The Enceladus Crisis

by Michael J. Martinez

  The egg deposited Weatherby at a long dock, which was empty. “This is where your vessel will make harbor when it arrives, Captain,” Vellusk said. “Ambassador Morrow and,” the creature paused a moment, “the woman are waiting at the harbor-master’s office. I will return to you as soon as I have more news.”

  Weatherby nodded and did his best to stumble through thank-yous and pleasantries that he hoped would be at least polite, if rushed. He then strode the length of the dock and into the small building, where a very young Royal Navy officer bolted to his feet and saluted smartly.

  “Lieutenant Underwood, at your service, sir,” the officer said. “The ambassador and countess are waiting for you.” With a nod from Weatherby, the young man rushed from behind his desk and opened a door, leading to a small inner office.

  There, he saw Morrow and Anne, sitting, with the former consoling the latter. Anne looked up, a wan hope upon her tear-streaked face, and Weatherby’s heart ached at the sight of it.

  “I am sorry, Anne,” he said simply. “I tried.”

  She nodded quietly, giving him a small smile of gratitude despite the tear that fell across her cheek at the news. “I know you did.”

  Morrow stood and offered his hand, which Weatherby took. “’Twas a brave effort, sir. And one that may yet win us favor in some quarters,” he said.

  “I shall leave that to you, my lord. At the moment, my concern is for the boy, for I feel he is truly the key to all of this,” Weatherby said.

  “How?” Anne asked plaintively.

  Weatherby sat down next to her, automatically taking her hand in his. “Anne, if the Xan partisans wanted a human hostage, they had England’s ambassador within their grasp. Or a Royal Navy captain. Or you, a Countess and the wife of one of humanity’s greatest alchemists. They chose Philip. This could not have been an error.”

  “Why him, then?” Morrow demanded.

  “I can think of but one reason: They know the Count St. Germain is here, and is with the French. The only question is whether these rebel Xan seek to use him to influence the Count and the French to do their bidding against the greater society, or . . .” At this, Weatherby cleared his throat. “Or, they acted upon the Count’s bidding, and we must hold that the Xan partisans are in league with the French.”

  Anne stared at Weatherby with perhaps the hardest look he had ever endured. Her eyes bore into him, seeming to seek some kind of flaw in his logic. This lasted several long, difficult moments, until finally she looked down at her hands. “It is the most reasonable explanation,” she said softly.

  “Agreed,” Morrow said, with no little sympathy. “Either way, we must conclude that St. Germain is working with the French and the Xan partisans, whether by his own free will or, now, under threat of harm to the boy. Now . . . all we have to do is bloody well find them.”

  CHAPTER 14

  June 20, 2134

  Darkness.

  That, and the desire to vomit.

  Gingerly, and quietly, Diaz started moving. Her hands and feet weren’t bound, which was one in the plus column. Wherever she was, it was utterly pitch black, which went in the minus column. Her tech gear and weapons were gone. She wondered whether getting contact-lens HUDs was a smart idea after all, but figured it was easy enough to put a jammer in a cell these days. In fact, given the hard, stone floor and the dust, it was very safe to say she was in a cell.

  The minus column kept getting bigger.

  She struggled to sit up, cross-legged, doing her best to ignore the vertigo and nausea—aftereffects of the zapper. That’s when she heard a groan from behind her, off to her right.

  Chances are, it was another member of the team. Or a pissed off bear.

  “Report,” she said quietly.

  “Captain Hutchinson reporting, General,” came a voice almost directly to her left. “Feels like we got hit with a zapper. I have no weapons or tech, ma’am.”

  “Roger that, Maggie,” Diaz said. “Who else is in here?”

  “I’m here,” Coogan muttered—he was the one behind her. “That was awful.”

  “No kidding. Where’s Greene?”

  There was no response.

  “Greene?”

  Nothing.

  “All right. Anybody near a wall?” Diaz asked.

  Coogan was, and soon Diaz and Hutchinson managed to crawl over to him. They then started moving in either direction in order to get the dimensions of the room—and to find Greene. The room was roughly five meters on a side, with a single door. While the room seemed to be part of the temple ruins complex, the door was metal and quite new, and thus very, very secure. Even if they started in with belt buckles and whatever else they had, it would take days before they could chip away at the stone around it.

  And Diaz figured someone would be around to get them before then.

  Meanwhile, Greene was nowhere to be found. Even after the three teammates crawled around the entire room in a grid pattern, they found nothing.

  “Why would they keep Greene?” Hutchinson wondered.

  “He may have had a reaction to the zapper,” Coogan offered. “Perhaps he seized up.”

  Diaz smiled despite herself, and was glad nobody could see it. “He’s been zapped before, Jimmy. I doubt it.”

  “Then it’s his technical expertise,” Huntington said evenly. “Somebody’s doing something down here. Maybe they need him.”

  “Maybe,” Diaz replied. “Most folks think he retired from his show and hit the beach. Of course, if Harry’s here, then he’d know Evan’s resume back to front.”

  They speculated a bit longer before it started seeming a bit futile. There was only so much a dark, empty room could provide before even the most harebrained idea got stale. So they sat.

  And waited.

  Hutchinson started doing some light calisthenics—not a bad idea, really, Diaz thought. Not enough to get winded, but enough to stay ready, much like an athlete riding an exercise bike between periods in a game. Stay warm and alert. Soon, Diaz joined her. Coogan, meanwhile, sat against a wall and seemed to be scratching something on the floor. Might have simply been nerves. The young officer lived with his visor and data feed 24/7. With their tech gone, digital withdrawal could become an issue.

  Fatigue started to set in after a while. They had all taken an energy boost prior to leaving—it was after midnight when they headed off on the road to the ruins, after all—but that was starting to wear off, and it had to be nearing five or six in the morning.

  When Diaz started hearing snoring from Coogan’s corner of the room, she figured she’d have to start a watch schedule. Being the boss, she took first watch, allowing Hutchinson to catch some sleep. She wished she had thought to bring a manual chronometer, or at least something that ran on chemical batteries. She had no idea when to wake Coogan up for his watch.

  Maybe she didn’t need to. It was highly unlikely that someone would just open the door and shoot them on the spot. Not impossible, of course—maybe someone needed to get orders from on high before pulling the trigger—but when Diaz thought about who was on high . . .

  She knew Harry didn’t have it in him. Most corporate executives didn’t. Hell, there were a few in the Fortune 500 with enough firepower under their command to take out a small country, all in the name of corporate security. But with a bare handful of exceptions, none of them had military or police experience. None of them wanted it. They had people for those sorts of distasteful things, and even then, with some of the most lenient corporate laws in history, corporations could not, in fact, get away with murder.

  Especially when it came to a ranking general and a world-famous scientist.

  Diaz was startled out of her reverie—had she been dozing?—by the sound of metal scraping across metal. A small grate opened on the door, allowing light to pour in the room briefly, blinding her. Something crashed to the floor—more metal, and some plastic, perhaps—before the grate slammed shut again.

  “Hey! Hey! Get back here!” Diaz said, rushin
g the door and pounding on it. “I am a United States military officer! I demand to be put in contact with my embassy!”

  Nothing. Even the footsteps receded quickly.

  Diaz felt around on the floor and discovered exactly what she expected. A metal tray, some pre-packaged food, and some plastic water bags. She nudged the others awake and doled out the food and water. Jerky, peanut butter, crackers, apples. Real basic rations, probably something that fell off an Egyptian army supply truck at some point.

  They ate. Hutchinson was a vegetarian—funny how Diaz never grokked to that before—so Diaz and Coogan traded her jerky for extra peanut butter and apples. The water bags were generous enough to keep them hydrated for several more hours.

  Of course, there was one problem with hydration . . .

  Thankfully, the water bags were fully resealable, and when emptied they provided an easy enough solution for the inevitable. Hopefully, Diaz thought, they wouldn’t be in there long enough to need further innovation in that regard.

  “No Greene,” Hutchinson said, a little sadness in her voice.

  “Nope, not yet,” Diaz said, keeping her voice neutral. “He’s probably spilling. That’s fine . . . if they caught us, they probably figured out enough anyway. Our stunt at the plant didn’t help matters to begin with.”

  Coogan sighed. “I remember watching his shows for years. He was entertaining.”

  “Enough with the ‘was,’ Lieutenant,” Diaz snapped, a little more forcefully than she intended. “All we know is that he’s not here. Hell, maybe he escaped, and the cavalry’s on the way. Let’s stick with what we know.”

  Silence reigned after that. Lunch came and went, followed by an old hospital bedpan. Nobody felt like making use of it, but a corner was nonetheless designated for it. Diaz felt like dozing again, and didn’t bother setting up watches. It was so damned quiet, any movement would probably wake them up in a heartbeat.

  Diaz genuinely felt bad about Greene. Yes, he pushed her—hard—to do more experiments. “Real science,” he called it. Admittedly, she may have sold him a bill of goods on that front. He had a top-rated show, book deals, you name it. And she lured him to the DAEDALUS team by promising he’d get his shot at a world-shaking discovery. Instead, they focused on defense, rather than extradimensional exploration. It was the right call, of course, from a security point of view. She firmly believed that. But even though he disagreed, loudly and often, he followed orders. His work was helping keep the world safe from crazy-ass people like Yuna Hiyashi and that Cagliostro guy—and their puppeteer, the ancient Martian warlord Althotas.

  In all honestly, Diaz probably wanted to open the door again as much as Greene. But she kept it to herself. Security had to come before exploration. Maybe Greene was right in that DAEDALUS needed to play more offense, less defense. Certainly it seemed Harry—or whomever he was working with—was pretty busy doing just that, and everyone else was left scrambling to catch up. And without the safeguards and common sense Diaz felt her team brought to the table.

  Sounds from the other side of the door jarred Diaz out of her reverie, bringing her to her feet; she could hear Hutchinson doing the same from the other side of the room. Keys jingled, locks clicked.

  “Close your eyes,” Diaz ordered. “Wait a few seconds before trying to open them.”

  Diaz did just that as the door opened, and felt the light from the space beyond hit her eyelids. Even that was painful, but impatience won out over practicality, and she squinted her eyes open just a bit.

  There was a human figure at the door, with what appeared to be a couple more behind it.

  “Bring all of them,” someone said . . . someone who sounded a lot like . . .

  “Greene?” Coogan asked.

  Men entered the room, grabbing Diaz, Coogan and Hutchinson by the arm, pulling them out.

  “We have a problem with the experiment,” Greene said. “We need to access BlueNet. But I don’t have the clearance to access it from here.”

  “What experiment?” Diaz demanded, anger coursing through her as the worst-case scenarios that had been playing through her head were confirmed. Goddamn it, Evan.

  “The one Total-Suez is running,” Greene said matter-of-factly. “They’re knocking on the door . . . but the door is knocking back. Hard.”

  October 15, 1798

  Finch rushed to the door of the underground chamber, only to find it had slammed shut with a disturbing sense of finality. In addition, three-foot spikes had sprung up from the floor in front of the portal, and the scream was the very last breath of one of the French soldiers—a boy, Finch noted, barely older than Jabir.

  “Don’t move!” Finch cried out. But he went unheeded, as another soldier made a mad dash to the door on the others side, only to see it slam shut. The man quickly jumped backward—just in time to avoid a second set of spikes springing up from the floor with a jolt.

  “What is this, Finch?” Berthollet demanded, as if mere indignation and seeming authority could countermand the impersonal nature of the crisis around them.

  “A trap, obviously, monsieur,” Finch snapped. “If this was indeed a back entrance to the temple, then it was only for the priests to use. There is likely a mechanism to use to hold all this in abeyance, so the priests could cross unscathed.”

  “So we must find it!” Berthollet said. “By the doors, most likely.”

  Finch got on all fours and began to crawl carefully toward the door from whence they had entered. He inspected the floor carefully, looking for odd-shaped stones and cracks in the masonry from which further dangers might erupt. He also paused to look at the walls and ceiling—the skeleton he had inspected had a head wound, and Finch fully expected further mechanisms to come into play.

  Finch heard a shuffle behind him. “For God’s sake, don’t move!” he shouted.

  He felt the floor shift under his right hand, and deftly moved it—just before another metal spike shot upward.

  “Le plafond!” a soldier cried out.

  Finch looked up . . . and rolled. Two more spikes landed right where he had been.

  Then he felt the ground beneath him vibrate once more, so he quickly rose to his feet—as two more spikes erupted from the ground.

  The door was but ten feet away. He had to chance it.

  Finch dashed across the room and pressed himself against the corpse of the impaled French soldier—for it stood to reason that no more spikes would fall or rise in a spot that had already claimed a life. He saw the man’s eyes shift toward him—dear God, what a horrible way to die—but forced himself to turn and gauge the rest of the room.

  Berthollet stood his ground, looking about, seemingly ready to move if the occasion called for it—but not a moment before. Dolomieu had moved to the other door; perhaps a smart move, but one that should have waited, for it was likely the geologist had tripped the spikes that imperiled Finch. The two remaining soldiers stood stock-still, and seemed to be praying most fervently.

  Finch found himself hoping their prayers would help.

  He turned his attention to the door. There were various sigils and pictograms marked along both sides. He looked for something larger-than-average, at least the size of a thumb-print, and at the level of his hand at his side.

  Nothing.

  “Deodat! Anything?” he called out.

  “No, Andrew! I am at a loss. I would think it would be easily reachable, and yet I can find nothing!”

  Finch frowned and looked across the room. None of the furniture was made of stone or was otherwise permanent. The shelves were wooden and particularly low-slung.

  Low . . .

  Finch stooped down and ran his hands up either side of the door.

  There. A large pictogram of an eye. How appropriate. Finch drove his thumb into it.

  And the doors opened once more, while the spikes receded into the floor. Beside Finch, the French soldier fell to the ground, a torrent of blood washing over the stones from where he was impaled.

  Finch
nonetheless checked the man, but he was truly dead now. Rising, he gingerly walked over to Berthollet. “Proceed carefully to the door, and do not, for the love of God, touch anything,” Finch ordered.

  The group quietly made for the door, in the kind of tip-toed rush one sees in comedies on the stage. Finch was the last one through, and closed the door behind him.

  “What if others wish to follow?” Berthollet demanded.

  Finch frowned. “They must go through the room regardless. Better to reset the traps, now that we know how to disarm them, than to see whether any other mechanisms are triggered by leaving the doors open.”

  Berthollet nodded after a moment, brusquely conceding the point. “How did you know where to look, Doctor?”

  Finch cocked his head behind him. “From what I’ve seen of mummies and ruins from ancient days, the Egyptians of yore were at least a half-foot shorter than we are, perhaps more. So the disarming mechanism must likewise have been lower.”

  Berthollet smiled. “Well done, Dr. Finch! Lead us onward!”

  Most assuredly expendable, Finch thought as he resumed his place at the head of the column. Idly, he wondered if someone would bother giving that poor boy a proper burial at some point, or if the legacy of French exploration would be littered with the corpses of dead soldiers. The fruits of the French Revolution, it seemed, were still distributed quite unevenly.

  The corridor they had entered had several doors upon either side. Most were wooden and infected with rot, and the small rooms beyond—likely the priests’ or servants’ chambers—held piles of rotted wood, cloth and papyrus. Finch wondered at this for a moment, until he realized they were far enough underground so that the oasis’ water-table could come into play. Thus, unlike the desert tombs he was used to exploring, there was just enough water in these ruins to affect the air and wood—and potentially ruin any treasures worth having.