The Venusian Gambit (33 page)

“Greene knows,” Diaz said simply. “And so does Cagliostro and this Berthollet guy. We find them, we find out what they’re doing, and we find a workaround to stop them.” She turned to Coogan and Chrys. “Where are we on sensors?”

The exec straightened up in her chair and seemed a little gratified to be asked something. “We can only boost the V-SEV sensor array so much before we start burning it out. We’re only good to about ten kilometers. That’s it.”

“I can’t believe you’ve adopted that damned French measurement,” Weatherby groused quietly. “What is that…six miles?”

“Yes, sir,” Chrys said.

“So your electronic eyes, then, are only a little better than our lookouts this time,” the admiral said. “Elizabeth here has identified a potential site for the Venusian memory vault we discussed. At the least, your ‘sensors’ may very well detect occult energies from it before we even reach it, which would at least help us know we were in the right place. I would not be surprised in the slightest if your Greene and his cohort had somehow found the French as well.”

Weatherby looked to Diaz, who nodded. “I agree, Admiral Weatherby. Looks like we need to go planetside and search up close. Jain, get the V-SEVs up and running, and check with
Victory
’s first lieutenant to see where he wants them when we…well, how does this ship get down to the surface, anyway?”

Finch smiled. “Oh, you’re going to love it.”

CHAPTER 19

January 29, 2135
May 28, 1809

S
haila and Stephane—accompanied by their ever-present Royal Marine guard—stood upon the quarterdeck of HMS
Victory
as she began her descent into the green-orange clouds of Venus. On either side of the ship, the rest of Weatherby’s fleet began to ready for “keel-fall” by tucking in the sails on their rudders and unfurling their plane sales parallel to the deck. The sails on all the ships were also drawn upward at an angle to further provide drag.

A moment later,
Victory
disappeared into the clouds, and all they could see was a lime green mist around them.

“Venus’ clouds are supposed to be made of sulfuric acid,” Stephane said quietly. “The winds here should be roaring at 360 kilometers an hour. And the atmosphere pressure…” He took a sniff of the air. “It simply smells humid and green, like a swamp.”

The ship suddenly lurched under them, buffeted by a series of sharp gusts. “Well, the winds are still impressive,” Shaila said. “Happy the acid’s not here.”

She was also happy for the lines that secured her to the ship’s mizzenmast, helpfully provided by the little lizard guy—Weatherby’s valet, a Venusian named Gar’uk. Officers in the Royal Navy enjoyed some serious comforts three hundred years ago, unlike the modern Navy. Shaila wondered, as she saw the admiral calmly sipping tea with Diaz and Vellusk nearby, what this older Weatherby thought of his station and his crew. She remembered the young lieutenant of a few years ago caring for the handful of men he commanded. How do you extend that to a fleet of ships with three thousand men aboard?

Suddenly, Elizabeth Weatherby lurched toward them, caught off-guard by the pitching, rolling deck. “So sorry,” she said after nearly colliding with Shaila. “I cannot say how Father abides this every time he visits a new world!”

Shaila helped the young woman to the railing. She looked pale and wild-eyed and kept glancing over to her father, who stood tall on the quarterdeck, resplendent in his spotless uniform. “Your first time?” Shaila asked.

Elizabeth nodded. “Is this the first world you’ve visited as well, Miss Jain?”

“No, I’ve hit up a few,” Shaila smiled. “Jupiter, Mars, Saturn. Now Venus. Though we don’t exactly use wooden ships to do it.”

“And you are an officer in His Majesty’s Navy?”

“
Her
Majesty’s Navy,” Shaila corrected. “We got a new queen a few months ago. And yeah, I’m a lieutenant commander. Roughly equivalent to being a first lieutenant on a good-sized frigate.”

Elizabeth gazed at her in wonderment. “I should very much like to be of your time, Lieutenant Commander. It took all of Father’s contacts and Lady Anne’s persuasiveness for me to be accepted at Oxford—which lasted only until the French took the town.”

“I think your father would miss you if we took you back with us,” Stephane said with a gentle smile. “That is, of course, if we make it back ourselves.…”

Shaila glared at him. “Jesus, Stephane. It’ll be fine. It worked out before.”

He simply stared off to starboard, into the swirling green clouds.

Then suddenly, the clouds disappeared, and all of Venus was spread below them. And even though she had seen snow on Enceladus and the great hydrocarbon lakes on Titan, it still took Shaila’s breath away.

Below, a lush green land stretched before them. It was almost completely forested, even the very tops of the mountains off to their west. There were rivers and lakes, and a vast ocean off to the east, the waters of which were an unusual brighter shade of green. Above, the disc of the sun—easily a third larger than could be seen from Earth—was swathed in rich orange-lime clouds, the light diffused across the horizon.

“Captain Searle!” Weatherby shouted over the winds that still swept across and under the ship. “Signal the fleet! We shall cross over land and make keel-fall in the bay below! Any lookouts there will think we would come by sea, so we must endeavor to disappoint them!”

Shaila watched as Searle relayed the orders—hugely formal, so inefficient!—and the junior officers rushed to implement them. A young lieutenant and a midshipman were huddled over a signal-flag book, piecing together the appropriate order to the other ships, while Searle’s first lieutenant got
Victory
heading in the right direction. Soon, the massive warship had arced in the sky and now had nothing but green jungle under its keel as it continued its somewhat-controlled descent from space.

“You know, seeing ground below the keel is more fucked up than seeing Venus from space,” Shaila said nervously, causing Elizabeth’s eyes to widen. “Sorry for the language,” she added.

“Not at all,” the young woman said with a bright smile. “I should say, I do not give a…a
damn
how you speak. A woman’s speech should be as…
hell
free as a man’s!”

Shaila burst out laughing. “I couldn’t agree more, but you need practice, Miss Weatherby. And I really suggest you stay out of earshot of your parents, just in case. Don’t want them thinking I’m a bad influence.”

Stephane actually brightened somewhat at this. “She is, though. In a great way.”

Any further conversation was interrupted by a flurry of shouts and running crewmen. There were indeed ships in the bay where they hoped to land.

“How many? Do we have a flag?” Searle shouted.

“Aye, sir! French!” came the word from the lookouts. “A third-rate, a frigates and two brigs!”

Searle turned to Weatherby, who nodded. “Prepare to engage. Focus on the brigs and frigate,” the admiral ordered. “We do not want the French to learn of our location quite yet.”

“Aye, my Lord Admiral,” Searle said, then turned to his first lieutenant. “Beat to quarters! Run out the guns!”

Shaila felt the deck below her vibrate as
Victory
’s crew opened a hundred gunports, and ran out a hundred cannon. All were loaded and ready to fire. It was funny to think that she could unleash nearly as much raw firepower from a 22
nd
century fighter/bomber with the flick of a switch, but she was nonetheless impressed at the efficiency of eight hundred men, acting in concert.

“Let us try to make keel-fall in front of that brig,” Weatherby said, pointing to the ship furthest out. “We can contain her or destroy her as needed and bottle up the rest of the bay.”

“Anything you want us to do, Admiral Weatherby?” Diaz asked, handing off her delicate teacup to Gar’uk.

Weatherby and Searle traded looks. “Can your vehicles be dropped upon land?”

Diaz waved Shaila over to join the conversation. “How high up can we survive a drop?” she asked.

Shaila took out her datapad and linked it to the operating systems of the four V-SEVs. “We have enough thrusters to go from 100 meters, ma’am. Any more we’d have to deploy the airbags.”

Searle bent over the map table on the quarterdeck and quickly penciled out some equations; Shaila noticed he was faster than she would’ve been. “They’ll make the beach, but barely.”

Diaz nodded. “Good enough. Jain, get everyone suited up. We’ll secure the beach. All right with you, Admiral?”

“It is indeed, General Diaz,” Weatherby said. “Godspeed to you.”

Shaila and Stephane followed Diaz to the maindeck, where Chrys and Coogan were already working on their V-SEV. Everyone clambered aboard their mechs, which had been brought onto the deck and laid out horizontally during the descent to better distribute the weight. It made for awkward going, and added a new wrinkle to their plans—especially as they continued to barrel forward toward the bay.

“Um…Shay, how do I get this thing standing up?” Stephane asked over the comm.

Shaila thought about it for a moment as she powered her systems up. “Just wait there. I’ll give you a hand. Once you’re up, get right up close to the side and get ready to hit thrusters. We gotta roll in….90 seconds.”

There was silence after that as the group from
Hadfield
prepared their V-SEVs. All systems were functioning normally, and Shaila was sure to seal herself in as if she were going onto the surface of
her
Venus. If they missed the beach and landed in the bay, she was sure the seawater would play havoc with the mech’s systems if it got in. She then panicked a moment about the mechs being waterproof, but quickly dismissed it out of hand, remembering that they were designed to be completely airtight and to resist atmospheric pressures comparable to the lowest depths of Earth’s oceans.

Shaila tucked her mech’s legs under it, then used its arms to push it into a kind of squatting position. She felt the machinery tremble a bit as she got it into a standing position—it wasn’t used to being deployed in such a way. Once upright, she turned to Stephane’s mech and reached for its outstretched claw, pulling it up far more easily. To her left, she saw Coogan giving Diaz a similar helping hand. A moment later, all four mechs were at
Victory
’s maindeck railings, two to a side.

“Coming up on target. Ready to jump off on my mark, then hit your thrusters to get clear of the ship,” Shaila said. “Three, two, one….MARK.”

A second later, she was falling straight down, and numerous alarms and warning messages popped up on the heads-up display before her. “Yes, I know this is sub-optimal deployment,” she groused quietly as she got her mech upright and fired thrusters.

A burst of noise from the comms startled her. “I have negative thrusters! Repeat, negative thrusters!” Coogan shouted.

“Deploy airbags!” Diaz ordered.

From her hatch window, Shaila could see Coogan’s mech tumbling toward Venus out of control—and much further out than the rest of them.

“Unresponsive! We hit the side of—”

Shaila saw a splash about 50 meters out to sea, and a moment later, HMS
Victory
splashed down further out, creating a massive spray and wake that obscured everything else. Then her HUD interrupted her view with the tracking information she needed to touch down safely. Shaking her head, she quickly reversed her thrusters in order to make a safe landing on the sandy Venusian beach.

“Jain to Coogan. Come in, Coogan,” she said.

There was no response.

“Scanning now,” Stephane said; Shaila could see on her display that both he and Diaz landed safely, about 10 meters from one another on the beach. “The V-SEV is about twenty meters under the water. No movement, no life signs.”

“Can the sensors penetrate inside the V-SEVs, Jain?” Diaz asked.

“No idea, ma’am. I—wait. We have three bogeys on the beach, running toward the tree line to the south.” Shaila turned and zoomed in on them. “Blue uniforms, officer with a red collar. Presumed French.”

“Get after them, Jain,” Diaz ordered. “I’ll go after Coogan and VanDerKamp. Stephane, guard this goddamn beach.”

Shaila grasped the controls inside her cockpit and urged the V-SEV forward, its broad metal feet gaining surprisingly good traction in the sand as it headed down the beach toward the trees. In fact, the vehicle was handling better than Shaila remembered from her simulator training. The damn thing weighed tons; it should not feel spring-loaded.

Then she remembered: She wasn’t on
her
Venus. The simulator had simulated the dense atmospheric pressure of the Venus she knew, which had made her feel like she was piloting through gravy. Yet on
this
Venus, there was a mere fraction of the pressure.

And it made piloting the V-SEV seem like driving a performance sports car. Within moments, she managed to get the mech up to a decent jog, crashing through the verdant undergrowth near the treeline with abandon.

Thankfully, a jogging V-SEV with a 2.5-meter gait matched up well against running humans. She started wondering how to subdue the French without much injury, given that they had abandoned
Hadfield
without taking any nonlethal microwave weapons with them. And the V-SEVs weren’t subtle, no matter the atmospheric pressure.

Then one of the dots on her tracking grid vanished. And others appeared, with the word UNKNOWN FAUNA next to them.

She looked up to see one of the Frenchmen on the ground about ten meters in front of her with a spear sticking out of his chest. His hands clutched the shaft, even as Shaila watched his vitals slow, then cease.

The dots representing her other two targets winked out a few moments later, while the UNKNOWN FAUNA bogeys faded out of sensor range just as quickly as they entered it.

Having met Gar’uk a few hours ago, Shaila had a pretty good idea of what just happened.

“Jain to Diaz. French targets neutralized by third party. Over.”

There was a fairly long lag before Diaz responded. “Roger that. Come on back. You see ‘em?”