The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2) (14 page)

It was “At the Shore,” a melody Connor heard often in the taverns near the Block, though, he recalled, never when the Janzers patrolled. He had no idea how much time had passed inside the cave. He remembered eating handfuls of moss and feeling woozy. It was possible the moss had been hallucinogenic, like the mushrooms Hans told him about in Vivo, or he might have passed out from exhaustion. He hadn’t slept well since the Jubilee. Either way, he was vulnerable, and he couldn’t risk losing Hans’s z-disk to Lady Isabelle should this singer prove a commonwealth agent.

No more tears
, Connor thought again,
no more hiding
.

The guitarist sang another Southern song, “The Fish and the Filly,” and a Western song called “When the Steam Rises.” More benari coins dropped from passing boats.

A foe would’ve already seized me by now
, Connor thought.

This man didn’t have the look of a Southerner, or the accent, and his skin wasn’t dark like the Portagens. There was something familiar about him.

Connor pushed his way through the opening in the clay and fell into the Archimedes. The water felt much colder than the morning he’d escaped.

The singer set down his guitar, pulled up the anchor, adjusted the sail, and the catamaran sped furiously to the riverbank. He helped Connor aboard, then threw a blanket about Connor’s shoulders. “Quick now, bub, wrap this around.”

Connor looked down. He couldn’t see his own arms or legs. “What?” he said.

The guitarist smiled. “Handy, eh, Connor? Keeps the unfriendly eyes at sea, so to speak.” Connor’s body went rigid. “No good,” the man continued. “I’ve got you at a disadvantage. I know you, but you don’t know me. I’ve got a few names I go by, but those who know me best call me Luke, Luke Locke, of Gaia, friend o’ your father’s and o’ the Front, here to see you on to the Great Falls.” He bowed, then lifted his guitar and sat again in his wooden chair. He strummed the chords for another tune.

Connor tucked the blanket over his head. “How did you find me? What happened to Murray, and to the lady and lord of House Tremadoci?”

“No time, bub, you wrap in that blanket, good and whole, and you’ll stop shaking.”

Luke finished his verse and let the song settle. Another raft floated by, followed by a shower of benaris.

Piscator Shore

Piscator, Underground South

2,500 meters deep

A military transport painted with a phoenix feather slowed into Shore Station. The entrance cleared, and Lady Isabelle and a Janzer pair strutted out. The illusion of a hard coral reef surrounded them, visions of algae and sea grass with jellyfish, crustaceans, sea turtles, snakes, stars, limestone skeletons, and remnants from elk horn and brain coral. Her peplum dress, infused with chameleon synisms, adjusted to make her blend in with the scenery, while her Piscatorian-designed silk scarf fluttered in a gentle breeze.

The Piscatorians parted from them as if they were a disease.

I didn’t miss this place
, Isabelle thought. Her last visit here had been when she’d led the assault on the BP enclave in Haurachesa Territory. Sometime in the years between 305 AR and 315 AR, the BP had built a stronghold beneath Hautervian City, sucking resources from the territory, endangering the settlers in that city, and also in Port Newland. Lady Isabelle destroyed and flooded the substructure, ensuring the survival of Haurachesa—and sending a message to the BP in other territories to never consider stealing precious resources from the commonwealth. The fact that her intelligence reports and mining of Marstone’s Database suggested they’d procured a new stronghold called Blackeye Cavern angered her more than Chancellor Masimovian ever could. Didn’t these vile BP care about the Beimenians who followed the rules, and wanted to live long enough to see the Earth’s surface? Would the BP let the majority perish so that their wretched way of life might survive?

Isabelle wouldn’t allow the BP to destroy the world.

Ten Janzer divisions arrived in additional military transports and set themselves into rows behind her. She rested one hand on the hilt of a diamond sword, the other on her Reassortment baton, which were holstered into her belt on either side of her waist. One of the Janzers whispered in her ear, “Up there, my lady.”

Above the reef and a school of damselfish, two tattooed Piscatorians poked their heads from a hole in the Granville panels. They chatted, softly and excitedly, then disappeared.

“
Piscos
,” Isabelle swore. How they disgusted her, their tattoos, their stench, their implicit support of the former BP enclave beneath Hautervian City across the Gulf of Yeuron. She held her fist in the air and hand-signaled to the Janzers, clad in their synsuits. “Forward!”

She led them along a burnished limestone promenade toward the Block. The Janzers smashed their boots in a drumbeat,
left, right, left, right, left.
Knees high, chests out, batons attached to their belts. They held activated pulse guns, with diamond swords lashed across their backs.

Isabelle raised her left hand and flapped it. The Janzers methodically slammed the ground and stopped. The walls here didn’t display the undersea illusion. Instead they displayed holographic advertisements, and in some stones bioluminescent synisms displayed the Second Precept, designed to encourage economic output: SUFFERING IS QUESTIONING. QUESTIONING IS DESTRUCTIVE. DESTRUCTION IS NEVER INEVITABLE.

The destruction of the BP
is
inevitable,
Isabelle thought. She ambled to the Janzers guarding the Block’s entrance.

We’re here to meet with Icarian,
she sent. The milky glass entrance cleared.

The fishermen stopped their work when they saw her. Conversations silenced. Icarian, who had slurred his instructions for a recent landing in one of the docks, lifted his gut and slipped a flask into his muddied trousers. Isabelle approached him. The seaweed stench nauseated her. She could feel the eyes that followed her. A dock shield opened, and water from inside the containment unit flooded out. A flapping tuna rolled over her boot. She hissed and kicked it under the Block, the arced stone on which the fishermen prepared the meat for the commonwealth’s markets.

“Good day, my lady,” Icarian said. He bowed deeply. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence?”

“To Reassortment with your courtesies,” Isabelle swore. She placed her hands on the base of Icarian’s workstation. Above it, holographic images of the docks, submarines, Piscator Reef, Gulf of Yeuron, and Homeria Sea fizzled. “Give me your hand.” His fingers warmed hers, but he stank of the sea, a rotting sea.

I’m interested in the activities of Zorian, Johann, Arturo, Murray, and Connor, fishermen of Piscator.

I don’t know who they are.

You will tell me what you know, or I won’t hesitate to arrest every man and woman in Piscator.

Icarian gasped.
I don’t know. I swear it!
He telepathically searched file after file, the images forming and disappearing above his workstation. He burped. She smelled the booze on his breath. Perspiration dripped down his long forehead into his eyes.

Let’s talk about Johann of Piscator, the last volunteer for our Jubilee. Who’d he associate with on the Block?
Isabelle transmitted Hans’s image to Icarian’s extended consciousness, and impulses in his brain flashed, like the night sky during a storm.

“I don’t know, my lady,” Icarian said, slurring.

You’re a lying, sniveling, traitorous coward. I don’t know why they ever let you in the RDD, and the arrests are on you, you forced this, you caused this—

“Wait!”

Icarian copied Hans’s image and dragged it to his application for the registration data of the Block. Images popped up, and a red slash appeared across the face of every nonmatch. Tens of thousands of photos flashed and slashed and blinked and departed. No matches. Now he frowned at the appearance of a green check mark next to TEAM 451. He put his head down.
Team 451. The top team on the Block, my lady.

“Show me.”

Hans, Connor, Zorian, Murray, and Arturo’s images materialized, with the names:

Icarian requested a visual. Above his workstation, the arced Block with its undersea docks built into the Earth’s bedrock where it met the ocean rotated and zoomed into Team 451’s location.

Empty.

Aliases, my lady, they used aliases, and they aren’t here, and I didn’t lie, and you must believe me. Mercy! I beg you! Mercy for the Block! Mercy for Piscator!

Isabelle extended her consciousness, examined the holograms, and transmitted data, requesting Marstone’s aid. She discovered brain impulses that suggested Icarian knew the BP had penetrated the Block. She dropped Icarian’s hand and stepped away from him, then unsheathed her diamond sword and held its tip beneath his chin.

“No! I’ve … I’ve given you … please …”

His voice gave out when the flask popped out of his belt and bounced along the ground. He now begged Isabelle’s forgiveness, his words incomprehensible. Isabelle lowered her sword and he coughed. He cleared his throat and spit. She gave a hand signal, and a Janzer stepped forward with shackles in his grasp. He latched them around Icarian’s wrists and ankles.

The Piscatorians swooned and mumbled.

Isabelle heard their thoughts and sensed their dismay that Icarian, their leader, their friend, was likely about to be shipped off to Farino Prison, from which no one ever escaped, as she made sure the commonwealth knew.

A deep-voiced laugh made her start. She sheathed her sword and drew her pulse gun.

She knew that laugh. It came from a man who had called himself Jonyn but whom Cornelius Selendia’s mind had revealed to her as Zorian Selendia. She tried to enter his mind, but he impeded her. She saw him, down along the Block. Tall and muscular, he moved like a shark, swaying, searching. Tattoos swirled over his porcelain skin. The alloy chains attached to his belt and boots jingled. He smoked synthetic leaf, and the cloud obstructed Isabelle’s view of his face, but not his voice.

I thought you might come here,
Zorian sent.

“Get out of here!” Icarian said.

His slur had disappeared. Isabelle punched him in the gut and he puked. She turned. Her blood quickened, for Zorian had genetically poisoned Jeremiah for her, enabling his capture in Piscator Square. He might be of some use now. She took long, cautious strides. He was, like his brother Hans, as powerful as Jeremiah in the ZPF in some ways, less so in others. Unlike Hans, she’d not yet discovered Zorian’s weakness.

His face took form after the smoke cleared, his aquiline nose and narrow forehead. He waved his colorful arms artfully, then took one knee on the wet ground, revealing the silver and teal tattoo of a spear around his neck. He looked at her knowingly, lowering his guard in the ZPF.

Isabelle plunged into Zorian’s mind, where she searched and located his secrets with relative ease, but she questioned, for the first time, who deceived whom in this relationship.

I can help you find them,
Zorian transmitted,
if you’ll allow me to.

She holstered her pulse gun. “Cuff him.”

Piscator City

Piscator, Underground South

Isabelle’s military transport eased into Katian Station. A Piscatorian couple with matted hair and crooked teeth held hands. They covered their eyes when dust lifted around the transport. The man yelled in the woman’s ear, and they scurried to the exit. Other Piscatorians turned away from Isabelle.

Good, fear me, but respect me, and serve, serve the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni
, she thought.

Granville illusions to her left, reeds and cypress trees and water lilies; and to her right, a lake surrounded by thickets at twilight. She already felt the sweat on her back. The Piscatorians didn’t maintain as robust a coolant system as they should have, though not for lack of benaris—Phanes supported
all
the thirty territories. Isabelle assumed Minister Blaylock might be as corrupt as his predecessor, skimming funds. If so, she’d see him sent to the Lower Level. She sighed.

They arrived at the Sixth Ward. “This will be a surgical search,” she told her Janzers. “Use tranquilizer darts. We need them alive.”

The Janzers nodded.

Isabelle despised visiting the shanty wards in the South; this one was no different. Half the structures looked like they might crumble, and while the Granville syntech functioned at the station, the night sky here didn’t have many stars. Synthetic torchlight danced along the walls. Zorian’s information directed her to the stone entrance of a clandestine apartment unit. She touched the DNA scanner on a stone pad beside it. ACCESS DENIED flashed. Isabelle requested a manual override and entered her universal access code. The unit’s opaque entrance cleared.

The stench struck her, and she nearly collapsed.

She covered her mouth and nose with her silk scarf and ordered her Janzers inside.

In the center of the unit, a woman hung from a wooden ceiling fan, her body decayed. Isabelle stepped in. With one hand, she held her scarf tight around her face. With the other, she touched the woman’s dress and noted the smooth texture, the style, weaved with the finest Phanean designs, though this gown was Palaestran, as it puffed from the waist down, stitched with orange and brown boxes.

A Janzer turned the body. Maggots crawled out of the woman’s mouth and slipped down the gown. Isabelle recognized her from Connor’s interrogation. She searched Marstone’s Database until a match appeared.

Prior to the interrogation, the database had suggested she’d perished in the year 347 AR. Someone in the BP had forged her file.

“She was a Polemon,” Isabelle told a Janzer, “with Johann Selendia.”

“What now, my lady?”

“Has your team scanned the rest of the unit?”