The Venusian Gambit Read Online Free PDF Page A

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