The Venusian Gambit

by Michael J. Martinez

  Shaila restrained herself from wanting to punch Finch in the face, and was about to say something particularly cutting before being interrupted by a young boy dressed up like an officer. Right. The mids were pretty young back then, she reminded herself.

  “Commander Jain, is it?” he asked, directing the question toward Stephane.

  “I’m Commander Jain,” Shaila said pointedly. “This is Dr. Durand.”

  This seemed to catch the midshipman at quite a loss for several seconds until he remembered why he was there. “Right, then. Uh, Commander…you and Dr. Durand have been asked to report to the great cabin. And Dr. Finch and Lieutenant St. Germain as well.”

  Stephane looked up at the man next to Finch. “St. Germain? Son of the Count?”

  The young man stood a touch taller. “Yes, he was my father, God rest him. I am the second Count St. Germain, and fleet alchemist to Admiral Weatherby, my stepfather.”

  Stephane and Shaila looked at each other in bewilderment. “I think we’re going to need a flowchart here,” she said quietly as they followed the two alchemists to Victory’s great cabin.

  They were met at the door by a meter-tall walking lizard.

  “This way,” it croaked.

  Even more stunned, the two wordlessly followed the creature into the cabin, where a long table awaited them. Behind this dining room was another room that looked to be the admiral’s office and berth. Everything was mahogany and brass and intricately made. It was just as Shaila remembered it from her cadet visit.

  Weatherby and Diaz were at the head of the table, with a massive robed figure to Weatherby’s right. “Xan?” Stephane whispered.

  “Wow, yeah. Probably. Holy shit,” Shaila replied.

  The room filled up quickly. Weatherby and the Xan were joined by Finch, Anne, the new Count St. Germain and a young woman who turned out to be Weatherby’s daughter, Elizabeth. Coogan and VanDerKamp were ushered in as well, and the little lizard-guy—a native Venusian, it turned out—poured wine.

  It was incredibly civilized and utterly surreal. Let’s have wine with the aliens. All right then.

  “I am saddened to report that we have lost ninety-three souls aboard Victory, and it looks as though Kent and Enterprise were completely lost to us,” Weatherby began, looking tired and drained. “Reports are still coming in from the rest of our fleet, but the damage has been grave. Thankfully, the French have retreated back to the surface in the face of our new allies from… what was your ship again, General Diaz?”

  “Hadfield,” she replied. “Good little ship. Named for an early explorer and educator.”

  “Yes, Hadfield, then. How many aboard?”

  The general grimaced. “Twenty-seven. We lost contact with the last man alive on board an hour ago.”

  Weatherby reached out and placed a hand on Diaz’ shoulder. “’Tis a hard thing to lose good men,” he said. “My condolences. When the time comes, we shall include the crew of the Hadfield in our memorials.” The admiral then took a deep breath. “But until such time as such arrangements can be safely made, these events must be put aside as we determine our true course. Perhaps, General, you and Commander Jain might give us a summary of your course since our last meeting, and how you may have come to be with us again?”

  The “summary” took well over an hour, with Diaz and Jain providing a précis of the Enceladus crisis and the Siwa fiasco, which apparently dovetailed to a degree with Weatherby’s visit to Saturn about a decade ago, as well as Finch’s discovery of The Book of the Dead in the very same part of Egypt—just three centuries earlier, give or take.

  Shaila also caught a very strong sense that Finch had held out on the Book from Weatherby, because he was getting a pretty cold shoulder from the admiral and his family, and his seat was at the very end of the table, leaving him with little to say or do unless called upon. Instead, he seemed content to stare out the window past VanDerKamp, who busied herself on her datapad. I bet she does that in all her meetings, Shaila thought. Rude.

  Meantime, Weatherby was rolling with it far better than he had just three years—or three decades—ago. It was odd and extraordinary to see his evolution from a green lieutenant to an experienced admiral in such a truncated fashion, at least for Shaila. She knew intellectually that his three decades in service to King and Country had taken him through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, but she had just interacted with his younger self three years ago in her timeline.

  It was tougher for Shaila—and both Stephane and Diaz, it should be said—to grasp just what had happened to Weatherby’s world over the past decade. As any good Englishwoman, Shaila knew her history well. Napoleon bought time through the Peace of Amiens to build his armies and attack, but he could not cross the English Channel because of the power of the English Royal Navy.

  In Weatherby’s timeline, however, through the power of ancient Egyptian alchemy, Napoleon didn’t need to contest the Royal Navy on the Channel—he could just march his goddamn zombie troops under it. So while the Britannia still ruled the sea, at least on Earth, and Nelson got his big victory and martyrdom at Trafalgar, the French were able to use Venus’ timber to build more ships, and they needed to put fewer into play to transport their troops.

  No wonder Weatherby looked tired.

  “So if I am to understand you, it seems that your Dr. Greene, whom you once trusted, turned on you…twice?” Weatherby asked.

  Diaz grimaced slightly. “He went to work for the corporates, yeah, and then got possessed by a Martian. And…well, that sounds pretty crazy, but that’s what happened.”

  Vellusk leaned forward slightly. “We were all deceived by the Martians, General Diaz,” he sang. “From what I have heard tell at this table, it seems Althotas has played us all for fools, starting with my ancestors more than five millennia ago.”

  It was the first time the Xan had spoken during the entire conference, and his melodic voices—he had two, and Shaila found the music enrapturing—were undercut with sorrow and foreboding.

  “How so, good Vellusk?” Weatherby asked. “Have we not sent Althotas back into his prison once more? In the place between worlds?”

  The Xan’s robes rustled as he spoke, and Shaila caught a glimpse of both tentacle and snout from under his hood’s shadows. “I fear the Xan had the first role to play here. The presence of an Emerald Tablet from another universe confirms it in my mind.”

  From the end of the table, Finch gasped. “Oh…I see it. Dear God….”

  Weatherby grimaced. “Be so good as to explain, one of you,” he said impatiently.

  Vellusk’s robes rustled again. “Of course, my good friend and brave admiral. Millennia ago, we imprisoned Althotas in a pocket real, a space between universes. But now that I see the Emerald Tablet—something we ourselves destroyed a decade ago on Titan—in the hands of these people, and I cannot help but wonder if our great working those thousands of years past had a hand in our current situation. It is but theory, but I believe that our working actually sundered our universe in two—the worlds of our own experience, Admiral, and the universe known to General Diaz and Commander Jain and their fellows.”

  Finch picked up the thread excitedly. “But there were objects of alchemical power—the Emerald Tablet and The Book of the Dead—that could not so easily be sundered. So they were duplicated instead, in each of the universes,” he said. “And perhaps…when Althotas was defeated on Mars, his experience in the combined worlds led to him to better understand the nature of his prison?” Vellusk nodded at Finch, who pressed on. “I believe Althotas likely seeks to combine your Tablet and our Book, along with the souls of his kin once imprisoned on Enceladus.”

  There was a long silence at the table as everyone digested the alien’s words. Stephane finally spoke up. “This feels right. I think us coming here is part of the plan. I think he wants the Tablet and the Book to do something.”

  Weatherby stared hard at the Frenchman; Philip and Finch had briefed him before the meeting began. �
��So then do we not simply destroy both items and be done with it?”

  The admiral looked at each face at the table, and most seemed to be on board with the idea to some degree or another—Shaila, for her part, wanted to see them vaporized yesterday, and even Finch was slowly nodding. But Coogan raised his hand after a moment to get their attention. “If I may, Admiral? General?”

  Both Diaz and Weatherby nodded, and Coogan rose to place his datapad in the center of the table. Shaila smiled; the 19th century was about to get its first look at holotechnology. A moment later, an image of Venus a meter wide was hovering in the air over the pad, and there were more than a few gasps around the room.

  “I had been backing up Dr. Ayim’s work periodically, under General Diaz’ orders, and managed to do a final grab of his sensor programming before we left Hadfield,” Coogan said. “The thing is, there is no real connection between the Book and the Tablet and the satellites that likely caused the dimensional overlap we’re experiencing right now. So if we destroy these two items, it’s quite possible they would have no effect on whatever’s going on.”

  “Then we go after the sats,” Chrys said dully. “Blow them up with cannonballs or something.”

  Coogan shrugged. “We could, but the thing is, the Cherenkov energy signatures aren’t 100 percent right when it comes to that, either. Yeah, the satellites are focusing the power, but just like General Diaz and Commander Jain saw on Mars, there’s more energy here than can be accounted for. Destroying the satellites doesn’t take out all the power, and may have unexpected consequences. Maybe the overlap spreads uncontrollably, or collapses around us.”

  “But we’re in the overlap now. So there’s already two dimensions. Shouldn’t we be able to trace the energy coming from the second dimension and close it up?” Shaila asked.

  “Ideally, but we can’t,” Coogan said. “Ambassador Vellusk noted that Althotas is trapped ‘between universes,’ or in some sort of pocket dimension. That means there’s a third possible locale, and that may be the source of the energy.”

  Weatherby looked at Anne and Finch in turn, and both nodded back at him. “I dare say he may be right,” Anne said. “We did, after all, give him a source of power on Mars by throwing the alchemical essences of the Known Worlds into the vortex with him as he was defeated.”

  Shaila and Weatherby both bristled at this. “It seemed the best option at the time,” the admiral said curtly.

  “I’d do it again,” Shaila confirmed.

  “And it worked!” Finch hastened to add. “But it also allowed him different pathways in which he might work his will. So he used the alchemical energies he gained to affect Enceladus and the temple in Egypt. He may have directed us—all of us—to these treasures. So yes, he has a plan for the tablet and book. Perhaps he needs to destroy them to fulfill his ends. Perhaps we can use them against him. But again, I cannot say.”

  “Greene knows,” Diaz said simply. “And so does Cagliostro and this Berthollet guy. We find them, we find out what they’re doing, and we find a workaround to stop them.” She turned to Coogan and Chrys. “Where are we on sensors?”

  The exec straightened up in her chair and seemed a little gratified to be asked something. “We can only boost the V-SEV sensor array so much before we start burning it out. We’re only good to about ten kilometers. That’s it.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve adopted that damned French measurement,” Weatherby groused quietly. “What is that…six miles?”

  “Yes, sir,” Chrys said.

  “So your electronic eyes, then, are only a little better than our lookouts this time,” the admiral said. “Elizabeth here has identified a potential site for the Venusian memory vault we discussed. At the least, your ‘sensors’ may very well detect occult energies from it before we even reach it, which would at least help us know we were in the right place. I would not be surprised in the slightest if your Greene and his cohort had somehow found the French as well.”

  Weatherby looked to Diaz, who nodded. “I agree, Admiral Weatherby. Looks like we need to go planetside and search up close. Jain, get the V-SEVs up and running, and check with Victory’s first lieutenant to see where he wants them when we…well, how does this ship get down to the surface, anyway?”

  Finch smiled. “Oh, you’re going to love it.”

  CHAPTER 19

  January 29, 2135

  May 28, 1809

  Shaila and Stephane—accompanied by their ever-present Royal Marine guard—stood upon the quarterdeck of HMS Victory as she began her descent into the green-orange clouds of Venus. On either side of the ship, the rest of Weatherby’s fleet began to ready for “keel-fall” by tucking in the sails on their rudders and unfurling their plane sales parallel to the deck. The sails on all the ships were also drawn upward at an angle to further provide drag.

  A moment later, Victory disappeared into the clouds, and all they could see was a lime green mist around them.

  “Venus’ clouds are supposed to be made of sulfuric acid,” Stephane said quietly. “The winds here should be roaring at 360 kilometers an hour. And the atmosphere pressure…” He took a sniff of the air. “It simply smells humid and green, like a swamp.”

  The ship suddenly lurched under them, buffeted by a series of sharp gusts. “Well, the winds are still impressive,” Shaila said. “Happy the acid’s not here.”

  She was also happy for the lines that secured her to the ship’s mizzenmast, helpfully provided by the little lizard guy—Weatherby’s valet, a Venusian named Gar’uk. Officers in the Royal Navy enjoyed some serious comforts three hundred years ago, unlike the modern Navy. Shaila wondered, as she saw the admiral calmly sipping tea with Diaz and Vellusk nearby, what this older Weatherby thought of his station and his crew. She remembered the young lieutenant of a few years ago caring for the handful of men he commanded. How do you extend that to a fleet of ships with three thousand men aboard?

  Suddenly, Elizabeth Weatherby lurched toward them, caught off-guard by the pitching, rolling deck. “So sorry,” she said after nearly colliding with Shaila. “I cannot say how Father abides this every time he visits a new world!”

  Shaila helped the young woman to the railing. She looked pale and wild-eyed and kept glancing over to her father, who stood tall on the quarterdeck, resplendent in his spotless uniform. “Your first time?” Shaila asked.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Is this the first world you’ve visited as well, Miss Jain?”

  “No, I’ve hit up a few,” Shaila smiled. “Jupiter, Mars, Saturn. Now Venus. Though we don’t exactly use wooden ships to do it.”

  “And you are an officer in His Majesty’s Navy?”

  “Her Majesty’s Navy,” Shaila corrected. “We got a new queen a few months ago. And yeah, I’m a lieutenant commander. Roughly equivalent to being a first lieutenant on a good-sized frigate.”

  Elizabeth gazed at her in wonderment. “I should very much like to be of your time, Lieutenant Commander. It took all of Father’s contacts and Lady Anne’s persuasiveness for me to be accepted at Oxford—which lasted only until the French took the town.”

  “I think your father would miss you if we took you back with us,” Stephane said with a gentle smile. “That is, of course, if we make it back ourselves.…”

  Shaila glared at him. “Jesus, Stephane. It’ll be fine. It worked out before.”

  He simply stared off to starboard, into the swirling green clouds.

  Then suddenly, the clouds disappeared, and all of Venus was spread below them. And even though she had seen snow on Enceladus and the great hydrocarbon lakes on Titan, it still took Shaila’s breath away.

  Below, a lush green land stretched before them. It was almost completely forested, even the very tops of the mountains off to their west. There were rivers and lakes, and a vast ocean off to the east, the waters of which were an unusual brighter shade of green. Above, the disc of the sun—easily a third larger than could be seen from Earth—was swathed in rich orange-lime clouds, the light
diffused across the horizon.

  “Captain Searle!” Weatherby shouted over the winds that still swept across and under the ship. “Signal the fleet! We shall cross over land and make keel-fall in the bay below! Any lookouts there will think we would come by sea, so we must endeavor to disappoint them!”

  Shaila watched as Searle relayed the orders—hugely formal, so inefficient!—and the junior officers rushed to implement them. A young lieutenant and a midshipman were huddled over a signal-flag book, piecing together the appropriate order to the other ships, while Searle’s first lieutenant got Victory heading in the right direction. Soon, the massive warship had arced in the sky and now had nothing but green jungle under its keel as it continued its somewhat-controlled descent from space.

  “You know, seeing ground below the keel is more fucked up than seeing Venus from space,” Shaila said nervously, causing Elizabeth’s eyes to widen. “Sorry for the language,” she added.

  “Not at all,” the young woman said with a bright smile. “I should say, I do not give a…a damn how you speak. A woman’s speech should be as…hell free as a man’s!”

  Shaila burst out laughing. “I couldn’t agree more, but you need practice, Miss Weatherby. And I really suggest you stay out of earshot of your parents, just in case. Don’t want them thinking I’m a bad influence.”

  Stephane actually brightened somewhat at this. “She is, though. In a great way.”

  Any further conversation was interrupted by a flurry of shouts and running crewmen. There were indeed ships in the bay where they hoped to land.

  “How many? Do we have a flag?” Searle shouted.

  “Aye, sir! French!” came the word from the lookouts. “A third-rate, a frigates and two brigs!”

  Searle turned to Weatherby, who nodded. “Prepare to engage. Focus on the brigs and frigate,” the admiral ordered. “We do not want the French to learn of our location quite yet.”