Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy, Volume One) (15 page)

Before the C.O.S. knew what hit them, there was no stopping the runaway train of Alterian Enterprises.
They couldn't make laws to stop us because there was no precedent, nothing to compare. Did Janison provide them enough information to go forward with their hostile takeover? And what of the ultimate mission? A covert enterprise, if discovered, that would terrify in ways unimaginable before.

"Contact us. Now
!" the voice message attached to the file said. The simple message caused Antone to cringe, recognizing Cardinal Thortizan as the owner of the voice. He forwarded the link and message to Stalling and attached his own that said: "I'll deal with this."

He synced back to Nancy. "Thank you Nancy. A
s usual, your judgment is spot on. Send the Cardinal a secure address and inform him Stalling will meet with him in five minutes."

"Understood," Nancy replied.

Antone took a deep breath and studied the double glass doors located in the middle of the room’s west wall. Behind those ebony tinted doors was the "Meditation Chamber". Used for many purposes, meditation was rarely one of them. Antone visualized the room he helped design, picturing Stalling as he sat in the recliner and applied the latest technological advancement produced by the project.

It was coming up on an hour since Stalling entered the room and Antone figured it would be at least another half hour before he had completed his rendezvous with Janison. He would be exhausted by the effort when he
was done and far from being capable or willing to deal with Thortizan for some time after.

Until they discovered a solution to save Muzar, Antone conclude he had to do what he could to keep the C.O.S. from forcing their hand. As valiant as his crash course
attempt to learn the science behind the project was, he knew it would do little to help the fast approaching emergency procedure. If anything, he would only get in the way. Taking on the front man role in negotiating with the C.O.S. was where he provided the most value.
I can only hope Stalling will conclude the same.

"The Cardinal has responded and is waiting for Stalling's arrival," Nancy reported.

"Understood," Antone said before taking another deep breath.
No time to dwell on Janison and no time to second guess your gut. This is what you do best, read and react. Keep the vision on the forefront and trust your instincts.

Antone opened the address Nancy provided and materialized in the virtual room an instant later. In lieu of the mundane conference room
normally reserved for meetings with the C.O.S., Nancy chose the virtual copy of Stalling's office.

Nice touch.

Located in the east corner, he sat in a contemporary leather couch facing Cardinal Thortizan sitting across from him in one of identical design. Thortizan was leaned back, his arms stretched across the back of the couch with his feet propped up on the glass coffee table placed between them. He appeared to be enjoying the virtual vista of the rainforest Antone was looking at in the real world only moments before.

He pulled his attention away from the scenic view upon Antone's arrival but remained in the same, casual position. At the site of Antone, a wave of disgust beyond imitation washed across his face and long body.

"What business do you have here Ecifrican scum? Don't you know there's no trash to be taken out in the virtual world?" Thortizan savored the insult with an evil chuckle. Putting feet to the floor, placing elbows on knees and intersecting manicured fingers, he leaned across the table and menacingly pointed his index fingers at Antone's crooked nose. "If your master has any sense, his ass had better materialize in your place in the next few seconds or a bad situation will get much, much worse."

Antone stared into the others eyes, allowing
the silence to fill the room, enjoying the unexpected but welcome boost to his optimism that Thortizan's greeting produced. After a decade of battling his counterpart behind the scenes, he truly could not have been more pleased with the start of their first 'in person' encounter.

Granted, Antone was leveraging his technological advantage to read the man's emotional aura in order to decipher the true meaning behind Thortizan's words and body language. The virtual tool reflected an internal confidence consis
tent with the outward. The man's prejudice toward the Ecifrican race meshed seamlessly into the very fiber of Thortizan's being. All and all, the cocksure bigot on the outside mirrored a more disturbing image on the inside.

It was respect for Antone as an
adversary, revealed by his virtual talent, no matter how begrudged it may be, that filled Antone with satisfaction. Never did the man before him, Antone realized with pride, ever imagine an Ecifrican as more than an indentured servant. Antone relished his enemy's reluctantly bestowed validation a bit longer, prideful of his role in reducing the C.O.S. dynasty to what it was today.

"Stalling Alterian has provided me the full authority to make decisions on his behalf both now and in the future," Antone lied.
"He wishes to convey his utmost respect for you and your colleagues and his desire to find an amicable solution to our current conflict."

Nothing like a little ass kissing to soften the delivery of bad news.

Thortizan appeared to reflect on Antone's words as he leaned back into the couch in one fluid motion. Dressed in a stunning, argent colored, fitted silk suit—the ornate, jewel encrusted pentagon pinned like a badge to his thin lapel the only outward denotation of his station—his thin lips formed a cocky smirk as he intently studied Antone.

Younger looking 'in person', Antone figured they were the same age, give or take a year. Thortizan was a prototypical Drakarlean: tall and lean with wide shoulders
, thick, jet-black hair that curled in waves at the base of his neck, olive skinned with hazel-green eyes framed by high cheek bones and pointed chin. True to his order, he wore no facial hair but his five o'clock shadow outlined a rich beard.

"This arrangement is unacceptable. We both know this. I mean, reall
y, how do you expect my superiors to take anything that transpires between the two of us seriously?"

Antone leaned back in his own couch, casually crossed his legs and folded his hands around the top of his kn
ee. "How you report to your superiors is not my concern. Frankly, we have reached a point in our dealings with you and those you represent where the returned value has diminished. Significantly. Have details surrounding our situation changed? Do you have something new to propose?"

Antone was grateful Thortizan did not possess the same means to detect ones emotions. Antone's assessment of the situation dictated the need to bluff early. He remained confident in the decision but his anxiety mounted as he gazed
into Thortizan's calculating eyes, uncertain as to how his adversary would respond.

"Antone Lartisent, Alterian Enterprise's poster child and author of the 'Manifesto of the Oppressed Ecifrican'. Look at you," Thortizan said, pointing at Antone with open
palms. "You actually believe in the facade Stalling has built around you. So sad. So pathetic. Tell me, is it better to have tasted the life of God's chosen, even if only for the briefest moment, or to remain ignorant to what can never be, much in how your countryman choose to live. I guess you will learn soon enough."

He's a cool one, I'll give him that. His primal respect keeps his knee jerk revulsion of me in check, preventing his self-centered existence from taking the bait. Let's see what happens when
I let the line out a little.

"This must be hard for you," Antone replied, confident his smug smile would relay the truth of his words to follow. "I mean, it
’s one thing to eat the shit sandwich A.E. has served up to you and your department over the years but knowing it was delivered by an Ecifrican, well, I don't know how you live with yourself. As we sit here in person, I will admit, the joy of kicking your ass for the past decade has provided more pleasure than I ever imagined."

Antone detected a subtle t
witch in Thortizan's right eyebrow before the man deliberately turned his head to look back at the evergreen vista. "Did you know I am a direct descendant of the Knights Vorenian, Order of St. Vorenius of Drakarle? There are over five thousands of us: the purest bloodlines with authentic documentation tracing our family line for thousands of years, all the way back to the Order's formation."

"Indeed," he said as he turned back to face Antone, "my direct ancestor was none other
than our founder and first Grand Master, Sir Bron Thorthauser, our beloved Apostle Drestan first born son."

Despite himself, the sound of the name sent a shiver down Antone's back.

"Yes," Thortizan said, clearly enjoying Antone's repulsed response at hearing the name, "you now see how your manifesto's demonic depiction of the great knight would conflict with my own. We, those of us who preserve all the Vorenian Order stood for, uphold Sir Bron 'The Wicked One' Thorthauser as the most holy of champions. The only blemish of his long list of achievements for the Church, in our humble opinions, was the failure in his campaign to extinguish every last Ecifrican from the face of the planet."

Antone's mouth had gone dry as blood pulsed hot along his ears and neck.

Thoroughly enjoying Antone's rush of anger, Thortizan drove salt into the exposed wound. "You see, my great ancestor recognized your great ancestor's recalcitrant resistance to Drakarle as nothing short of a plague. How could God's chosen rule the world when there were so many pagans openly opposed to our doctrine? And as you eloquently reminded everyone in your pathetic manifesto, none of the Church's leaders at the time disagreed."

"Ahhh, what glorious times it must have been," Thortizan said, leaning back into his original, relaxed p
osition. His eyes turned up in his skull, half shut, as he imagined that gruesome age. "Think of it, commanding ten legions of the world's most advanced warriors of the day, with one objective: rid the world of the Evil One's spawn. Oh, how I look forward to our ritual meetings when we reenact the canonized butchery of the Ecifrican Crusades. An experience greatly enhanced thanks to your link visors and Auranet I might add," he said, breaking in his reverie to lift his hands above shoulders and wave them around the room.

Leaning forward again, looking left, then right, he spoke in a mock hushed voice, "Between you and me, it
’s still not enough. As realistic as our setting today may be, we both know deep inside it’s not real. Sometimes, in order to know what it was like, you just have to experience the real thing.

"So every so often, I collect a few Ecifrican servants, you know, the ones relegated to the hazardous labor, the ones no one will miss. A child or two, infirmed but not so sick they can't give a good
chase and a young maiden or two to make the whole 'rape and pillage' bit as authentic as possible." Thortizan absently wiped a dab of spittle with the back of his hand that had escaped out the side of his crooked sneer, before continuing with the crescendo of his morbid confession.

"A few of my fellow knights do the same and we put the lot together on some isolated island. We even build a few shacks, provide some food, some basic tools, all the trimmings to make it look like an Ecifrican settlement of yest
eryear. After week or so, I gather the boys," without a skip in his cadence, the image of Thortizan's three adolescent sons appeared above the table, a glimmer of pride washing over his face, "my comrades do the same with their scion and we set our camp outside the makeshift settlement. Dressed in our replica armor, armed with our replica weapons—I've taken a preference to the flanged mace, renowned for its proficient violence—we commence with our God given right, nay duty, to rid the world of evil."

He lea
ned back, as if communing with close acquaintances at the country club. "You cannot imagine how therapeutic the exercise has been for all us. It's the only thing keeping us sane over the centuries as we patiently wait the Savior's second coming; when we can finally finish the job our ancestors started so long ago."

The rush of anger turned into a dull throb at the base of Antone
’s throat by the time Thortizan finished describing his demented actions. Antone knew, if not for the virtual setting, he would have not had the perseverance to control the impulse to lock his hands around the man's throat and crush the life from his body. On the brink of going berserk on the man as he was, the imposed patience shed light on a much larger and insidious threat. A threat to the vision he swore to stay focused on before engaging this malevolent creature.

Thortizan knows as much as I that, despite the formality of signing our terms, we would keep a private record of this meeting.
Their use of condemning sound bites, spoken by various cabinet members and high ranking Church officials—in what they perceived to be secure settings, either over the Auranet or once discerned sanctuaries—has been a key intangible used to turn public opinion of the growing sector of liberal Drakarleans in favor of A.E.’s eccentric leader and agendas. All of that incriminating intel combined is but a fraction of what the third highest-ranking cabinet member just confided.

Antone had maintained his cool composure throughout Thortizan's insane soliloqu
y but somehow the man across from him saw through the facade, as if he had acquired Antone's technological advantage.
Janison, that sanctimonious son-of-bitch, completely turned the tables on us. This pious piece of shit no longer fears anything from us.