Shadows Against the Empire (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 1) Read online

  “We have instincts to help us along,” Folkestone mused. “Perhaps the Nagas of Venus have more.”

  “What you mean, sir?”

  “We hear a loud noise near us, or something brushes against you in the dark – in one case you duck or run, in the other you freeze,” Folkestone said. “No one had to teach you those reactions.”

  “No, sir, it’s just natural, just the things to do, whether you’re from Mars or Earth,” Hand agreed.

  “But what if, on Venus, the reptilian races transmit the same information, not by instinct but by actual memories of the past,” Folkestone suggested. “It may also explain why the reptilians might be more susceptible to this…this call of the Dark Gods.” He looked askance at the diminutive sergeant. “You haven’t been having odd dreams, have you, Sergeant Hand?”

  “No, sir,” he replied, his tawny face reddening. “The only dreams I have concern…well, sir, there are certain fair ladies in Syrtis Major that…”

  “Never mind, Sergeant, I can well imagine,” Folkestone said with a knowing grin.

  “Be that as it may, sir, it doesn’t explain a link between Mars and Venus,” Hand complained.

  “The link may be the Dark Gods themselves,” Folkestone said. “If we suppose the Dark Gods were actually real creatures…”

  Hand started to protest, but Folkestone quickly motioned him to silence.

  “Perhaps not physical beings as we ourselves are, but vastly different, yet quite capable of manipulating the material world, terrorizing its inhabitants as your own legends declare.” He thought a moment, then said: “If we assume the existence of powerful beings, entities who might seem to be deities with godlike powers, perhaps even to a civilisation as advanced as our empire of iron and steam, then their very existence would bridge the gulfs between the planets, artificially creating similarities in religion and history between dissimilar cultures.”

  “Even Earth, sir?”

  For several long moments, Folkestone stood with a pensive look on his face, as if contemplating unpalatable ideas. It was one thing to speculate about the ancient religions of Mars and Venus, to cast the precious beliefs of wogs on the rubbish heap of history, but it was quite another to reconsider voices from burning bushes or even the blood-drinking devil-god of the Mussulmen. He looked across the sward to the great greenish wall of the upland jungle.

  “Those Nagas took off that way,” he mused. “Somewhere out there may be an answer to everything, perhaps to what happened in Cydonia, and how it ties in with the disappearance of Daraph-Kor.”

  “It’s a big jungle, sir,” Hand said. “And dangerous.”

  “Especially at night,” Folkestone pointed out.

  “Yes, sir, but not nearly as bloody hot as in the day,” Hand said with a derisive laugh. “Besides, sir, no risk, no gain.”

  “Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” Folkestone said. “Keep the fell night from turning hideous, and guide the plodding footfalls of such fools as we.”

  “That’s not quite exactly the Bard, sir.”

  “Close enough,” Folkestone said. “And, Sergeant, let us keep our plans to ourselves.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Chapter 9

  Through the long dreary Venusian day, Folkestone and Hand drew their plans for a nocturnal sojourn secretly. Overtly, they interviewed the remaining workers, which was as much a waste of time as they expected after interrogating the comparatively loquacious Ibliss, and reviewed Mallory’s plantation records, but behind closed doors they studied ordinance maps of the region and aerial photographs taken by military and civilian airships. When the sullen day finally gave way to the stygian night, they gathered their supplies and weapons, slipped quietly out of the mansion and entered the penumbrous jungle.

  Due to the miles-thick canopy eternally blanketing the planet, nights on Venus are deeper than on any other world of the Solar System, even those dark outer worlds and moons where the sun appears as a light only slightly brighter than the surrounding stars. And, yet, the blackness is not complete. All the turbulence in that seething mass of clouds creates electrical discharges that snake through the roiling vapours. The flickering lights are soundless and erratic, much like dry lightning on Earth. While it does take the eyes some time to grow acclimated to such uncertain and variable illumination, it is yet possible to trek through even the dense jungle vastness without aid of lamp or flare.

  Folkestone and Hand made their way cautiously between the prodigious trunks, under the spreading limbs and through the ensnaring vines.

  The Venusian jungle is a realm of constant growth, and while it was absolutely impossible to maintain a roadway useful by imperial standards, for the jungle would devour it almost immediately, pathways yet endured, as if the jungle somehow agreed not to reclaim as quickly those trails where animals and Nagas tread lightly.

  Sergeant Hand was sweating profusely, perspiration soaking through his uniform. While Venus’ nighttime was nowhere near as torrid as its twilit day, the air was still hotter and more humid than any day on Mars. And being surrounded by the black immensity of the jungle seemed to make it even worse, as if the trees and underbrush emanated a living heat. He paused a moment, removed his pith helmet, wiped the moisture from his brow, then caught up with Captain Folkestone.

  “It’s a very meandering trail for sure, sir,” Hand observed, keeping his voice very low. “Might be nothing than a hunter’s track, not a proper trail at all.”

  “You’re probably right, Sergeant,” Folkestone admitted, “but those belligerent Nagas took off in this general direction. Their options are few, as are ours, judging by the survey maps.”

  Hand nodded. Several times during their trek, they had run across intersecting paths, but they always stuck to the ones that seemed freshest and which led deeper into the jungle, away from settlements of humans or other Nagas. Suddenly, Folkestone sank to one knee, and Hand followed suit. Folkestone motioned to his ear.

  Venus was, as far as Sergeant Felix Hand was concerned, a hellhole of the first order, with crushing gravity, searing heat and bad food. However, the soupy atmosphere did provide an advantage to a man of Mars – it carried sounds wonderfully. The attenuated Martian atmosphere did not carry vibrations either far or well, which made the Martian ear one of the most sensitive sound detectors in the Solar System. Folkestone had served so long on the red planet that his own hearing was almost as acute as that of a native highlander.

  Hand moved closer and said softly: “Yes, sir, voices, that way, a thousand yards, maybe a bit more.”

  Folkestone nodded in agreement.

  “Should we try to return to get reinforcements?”

  “Some of Mallory’s workers?” Folkestone asked with a slight smile. “Or an aether-message to Port Victoria?”

  “Yes, sir, I see your point.”

  “Flank left and I’ll take right,” Folkestone said. “Nothing but observation, at the moment.”

  Hand nodded his understanding and started circling around to the left, moving slowly as to stay silent. There were no trails to follow, and this deep into the Venusian jungle the flicker of light from above was minimal, but he managed to edge his way ever closer to the source of the sounds without betraying himself. He had no idea where Captain Folkestone was. From Hand’s point of view, the human officer had vanished as quickly and as silently as a smoke-ghost of the desert lowlands.

  Though Hand listened carefully for some trace noise made by his commanding officer, he heard nothing. Sometimes he felt as if Captain Folkestone might be somehow related to the Red Indian heroes in the shilling-shockers so popular among the Martian middle classes. In an atmosphere as soupy as was this infernal planet’s, Hand felt as if he should hear the human clumbering about, as humans do, but he heard nothing. It was as disconcerting as it was annoying.

  Folkestone, flanking right, gradually began to close in on the source of the noise. Ideally, he wanted Hand and himself to have opposite vantage points so they could later compar
e notes and come up with an accurate composite observation. While Hand moved rather quietly for somebody so squat, Folkestone still had a pretty good idea where the Sergeant was and kept pace with him.

  After about twenty minutes, Folkestone came to the edge of a clearing a few hundred yards in diameter. There was no village, but from the maps and photos they had studied, Folkestone had not expected one. Nor had he expected to find a temple, for the Nagas of Venus were naturalistic in their supplications to whatever reptilian deities they worshipped, eschewing artificial structures for natural outcroppings, strangely shaped trees and the openings of caves. Temples on Venus were restricted to the cities, to the obscure religions of the decadent Venusian humanoids, but if the structure rising from the midst of this clearing was not a temple, Folkestone thought, then he was a twin-tailed swamp adder.

  If the temple of stones and boughs was startling, then the glyph that dominated its front was mind-numbing – the orb of Mars burning ruddy in the blackness of space, and, surmounting it, the image of the five-sided pyramid seen last in the forbidden ruins of Old Cydonia. Flames leaped from braziers flanking a portal.

  Folkestone took up a position where he had a good view of the entrance, and trusted Hand to do the same. He settled back into the darkness and waited.

  At least a hundred Nagas milled before the temple as if waiting for the start of something. They chattered softly amongst themselves in those primal sibilant and guttural sounds that passed for a language. Even if Folkestone had understood the palaver he was too far away to catch any clear snatch of conversation, but after a few long moments he wondered if the sleek reptilians were talking at all, in the accepted use of the term.

  No, it’s just as much a babble to those blighters as it is to me, he thought. They’re excited, almost in a rapture of religious ecstasy, like Shakers at their prayer meetings or Mohammedans in the presence of that damned Black Stone. They’re all waiting for something to happen.

  But waiting for what? He glanced to the Mars sigil that should have no meaning at all to any inhabitant of Venus, reptilian or humanoid, and shuddered.

  In an instant, a wave of silence swept over the Nagas and they surged toward the raised opening of the temple, answering some call imperceptible to Folkestone’s human senses. Their bodies glinted beneath the silent crackling lightning, savagely sinuous.

  Folkestone peered intently into the ill-lit gloom, moving as far forward as he dared to get a better view of whatever had signalled their sudden massing.

  The temple was outwardly large, but constructed as it was from stones and the jungle trees that were supposed to be sacred to the Nagas, the interior could not have been more than a couple of chambers, three at the most, close quarters for a Naga indeed, creatures born to the vastnesses of the planet.

  Folkestone’s eyes narrowed as a misshapen figure appeared in the temple’s raised opening. A hissing gasp shot through the crowd, and they prostrated themselves as if they were of one mind, under the control of a single dominant will.

  Much larger than a Naga, Folkestone noted, but not at all misshapen, as he had first thought.

  Crimson robes and an outlandish mask, Folkestone realised with a physical shock. A Naga clothed in more than the skins and scraps provided by nature?

  The robes were of such a bright ruddy colour as to almost seem to glow like a burning coal. Given the eternal twilight of the planet, strong colours were neither common on Venus, nor courted by the Venusians, but the Nagas seemed fascinated, practically mesmerised by the glaring colour.

  The mask upon the Naga priest swirled with reds and shades of ochre, the same hues dominating the low deserts of Mars. All about the headgear there swirled black slashes which at times seemed like unknown glyphs, at others like grasping tentacles.

  The enraptured throng seemed as equally enthralled by the disc upon the chest of this creature who could be none but the Speaker of the Dark – it flamed and flashed like no metal ever seen before by Folkestone, as if empowered by an inner galvanic fire.

  The disc, he realised, was a smaller version of the orb of Mars, the Red Eye of ancient Venusian legend. The shadows which swirled across the fabric as the figure moved about made it appear as if the disc was wreathed about by serpents. It was just the sort of display to appeal to Nagas, with their fascination for bright colours and reptilian imagery. This apparent reversion of the Nagas to the long neglected gods of the dead past brought to mind Thoza-Joran’s sudden reverence for a forbidden religion.

  Icy fingers seized his spine, and he shivered in the torrid heat of the deep Venusian night. Something ancient and monstrous was stirring in the old dead places of the Solar System, something that had once held suzerainty over humans, Martians, Venusians, and who knew whatever now-extinct races previously swarmed over the worlds orbiting Sol, some dark force that reigned with blood and terror till something even greater had banished it to angles and dimensions outside the normal realm of space, expelled once but perhaps not for good. Folkestone had felt it, heard it, seen it on Mars, and now, again, on Venus, a world that should know nothing of Mars.

  Folkestone was roused from his epiphany by a sudden roar from the Speaker of the Dark, a sound that slammed against his eardrums despite the distance. The priest raised his arms and there shot from his glove-encased hands bolts of brilliantly white, crackling energy, unlike any form of lightning known to the Venusians, and yet distressingly familiar to Folkestone.

  These bolts were identical to those hurled by Thoza-Joran, but were much more powerful.

  The Nagas gasped and hissed furiously, as terrified as they were excited.

  The naked bolts struck the cloud layer above the clearing repeatedly, then arced from cloud to cloud. The discharge was not silent, as are most aerial electrical displays on Venus, but roared like the thunder of all the worlds’ water falls…or the hungry bellow of a long-imprisoned ravenous beast suddenly set loose among prey.

  Folkestone joined the Venusians in gazing upward where the sizzling energy yet churned. At first, there appeared to be no change in the clouds, still seething in their furious currents as they had for millennia. When Folkestone first noticed the change, however, he attributed it to apparent motion imparted by the energy discharge, but after a moment could not deny the evidence of his eyes – the mass of clouds directly above the clearing into which the priest had directed the unnatural energy was beginning to swirl.

  The unprecedented maelstrom formed around the point at which the energy entered the clouds from the upraised gloved hands of the Speaker of the Dark. They swirled as if trapped in a vortex independent of Venus’ atmospheric processes. Faster the clouds whirled, until Folkestone was reminded of a terrestrial tornado he had survived years earlier in the North American prairie.

  As Folkestone watched, a point of light formed at the centre of the swirling mass. At first, he thought it some sort of illumination connected with the energy discharge, but when it was joined by other points of scintillating light he finally grasped the truth of what he was seeing, the impossible truth being revealed to the benighted Nagas of cloud-girdled Venus – the Speaker of the Dark had by powers unknown opened a hole in the everlasting clouds and was revealing to them a universe of stars.

  The Nagas hissed and gibbered in wonder, fright and ecstasy. The Speaker of the Dark had given to them a universe of burning wonders, and Folkestone had no doubt that the enthralled reptilian savages would now do whatever they were directed by the wielder of the godlike powers – to burn and pillage the plantations in the British sector of Venus, to kill Her Majesty’s subjects. The anti-British ravings of Thoza-Joran came back to Folkestone, and another piece of the puzzle fit into place.

  There was a definite connection between disturbances on Mars and the native uprisings on Venus, but the overall image remained elusive.

  Screaming voices and pounding feet sounded close by, and Folkestone cursed his lapse of attention. The hole in the cloud cover, which was now just beginning to surge close, had ca
ptured his mind as much as it had the primitive Nagas.

  He raised his weapon as they slithered and slipped around him, the reptiles moving with astonishing swiftness, as if by dint of a single mind and will. His actions were futile. The weapon was pulled from his grasp, as was the knife at his belt. He tried to fight them off, but there were too many of them. In moments, Folkestone was taken captive and frog-marched toward the temple in the midst of the clearing.

  Folkestone knew Hand was somewhere in the darkness, safe, at least for the moment, still capable of taking a warning back. He willed the sergeant to stay hidden and not do anything foolish.

  Might as well tell a bloody Martian sandstorm not to blow, he thought ruefully.

  Somehow, though he could not understand how, he had been found out and the Nagas set upon him. While an unarmed human was more than a match for one or two of the lithe reptilian beings, and an armed man could hold off the attack of a half-dozen of them, there was nothing to do when dozens swarmed, especially in an unguarded moment. Stripped of his weapons and firmly grasped by clawed hands, Folkestone was pushed and pulled toward the temple and the waiting priest. As the scaly bodies seethed around him, he felt as if he had fallen into a snake pit.

  Nearing the temple, Folkestone felt himself lifted into the air, conveyed above the hissing, snapping jaws of his captors. He tried to kick free, tried to slap away their clutching talons, but he could not get any leverage with his feet, could not evade their hold. At the last, he felt himself lifting entirely into the air, thrown bodily by the enraged Nagas.