The Venusian Gambit

by Michael J. Martinez

  “Their memories of these events are here, in the memory vaults,” Cagliostro added. “We hope that these memories will give us the information we need.”

  “To bring him back?” Weatherby demanded.

  “God, no, Weatherby!” Davout thundered. “To shut him away forever!”

  “But with you here, and the convergence in place, all he would need are the two artifacts, the book and the Tablet,” Berthollet said. “And we fear his agents could be anywhere. Indeed, they could be you!”

  Shaila’s stomach dropped as Weatherby turned to her in horror. It was their worst fear confirmed. All he needs are the book and the Tablet. And we brought them here.

  Suddenly, Shaila’s headset crackled. “Diaz to Jain. Diaz to Jain. Enemy is here. Repeat, enemy is here. We got about a thousand goddamn zombies out here and we are engaging. Over.”

  CHAPTER 26

  January 30, 2135

  May 29, 1809

  Diaz watched stoically as line after line of Corps Éternel soldiers marched into the clearing. They spread out like the precision drill teams she had seen in her academy days at Colorado Springs, with muskets over their shoulders and feet moving in unnervingly precise lockstep. And they moved fast—it was like she was watching a parade in fast-forward.

  “Hold fire,” Diaz ordered. She had given Elizabeth’s headset to Philip so they could coordinate better, then rigged the comms in the other V-SEV so that she wouldn’t need one. “I want to see how these guys line up.”

  And line up they did. They emerged from the jungle five abreast, then quickly formed larger lines in the clearing that spread out and pivoted toward the pyramid. There were easily fifty troops in each row, at perfect arm’s length. And they kept coming.

  “Holding fire. Cannon is ready,” Philip replied. “Lookouts report several cannon coming down the trail now. Six…no, eight pieces.”

  “Aw, hell. Why not, right? Jesus,” Diaz responded. “I’m going to try to disable the guns while they’re in transit. If I can’t, hold fire until the guns have stopped moving before you hit ‘em.”

  “We shall concentrate fire upon the Corps Éternel until you tell us otherwise, Madam General,” Philip responded, “and allow our Venusian compatriots to attack at the flanks and rear.”

  Diaz powered up the lasers on both V-SEVs. “Call me ‘madam’ again, Lieutenant, and I’ll beat you something fierce,” she said with a grin.

  It took a moment for the young man to reply. “I certainly meant no disrespect,” he said, a touch of petulance in his voice.

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. Let’s get to work. Fire when ready.”

  Above Diaz’ V-SEV, a huge blast shook the foundations of the pyramid as a gout of bluish flame shot out in a wide arc across the clearing, and at least two dozen zombies went down in flames, literally. Meanwhile, Diaz targeted the first cannon she saw, rolling up toward the clearing from the trail. She took aim and fired—and found the laser was going to take a while to cut through the thick iron of the cannon.

  Thankfully, it cut through the wooden wheels just fine. A second later, the artillery piece dropped through the wooden wreckage onto the ground—effectively blocking the other artillery from entering the clearing and approaching the pyramid.

  “Hot damn!” Diaz whooped. “Lieutenant, I suggest you have your snipers commence firing. Elizabeth, as soon as you see the last soldiers come off the trail, signal the Venusians to attack.

  “We might get out of this looking good after all,” she added.

  Diaz began slicing through the enemy lines with her laser—failing to notice two small targets edging around the back of the pyramid.

  Weatherby stood across from Berthollet and Davout with his arms folded. “You’ll forgive me, gentlemen, if I cannot quite believe your assertion that the presence of the Emerald Tablet and The Book of the Dead in this place is in error, for our own alchemists believe that these two artifacts may be used against Althotas with great efficacy.”

  “Just as a child may use a loaded gun when placed before him,” Berthollet sneered. “Not well. And if there is a soldier there with him, who should make better use of it?”

  Shaila stepped forward. “Fine, but where is he, then? If he’s not here to use the damn things, and if you guys are all excited about keeping Althotas out of our worlds, then let’s take them and get to work. Seal it up. Banish him. Whatever.”

  “That is not the entirety of our mission, young lady,” Davout said. “It is, of course, imperative to ensure Althotas does not enter our realms again. But the Emperor himself has commanded that we find a method to permanently banish the Martian that does not reduce the effectiveness of the Corps Éternel.”

  Weatherby narrowed his eyes at the French marshal. “And so you and your Emperor would risk the Known Worlds in order to keep your foul soldiers,” he said. “That cannot stand. We have the book and the Tablet, and by God, we will use them to defeat Althotas, and your creations can go to Hell where they belong!”

  The two sides stared for a few long moments before Anne stepped forward and ventured an idea. “Gentlemen, perhaps we may yet come to an accord. Of course, we retain the book and the Tablet, and have no intention of surrendering them to you,” she said, walking around the room slowly, apparently deep in thought. “Of course, with this convergence occurring, I would suggest time is of the essence. Therefore, I would like to conduct my researches here in this chamber, with Dr. Finch assisting me. As might I suggest that you may continue your inquiries here as well, so long as you do not hinder ours. Should either of us find a solution, we may implement it as we see fit—again, without interference. And of course, we shall all agree that this chamber is of utmost importance to the Venusian people, and should be treated with all due care and respect.”

  Davout and Berthollet looked at each other, surprise and confusion writ upon their faces, while Cagliostro seemed almost giddy at the prospect. Meanwhile, Weatherby positioned himself just in front of three of the revenants, and gave Shaila what he hoped to be a most meaningful look. To her credit, the young woman gave a slow nod of her head and slowly walked toward two others, bringing one of the marines closer with a subtle gesture.

  After conferring briefly, Davout looked up and smiled. “While that is indeed a most fair-minded solution, Lady Weatherby, I am afraid we must decline. Above, our reinforcements are well on their way, and even with your fantastical vehicles, our sheer numbers may yet turn the tide. And as for this room, well…” Davout made a show of unsheathing his blade. “You are outnumbered. Corps, attaque!”

  Utterly predictable, Weatherby thought. With one swift motion, he drew his alchemically enhanced sword and swung in a wide arc, neatly slicing three of the revenants in half before they could move. Shaila was less fortunate, however, for her pistol shot hit her target in the jaw, rather than the forehead, and the creature began to grapple her in its clawed, shriveled hands, even as its jawbone dangled from its shattered face.

  A scream to Weatherby’s right sent a shiver down his spine; he turned to see one of his marines impaled on a bayonet, while another revenant twisted the poor man’s neck in a wholly unnatural way. With a sharp crack, the deed was done, and the man slumped to the ground, his head at an ugly angle from the rest of him.

  Weatherby bent down to grab one of the severed revenant’s muskets. “Jain!” he cried, throwing the weapon toward her. Despite her predicament, she managed to catch it with one free hand, then sent the butt of the weapon into her revenant’s head, or what remained of it, stunning it long enough to free her. She then drove the bayonet through its throat and twisted, severing the head and sending the body collapsing to the floor.

  A gunshot rang out, and Weatherby turned to see Stephane at the door, holding another musket. His heart stopped a moment—at whom did he aim?—but was relieved to find that the Frenchman had successfully shot a revenant making for Anne, and she was able to finish off the creature with her sword.

  Weatherby was about to mo
ve forward to engage the rest of the revenants when several more shots rang out in dizzying succession. He wheeled about to find Stephane being pushed to the floor, and two other people walking into the room with what could only be firearms from some unimagined future—jet black and small and, it seemed, capable of firing rounds at an incredible pace.

  “Greene!” Shaila cried out. She raised her musket toward him, but the silver-haired man immediately pointed his weapon at her—and she immediately thought better of it.

  “Enough!” Greene shouted. “Throw down your weapons!” He then said something in a language Weatherby could not fathom, and the revenants immediately stopped fighting, once again frozen in place.

  Undeterred, the remaining marine set his bayonet and charged Greene and his companion, an African woman of surpassing physical strength. The woman fired her weapon at the marine, and the man’s chest exploded with what seemed to be at least seven different bullet wounds. He fell wordlessly to the floor.

  “Anybody else gonna be an idiot today?” the woman hissed. Her brow was dappled in sweat, her eyes were wide, and the near rictus-grin she bore chilled Weatherby to his bones.

  Evan Greene walked over to Weatherby. Like the woman, he too seemed…strained. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles under them, and he seemed coated in a thin veil of perspiration. And his smile was only slightly less disconcerting. “You look old, Mr. Weatherby. I guess it’s been a while. Your sword, if you please. I know how dangerous that thing is.”

  Weatherby looked around and saw the woman with her weapon now aimed at Anne, whose face bore a look of anger and horror both. With a grimace, Weatherby flipped his sword around in his hand and presented it to Greene. “At least I, Doctor, can blame my appearance on the passage of time. You do not have such an excuse at your disposal.”

  Greene took the blade with a grin. “It’s these bodies. They’re soft. Sure, they can contain a human spirit just fine. But a Martian soul? It’s a tight fit.” He then turned to Shaila. “Really good of you to bring the Emerald Tablet with you, Shay.”

  Shaila’s look would’ve made most grown men cower. “You can go to Hell.”

  “Working on it,” Greene quipped. “Maggie, do you sense it? I think the book’s here too.”

  The African woman—her name was Huntington, Weatherby remembered—gazed around the room a moment before settling back on Anne. “It’s in her pack.” She then grabbed Anne’s arm and roughly spun her around, tearing Anne’s pack from her shoulders and shoving her to the floor. “Yeah, it’s in here. He’s going to be pleased.”

  Greene laughed. “I can’t believe you guys. This was too easy.” He walked over, wrenched the case containing the Tablet from Shaila and proceeded to the pool in the middle of the room. “You really played your parts well. All of you!”

  “Then perhaps you might illuminate us as to our folly,” Finch said icily.

  Greene and Huntington began to unpack the artifacts, one on each side of the pool. “I really wish we could just shoot these fuckers now,” Huntington said as she stood back up and covered the room with her weapon.

  “That’s not the plan,” Greene said softly as he began unspooling wires from his own pack. “Althotas wants them to see this.”

  Huntington looked over to Davout. “What about him? He’s not part of the brief.”

  Greene looked up briefly at the French marshal. “No, I guess he’s not.”

  With an awful grin, Huntington aimed her weapon at Davout and pulled the trigger, releasing another volley of rounds into the stunned officer. He was struck several times and immediately fell backward. The man coughed once, turned his head briefly toward Weatherby…and died.

  “What is it, then, that the ascended master wishes us to see?” Cagliostro asked with surprising deference, a change in demeanor that immediately repelled Weatherby.

  It seemed neither Greene nor Huntington was falling for it. “You failed once already, Cagliostro,” Greene said as he began attaching wires to both the Tablet and the book. “I suppose you did your best. Maybe Althotas will keep you around. Like a pet or something.”

  “What are you doing?” Weatherby demanded. He saw Greene now attaching wires to one of the “datapads” Shaila and her compatriots used. “What do you hope to accomplish here?”

  Greene looked up and smiled again. “This.”

  He pressed a few keys on his datapad, and both the Emerald Tablet and The Book of the Dead began to glow—the Tablet in a bright greenish-yellow, and the book in a black-purple emanation that seemed to draw light in rather than cast it.

  Weatherby heard a soft tone from Shaila’s direction. Heedless of the revenants around her, she pulled out her datapad and examined it. “Oh, my God. They’re transmitting something. From the satellites.”

  A moment later, the remaining revenants in the room began to tremble.

  Then they screamed—an unholy, utterly unintelligible cry that seemed to come from the darkest places of all Creation.

  What was that old phrase? Shooting fish in a barrel? Diaz smiled as another line of zombie soldiers were sliced in half by her V-SEV’s laser. Her plan to alternate between vehicles was working out fairly well, though she figured she had maybe three or four more shifts between the two before both lasers would need a serious recharge. By then, with any luck, the French would run out of bodies to throw at them.

  And at least the French had the decency to line them up nice and neat for her to mow down. Gotta love 19th century infantry tactics.

  Another boom echoed above her, and this time a single cannon ball was launched into the middle of the French lines. The resulting explosion produced a ring of fire that took out another twenty targets. At the edges of the French lines, the Venusians were giving it their all. It took three or four warriors to take down a single revenant. The little lizard guys were getting pretty efficient at it, though their losses were starting to pile up a bit more than anyone would’ve liked.

  It was going to be close, no matter what. Still, if she had to mobilize her V-SEV and go storming in, she wanted as many of the goddamn zombies down as possible.

  Then suddenly, the French Corps Éternel stopped fighting.

  “Lieutenant, what the hell am I seeing here?” Diaz asked over the comm as she watched five hundred zombies begin to quake…and scream something completely inhuman.

  “I…I cannot say, General,” Philip replied. “This is…this is wrong. Something is happening.”

  “No shit,” she replied, pausing to allow her lasers a chance to recharge a bit. “But what is it? They running out of juice? Giving up? Dying?”

  “No, General, I…oh, dear God in Heaven.”

  Diaz quickly pulled up a holocam shot on her HUD and zoomed in on a small group of zombies. They had stopped shaking and screaming, and were now…looking around. They were looking at the muskets in their hands, the clothing they wore, the faces of their comrades.

  “Oh, fuck me. They’re waking up,” she breathed.

  A few of them started talking…shouting, really. Diaz couldn’t hear, but from what she could see, the zombies were definitely communicating with one another. She panned her camera over to two living French officers—and they looked horrified.

  A moment later, they were swarmed by their formerly docile troops…and literally torn limb from limb.

  “Oh, fuck. Lieutenant, I need you double-time on that gun. Fire at the biggest groupings you can find. Now!”

  But the Corps Éternel were no longer as compliant in their own destruction as they were a few moments prior. At least half of them began running—and running fast—toward the pyramid. And they were running in zigzags and jagged lines, toward and away from each other all at once.

  They were dodging.

  The other half started in on the Venusians, hacking at them with bayonets or simply tearing the poor things apart with their bare hands. They were strong before, but now…

  Diaz powered up the lasers on both V-SEVs and started firing in wide ar
cs. “Kid, get off a last shot and then take cover,” Diaz ordered. “Get Elizabeth out of her V-SEV and bring her and as many men as you can inside the pyramid. Hopefully we can hold them off at the door.”

  With a grimace, Diaz pushed her V-SEV forward a few meters to clear the way for what she hoped wouldn’t be a futile retreat.

  May 29, 1809

  Sir Arthur Wellesley looked over his maps and, for the first time in years, dared to hope.

  “Your warriors are most efficient, as are your weapons, my lady,” he said to the robed, hooded Xan towering over him to his right. “I had thought the small handful that accompanied you were too few, but…I was wrong, and I apologize.”

  The Xan bowed. “Your apology is appreciated, but the gesture is most unnecessary,” the creature sang. Her name was Arkhest, and her title was that of “battle-art master” of the Xan. “Our weapons simply rob the revenants of their alchemical properties long enough to give those poor souls their proper rest.”

  “Indeed,” Wellesley said, noncommittal. Arkhest had a penchant for understatement, for the queer firearms employed by the two dozen Xan she brought with her could immobilize a dozen revenants at a shot, allowing the English to come behind them with bayonets and fire to finish the job.

  Wellesley had launched his attack at Colwyn Bay, sailing from Edinburgh and traveling north through the Orkneys to avoid detection. Once he landed his force, resistance was light until they reached the outskirts of Shrewsbury. However, the Battle of Shrewsbury went well enough to send the French retreating east and south, and Wellesley had pressed forward to the town of Dudley, where they now faced resistance.

  The real prize would be Birmingham, on the other side of this particular battle. If they were able to secure themselves there, they would have numerous options—Bristol, Oxford, Northampton. Once cut off from the south, the French forces in the North would be faced with a second front, commanded by the Prince Regent himself, heading down from Hadrian’s Wall through Yorkshire.