The Venusian Gambit (32 page)

Shaila smiled, and made a note to tell Weatherby instead, as the admiral would probably really want to know the state of his enemy’s fleet. “I knew you were a good guy, eh?”

“I’m trying. Moving and acting seems to help,” Stephane said. “And…oh…
mon dieu
…there he is.”

Stephane had spied Finch walking across the maindeck with a younger man and made for him, and Finch immediately recognized him. “Dr. Durand! So glad you could join us. Might I introduce….”

Then Finch’s eyes widened as Stephane approached. And Stephane began to walk more slowly.

“You’ve been inside
Maat
,” Stephane said, his eyes narrowing. “That’s what I sensed…. What did you do?”

Finch peered at Stephane with equal amounts of consternation and concern. “I should ask, Durand, what in God’s name have you been up to? I…dear God.” Finch immediately reached into his pocket and pulled out a strange set of eyeglasses, with a number of hinged and colored lenses on them. He switched between lenses for several long moments, all the while staring directly at Stephane.

“What is he doing?” Stephane asked.

“Beats me, but if they have the
Book of the Dead
like Anne says they do, maybe you’re giving off some kind of vibe he can see,” Shaila said.

“Vibe?” Stephane asked, confused. “Like that thing you have?”

Shaila smacked him in the arm as she felt her face flush. “Christ, Stephane. Not here!”

Finch finally lifted the lenses from his face. “I suggest, Philip, that this man be placed under immediate armed watch while aboard,” he said with a surprising amount of seriousness. “Whilst he remains in control in large part, there is another entity within him, likely of Mars.”

“Yes, there is,” Stephane said, a hint of combativeness in his voice. “His name is Rathemas, and I am keeping him down right now.”

The young man next to him grew wide-eyed at this and nodded, then turned to one of the red-coated marines stationed on deck. “Marine, keep watch over this man until ordered otherwise. I will inform the admiral.”

The marine immediately took up a post behind Stephane’s left shoulder, about three feet back—plenty of distance for him to shoot if needed.

“He’s got it under control, Dr. Finch,” Shaila said, with maybe a little more emphasis than she intended. That’s when she noticed his pale, sweaty look. “How about you? What’s that book been doing to you?”

And Finch’s arched eyebrow showed he got every bit of subtext there was to have. “I assure you, Miss Jain, that
The Book of the Dead
, whilst a powerful artifact, has not led to possession by an outside intelligence. The connection with
Maat
is draining, but it is not consuming my Will,” Finch said, a touch defensively. “And Dr. Durand here is, shall we say, not entirely himself. Or, rather, he’s quite more than one self.”

Shaila restrained herself from wanting to punch Finch in the face, and was about to say something particularly cutting before being interrupted by a young boy dressed up like an officer.
Right
.
The mids were pretty young back then
, she reminded herself.

“Commander Jain, is it?” he asked, directing the question toward Stephane.

“I’m Commander Jain,” Shaila said pointedly. “This is Dr. Durand.”

This seemed to catch the midshipman at quite a loss for several seconds until he remembered why he was there. “Right, then. Uh, Commander…you and Dr. Durand have been asked to report to the great cabin. And Dr. Finch and Lieutenant St. Germain as well.”

Stephane looked up at the man next to Finch. “St. Germain? Son of the Count?”

The young man stood a touch taller. “Yes, he was my father, God rest him. I am the second Count St. Germain, and fleet alchemist to Admiral Weatherby, my stepfather.”

Stephane and Shaila looked at each other in bewilderment. “I think we’re going to need a flowchart here,” she said quietly as they followed the two alchemists to
Victory
’s great cabin.

They were met at the door by a meter-tall walking lizard.

“This way,” it croaked.

Even more stunned, the two wordlessly followed the creature into the cabin, where a long table awaited them. Behind this dining room was another room that looked to be the admiral’s office and berth. Everything was mahogany and brass and intricately made. It was just as Shaila remembered it from her cadet visit.

Weatherby and Diaz were at the head of the table, with a massive robed figure to Weatherby’s right. “Xan?” Stephane whispered.

“Wow, yeah. Probably. Holy shit,” Shaila replied.

The room filled up quickly. Weatherby and the Xan were joined by Finch, Anne, the new Count St. Germain and a young woman who turned out to be Weatherby’s daughter, Elizabeth. Coogan and VanDerKamp were ushered in as well, and the little lizard-guy—a native Venusian, it turned out—poured wine.

It was incredibly civilized and utterly surreal.
Let’s have wine with the aliens. All right then.

“I am saddened to report that we have lost ninety-three souls aboard
Victory
, and it looks as though
Kent
and
Enterprise
were completely lost to us,” Weatherby began, looking tired and drained. “Reports are still coming in from the rest of our fleet, but the damage has been grave. Thankfully, the French have retreated back to the surface in the face of our new allies from… what was your ship again, General Diaz?”

“
Hadfield
,” she replied. “Good little ship. Named for an early explorer and educator.”

“Yes,
Hadfield
, then. How many aboard?”

The general grimaced. “Twenty-seven. We lost contact with the last man alive on board an hour ago.”

Weatherby reached out and placed a hand on Diaz’ shoulder. “’Tis a hard thing to lose good men,” he said. “My condolences. When the time comes, we shall include the crew of the
Hadfield
in our memorials.” The admiral then took a deep breath. “But until such time as such arrangements can be safely made, these events must be put aside as we determine our true course. Perhaps, General, you and Commander Jain might give us a summary of your course since our last meeting, and how you may have come to be with us again?”

The “summary” took well over an hour, with Diaz and Jain providing a précis of the Enceladus crisis and the Siwa fiasco, which apparently dovetailed to a degree with Weatherby’s visit to Saturn about a decade ago, as well as Finch’s discovery of
The Book of the Dead
in the very same part of Egypt—just three centuries earlier, give or take.

Shaila also caught a very strong sense that Finch had held out on the
Book
from Weatherby, because he was getting a pretty cold shoulder from the admiral and his family, and his seat was at the very end of the table, leaving him with little to say or do unless called upon. Instead, he seemed content to stare out the window past VanDerKamp, who busied herself on her datapad.
I bet she does that in all her meetings
, Shaila thought.
Rude.

Meantime, Weatherby was rolling with it far better than he had just three years—or three decades—ago. It was odd and extraordinary to see his evolution from a green lieutenant to an experienced admiral in such a truncated fashion, at least for Shaila. She knew intellectually that his three decades in service to King and Country had taken him through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, but she had
just
interacted with his younger self three years ago in her timeline.

It was tougher for Shaila—and both Stephane and Diaz, it should be said—to grasp just what had happened to Weatherby’s world over the past decade. As any good Englishwoman, Shaila knew her history well. Napoleon bought time through the Peace of Amiens to build his armies and attack, but he could not cross the English Channel because of the power of the English Royal Navy.

In Weatherby’s timeline, however, through the power of ancient Egyptian alchemy, Napoleon didn’t need to contest the Royal Navy on the Channel—he could just march his goddamn zombie troops under it. So while the Britannia still ruled the sea, at least on Earth, and Nelson got his big victory and martyrdom at Trafalgar, the French were able to use Venus’ timber to build more ships, and they needed to put fewer into play to transport their troops.

No wonder Weatherby looked tired.

“So if I am to understand you, it seems that your Dr. Greene, whom you once trusted, turned on you…twice?” Weatherby asked.

Diaz grimaced slightly. “He went to work for the corporates, yeah, and then got possessed by a Martian. And…well, that sounds pretty crazy, but that’s what happened.”

Vellusk leaned forward slightly. “We were all deceived by the Martians, General Diaz,” he sang. “From what I have heard tell at this table, it seems Althotas has played us all for fools, starting with my ancestors more than five millennia ago.”

It was the first time the Xan had spoken during the entire conference, and his melodic voices—he had two, and Shaila found the music enrapturing—were undercut with sorrow and foreboding.

“How so, good Vellusk?” Weatherby asked. “Have we not sent Althotas back into his prison once more? In the place between worlds?”

The Xan’s robes rustled as he spoke, and Shaila caught a glimpse of both tentacle and snout from under his hood’s shadows. “I fear the Xan had the first role to play here. The presence of an Emerald Tablet from another universe confirms it in my mind.”

From the end of the table, Finch gasped. “Oh…I see it. Dear God….”

Weatherby grimaced. “Be so good as to explain, one of you,” he said impatiently.

Vellusk’s robes rustled again. “Of course, my good friend and brave admiral. Millennia ago, we imprisoned Althotas in a pocket real, a space between universes. But now that I see the Emerald Tablet—something we ourselves destroyed a decade ago on Titan—in the hands of these people, and I cannot help but wonder if our great working those thousands of years past had a hand in our current situation. It is but theory, but I believe that our working actually sundered our universe in two—the worlds of our own experience, Admiral, and the universe known to General Diaz and Commander Jain and their fellows.”

Finch picked up the thread excitedly. “But there were objects of alchemical power—the Emerald Tablet and
The Book of the Dead—
that could not so easily be sundered. So they were duplicated instead, in each of the universes,” he said. “And perhaps…when Althotas was defeated on Mars, his experience in the combined worlds led to him to better understand the nature of his prison?” Vellusk nodded at Finch, who pressed on. “I believe Althotas likely seeks to combine your Tablet and our
Book
, along with the souls of his kin once imprisoned on Enceladus.”

There was a long silence at the table as everyone digested the alien’s words. Stephane finally spoke up. “This feels right. I think us coming here is part of the plan. I think he wants the Tablet and the
Book
to do something.”

Weatherby stared hard at the Frenchman; Philip and Finch had briefed him before the meeting began. “So then do we not simply destroy both items and be done with it?”

The admiral looked at each face at the table, and most seemed to be on board with the idea to some degree or another—Shaila, for her part, wanted to see them vaporized yesterday, and even Finch was slowly nodding. But Coogan raised his hand after a moment to get their attention. “If I may, Admiral? General?”

Both Diaz and Weatherby nodded, and Coogan rose to place his datapad in the center of the table. Shaila smiled; the 19
th
century was about to get its first look at holotechnology. A moment later, an image of Venus a meter wide was hovering in the air over the pad, and there were more than a few gasps around the room.

“I had been backing up Dr. Ayim’s work periodically, under General Diaz’ orders, and managed to do a final grab of his sensor programming before we left
Hadfield
,” Coogan said. “The thing is, there is no real connection between the
Book
and the Tablet and the satellites that likely caused the dimensional overlap we’re experiencing right now. So if we destroy these two items, it’s quite possible they would have no effect on whatever’s going on.”

“Then we go after the sats,” Chrys said dully. “Blow them up with cannonballs or something.”

Coogan shrugged. “We could, but the thing is, the Cherenkov energy signatures aren’t 100 percent right when it comes to that, either. Yeah, the satellites are focusing the power, but just like General Diaz and Commander Jain saw on Mars, there’s more energy here than can be accounted for. Destroying the satellites doesn’t take out all the power, and may have unexpected consequences. Maybe the overlap spreads uncontrollably, or collapses around us.”

“But we’re in the overlap now. So there’s already two dimensions. Shouldn’t we be able to trace the energy coming from the second dimension and close it up?” Shaila asked.

“Ideally, but we can’t,” Coogan said. “Ambassador Vellusk noted that Althotas is trapped ‘between universes,’ or in some sort of pocket dimension. That means there’s a third possible locale, and that may be the source of the energy.”

Weatherby looked at Anne and Finch in turn, and both nodded back at him. “I dare say he may be right,” Anne said. “We did, after all, give him a source of power on Mars by throwing the alchemical essences of the Known Worlds into the vortex with him as he was defeated.”

Shaila and Weatherby both bristled at this. “It seemed the best option at the time,” the admiral said curtly.

“I’d do it again,” Shaila confirmed.

“And it worked!” Finch hastened to add. “But it also allowed him different pathways in which he might work his will. So he used the alchemical energies he gained to affect Enceladus and the temple in Egypt. He may have directed us—all of us—to these treasures. So yes, he has a plan for the tablet and book. Perhaps he needs to destroy them to fulfill his ends. Perhaps we can use them against him. But again, I cannot say.”