The Venusian Gambit (4 page)

She wasn’t sure she ever would.

Five months ago, she had been on top of the world—a new world, in fact. The first person to set foot upon Enceladus, the mysterious ice moon of Saturn. They were there to search for life—evidence of life beyond Earth itself. There wasn’t any on Mars. The Jovian moon Europa was being stubborn. Enceladus, with its under-ice lake, warmed by the push-pull of Saturn’s gravity, was humanity’s best, last hope for finding neighbors.

The neighbors found them instead.

Shaila wasn’t supposed to be the first person on Enceladus. She led the landing team, but they had drawn straws, and the honor had gone to Stephane Durand, a French planetologist and her boyfriend and lover of two years. They had been together at McAuliffe Base on Mars. They fought to save two dimensions from an inexplicable, ancient evil. They had become inseparable. And when it came time for Stephane to make history, he had physically picked her up off the landing craft and, in Enceladus’ extremely low gravity, tossed her over the side in his place.

How many men have given the woman they loved an entire world?

She smiled sadly at the thought. Smiling was ever-so-slightly easier now, after five months. She would occasionally think of seeing her family on Earth, or the simple delights of a blue sky or a beach. She would smile. And then the guilt and anger over what happened would erase that smile quickly, and she would lock it all down inside and focus on the work again.

She reminded herself daily that Stephane wasn’t there anymore. Something had gotten to him on Enceladus, and she worked hard to figure out how and why. She reviewed all the videos and records, and tracked down the source. On their first landing, they had been in the path of a cryovolcanic ejection–a cold-water geyser. They got wet. And the microbial lifeforms believed to be in the water must’ve gotten on them. She remembered Stephane in the lander after their historic mission, heading back to
Armstrong
. He took off his helmet and, reflexively, wiped his gauntleted hand across his face.

Then he complained of the taste of the water covering him.

That’s how it got him. That’s why he wasn’t there—both physically on the ship, and present in his own mind. Something had taken possession. And Shaila knew—without more than circumstance and conjecture, she nonetheless
knew—
that it was tied to what happened on Mars two and a half years ago.

Back then, they defeated that alien—some horrible, monstrous thing calling itself Althotas. And she was hell-bound and determined to defeat whatever possessed Stephane, whatever made him board the Chinese ship, whatever made him kill
Armstrong
’s captain, U.S. Marine Col. Mark Nilssen.

Whatever made him plant the explosive charges that reduced Enceladus to its tiny, rocky core, freeing thousands—maybe millions—of similar little lifeforms, just like the one that possessed him.

Another chime sounded in her ear, and a small window popped up to her right, next to the constellation Taurus. “DAILY REMINDER: VIDEO TO STEPHANE.”

Shaila chased the text away with a wave of her hand. She wasn’t in the mood. There were a lot of days where she wasn’t. But…

“Jain to Archie, come in,” she called over the ship’s comm.

A few moments went by before the response came. “You really need to let me relieve you up there for a while,” Dean Archibald replied in his maddeningly paternal old-man drawl. “And you really should eat something today, young lady.”

How long have I been in here?
she wondered. She idly called up the holocam to catch an image of herself, and was mildly surprised at the result. She didn’t look too bad—her military training prompted her to stick to a decent exercise and hygiene regiment. Yet the dark circles under her eyes were impressive, reminding her of the black stuff American football players used to cut down glare and intimidate opponents. Shaila’s skin, usually the color of café au lait, seemed sallow and wan. “Roger that. You can relieve me at next watch,” she said. “Going to swing the dish to target
Tienlong
and send a packet. You have yours ready?”

“It’s on my server, the usual place. Recorded it a while ago,” the old engineer replied. “And I’ll see you in three hours to kick your ass out of there. Out.”

Shaila and Archie were the only surviving in-place members of the
Armstrong
crew. Nilssen was killed when he went to investigate a distress call from
Tienlong
, the rival Chinese ship that drove them off course from Titan, prompting their landing on Enceladus instead. The ship’s biologist and medic, Maria Conti, was on board
Tienlong
now, also possessed. The mission’s corporate sponsor, Elizabeth Hall, died on Titan.

The Chinese had been less fortunate. The DAEDALUS task force investigators believed that one of the Chinese may have been infected prior to leaving Earth, thanks to a minute space-time rift in Egypt, in the ruins of an ancient temple in the Libyan desert town of Siwa. The guy had gone to play tourist there prior to leaving. He may have infected others en route to Saturn. They didn’t know the details yet. But in the end, of the six Chinese crewmen aboard
Tienlong
, only one remained alive, and he was aiding Stephane and Conti. Four were brutally murdered by their fellow crewmen, and Shaila watched in horror as the fifth took his own life by putting a laser drill to his head on the surface of Titan.

The image of that suicide still haunted her, when she wasn’t thinking of Stephane.

“Locate
Tienlong
,” Shaila told the ship’s computer. A moment later, a red dot appeared in front of her, alongside a window showing as much of that ship’s status as the computer had handy, mostly course and speed.
Armstrong
was gaining on her. They’d enter Earth orbit mere minutes apart, even though Shaila’s ship had been delayed more than a week due to engine problems. They had burned salt-laden Enceladan water in order to respond to the
Tienlong
’s original distress call, and Archie had needed the time to clean up the mess the solids had made inside the engines.

Shaila locked
Armstrong
’s communications array on Tienlong. There was no way of knowing whether a laser comm would work, so Shaila had to rely on old-fashioned radio for these little exercises. That was fine. She could still focus the call somewhat, and hope that she wasn’t appearing on every holovision set in eastern Europe or something.

“Record vidmail message and stream to target,” Shaila said. The computer obliged within microseconds.

She cleared her throat, straightened up, and forced a smile as she began.

“Hello again, Stephane. I’m still on your tail, of course, and we’re still gaining on you. I know Archie’s trying to find a way to get us over the hump so we can intercept you before you make Earth orbit. If anyone can do it, he can. He says hi, by the way. He told me to say that. Funny, isn’t it.

“I’m going to keep this short today, because I’m really tired and really fucking pissed at you, and at the world, and at the strange things that are doing this to you and to us. You know, I liked being an ‘us.’ For the first time ever, I actually wanted to be part of another person’s life like that. I…yeah. Anyway, I’m still here. I’m coming to get you. Keep fighting. I love you.”

Shaila stopped and waved the recording closed as she fought back tears.
Every goddamn time
. She plucked Archie’s vidmail from his folder and sent it along as well. Shaila had ordered him to send vidmails to Conti, just as she’d been sending them to Stephane.

Every day. Without fail.

For the past 159 days. It was the only thing she could do to prevent herself from going crazy sitting around waiting.

There had been no response.

“What do you mean there’s been no response?” Harry Yu asked crossly, running a hand through his otherwise immaculate black hair. “You’ve been setting this up for months now, and there’s been nothing from
Tienlong
at all?”

Harry paced inside a small office inside a nondescript office park on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. A century ago, the country emerged from civil war and sectarian strife to become a high-quality corporate safe haven; in exchange for regular “taxes” and outright bribes, businesses could do whatever they wanted in Kabul, no questions asked, no regulations enforced. A lot of financials and biotechs had outposts here, in very similar, un-logoed office parks.

But Harry Yu wasn’t working for the congloms anymore. The former Total Suez and Billiton MinMetals executive, once a rising star in the corporate world, was on the lam, wanted for questioning by Interpol, the Egyptian police force and—most importantly—Project DAEDALUS.

Harry didn’t let it show; at least, that’s what he tried telling himself. He still wore the finest clothes he could afford, and with the terras he’d stashed in various accounts around the world, he could still look good. Today was a grey suit and white shirt, the only nod to the weather and location was the lack of necktie. He always felt clothes helped project authority.

Whether or not he had any authority left was an open question. Most days, his “team” seemed to be humoring him.

“Your conventional signaling won’t work, Harry,” Evan Greene replied with the hint of a smile. “That’s why we’ve been working on the dimensional phase communications here, which is why we replicated Yuna Hiyashi’s Mars experiment in the desert outside town. That’s the only way we’ve been able to reach them before.”

Them
. The folks from the other side. Extradimensional aliens. Martians, to be specific.

Harry saw Greene trade a very pointed look with his companion, former U.S. Marine Capt. Margaret Huntington. Both Greene and Huntington had been part of Maria Diaz’ DAEDALUS team over the summer when they turned up and ruined Harry’s attempt to replicate the rift created on Mars two years prior.

Discovering a whole new universe of worlds was a monumental moment in human history, and Harry Yu would have done anything to be the man to capitalize on it. And he’d gotten so close.

Yet Harry’s experiment in the Egyptian desert was—well, it wasn’t a failure, was it? A portal was opened. How could he have known that there were some seriously fucked-up creatures on the other side? If Maria had just given him more time, he could’ve replicated the rift, brought in some heavy artillery from G48 or Unity-Halliburton, taken care of things. He didn’t want to go in shooting, of course, but there were worlds full of resources—and alchemy!—that were going unexploited.

But the portal wasn’t stable. He didn’t have enough time.

After that, Diaz shut him down and took over his worksite, his company disowned him, and he was busy getting drunk-as-fuck under the radar in Dubai when Greene—who had secretly been on Harry’s payroll—and Huntington walked up clear as day and convinced him to try again. The thing was, he thought Greene and Huntington were buried under the rubble after his particle collider blew the hell up. And Greene never told him he’d recruited Huntington.

But since then…well, it had been a weird trip.

First off, Harry didn’t know this Huntington woman in the slightest, but he knew Greene—and there were days Harry felt that the guy wearing Greene’s face wasn’t Greene. Greene was funny, for one, and cocky as hell and downright charismatic; the scientist used to host educational holovision shows before going to work for Diaz and, later, Harry. But lately, Greene was none of those things. Sure, he still had his trade mark mane of silvery hair, his bright teeth and holovision-ready looks. But he had some nervous tics to him, drumming fingers and the occasional twitch, and a near omnipresent thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, even in the air-conditioned offices. To Harry, Greene seemed…stretched. Thinned out, somehow.

And from what Harry knew of U.S. Marines, the woman before him now was far less disciplined, cool and detached. There was a feral fervor about her that made “unnerving” seem like a garden party in comparison. The fact that she was physically ripped and nominally pretty was even more disconcerting.

When Harry finally confronted Greene about his survival, the scientist said he’d been in contact with the aliens from the other side—just as Martian scientist/astronaut Yuna Hiyashi had been two years ago on Mars. Greene said he and Huntington had managed to avoid the worst of the building collapse in Siwa and, armed with new knowledge, were working to reestablish contact with the other side to re-open the portal that had flared wide and slammed shut in the temple below the Siwa oasis.

But they seemed to be keeping Harry very much in the dark. And that wouldn’t do.

“And you’ve been in contact?” Harry pressed.

Greene and Huntington kept working away on their rented holostations. “That’s right, Harry,” Greene said coolly. “Not often, not every day, but enough. Soon, we’ll have enough resources available to us to rebuild what you did in Egypt, but better. Bigger. In the meantime, the dimensional phase communicators will help both
Tienlong
and ourselves better manage the entities aboard that ship so that they can be put to use in opening a new portal when they arrive.”

Huntington smiled as she worked, a predatory expression that sent a shiver down Harry’s spine and, for the thousandth time, made him question just what the hell he was doing with these two.

But there were no alternatives. Wanted by the authorities and running low on even his extensive lines of untraceable credit, he’d hitched his wagon to the notion that Greene and Huntington could reopen the portal between worlds, stabilize it and make it so that resources and people could be safely transported from one to the other.

In business, the only way to correct a mistake is to achieve an exponentially bigger gain. And opening up an entire universe worth of new markets certainly qualified.

“All right,” Harry said. “But we only have a few months left before my lines of credit run out. After that, all this gets shut down.”

“It won’t get shut down,” Huntington said quietly. It was the first time she had spoken within earshot of Harry in a month.