The Venusian Gambit

by Michael J. Martinez

  He was already familiar with the room, of course. Like so many others, it was lined floor to ceiling with books. These were organized by planet, starting with Mercury to his immediate left, and ending with Saturn to his right. As one might guess, the sections on Venus, Mars and Saturn were the most extensive, being the homes of the three intelligent races other than Man that called the Known Worlds home. Nearly half the room was given over to the study of the Xan, and there were a number of small artifacts in glass cases near the books. None of these, Philip knew, would be of great import or insight, for the Xan still guarded their secrets jealously from mere humans.

  There were more artifacts from Mars, of course, including an extensive array of reddish stone carvings taken in 1779, one of the results of the HMS Daedalus affair, of which his stepfather and mother were most notably involved, along with the late Baron Morrow, captain of the Daedalus and a man Philip had grown to know and love as much as any blood relation in the time since the Emerald Tablet affair some eleven years ago.

  Venus had an extensive collection of tomes and items as well, including many plant samples kept in vials and tubes—leftovers, Philip knew, from the alchemical labs, for the efficacy of Venusian flora in alchemical workings was extraordinarily well known. It was a shame that, given the English blockade of the French occupiers, such stores of Venusian extracts and leaves were hard to come by in Oxford these days.

  And it was there amongst the Venusian lore, in the furthest corner of the room, that Philip laid eyes upon Claude-Louis Berthollet, seated in a comfortable chair, reading by candlelight. His compatriot sat across from him, his back to Philip, with but a tuft of white, disheveled hair protruding above the back of his chair to give him away.

  With them were two more members of the Corps Éternel, standing watch over the door from the center of the room.

  Philip took a moment to study Berthollet, a man he knew only from etchings and the stories Finch would regale them with at parties. He was a stout man, and one of a frowning countenance in his florid face. Like the rest of the French, he eschewed the use of powdered wigs, allowing his gray-and-white hair to grow more freely. Philip knew him to be the creator of the Corps Éternel, but remembered that Berthollet also was the vice-president of the French Senate and one of Emperor Napoleon’s foremost advisors.

  Philip cursed himself for not obtaining a pistol, for a well-placed shot might cripple France’s alchemical ambitions for years.

  As it was, his task was one of espionage, rather than assassination, and he knew himself well enough to recognize his own incapacity for murder in cold blood. So Philip carefully walked into the room, past the un-dead sentinels, and toward the seated Berthollet.

  He started slightly when Berthollet spoke.

  “Alessandro, what do you make of this?” Berthollet asked his companion, offering the other man the book he was reading. Berthollet’s French had a deep timbre. “On the right, the second column.”

  The older man reached out a trembling, gnarled hand to take the book, drawing it to his own candlelight. A few moments passed, during which Philip quietly drew closer. “I think you may have something there, monsieur,” the other man said with a light accent; Philip assumed it to be Italian, given the man’s name.

  “We cannot be certain, but there are enough elements to the architecture to suggest that the Venusians had guidance in building it, likely from the Xan,” Berthollet said, accepting the book back once more. “They build so damnably few buildings, it would seem a logical place to start.”

  “Which tribe holds it?” the other man asked.

  Berthollet picked up a map from the table beside him. “Let us see…it appears this is some sort of neutral ground, administered by the Va’hak’ri.” The Frenchman grinned. “I do believe you have some experience with that tribe, do you not?”

  Philip could see the older man shift in his chair. “Not nearly enough. I have many regrets, Berthollet. The Va’hak’ri are one of them,” he said, with a weariness in his voice.

  Berthollet gave the older man a kind of understanding smile, though his face looked wholly unsuited to such displays of commiseration, and it came off as quite awkward to Philip’s eye. “It is unfortunately necessary to the continued success of the Revolution, and the Emperor’s vision of liberty, that we press forward, old friend. Otherwise, the evil that plagued you so many years ago may once again rise.”

  Recognizing it as perhaps naivety, Philip nonetheless was surprised to hear such words from the French. Of course, those who commit evil often consider themselves working toward their own noble ends. But this seemed all too genuine, for there was no other audience for Berthollet’s ears. Well, none that he might discern.

  Philip walked around where the two men were sitting so that he might have a better look at the books and maps upon Berthollet’s table. He also got a look at the other man, the one called Alessandro. This man was wizened indeed, looking to be well past eighty years of age, with a bald pate ringed in a fringe of unruly, snow-white hair. His clothes were fine but unremarkable. He also bore no jewelry upon him, compared to the rings and adornments worn by Berthollet. Philip knew that there were those alchemists, particularly the French, who used jewelry as a focus of workings. Students of the Great Work were often warned against such overt displays of power, but some saw the opportunity to wear rings and bracelets adorned with sigils of mystic science as a kind of calling card.

  So was this Alessandro an alchemist? Philip’s mind went back to a story his stepfather once told of meeting the esteemed Ganymedean alchemist Benjamin Franklin, who had immediately identified Finch as an alchemist by the stains of elixirs and powders upon his hands. Philip could see Berthollet bore a few upon his, but the other fellow’s hands were unblemished.

  And yet Berthollet addressed him as someone worthy of respect, if not an equal, and both seemed to be engaged in whatever quest for knowledge they were upon. An expert on Venus, perhaps?

  Philip moved closer to attempt to read over Berthollet’s shoulder…

  …and knocked over the ink bottle and quill upon the man’s table.

  Stupid idiot! he chided himself, even as he quickly drew back. But unfortunately, he moved so fast that he forgot where he was, and bumped into the bookcase behind him.

  A second later, Berthollet was on his feet, casting his eyes about the room. “Guards! Close the door! Let no one enter or exit!”

  Philip watched as the two guards stiffly but quickly moved to the door, shutting it, and turned back to watch the room carefully. Berthollet began rummaging through a small case he had secured next to the table, while the older man slowly worked his way to his feet with the aid of a cane.

  Don’t move. Don’t move.

  Philip stood as still as possible, breathing as quietly as he might. Surely he might find a place in the room to hide, rather than keeping his back pressed to a stack of books and papers all night.

  The papers…he felt them on his back as he shifted ever so slightly. Motion. Movement. Oh, no.

  Suddenly, he looked up to see Berthollet before him, blowing a powder toward his face. And in that moment, Philip knew the game would be up. He tried to spring forward, but Berthollet slammed a hand into his chest and, with surprising strength, likely enhanced by alchemy, he shoved Philip back into the wall, even as Philip saw himself regain visibility in the dim light of the candles.

  “Well then, young man,” Berthollet said in French. “You are a canny alchemist, though a fool and a clumsy oaf as well.”

  Philip struggled against Berthollet’s grip, but the Frenchman was too strong; it was as though the man’s arms were made of steel. Perhaps they even were. “I was…curious, merely curious, monsieur,” Philip replied in passable French. “Surely a great alchemist as yourself would be working on something extraordinary if it were to bring you to Oxford, would it not?”

  Berthollet backhanded Philip across the face, sending him to the floor. A kick from the man’s shoe cracked something in Philip’s
ribcage, sending shooting pain throughout his body and causing him to cry out. “Do you think, boy, I am so stupid as this? You are working for those damn fool rebels in Scotland, who think they can countermand the alliance King George has made with our emperor!”

  Philip heard a woman’s voice from across the room. “An alliance at the end of a bayonet is hardly one at all!” she cried.

  Elizabeth. Dear God, what are you doing?

  Philip struggled to his feet, even as he heard the guards making for Elizabeth. There were the sounds of a scuffle, and a pistol shot besides. Overcoming the pain of his broken ribs, Philip stood and began to move forward….

  ….only to see Elizabeth moving across the room with a pistol pointed at Berthollet’s head, a shining sword in her other hand. The guards behind her lay upon the ground moaning. They were cut in two at the waist.

  “That’s a fine sword, young lady,” Berthollet remarked coolly. “Alchemical, I take it?”

  Elizabeth gave the Frenchman a surprisingly wolfish smile. “Quite so. Made by the hand of one of the finest alchemists in the Known Worlds, and wielded by one of England’s finest heroes. You may have heard of him.”

  Before she could say anything more, the older man reached out with his stick, knocking the sword from her hand and, with surprisingly deftness, cracking her across the head with it. To Philip’s horror, Elizabeth fell to the floor, the pistol slipping from her hand.

  “I know who carried that sword, young lady,” the old man said, looking down at her with something akin to sorrow. “I believe I shot him once, though I was aiming for someone else.”

  Berthollet turned on the old man. “You know this woman?”

  “No, but I know the blade,” the man replied with a shrug. “Surely you’ve heard of Thomas Weatherby, have you not?”

  Philip started to grow dizzy, whether it was from the pain in his side or the sight of his stepsister half-conscious upon the floor, he could not say. “What do you have planned?” Philip demanded, trying to sound hale. “Surely, it cannot countenance striking a woman in such a way.”

  The old man shuffled over toward Philip, looking him squarely in the eye. “I don’t know this one either, but…but…hmmm.” He drew close and examined Philip’s face as though it was but a bust carved from stone in the galleries above. “I know those eyes, that nose. I dare say I knew your father, did I not?”

  Philip stared blankly for several moments until a thunderbolt of recognition hit him. “It cannot be,” he replied quietly. “You were said to have died in a dungeon in Italy!”

  The old man favored him with a wink and a smile. “Even without the power your father stripped from me, I am a most resourceful man. And of course, I am fortunate to have friends in need of my services,” he added, nodding toward Berthollet.

  Philip was about to reply when Berthollet approached and blew more powder into his face. A moment later, all went black.

  CHAPTER 6

  January 14, 2135

  Shaila gazed out her window at the small full Earth, floating in space some 1.5 million kilometers away—a bit smaller than the full moon as seen from the ground. So close, closer than she’d been in a year. And yet she wasn’t going there any time soon.

  She was supposed to be in her rest cycle but sleep wasn’t happening, despite the long hours she and Diaz’ team were putting in. There was too much to do, too much to figure out. Lives were at stake, somehow, though nobody could really pinpoint how quite yet.

  And there was Stephane. That would’ve been more than enough to keep her up.

  The last week and a half had been a whirlwind. The assault on Tienlong was a success, but not without cost. Parrish’s team took the loss of one of their own very hard, and Shaila mourned with them. And yet Stephane, Conti and Shen were subdued and captured. The ship was halted well beyond Earth orbit for inspection and decontamination.

  The problem was…there was nothing to decontaminate.

  Deciding to give up on sleep altogether, Shaila took a quick run through the shower and threw on a fresh jumpsuit. Compared to the quarters on Armstrong, her new digs were outright luxurious. After a few days parked well away from anything, the powers-that-be allowed the ships to dock at Ride Station. What was once a bustling little waystation—“spaceport” seemed a bit ambitious yet—with more than sixty people aboard was now the spacefarer’s equivalent of a ghost town. No extraplanetary missions, governmental or corporate, were allowed to use it. The staff was sent home. Shaila had scored the station XO’s quarters as a result, a little present from Diaz.

  When Shaila was finally allowed into Ride—after a gauntlet of medical tests that left her feeling like a pincushion, Diaz hugged her like a long-lost sister and Shaila couldn’t help but lose it, breaking down right there at the airlock door. Someone—probably that hyper-efficient Coogan guy—cleared the room for them. All Diaz said was, “Good job, kid. Good job,” over and over. Shaila couldn’t find words to speak for hours after that.

  That was the last time she cried. There was too much work to do.

  Snapping back to the moment, Shaila left her quarters and walked down the hallway. Ride Station was a rotating spoke-and-wheel affair—the classic designs seemed to work best after all these years—which provided nearly full Earth gravity to most of the living quarters and workspaces. Only the six docking linkups and the cargo areas were kept in the station’s axis. And right now, only Armstrong and Tienlong were there.

  She passed through one of the common rec areas, where a couple of DAEDALUS teammates were spending their off-duty time. A few looked up, their faces brightening, but she gave them a curt nod and quickly walked past. She was something of a celebrity to many of the techs, warfighters and officers Diaz brought along, but Shaila was in no mood to make new friends. And she wasn’t about to talk about what they really wanted to know—what went down on Titan and Enceladus. She’d already had two days of debriefing since arriving at Ride. It would be a good long while—if ever—before she was ready to talk about it with anyone else.

  Not even Stephane.

  Shaila strode through the corridor until arriving at a door labeled “ASTRONOMY.” Most of the time, academics were allowed to rotate through the station to further whatever research they had going—a perk funded, at JSC’s insistence, by the station’s corporate customers. Since Diaz and DAEDALUS arrived, however, the room was converted into a giant containment facility. She opened the door and entered, just as she’d done at least three times a day since her debrief had finished.

  Inside, the room had been split in half. To her right, a bank of computer equipment and monitors kept constant watch over the left part of the room, sealed off from the rest of the station by every means imaginable. It had its own airlock, environmental controls, bathroom facilities—even the fresh oxygen was fed in through a tank latched to the outside of the station, rather than Ride’s usual atmosphere.

  On a small cot in the corner, Stephane sat, looking at Shaila intently. Just as he did every day for over a week.

  They had zapped him to hell and back again when they brought him aboard Ride, and someone had taken the opportunity to clean him up and put a fresh uniform on him. The hair and beard were still a mess, but at least they weren’t greasy anymore. The med techs told Shaila that he’d been living on just 1,000 calories a day, tops. His body showed signs of extreme exhaustion, as if he’d been going with just two or three hours a sleep per night for the last several months. He was emaciated, his muscles atrophied; it seemed he’d spent most of Tienlong’s transit to Earth in zero-g, in the ship’s labs rather than its living quarters. And yet, much to the med techs’ confusion and consternation, his energy levels were off the charts. By rights, he should be utterly exhausted, and yet there he sat, wide awake.

  Watching.

  She walked over and pressed the comm button on the door of the containment cell. “Hey.”

  Stephane’s body twitched slightly—was it a sign of recognition?—but otherwise he simply conti
nued to stare at her, slightly glassy-eyed, regarding her as one might watch a goldfish in a bowl. It almost seemed disdainful.

  No response, as usual. Shaila turned to the monitors. Accelerated heartbeat, signs of physical stress, exhaustion, exceedingly odd brain-wave patterns—and trace signs of Cherenkov radiation emanating from his cerebral cortex.

  The diagnostic computers settled on “UNKNOWN INFECTION,” which was an odd echo of the official line regarding whatever he picked up on Enceladus. But deep down, Shaila knew that it was more than a mere pathogen. He was under the influence of an alien intelligence, and as much as she wanted to reach inside him, rip it the hell out and stomp on it, there was nothing she could do.

  Except talk. Every day, several times a day.

  “I talked to your mom today,” she said, returning to the comm. “I couldn’t tell her what happened, of course. But I told her you’re alive, and we’re doing everything we can to make you well again,” she said. “Of course, she doesn’t have to know that we have no clue what we’re doing, or how to get that fucker out of you. But we’re trying. We’re working on it. And we will get that thing out of you. No matter how long it takes.”

  Another twitch.

  Shaila turned and saw his already elevated heart rate start to climb, pushing 120 beats per minute. His brain-wave patterns likewise started getting weird. That hadn’t happened before. She had no clue what it meant, but she knew something was going on.

  “You hear me, Stephane? I know you’re there. I bet that’s you, isn’t it. Fighting. I know you. You’re a cocky little joker, this laid-back guy with your sweet talk and your pretty smile, but deep down, you’re a fighter. That’s how you got me. That’s why I fell for you.”

  He twitched again, quite visibly. His whole body shuddered. His hand fluttered.

  Shaila’s heart started to race. “You’re the guy who pulled off a miracle back on Mars. You risked your life, sneaking into a weird temple to free us and stop Althotas. You climbed to the top of a fucking pyramid to cut a rope to stop that insane alien bastard from opening a rift between dimensions. If you hadn’t done that, none of us would be here. That was you, Stephane. All you. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you. Maybe none of us would.