Shadows Against the Empire (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 1)

by Ralph Vaughan

  "Some new kind of cult worship?" he asked, suddenly interested, glancing pointedly at Hand.

  "It was certainly unknown to even the tribal elders of the Naga tribes," Lady Cynthia explained. She paused a moment before saying: "And unknown, also, to the humanoid Venusians I consulted in the temples of Yzankranda."

  Hand looked across the river. "Cor!"

  "Yzankranda? You went to Yzankranda? That was a damned foolish thing to do," Folkestone snarled. "A human woman has no business in that district, even by the light of what passes for day here. And I suppose you went in by night as well? And, knowing you, I suppose you went in alone as well?"

  "As a matter of fact, I did, not that is any of your business, Captain Folkestone," she replied frostily.

  "I could make it my business!" he snapped.

  "Not even in your dreams, Captain!"

  He blushed furiously. "I did not mean..."

  "I do not care..."

  "Your voices are carrying, Captain, m’lady," Sergeant Hand said softly but with a measure of laconic urgency.

  Lady Cynthia and Captain Folkestone glared at each other.

  "Quite right, Sergeant," Folkestone finally said.

  "Yes, Felix," Lady Cynthia agreed. "Thank you."

  "But Yzankranda is a most dangerous place," Folkestone persisted, though keeping his voice limited to their own hearing.

  "I go where I need to go," she replied with the same soft tone. "I do what I need to do, as do you!"

  "What I do, I do for Queen and country, not my own amusement.” He paused. “And your father should not indulge you!"

  Her creamy skin flushed, her brow furrowed and her blue eye flashed with rage.

  Even though that baleful glare was not directed at Sergeant Felix Hand, he cringed inwardly. He awaited fireworks that never materialised. Gradually, Lady Cynthia's skin returned to its normal translucency and her brow smoothed, but her eye never lost its fire, nor wavered from Captain Robert Folkestone's own steady gaze.

  "Problems with natives appear to be mostly restricted to the British settlements," Lady Cynthia said after a tense and protracted silence. “But not entirely.”

  Sergeant Hand softly let out the breath he had been holding.

  "Though reports are nearly impossible to verify," she continued, "there might be some problems among the Chinese and German colonies, but nowhere to the extent we have observed."

  "I'll wager those laddies aren't taking it lying down!" Hand said with a derisive snort.

  "No, apparently they are not," Lady Cynthia confirmed. "The Venusians, reptilian and humanoid alike, are not accorded the same rights and privileges under other nations as they are under the British Empire."

  "Well, if a new religion is rising among the Venusians, what of it?” Folkestone said. “I do not see what can be done about it."

  "Perhaps it's not a new religion," Sergeant Hand suggested.

  The two humans turned curious gazes toward the short, stout Martian.

  "Perhaps it's something old," he continued. "Very old."

  "It's odd you should suggest that, Sergeant," Lady Cynthia commented. "I spoke at length with Cyrak, High Priest in the most ancient temple in the Old City."

  Folkestone frowned, but held his words behind his teeth.

  "He told me the number of adherents to the traditional Gods of Venus are beginning to dwindle, slowly but persistently" she continued. "Fewer offerings to the beasts of the sea, fewer candles lit for the gods of the air, fewer acolytes embarking on directed dream-spice journeys."

  "That's just as well since it's so addictive," the Martian remarked. “Isn’t it?”

  "The priests don't like its use outside the temples either," she countered, “but its religious usage is an old tradition.”

  "The people lost to the temples...siphoned off to this odd cult?" Folkestone asked. “Would humanoid Venusians be attracted to a Naga cult?”

  "He did not know, but they may be," she replied. "People are abandoning their religion, their friends, and their families...as if they suddenly answered a call heard only by them, and went who-knows-where, leaving all worldly possessions behind."

  Sergeant Hand shot a quick glance toward Folkestone, and a slight nod from the Captain confirmed they shared a common thought – Daraph-Kor.

  "I did not get as much from Cyrak as I would have liked, you know how the Venusian humanoids feel about outsiders," Lady Cynthia admitted, "but he did say one thing that I don't quite understand."

  "What was that, Lady Cynthia?" Folkestone asked.

  "He said he feared there were terrible travails ahead for Venus which might mean the end of everything," she answered. "He said he feared the rising of the baleful Red Eye."

  Folkestone's eyebrows shot up.

  Hand shook his head in confusion. "Red Eye?"

  "It is the ancient Venusian name for Mars," Folkestone said.

  "But nobody can see a bloody thing – pardon me, Lady Cynthia – through these eternal seething clouds," Sergeant Hand exclaimed. "Not even the Sun or even the real stars; and the clouds have always been there so there is no way Venusians could have ever seen Mars, much less have a name for it."

  "Quite true, Sergeant," Lady Cynthia admitted, "yet they do. We have known since the earliest exploration of Venus about this anomalous astronomical knowledge, but in all the time we have studied the Venusians we have not learned how they came upon this knowledge...and they will not tell."

  “It is a great mystery,” Folkestone admitted.

  “But what's to be made of it?" Sergeant Hand mused. "Mars? A religion older than..." He glanced to his superior, frowned as he thought of the danger they had encountered on Mars, and said, "Sir, do you suppose..."

  "You are undoubtedly correct, Sergeant," Folkestone said quickly. "There seems no explanation for this errant astronomical intelligence among the Venusians, and perhaps even less sense to be made of it. Excellent observation, Sergeant."

  "Yes, sir." Hand agreed, even if he was not entirely sure to what he was agreeing. He looked to Lady Cynthia. “No doubt the Captain is right about that, ma’am.”

  Lady Cynthia looked back and forth between the two soldiers, but was at a lost to determine what information was being traded without her knowledge, though she was quite careful not to let any consternation show through her placid features. Usually she just wanted to slap the smug arrogance from Captain Folkestone's face – exactly what her father saw in this roguish and often rebellious officer she had no idea – but at the moment she felt like extending the slap to the usually agreeable and taciturn Sergeant Felix Hand.

  "Well," Lady Cynthia said coolly after a moment, "that is the extent of the information I was asked to share about the Naga problem. I hope it is some help to you."

  Folkestone smiled. "We shall see."

  "Should you learn anything further, I trust you will ensure I am informed," she said without real hope.

  "Of course, Lady Cynthia," Folkestone assured her.

  She doubted his assurances, but kept her concerns to herself.

  When Folkestone was quite sure Lady Cynthia was well out of earshot, he murmured to Hand: "No matter how helpful she may be at times – don’t you dare mention that to her! – her father has no business encouraging her foolishness. She is reckless!"

  "She is quite capable, Captain," Hand pointed out, thinking recklessness was a trait the two of them shared. "She's proven that."

  "An agent of Empire needs more than beauty and luck."

  "Sir," Hand said, seeking to divert the subject to something less incendiary. "The rise of an old religion on Venus and an apparent connection with Mars…could it somehow be connected with what happened in Old Cydonia?"

  Folkestone shrugged. "I hope not." He looked down the riverfront where the slender form of Lady Cynthia was almost lost to view. "She is an absolute nuisance, isn't she?"

  "Yes, sir," Hand agreed, smiling into his teacup. "Quite."

  Chapter 7

  Baphor-Ta, Chief
Investigator for the Court of the Red Prince in Syrtis Major, cursed Captain Robert Folkestone. Then threw in that rapscallion Felix Hand for good measure.

  He had a good half-dozen major reports overdue to various functionaries of the Red Prince, as well as myriad reports from his own underlings to review, and numerous people both bad and good to interrogate; and he had been tasked by the temple authorities to get to the bottom of several profane desecrations before the start of the High Holy Days. And, yet, here he was making his way through the murky underworld of Syrtis Major in search of a woman who was probably nothing but a shrew who had driven a long-suffering husband to seek oblivion.

  Yet, he had to admit, all the friends and acquaintances of the Kor family had described the relationship as a caring and enduring one. All agreed Mozah-Kor was the perfect wife, a true life-mate. If anything, people wondered how she managed to put up with Daraph-Kor, who was described as a dreamer and a man who did not always live up to his potentialities or aspire to the social influence that always attended a successful Martian merchant. As a group, the only books that usually held the attention of the managers of the hereditary trading houses were ledgers, the only documents invoices and bills of lading.

  But Daraph-Kor was, it seemed, a throwback to a time before the unbridled avarice brought by the advent of interplanetary commerce, when merchants, armed with literacy and a yearning to personally open new markets in the unmapped areas of Mars, rivalled the priesthood as society's learned class. Daraph-Kor was a collector of scrolls and tablets, of offworld books, of objects rare and historical.

  Perhaps it had not been family life at all that drove him off, Baphor-Ta reflected as he trekked the steamy underworld, but his own atavistic nature. Perhaps he did not run away from anything, the investigator thought, but to something, not seeking oblivion but enlightenment.

  Baphor-Ta shook his head. Made no real difference, did it? Still no crime involved, and the allegations that Thoza-Joran spoke to a vanished man no one could see was evidence of...absolutely nothing. And who was to say the report of what had happened in Old Cydonia was at all accurate? Humans were notoriously emotional and imaginative, and a man like Folkestone embodied the worst of those characteristics. And Felix Hand? Well, what could you say about a highlander to begin with? And then add in that he had lived most his life with humans, even to the point of taking a human name. It was nothing but a thoon hunt, and Baphor-Ta was being played a fool.

  And you let yourself get roped into it, didn't you? he thought.

  He cursed his own stupidity.

  And then he again cursed Captain Robert Folkestone and Sergeant Felix Hand.

  Yet, here he was, traversing a dark and dangerous portion of the city, searching for a woman who did not want to be found.

  Baphor-Ta was disguised as he ventured forth, for in his capacity as a criminal, political and religious investigator for the Court, he had made more than his share of enemies, any of whom would have paid good money to attend his funeral, if not to actually arrange it. Somewhere nearby, but not so near as to interfere with him, were his two bodyguards, but while he recognised their potential help should an awkward moment segue into a crisis, he counted less on their quick reflexes and good aim than he did the arsenal of blades and bullets he carried on his own person.

  He entered a side tunnel and left the thronged bazaars, crowded hovels and threadbare shrines, the overpopulated rookeries where all that was illicit and desired in Syrtis Major was ever available, for the right price, even a murderer's hand.

  Even in these ancient warrens of iniquity and vice the Eyes of the Red Prince peered, even though at times it was, as the human missionaries might have termed it, as through a glass darkly. Very darkly, Baphtor-Ta admitted. He knew where Folkestone and Hand had found the woman, but all that told him in this underworld of constant flux, was where Mozah-Kor would not be found, and even his own agents, slippery as shadows and ever eager to stay in the good graces of the Court, could only tender vague suggestions.

  He would see the woman, talk to her, confirm Folkestone's claims, or burst them, then decide what should be done next. He wanted to dispense with this fool's errand, but his greatest fear at the moment was that it would be just the beginning.

  Old Gods.

  Rivers of blood.

  Footfalls once more in the dire streets of Old Cydonia.

  Dark energies and darker desires.

  Strange cults emerging to deface the temples and challenge their undemanding gods.

  Hoax or foolishness, it boded ill anyway you looked at it.

  As Baphor-Ta entered a nexus of chambers, he appeared to be a solitary traveller, which was exactly how he was supposed to seem. If he could see his bodyguards, so could others, and that would have defeated their purpose. Only the rich and powerful were guarded from harm, and for his sojourn among the damned and forgotten he needed to appear as just another shady and dangerous character bent on errands best kept secret.

  He entered a dim and squalid hovel, the place where old Mozah was most likely to be, and smelled immediately the scent of death, the sulphurous smell of blood and the ripeness of flesh left for the carrion feast.

  And it was a death not very old.

  One hand strayed to the hilt of a katana given him last year by Folkestone while the other reached for a repeating revolver of German design, a gift from Altamont.

  He followed his nose to the remains of an older Martian woman, Mozah most likely but there was no real way of telling. Were the blade cuts not so obvious, he might have taken this as an attack by a savage beast. He forced himself not to turn away; a savage and ruthless beast, indeed the creature that walked on two legs and built cities and smiled as it killed for pleasure.

  Her left hand was clenched tightly about something. Though rigor had not yet set in her mortal remains he had to break her fingers to open the hand and get at what she had clutched in her death agony. So intent was Baphor-Ta in gaining possession of what turned out to be a fragment of cloth he did not at first hear the slow whispery sound of someone unlimbering from a hiding place quickly sought when he had entered the chamber. He whirled about in time to see a shade separate from the shadows, a man of rags and dust, a dark hand holding a large-bore blue-black revolver.

  Baphor-Ta fired his own weapon without aiming but not before the dim figure shot at him, not before the chamber was filled with a deafening roar and acrid smoke, not before a projectile slammed into the centre of his chest. He flew back, sprawling across the remains of the unfortunate Mozah-Kor, one time matriarch of a Syrtis Major mercantile house and aspirant to high society, but now covered with scarlet blood and fit for nothing more than an impoverished closed-casket temple service.

  Though his ears still rung from the double blast, he heard two more explosions, more like timid little pops.

  Hands held him, were lifting him from the charnel bed.

  "Sir!"

  "Baphor-Ta!"

  His bodyguards dragged him till a wall was at their backs.

  "No, it's all...I am unharmed."

  But the older of the guards already had his tunic open.

  Baphor-Ta looked down, saw the deep indentation in the brasswork that was his chest, the formed ribs of the artificer and the facsimile of muscles. From time to time he had cursed the accident that had crushed his chest, the engineering marvel that had at times made him feel less than a man...but not today.

  "You were lucky, sir," the guard murmured. "Soft-nosed ammunition, notched to do the most damage to flesh and bone."

  "Flesh and bone," Baphor-Ta snorted derisively. "Is he..."

  "Dead," reported the younger guard, returning to the others. "Shot three times."

  "Good, though I would have liked to question him."

  "He's human, but...you should see this yourself."

  They helped Baphor-Ta to the remains of the would-be assassin. There was a hole in his neck and two in his head, but that was not what grabbed their attention. The man's shirt was ri
pped open, and Baphor-Ta motioned for the guard to open it further. A scarlet mark seemed to writhe across the man's torso like a bloody snake, having neither beginning nor end, forming a dread pattern.

  "Great Gods!" the older guard breathed.

  Baphor-Ta's lips tightened until they were bloodless. Every Martian knew the sigil, knew that ancient form, though delineating it in any manner was a blasphemy of the highest order, a crime carrying the penalty of death.

  "The Old Gods," a guard murmured.

  “Shut it!” Baphor-Ta snapped.

  "What does it mean, sir?"

  "You stay here until we can send other back to help you," the investigator instructed the younger man. "Anyone but our people come in, chase them off, kill them if you must, and cover that obscenity up." He regarded his men sternly. "You are to forget what you've seen here, not to talk about it, not to anyone or with each other. Do I make myself clear?"

  They nodded grimly.

  He looked to the older of the guards. "Give him your gun, take mine."

  As the two men exited the chamber they encountered a squad of regular peace keepers, and ordered them to secure the entrance, but not to enter. There was no way Baphor-Ta was going to entrust any part of this crime scene to anyone but his own people.

  Once the machinery of officialdom had been set in motion Baphtor-Ta realised how much pain he was in. The bullet may not have been able to punch its way through the brass and steel that had replaced his crushed chest, but it certainly had not done him any good. He let his aide conduct him to the hospital while he considered the fabric he had taken from Mozah-Kor's lifeless hand, a fine and shimmering cloth woven from the secretions of an insect found only in the lowland jungles of Venus.

  Damn Captain Robert Folkestone!

  Chapter 8

  The Consul airship grew small and was eventually lost in the roiling nimbus that was the eternal canopy of Venus. That cloud cover was the hallmark of Venus, and there was never a time in the history of the planet when it had not been there. Until the coming of Martians and humans to Venus, none of the inhabitants of that enshrouded planet, neither the Nagas who now dominated jungles and swamps, or the tall humanoids who had anciently retreated to a dozen stone citadels by sea and river, had beheld the universe beyond the clouds. To the Venusian aborigines, even the sun was nothing but a diffused brightness amongst the clouds that daily rescued the planet from a stygian night utterly unrelieved by even a glimmer of celestial light.