The Venusian Gambit (17 page)

“Cagliostro remains the Known Worlds’ foremost expert in one thing—the processes he used to open up a portal between worlds. The means by which he sought to free Althotas of ancient Mars,” Finch said. “Any other use of him would be a waste.”

Anne gasped. “They want to try again?”

“Perhaps,” Finch said.

Before he could elucidate further, the doors to the room burst open and a red-coated Army officer—looking no older than sixteen years—came rushing in. “Lord Weatherby! Pickets reporting several French ships making for the Firth of Forth! At least a half dozen, maybe more!”

Weatherby wheeled about and stood tall before Prince George. “Sire, I recommend preparing the city’s defenses as quickly as possible, and sending forth messages to the coastlines within a hundred leagues of here. By your leave, I shall make sail and engage the enemy at sea.”

The Prince Regent, looking a touch ashen, nodded somberly. “Go, Lord Weatherby. May God be with you. I shall see to the defenses.”

Weatherby bowed, then paused to kiss Anne tenderly, and placed a kiss upon Elizabeth’s brow as well, before grabbing Finch’s arm and walking for the door. “Come, Doctor. The French seek to invade. Let us endeavor to disappoint them.”

CHAPTER 8

January 16, 2135

T
he old Vysotsky building in Yekaterinburg was once the tallest building in Russia outside of Moscow, but now it was but one of many skyscrapers, with every day of 120 years’ weathering seemingly worn on its glass-and-steel façade. The windows’ coating was visibly peeling, the steel was pitted in places by acidic rain and dusty wind, and the neon lights that traced its outline at night were almost charmingly antiquated compared to the latest LED window-screens that turned most 22
nd
century buildings into nighttime works of commercial excess or, on occasion, art.

Harry wasn’t surprised that his benefactor would set them up in the Vysotsky. When conglom execs took on these “personal projects,” creature comforts were never front of mind. And it wasn’t like she’d put them up in the same building her own conglom was located. Secure comms, untraceable funds and chance meetings always lent an aura of plausible deniability to such ventures. Especially when said ventures might involve breaches of either ethics, law or both.

This was definitely both.

On the bright side, his contact managed to get them the entire 52
nd
floor. It actually used to be the observation deck when the building was new and tall, back some time in the 2000s or 2010s. The proliferation of other conglom skyscrapers around it—taller, glassier, just generally better—made the deck an afterthought. So they basically had office space plus a massive balcony surrounding it.

Chrys VanDerKamp was waiting there for them when they arrived. “Good to see you again, Harry!” she said, extending her hand as Harry, Greene and Huntington got off the elevator. “Glad you could come out here.”

“Good to see you, Chrys,” Harry smiled, taking her hand. She had a firm grip and a smile that might be called “perky” if not for the steel behind the eyes and the self-aware curl at the very edge of her lips. Chrys had served as Harry’s deputy at Billiton MinMetals prior to his Mars assignment, and her star had risen sharply since. Of course, Harry had taken it upon himself to keep her working nose-to-the-grindstone while he was her boss, then received a lot of credit—some of it even deserved—when she began her ascent. The fact that the tables were turned now was a bit awkward for Harry, but it seemed not to faze the younger woman.

She waved everyone in and Harry made the introductions. Greene seemed almost like his old charming self, while Huntington was at least more restrained. When they saw the new quantum computing rig Chrys had acquired for them, they immediately peeled off and began unpacking, leaving Harry and Chrys to walk the old observation deck.

“How’s your tennis game, Chrys? You still as good as I remember?” Harry asked.

“Better than yours, unless you suddenly got talent,” she replied, then dropped the business smile. “So what the hell happened, Harry? You went from director to VP to EVP in two years and now you’re basically an internationally wanted criminal. That’s pretty special.”

Harry gave her a sidelong glance. “You know what happened, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

This earned him a shrug. “Honestly, all I have are rumors. Aliens? Other dimensions? A pre-industrial Earth ripe for the picking? Just finding out how much is real and how much is bullshit is worth the price of admission. So here we are. Now, how’s this going to be more like Mars and a
lot
less like Egypt?”

Harry plopped down on an old plastic bench, and Chrys slid down next to him, sweeping her long brown hair from her face and smoothing out her suit. Harry knew her clothes cost some serious terras; he had a number of suits from that label at one point. “On Mars, we had someone who was in touch with the other side. She was getting info on how to make the portal work. In Egypt, we had an artifact, but no real link. We thought we had enough data to make it work, but without the link, we didn’t. And it went south.”

Chrys nodded, keeping up an imperturbable cool. “And so now, what? You have a link to the ‘other side’ again?”

“Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“More than a little.”

Harry smiled ruefully. “Those two in there are working with the guys that took over
Tienlong
from the Chinese. We believe the Chinese have been in contact with the other side, and we’ve been getting good working data from them.” There were, of course, some things Harry left out of that summary, but there was no use worrying his one and only investor quite yet.

“You know, Harry, they captured
Tienlong
. The crew was found dead. They say the captain snapped after the Enceladus thing and killed everyone, then committed suicide,” Chrys said. “So you’re saying that’s not true.”

“Nope, that’s just the JSC cover,” Harry said. “There’s at least one survivor, possibly more. They managed to squeeze off a huge, highly encrypted file right before they were captured. We got that file, which is why we had to get out of Afghanistan, before JSC’s jack-boots got there.”

Chrys nodded, then stood up, towering over Harry despite her slight frame. “Harry, this needs to work. You need to find a stable portal to the other side. Not some overlap area, not the shit-show that leveled Siwa. A stable portal. I need to march people in and out of there like it’s a revolving door. That’s the goal. Anything less is failure. And if we fail, I’m out a lot of money. And you…” Her voice trailed off.

“And you recoup your losses by turning me in to whoever pays the most,” Harry said.

“You still got it, Harry,” Chrys beamed, patting him on the shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything. Use the secure channel, and try to make it after hours. I have an orbital insertion to manage over the next few weeks and it’s going to be hectic.”

Chrys walked off, leaving Harry on the bench, his back on the cold concrete wall of the observation deck, looking out over Yekaterinburg’s skyline. There was a point in his life when Harry could’ve picked whichever corner office he wanted in any of those buildings. He’d be the one managing….

Harry sat upright and pulled out his phone, pulling it open into a holotablet. It was a matter of five minutes to find out where Chrys was working now—Rossviaz, pretty much the biggest name in satellites. From there, it was even simpler to figure out her next project.

In less than two weeks’ time, Rossviaz would be placing 13 satellites into orbit around Venus for the most comprehensive resource mapping expedition ever sent to that little hellhole of a planet. The sats would be constantly circling and twirling around the planet for the next five years, creating an orbital map that could not only pierce Venus’ notoriously stubborn cloud-cover, but also could map the surface to within a centimeter—literally. With that kind of map and some serious geological know-how, a smart conglom could figure out the most stable parts of Venus’ geography for extraction and exploitation. The margins would be crap, at first, but it opened up the chance for finding the unexpected, landing the big haul.

It was a huge gamble. But with Chrys’ company owning the gaming table, she wasn’t going to be the one gambling. It was guys like his old employers—Billiton and Total-Suez—who might take a shot at mining Venus.

Harry smiled. He’d like to think he had a hand in Chrys’ acumen, but knew that she was at least this good on her own.

And if Harry and his “team”—if you could call them that—could recreate a stable portal, then it wasn’t just a pristine, pre-industrial Earth that was up for grabs. Harry had managed to read excerpts from that journal Jain and Diaz found on Mars. That Weatherby guy had described Venus as a lush jungle world, rich with resources.

Perfect.

There was no doubt that Chrys would want—and get—her cut of whatever such a stable portal would bring them on either Earth or Venus. But ultimately, Harry had the tech. She didn’t.

Greene poked his head outside onto the observation deck. “Harry, c’mere a second. We have some things we’re going to need to get up and running.”

Harry nodded and Greene disappeared inside the building again. Correction: Greene had the tech. And Harry didn’t quite have Greene in his pocket.

Not yet.

Harry got up and looked out over Yekaterinburg one more time. At least now he knew what the playing field looked like. He could see the permutations, get a feel for the players.

He knew what he had to do to win. And that was the biggest hurdle of all.

Maria Diaz shut down the comm station with a look of disgust that Shaila knew all too well. The only real question was what, among so many different candidates, was the source.

“That was CIA,” Diaz said, just loud enough for Shaila and Coogan to hear in Ride Station’s busy ops center. “They managed to track Harry down to an industrial park outside Kabul, but turns out they up and left just two days ago. Packed up, drove to the airport and got onto a secure corporate jet. Unmarked. Goddamn corporate shield laws!”

Shaila shared a knowing look with Coogan. This wasn’t the first time Diaz spouted off against the international conglom system. It probably wouldn’t be the last. And it didn’t make her wrong, either. “Anything else? Flight plan filed, maybe?”

Diaz called up a map of central Asia. “All we got is that it’s a Cessna Longitude Mark VII. So basically, that’s anywhere from London to Beijing to Jo’burg.”

Shaila could see beads of light flying along the inside Coogan’s HUD glasses. “Yes, General, but I think we might want to focus on nations with particularly welcome corporate laws,” he said drily. “Plus, Mr. Yu is wanted by the E.U., U.S. and Islamic League. So that would leave us with Russia and China as our two best candidates, with Zimbabwe and Bangladesh right behind.”

Diaz smiled over toward Shaila. “And this is why we’re still up and running, thanks to this guy. Find him, Jimmy.”

Coogan nodded and parked himself at a nearby holostation; a moment later, he was manipulating data and light like a conductor before the London Philharmonic.

“So what do you think?” Diaz asked Shaila. “What did they send?”

Shaila sat down at the console next to Diaz, idly fiddling with the controls as she spoke. “First time this happened, on Mars, Yuna Hiyashi said she had been in contact with the other side. If I’m remembering right, she said she got some help, too, when she built the accelerator that opened the door. Doesn’t seem like Harry had that when he tried to pull it off on Egypt, did he?”

“Nope,” Diaz replied. “He had some kind of artifact that was throwing off a metric shit-ton of Cherenkov, but far as we know, there was nobody with a line to the other side that we know of. Probably why it blew up to hell and back.”

“But there was a portal, briefly. Your report said you saw Finch?”

Diaz smiled. “Yeah, though he looked a lot older. Maybe an older brother or something? Maybe he was trying to do the same thing Harry was. Didn’t seem like it was going too well for him, either.”

Shaila shuddered involuntarily. She’d seen the holorecordings of the Siwa experiment: mangled, grasping hands trying to claw their way through the unstable portal Harry’s team created. “No, it didn’t. But maybe the key to creating a stable portal came from Althotas, that ugly fucker from Mars. Yuna seemed to think she was talking to him. Maybe that data in the Enceladus proteins came from him, too.”

“And yet we think Stephane was possessed by one of those proteins—or whatever was hooked up to it on the other side,” Diaz said, sounding more frustrated. “Fuck it, I don’t know, but I bet Stephane knows. Or Rathemas. Whoever that guy is in our brig. I saw the vid of your encounter with him.”

“You’re thinking that Stephane could be the key to unlocking all this,” Shaila said with a frown. “You think he’s still in there? That there’s anything left of him?”

Diaz leaned forward with a maternal look that Shaila found both comforting and maddening. “I don’t know. But you’re the only one here who’s managed to get a rise out of him. And he might have some intel on this mess.”

Shaila nodded. She knew this would be coming. She’d been gearing up for it. “Even if I have to beat it out of him?”

“Preferably not,” Diaz replied. “I think we’d both like to get him back intact, somehow.”

Shaila stood up. “All right then. Let’s do it.”

“Whoa, girlie. You have a plan?”

“Of course not,” Shaila replied with a slightly pained grin. “But you have Ayim on the science part, and Coogan doing intel on Harry. I need to be doing something useful.”

Diaz nodded soberly. “Take a zapper with you. Set it on high. And don’t go in there with him, whatever you do.”

Shaila nodded and left the ops center, stopping briefly at the new makeshift armory to grab a zapper from one of Major Parrish’s team before heading back to the containment area. She found herself gearing up for the encounter, much like she did back when she was a mere ensign flying training missions. The thought of freeing Stephane from…whatever it was…Rathemas? Martians in general?…was all-consuming.