad about JSC taking the lead on this particular humanitarian mission.

  A red light began blinking above the hatch; the depressurization process was beginning inside Tienlong’s airlock, as per usual. She waited until the light turned a steady green and, with a deep breath, turned the hatch’s locking mechanism. With her other hand, she grabbed her weapon and pointed.

  Nothing.

  The inside of the airlock was as expected. Her suit sensors helpfully ran a diagnostic on the visible ships systems, and all seemed in order. There was a small window that opened into the rest of the ship, but from her vantage point outside, all Shaila could see was dim lighting and, blessedly, no movement.

  “Hadfield, this is Jain. All clear here. I’m going to enter the airlock and close it behind me. Over.”

  “Roger that, Jain,” Diaz replied over the comm. “We’re about four minutes out. We’ll be joining you shortly. Do not pressurize and enter the ship until I give word. Over.”