That was a lot of clues she gave me to follow right there. Phoenix is working with off-worlders on something, and the test fields are here on the surface of Venus. Still, there must be more.
“There must be more?” I ask directly. “What kind of research has everyone so worried?”
“What is it that has everyone worried?” she asks back. “The Great Houses of Venus, Luna, Terra…even the mighty Jupiter and Saturn? What started the war…and what might reignite it?”
Oh, no…
“House Phoenix seeks what others have also sought, what the State of Terra sought, and Saturn before them. They seek true material and mental transcendence—a level of change that will move them so far beyond our current understanding as to become altogether a different order of being. They seek change…transcendence…and singularity.”
Oh, God. I stop dancing, unable to breathe for a moment.
Not this…not again…not here and now.
“Yes,” she whispers. “This worries us as well.”
I bet—wait a minute—who is she really?
She’s had me off balance since we started talking. I don’t even know her name. Maybe I should have opened with that.
“I believe you have me at a disadvantage. You’ve accessed my identity, but I’m afraid I don’t know yours.”
“I am Princess Lairana Aurien-Rel of House Unicorn,” she answers simply with a small smile.
Aw, hell no!
My first urge is to drop her at once and flee the room. I can’t do that though. I can’t leave my men behind to face this monster by themselves. More, I can’t abandon my post as honor guard. Finally, there’s no telling what terrible, subtle revenge this creature will exact if I humiliate her in public.
This is a real, live Venusian princess I’m dancing with—it isn’t like a fairy tale. She’s likely centuries old, and responsible for countless atrocities. There’s no telling what she’s slowly become over lifetimes of augmentation and genetic replacement.
Is she lying? I hope so, but I don’t think so. No one would dare offend the real princess unless they were an authorized body double. How is it she was sitting next to me in the seating arrangement, instead of near the ambassador? What’s going on here? How do I get out of all this alive?
I’m still dancing, though if my augments weren’t keeping me going, I probably would have fallen over.
“Is something wrong?” she asks with apparent concern.
So much is wrong.
“Uh…I need to go.”
“Ah, but we’ve only begun! Come back with me and I will reveal all.”
Her gaze, the light rises of her chin, the held breath—everything indicates she will indeed reveal all.
Even knowing what she is, I’m tempted. Then I remember what happened in the hall, when they all laughed while a girl dissolved on the floor…
…and leaving the princess behind is easy.
I turn around and don’t look back.
* * *
Finally, I get to my assigned quarters. After a long day of meeting, greeting, and all that, I’m exhausted. I thought parties were supposed to be relaxing and refreshing, but this has been anything but. Not only am I totally out of my element here, danger of every kind seems to be everywhere.
I’m not sure how I’ll get any sleep tonight, but I have to try—big day tomorrow, and all that.
The hatch—door on a planet, Mike—slides open to reveal my room in its palatial luxury. The crystal windows show the artificial night of Venus, the sky glittering with flashing prisms blocking the sun. Ornate carvings of motion art cover most of the pearl walls, while the ceiling is a baroque map of the galaxy that seems to spin slowly as I walk in. The carpet grass is in bloom, giving off a faint fresh floral scent from myriad tiny flowers. The furnishings are carved in the form of mythical creatures, and shine with iridescence. If I wasn’t already getting used to Venusian décor, I might have been blinded.
Laying atop my round bed, dressed only in shining locks that conceal nothing, is an astonishingly beautiful woman who looks just enough like my wife to—
NOPE! Nopenopenopenope…nopa-nopa-nope!
“Get. Out,” I manage.
“I simply wish to welcome you to Venus, Your Excellency.” She sighs. “Please allow me to offer our customary greeting—”
“OUT…NOW.” I point at the open hatch—er, door—behind me.
She pouts attractively, then rises and slowly puts on a glittering robe, which somehow makes it all worse. She strolls languidly out of the room, pausing to offer one last gaze at me over her shoulder. Then, finally, she’s gone.
I rush in and seal the hatch, then lean against it for a few moments to catch my breath.
This is going to be harder than I thought. Also, how do I get any sleep in this place? It not only looks ridiculous, but it’s certainly filled with surveillance devices and possible traps.
Well, time to get to work. I unpack my satchel and release my counter-nano cloud to seek out, identify, and neutralize hostile devices. My augmentation will coordinate the whole thing. Even with all this to help, there could be literally billions of nano-devices in the room—and missing one will be just as bad as missing them all.
This will probably take a couple hours…and when I come back here tomorrow, I’ll have to do it all over again.
So much for getting any rest.
* * *
The Venusian jungle is dark and looming all around me, with boughs, branches, and broad leaves concealing almost everything. The gloaming night is still illuminated by spectral purple, blue, and green phosphorescence from the undergrowth and ever-present fungi. Soft sounds sing and chirp through the night, merging into a low drone of life. Rich and subtle forest perfumes wash over me with ever-changing intoxicating scents. Bioluminescent clouds of insects swarm around glowing night flowers like swirling galaxies of diffuse light. The springy forest floor gently sinks and rebounds under my bare feet, and the vines and leaves caress my bare skin as I walk forward through the night.
She stands there ahead of me in a clearing, clothed only in the spectral bioluminescent mists of the forest. It’s the princess, as beautiful—if not more so—as before. I meet her gaze and cannot look away. Entranced, I slowly walk closer.
“Come to me,” she whispers, and the voice repeats endlessly in my head, turning into the musical notes of a grand symphony. “Take me, Michael. I am yours, and you are mine…”
“No…” I manage to whisper and come to a stop. Something is wrong.
“I can be anyone, Michael, anyone at all.” She removes her face, and underneath is my wife’s face, smiling invitingly at me.
I miss her so much…another step forward before I stop. “No.” The fog of the forest seems to be in my brain. It’s hard to think straight. “This isn’t right…”
“You’re mine, Michael.” She’s getting angry, and the forest grows dark around me, and the various sounds of the forest creatures trail off. Pinpoints of red light shine from her pupils, and her nails grow into long, black, curving claws.
“No…” I back away, out of reach.
“I can be anyone…or anything!” She tears her face off with her claws into long, bloody rags.
Underneath is the face of Saturn. Black, chitinous armor is broken randomly by glowing red compound eye sensors. Antennae and bristles sprout here and there.
I scream and turn to run.
Around me, the forest burns. Screaming creatures fall from the trees, while burning embers whirl in the raging flames. Heat blisters and tightens my skin, and it’s hard to breathe. Still, there must be some way to escape through the raging firestorm and twisting columns of flame.
I break out into a plain of ash. The gray desert stretches off in all directions to a bare horizon that breaks suddenly to a putrescent ocher sky and roiling umber clouds. The heat continues to increase and becomes unbearable. It’s hard to breathe, as the air becomes thick, viscous, and stingingly acidic. The reek of brimston
e and sulfur are everywhere.
Finally, it rains upon the parched land…it rains acid. My skin burns and sloughs off. The acidic air chokes me, and my lungs fill with burning fluid as the deadly gas all around me burns and dissolves. Temperature, heat, and pressure keep going up and up and up. I’m burning, dissolving, and being crushed all at the same time, yet somehow, I’m still alive. It’s impossible, but it keeps getting worse…
* * *
WAKE NOW!
My augments thunder into my mind, while a surge of energy is sent to rev up my cardiovascular system, central nervous system, and musculature. I’m awake instantly, filled with energy from my augments and my nightmare. Time slows as my neural augmentation comes fully online.
INTRUDER LOCATED.
I grab the laser pistol by the bed and roll onto the floor in a low crouch while taking in the situation.
Low light visual augmentation snaps the dim room into crystal clarity, while my sonar augments analyze the pattern of ambient sound waves and how they reflect to create a complete physical picture of the room. Infrared not only makes the walls appear to glow, but also shows the subtle heat patterns and textures of objects, as well as the air currents disturbed by any motion. Finally, a map overlay shows where everything should be, so I could make my way around even if I were somehow totally blinded.
Everything points out the intruder in my room.
Low to the floor, on the other side of my oversize bed, is a powerful heat source. It’s putting out more heat than a person would, more like the kind of waste heat active heavy machinery puts out. I can hear it breathing, and sonar shows me a picture of a low-slung, six-legged, long-tailed creature crawling in my general direction.
The girl who was previously in my room was more pleasant, but I still think she might have been more dangerous than this thing, whatever it is.
My augments report that the security of the door was breached while I was asleep, even the additional codes I overlaid on the security systems. The door opened for barely a second, and this thing scampered in. The door is now closed and locked, and the security codes have been changed. Neither the door nor the room’s communications systems are responding to my queries. I’m trapped in here with it.
No problem. My pistol is already integrated with all my augments, so I’ve got the creature locked in—all I have to do is get a clear shot, and I can’t miss—not at this range, or even out to several kilometers. I set it to maximum short burst—a UV beam that should vaporize solid matter, creating an explosive cloud that will cause additional blast and burn damage. That should be enough to stop almost any animal.
I pop up over the bed and fire in one action.
The room fills with glaring brilliance as my beam scatters uselessly from the scales of the monster. Small fires start here and there from the scattered laser light, and emergency filters activate in my glare-stung eyes. Still, I manage to get a look at the thing.
It’s a salamander.
Glittering blue-violet armored scales cover its body, and protective covers snap down over its eyes. That armor can diffract UV frequency laser light and stop rail darts from small arms. My pistol is going to be useless. Atom-sharp diamond claws and fangs flash and shine as they extend fully to attack.
Salamanders are basically mini dragons made by the House of the same name. They’re attack creatures made to go into enemy buildings, tunnels, and structures and clean out prepared resistance. Salamanders are immune to small arms fire, light explosives, and atom-blades, and of course bio, chem, radiation, and nanotechnology. Somebody sent a bioweapon designed to take out light fortifications just for little old me. I should be flattered. Really.
The salamander gapes wide and hisses at me. A stream of high-pressure pure oxygen makes its mouth and fangs glow red hot, and then it coughs…
Oh, yeah, salamanders can breathe fire, too.
I duck behind the bed and roll for cover.
A blinding column of searing white strikes the wall where I was an instant ago. The outer layers of the wall simply char away and peel back from the explosion of light and heat until the armored bulkhead behind the wall finally stops the devastating torrent of flame. The bed, only catching the edge of the fire, ignites instantly and fills the air with swirling clouds of burning ashes.
As I roll up to stand and run, the annihilating bar of flame follows me.
If that fire hits me, I’m done—so I need to make sure it doesn’t hit me.
Salamander fire burns the walls and floor in a crazy, twisting path, just behind me. Raging pain hammers across every inch of my skin as the radiant heat of being near the fire burns and blisters me. The entire room fills with flames, smoke, and ash. My emergency filters and internal oxygen cell activate when all the oxygen is sucked out of the room as everything burns.
Finally, after over a minute of raging, relentless fire, the salamander’s fire is spent, and it stops.
I may not have been hit by the fire, but I’m still covered in painful burns just from being near it, and from being stuck in a room that’s now an airless oven. The emergency fire systems should have come on by now, but haven’t. Instead, the room is a smoke-filled broiler, with the occasional glowing orange light from molten ruins and charred embers.
I come around behind the salamander—trying to get to it before it can recover and breathe again.
It turns like a cat and whips its long tail at me.
I catch it, and the razor spines along the back tear into my burned flesh. Instead of letting go, I tighten my grip and heave. In the low Venusian gravity, it’s easy to swing the salamander around by its tail, slamming it into one scorched wall after another as hard as my augmented musculature allows. I don’t know how much damage I’m doing, but it’s very satisfying.
Once it seems stunned, I drop it and jump atop it.
Yeah, getting into hand-to-hand combat with a bioengineered killing machine is a bad idea. So is staying at range and letting it breathe fire on me.
It goes crazy when my weight crashes atop it. Six limbs with diamond claws rake and tear at my burned flesh. My subdermal armor stops the claws from doing any vital damage, but it’s still agony. It rears back to bite me, but I manage to get my hands around its jaws before it can. With its mouth clamped shut, it can’t bite me or breathe fire. The whole thing bucks and writhes in my grip, clawing and flailing, but it can’t get those jaws open. Apparently the muscles that open the jaws are weaker than the ones that close them, a design flaw that might just save my life.
I change my grip, still holding the deadly maw closed, and get a hold of its main body, turning the whole thing over so the claws can’t reach me anymore. Its tail still whips and lashes at me, and coils about my legs.
Still, I force my knees up against its spine and pull back with everything I’ve got. The salamander’s back bends toward me and stops, its reinforced spine refusing to give. Even my Jovian strength will never be a match for something from the Venusian bioweapons labs. Fortunately, I’ve got military-grade strength augments.
Even with everything I’ve got, the thing is still alive, somehow. Warnings flash in my sensorium; I override them and urge more power to my augmentation.
It’s Jovian engineering vs. Venusian biology, and when its spine finally breaks, I know we’ve still got the edge.
I make sure it’s dead, destroying the rest of the spinal column and thoroughly smashing its skull.
Now for that door.
My augmentation tells me it will take about 30 minutes to break the codes holding the door shut. Plenty of time—my oxygen cell is good for hours.
Still, I’m worried about what may be happening to the ambassador or the rest of my team. I can’t talk to anyone in here with the systems locked out, and anything could be happening. Most likely this was a personal hit against me, but it could be part of a larger attack. I’m not the actual security for the ambassador, however; I’m just here for show. So attacking me doesn’t help in an attack on the ambassador or an
y of the negotiating parties. It’s not even a good diversion, since all the communications from this room were blanked out. So most likely this was just an attack on me. Maybe this was about the bounty Saturn’s placed on my head. Either way, with all the adrenaline and anti-pain medicine in me, I feel like I’m ready to take on anything at the moment.
I’ll at least have to file a complaint with hotel management.
* * *
Once I finally get the door open, a huge cloud of hot smoke blows out into the crowded hallway, driving elegantly dressed, glittering Venusians back. Fresh air and oxygen rushes into the room behind me, and the remaining unburnt wreckage in my room explodes into flames.
My clothes, hair, and most importantly, my gear, have all been ruined by the fire. I’m clad in nothing but ashes and the corpse of the salamander draped around my neck.
The Venusians draw back and gawp.
“Go ahead! Stare!” I bellow.
They do.
They’re also recording everything and sending it out to everyone on Venus…and likely beyond. It’s not like I’m the ambassador’s honor guard or anything.
Now that I’m out of the dead zone, I do a quick check with my augments. No one else on my team has been attacked, and the ambassador is fine. There are plenty of queries about my health and status, but that will have to wait, though I let them know I’m fine…for a certain definition of “fine.”
All this is going to get back home, of course.
Then what? Do I record a message, assuring my wife and family not to worry about video of me stark naked and burned while wearing a dead salamander? What do I say? Hey, don’t worry. It isn’t what it looks like. For that matter, what does it look like? I went through it all, and I still don’t know what to think.
My augments and the local network lead me to the crowded lobby, where the guy in charge of this residential complex is.
The lobby is just as palatial and decadent as my suite used to be, and I trail in ashes and stares as I enter. Stunned, bejeweled Venusians stare, titter, or fan themselves as I enter.
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