The Enceladus Crisis

by Michael J. Martinez

  “What the hell?” she groaned.

  Coogan was busy putting out a small lick of flame on the cuff of her pants. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said with a tired, sad smirk. Then he looked around. “Where’s your friend Harry?”

  Diaz bolted upright, her gun at the ready. Harry Yu was nowhere to be found.

  “I swear to God, I’m gonna kill that fucker,” she spat.

  October 18, 1798

  Finch struggled to think clearly as the mass of revenants—for truly, there was no better name—shuffled toward him and Dolomieu. He thought to brandish The Book of the Dead before him as a talisman, but managed to dismiss the idea as something that might actually encourage them to move faster.

  Then the glowing blue portal before the altar became bathed in white light—and gouts of fire shot out of both sides of it.

  A moment later, there were no fewer than five flaming revenants staggering about the chamber, bumping into their fellows and setting them ablaze as well. And those first few unfortunates were slowly disintegrating within the flames.

  “A torch!” Dolomieu cried out. “We must have torches if we’re to save Berthollet!”

  The two alchemists raced into the corridor, grabbing torches from the sconces upon the walls, then rushed forward again, brandishing the flames in front of them. They burst back into the room . . .

  . . . and found their way blocked. There were still a dozen revenants there, their skin shriveled onto their bones, teeth bared in fell parodies of smiles, eye sockets empty and oozing.

  Cradling the book against his chest, Finch immediately shoved a torch into the face of one of them, but had to dodge the grasping hands of several others. He had hoped to cut a path toward the altar in order to reach Berthollet—or if not the man, his notes, for he bore little love for the Frenchman at the moment—but was soon cut off, his back against the wall with Dolomieu at his side, both men swinging their torches in wide arcs in order to keep the dead at bay.

  Yet the torches would not last forever . . . and the dead were already dead. They had nowhere else to go.

  Dolomieu was swinging his torch even more wildly, and left himself open to attack. One of the revenants lurched forward and grabbed for his throat, prompting him to cry out and drop his torch. As Finch watched in horror, Dolomieu was carried off by several of the unliving creatures, his screams echoing in the chamber. Finch shouted after him, but to no avail.

  Then the sound of musket fire erupted into the room.

  Being taller than most, Finch looked past the swarm of grasping hands and sickening faces before him to see Sheikh Karim charging into the chamber with a small number of fierce desert warriors, guns and blades drawn. And right there with them was Jabir.

  The Bedouins surged forth as the revenants turned to meet these new foes. Muskets did little to harm them, but the scimitars were quite efficient, especially when aimed for the neck.

  Finch pressed the advantage, setting fire to two other revenants then dashing off toward where he last saw Dolomieu. And Finch found him indeed . . . first his arm, then his chest, a leg, and finally his severed head, the man’s face frozen in terror. Finch cried out at the sight, but there was nothing to be done . . . and still much else to do.

  Karim’s warriors seemed to have the advantage, leaving Finch surprisingly hale and uninterrupted. He rushed toward the altar, but could find no trace of Berthollet . . . or the man’s notes. Finch quickly looked around the room, but the French alchemist was nowhere to be found.

  Finch was shocked, at first, at the man’s callousness in escaping such a horrific scene . . . then reminded himself that Berthollet had very well caused it in the first place. And with his notes still in his possession . . .

  Berthollet had the translation in hand, and Finch possessed the one thing that might tip the scales back into balance—The Book of the Dead itself.

  Looking about on the floor, Finch spied a rucksack that had been tossed aside by one of the Frenchmen. He quickly grabbed it and stuffed The Book of the Dead inside, closing it tightly before slinging it upon his back and making his way to the back of the chamber, where the last of the revenants had fallen to the Bedouin blades.

  “Murshid, you are harmed,” Jabir said, running toward him with his eyes on Finch’s arm, which he had cradled toward his chest.

  “It’s nothing,” he replied with a smile. “You’re late.”

  “They took convincing,” the young man replied.

  Sheikh Karim stepped forward and bowed deeply. “And for that, I must ask your forgiveness, murshid. We did not believe this boy’s tales at first, even with the note written in your own hand, but now we see the evil that these Franks committed.”

  “And they may yet commit more. Berthollet has escaped,” Finch replied.

  Karim turned toward his men and launched into a stream of rapid Arabic. They immediately rushed from the temple, swords at the ready. “He will not go far, murshid. And we will have words with him before he is sent before Allah to answer for his crimes.”

  “If you please, do not to kill him before I’ve had a chance to talk with him,” Finch said. “There is much that happened here that needs clarification.”

  Karim nodded and bowed once more, then turned to follow his men, leaving Finch and Jabir alone in the temple. The boy was looking at the corpses upon the floor, worry writ upon his brow. “What happened here, murshid?”

  “I cannot say for certain,” Finch said tiredly. “The ritual should have called forth souls, not caused dead bodies to rise.

  “And I think,” he added, thinking of the tendrils of light snuffed out by fire, “our allies upon the other side kept those souls from arriving on cue.”

  “But where would these souls have come from?” Jabir asked.

  “I’ll wager Berthollet knows.”

  CHAPTER 22

  June 22, 2134

  The Total-Suez lab underneath the ruins of the Siwa temple was a perfect wreck, but that didn’t stop the mass of investigators and technicians Diaz had called in from doing their level best to piece together what happened.

  It wasn’t looking good.

  The energies released from Harry’s collider experiment caused the ceiling above to cave in over much of the room, destroying billions of terras of computer equipment, not to mention key pieces of the particle collider. Nearly everything in the entire room carried scorch marks, and the thick walls of the containment chamber were melted—along with the first two rows of workstations and a fair number of computers.

  The loss of the collider she could live with—Diaz was already considering how to draft legislation to limit this kind of experiment—but the computers housed reams of data, much of which might be lost. The computer geeks seemed to think that the backup drives might be salvageable, but the optical-quantum storage drives were fragile to begin with.

  Worse, there were no signs whatsoever of Huntington and Greene. Literally none—not even trace amounts of DNA could be found, though it would take weeks to be sure. It was possible they may have been completely vaporized, but they were already a fair distance from the containment area when it blew.

  Yet as the techs carefully worked around her, she was far more concerned about the reports from Armstrong. Two dead, one captured, and one . . . to be determined.

  Diaz had seen a fair amount of Stephane Durand after the incident on Mars. They’d traveled back to Earth together, been quarantined and debriefed together (and separately), and both he and Shaila had helped with the initial launch of Project DAEDALUS before reporting for training for the Saturn mission. Straight up, he was a good guy. The whole Daedalus incident had given him much-needed focus, and Shaila had kept him grounded. Optimistic, dedicated, a team player.

  Shaila had sent along an eyes-only addendum to Diaz, apart from her official report. She believed Stephane had somehow ingested a proto-protein from the water on Enceladus that somehow possessed him. Even Shaila sounded unsure when offering up her opinion, but the millions of Cherenkov hit
s from the moon’s destruction seemed to back that up, as did the miniscule wormholes they had encountered in this very lab.

  And then there was the artifact they found on Titan. Diaz couldn’t help but wonder whether the green tablet found on Titan may have been linked to whatever it was under the altar that had overloaded the power on the collider within the Siwa temple. And in a bit of this-ain’t-coincidence, Coogan discovered that two of the Chinese astronauts assigned to Tienlong—their identities confirmed by a chagrined and suddenly cooperative Chinese government—had been part of a tour group that visited Siwa more than nine months ago, likely the same tour group that drew Total-Suez there in the first place.

  Finally, there was little doubt in Diaz’ mind that Harry’s researchers—with Greene’s help, damn him— managed to open the door to the other side of the fence, the other dimension where Weatherby and Finch came from. She still wasn’t sure whether she truly saw Finch there, but on a whim, she had done a Web search of late 18th century military uniforms. One of the arms she saw trying to claw its way out of the containment frame wore the coat of a French infantry officer circa 1795.

  Dr. Ayim—who quickly agreed to assist the DAEDALUS team in exchange for immunity from any charges stemming from the experiment—believed that if there were a pair of artifacts interacting with each other across millions of miles of space on this side of the fence, chances are there was a mirror situation going down on the other side. Preliminary comparisons of the power spikes from the Daedalus incident seemed to bear that out—the additional power that overloaded Harry’s experiment had to come from somewhere, after all.

  Sadly, there was nothing left of the altarpiece in the temple now. Indeed, the DAEDALUS team had their work cut out for them just getting to it, because not only was the ceiling collapsed, but the floor as well. There were no traces of Cherenkov radiation for miles around Siwa. If the computers melted, chances are whatever was under that altar was destroyed.

  Diaz walked over to where Ayim and Coogan were reviewing some of the salvaged data from the experiment. “Anything?” she asked.

  Coogan shrugged. “Bits and pieces, ma’am. It’s going to take weeks before we have a full picture of what we have and don’t have.” He paused and looked up. “I’m sorry about Maggie, ma’am. I know you were close. AndGreene too, for that matter.”

  Diaz stared down at her boots. “Me, too. But I can’t help but wonder if Evan had a point after all,” she said. “I mean, what he did was stupid.” At this she looked pointedly at Ayim, who looked extremely uncomfortable. “But that said, I don’t think we can afford to just focus on defense anymore. There are guys on the other side screwing around with this stuff—human beings, just like us, probably trying to figure shit out. Maybe this blew up in their face, or maybe they planned it. Maybe that fucking Martian was involved. I don’t know. But we need to find out.”

  “How?” Coogan asked.

  Diaz took a deep breath. “We need to find a way to communicate with them. With the guys on the other side.”

  Ayim actually took a step backward. “You’re serious, General?”

  “’Fraid so. It’s already been proven once that whatever’s out there can influence both dimensions. Maybe they did it again yesterday. If we’re going to figure this out, we need intel from the other side. And they might need us, too. Soon as you’re done with the post-mortem here, that’s your next priority. We need to find a way to talk with our opposite numbers on the other side. So long as you’re willing to play ball, Dr. Ayim.”

  The African physicist nodded gravely. “I have seen things here, General, that I cannot begin to explain. Dr. Greene and Mr. Yu did not tell me everything, otherwise I might not have agreed to participate. But now . . .” He paused, gathering himself. “I will help you, if you’ll have me.”

  “What are you going to need?” Diaz asked.

  Ayim looked unfocused, lost in his head a moment. “It’s going to require a lot,” he said finally. “At least a couple different colliders, better containment, some energy buffering . . .” His voice trailed off as he began tapping on his datapad.

  Diaz couldn’t help but smile slightly. “Just send me a shopping list.”

  She turned and headed out of the ruined chamber, leaving the experts to their job. The thing was, Diaz hadn’t told Gerlich about this plan yet.

  She wondered if she really needed to. He’d probably just say no.

  October 20, 1798

  The men of HMS Fortitude stood at attention upon the deck, staring up at Captain Thomas Weatherby. Beside him to his right were Lt. O’Brien, looking far better than he did prior thanks to a clean uniform and proper meals, as well as Lt. Barnes, Dr. Hawkins and the rest of the officers behind them. To his left was the Countess St. Germain, her head bowed, and Lord Morrow. In front of him was Gar’uk, ready to assist his captain with the grim task at hand.

  And before them, resting on mess tables on the main deck, were the shrouded remains of four of Weatherby’s men, draped with England’s flag. And there was a fifth as well—the finest alchemist in the history of mankind, the Count St. Germain. Normally, an ensign would be laid over his body as well, but Weatherby knew St. Germain bore no national allegiances—or any allegiances, really.

  This was, undoubtedly, the worst duty a captain had aboard ship. And this time, it was one of the most conflicting, for Weatherby’s emotions ran a gamut he had hitherto never experienced. The customary sadness and guilt for the loss of his men—those who had died while captive on Titan, as well as those who had fallen in the final melee—was joined by anger, disappointment and dismay over St. Germain’s actions.

  But he had a duty nonetheless, despite the weariness in his soul and the lingering ache of the wound across his chest. “We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, to be turned into corruption,” Weatherby said by heart, not bothering to read from the open book in his hands, “looking for the resurrection of the body, when the Sea and Void shall give up their dead, and the life of all the worlds to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.”

  Weatherby nodded, and groups of four men below picked up the tables and took them to the starboard-side rail, tipping them so that the bodies, weighted with iron shot, slid into the thick, viscous depths of Titan’s sea. Only the flags remained.

  “In the sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God the souls of our fallen comrades—seaman Thomas Wells, able seaman George Finn, carpenter’s mate John Mason, fifth Lieutenant James Floyd Kellogg, and Francis, the Count St. Germain—and we commit their bodies to the depths,” Weatherby said. “The Lord bless them and keep them. The Lord make His face to shine upon them and be gracious unto them. The Lord lift up His countenance upon them, and give them peace. Amen.”

  Weatherby closed the book and led the crew in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, then nodded toward O’Brian, who gave the order: “Company dismissed.”

  “Thank you, Mr. O’Brian,” Weatherby said with a small, sad smile. “’Tis a good thing to have you back once more. Though I will say,” he added, with more volume to his voice, “that Mr. Barnes did a fine job in your stead.” As Weatherby had hoped, Barnes smiled broadly at this as he took his station as officer of the watch. “Mr. Barnes, we sail north. Once we are within the aurorae, rig for Void and proceed outward on course for Mimas.”

  Weatherby turned to look for Anne, but she had already retreated into the great cabin, which Weatherby had readily given up for the use of her and her son, who remained unconscious after his travails.

  “You’ve done well,” Morrow said. “Again. You’re becoming far too useful, I think. Be careful or they’ll make an admiral of you, and all use will be lost.”

  “Thank you, my lord, but I shall be content to remain captain a while longer, I think,” Weatherby r
eplied. “Though I wish we’d be able to find the Franklin. From what O’Brian has told me, they remain at large, and in contact with the Xan partisans. He was unable to identify the leader of the French expedition, but I shall do my utmost to find this out, and which parties were behind the venture in the first place. The thought of the French allying themselves with even a small faction of Xan could spell doom for Europe. Perhaps all of Earth. And I worry that they were not, in fact, acting solely on behalf of France. What if other parties were involved?”

  “I share your concerns, but more importantly, so do the Xan,” Morrow said. “Without the count’s alchemy to cloak their movements, the Xan will no doubt find them, and God help them when they do. And I hope the identity of those behind this madness will be made plain soon after.”

  Weatherby nodded. “Speaking of the Xan, I’m surprised you did not return to Saturn with Vellusk when he departed aboard the Ovoid that arrived yesterday.”

  Morrow shrugged slightly. “Vellusk needs time. There are factions to be dealt with. This crisis was averted only in part. There remain rifts in the Xan society that may yet be beyond repair. I will go in due course, when Vellusk feels it appropriate. But I will say that the crimes of the Xan partisans here have given him some leverage against those who would take a more active role in our affairs.”

  “Yes, but there will always be those who will take that role, I think,” Weatherby said. “They came quite close. So long as the partisans remain at large, and in contact with the French, I cannot help but doubt the future.”

  Morrow actually smiled at this. “Then I thank God you remain in the service. If anyone can defeat an alliance of French and Xan, I dare say it’s you, Tom.”

  Weatherby looked at the decking, embarrassed. “You’re too kind, my lord.”

  Morrow reached out to clap Weatherby on the arm. “Call me James.” And with that, Morrow took his leave to walk the decks, as was his wont. For his part, flush with embarrassment and pride, Weatherby retreated toward his cabin to check upon Anne and Philip. He found them much as they had been since returning to Fortitude—Philip unconscious in Weatherby’s own hammock, and Anne in a chair by his side, reading to him.