The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2) (27 page)

A woman strutted through an entryway with a group of Polemon, stealing Murray’s and Connor’s attention. Her long hair was slicked behind her ears. Her slender build and bodysuit accentuated her muscles. She had thin lips, a taut body, and a pointed nose. With her amethyst eyes, she looked curiously at Connor.

“Who the hell is this?” she said. “I thought after Zorian we agreed to keep this tight—”

“Who the
hell
are
you?
” Connor said, not unfriendly.

“Connor, meet Aera,” Murray said. “Aera, meet Cornelius Selendia.”

More names flew Connor’s way: Gage, Zoey, Isaiah, Brooklyn, Xander, Lizbeth, and more, men and women who sat around the table with them as if they’d done so a million times before.

“Jeremiah’s boy?” Aera said. She narrowed her eyes. “He looks like he might slow us down.”

“I’ve slaughtered a hundred fifty-kilogram sharks during the peak, at the
fastest
times on the Block,” Connor declared, “and I survived the fever, and I escaped Lady Isa—”

Connor didn’t see Aera spin, didn’t feel her until she’d lifted his arm and thrown him on the ground, where he lay with her knee digging into his chest, her hand beneath his throat.

“
Enough!
” Pirro said. He pointed his cane at Aera. She released Connor. He gagged and Arty lifted him. “Save your energy, girl.” Pirro poked his cane at her.

“Whatever.” Aera waltzed behind the workstation to the head of the table, eyeing Connor as she went. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him.”

“You
are
an aera,” Connor said, between coughs.

“She’s
the
aera,” Murray said.

“The First Aera,” Pirro corrected.

“They say you’re a myth,” Connor said and shook his head. He remembered all the stories from the fishermen on the Block. “They say you perished in the lost territory in the West. They even say you’re a mermaid that rises in the Gulf of Yeuron and strikes fear into men who long for the Pacific Ocean—”

“All lies,” Aera said. She adjusted her belt, and the shuriken sheathed there jingled next to her pulse guns. “Told well, it seems.”

Connor squinted at her. The BP
was
known for its illusions, but she looked just like the legendary Aera, and she certainly moved with the ferocity of one. Then he thought about his journey through the commonwealth with Luke, and another idea struck him.

“You’re the synbio thief!”

Who else could boldly break into the RDD? Who else could provide the synisms the Front required to survive?

“I’m whomever Jeremiah Selendia needs me to be,” she said, seriously and wisely, the way Connor envisioned the First Aera should speak.

“You mentioned Zorian earlier. What did you mean by that? What’s happened to my brother?”

Aera raised her brow, looking at Pirro.

“No more lies!” Connor said.

“We think he might be feeding intel to Lady Isabelle,” Murray said.

“No, you’ve got it wrong. Zorian wouldn’t—”

“Cornelius—” Aera began.

A youthful BP commando burst into the room.

They all turned.

“Luke Locke sends word to the Cavern!” The commando’s stolen military fatigues adjusted to match the room’s hues. “Lady Isabelle attacked the phantom cavern beneath Navita”—
gasp, gasp—
“Much of her army is dead, but she and the lieutenant survived!” Pirro was about to speak when the commando added, “There’s more!” He caught his breath and swallowed. “They’re back! The Barão Strike Team made it home!”

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

Twilight overtook the archways outside Tortonia Station. Damy bounced up and down, too nervous to think straight, while Verne scanned the holographic readouts. She was going to see Brody, her Brody was alive, and when the time was right she would tell him the news.

“A Peanowera-bound transport just arrived on track 35,” Verne said.

“When does it depart?” Damy said.

“We have to go now.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her through the crowd inside the station. They were nearing the tunnel for tracks 26–35 when a youthful boy, an apparent Courier of the Chancellor in a camouflage cape, slipped Verne’s fingers from Damy’s wrist and stealthily dragged her aside.

“Hey!” Verne said. He didn’t see the courier. “Damy! Where’re you going?”

“For you, my lady,” the courier said, handing her a z-disk, “for your eyes only,” and he dissolved into the crowd.

Verne looked anxiously at Damy, at the maglev track, and back to Damy. He drifted to her. “All you, sister,” he said. “If we miss this one, not me, can’t blame me!”

“I’m not your sister!”

“It’s a figure of speech!”

“Calm yourself! I have an important message!” She extended her consciousness. The entrance to the transport solidified. It hummed from the station, and the new line was soon twenty deep. Verne put his hands on his hips and sighed.

“They never made it to the Outer Boundary Village,” Damy said. “They were held up in quarantine in Boreas.”

“Oh,” Verne said, almost hopeful, “what went wrong?”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Damy paused. She rolled the message through her extended consciousness. “It’s more than okay.” Her tone lifted. “They’ve been cleared for entry.”
A conclave.
She couldn’t contain herself. The message included a receive receipt and required a response:

Her mind raced, and the YES and NO boxes glowed at the same time.

She corrected the error, and the YES box winked gold.

She grabbed Verne’s hand. “C’mon.” She pulled him out of the station and down the golden marble stairs, then onto the wooden North Boardwalk that smelled of caramel and nuts. “Change of plans.”

“What Damy, what change?”

“I’ve been recalled to the Brezner Building for a conclave of the supreme scientific board.”

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

“You can’t expect us to believe this report,” Supreme Scientist Dorian Knox said.

He stroked his deep red beard thoughtfully. A hologram hung in front of the mercury pool, created from Brody’s mind. He’d just finished his review of the journey. When he’d found out the chancellor would host a conclave at the Brezner Building, he’d prepared his presentation based on memories stored in his neurochip.

“Why would I lie?” Brody said.

He closed his eyes and shut down the imagery. The keeper bots that transposed meeting minutes for the official record shifted the carbyne-and-glass trellis overhead from opaque to transparent. The Granville sun’s rays sprayed the red rose petals splayed over the pool.

The board members, who wore light blue robes and enough synthetic gems to buy all of Underground East, accepted hors d’oeuvres from the bots. Brody smelled the fried fish, but though he loved Piscatorian seafood, he declined. He couldn’t eat until the vote, until the board awarded his team the Marks and reaffirmed their standing on the Reassortment research team.

“I agree,” said Supreme Scientist Nasha Ele. “No man or woman could possibly travel inside a planet to its core and survive.” Nasha’s blackish-purple hair was lifted to a clip at the top of her head, which organized the strands into thicker bands that swirled over her back and dangled near her waist. She rubbed one of those bands between her thumb and forefinger and accepted a glass of Phanean wine. “Put yourself in our places, Captain.” She sipped her wine. “We hear stories of elephant-sized insects and beasts and birds, of layered temperature inversions, of Gemini whom threw you into a river … I can’t help but believe the exposure altered your senses—”

“The Lorum uses the zeropoint field in ways we don’t understand,” Brody said, “lives in a form foreign to us, but that doesn’t make its existence or its power less real.”

“That’s not the point,” Prime Minister Decca said, pressing a toothpick between his teeth. “What proof do you have of this journey to Vigna’s heart?”

“You mean aside from the Lorum orb?” Damy said, “or the follow-up transmissions through Candor Chasma’s ansible?”

“Stealing a metal orb and receiving a few transmissions confirms nothing.” Decca tilted his head, not unkindly. “And you of all people should realize the impossibility of what the Barão Strike Team claims—”

“It’s not just a metal orb,” Minister Genevieve Sineine said. The Borean minister had greeted Brody and the team upon their release from quarantine in Area 55. She pressed her hands together and shook them near her chin. “I could
feel
its connection to the ZPF—”

“
All
matter that exists from the Big Bang is connected to the ZPF,” Supreme Scientist Vanya Canis put in. “That proves nothing.” Her venomous voice didn’t surprise Brody, for she’d developed with Antosha in preparation for the Harpoon Exams at House Adao.

“You can have the memory transfer from our neurochips,” Brody said before Vanya could spread more doubt. “That data capture has always sufficed in the past. Why shouldn’t it now?”

“I agree, we should rely on the facts,” Minister Tethys Charles suggested, “and after that we can let Marstone mine his team’s memories, or put them under Chief Justice Carmen’s scrutiny. A hearing—”

“Will not be pursued,” Masimovian said, “not today.”

That the chancellor denied Tethys’s request surprised Brody, for a hearing with Chief Justice Carmen could definitively end all arguments over his mission log.

“Let me tell you what I can’t believe,” Brody said. “I can’t believe that a supreme scientist,” he nodded to Heywood Querice, “would withhold information to a commonwealth mission.” Brody turned to Heywood. “The board demands to know what you knew about the Lorum, when you knew it, and why my team was left out of the process—”

“Captain, you speak for yourself,” Knox said, “not the board.”

Brody ignored him and stared at Heywood. That Masimovian didn’t interfere forced Heywood’s response. The supreme scientist of the Huelel Facility swayed his head and pressed his lips together, and in a tone that bordered on apathy, he said, “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about—”

“Don’t!” Brody said. “You sent us to that exoplanet and told us you required a sample from a particular liquid, though you left out the part about the Lorum—”

“Captain Barão,” Masimovian interrupted, “where were
you
on this?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why didn’t you conduct due diligence, examine the ansible transmissions sent from Mars, as any capable Beimeni captain would have done, covered more than the basics of atmospheric composition, temperature, surface pressure, topography, weather, and the like. Why would you require Heywood to do your job?”

Brody balled his hand into a fist, swiped his mouth, and contemplated a proper response. “Chancellor,” he said, “no one could decipher the Lorum’s transmissions in the ansible, and either way, I confirmed with Captain Holcombe that the signals had ceased. Heywood left out of his mission protocols any indication that the sample he desired could’ve been the advanced species with which we lost contact, an oversight that could’ve ruined our mission—”

“I’ll not sit here and take another second of this baseless, illogical, categorically
false
accusation that I purposefully and maliciously misrepresented mission protocols.” Heywood rose and stalked toward the exit.

“Sit down,” Chancellor Masimovian said. “I’ll not allow a supreme scientist to walk out on a conclave.”

Two of the bots escorted Heywood back to his spot at the mercury pool, while their partners furiously transcribed the meeting minutes into data streams above their workstations.

Brody didn’t know what to think. Was this a planned deception? If so, was the chancellor in on it? Did Heywood even know the metal river was the Lorum?

A bot held a tray near Chancellor Masimovian, who accepted a glass filled with wine. “Chancellor,” Brody said, less brashly, “now is not the time for division among us. With the Lorum, we have our way out of the planet and an interstellar alliance with a being as evolved as transhumans in many respects, but as basic as extremophiles in the Earth’s interior in others.”

“What does that mean?” Masimovian said. He sniffed his glass, then sipped his wine. “I tire of your riddles, Captain. Speak swiftly and honestly.”

Brody stood, pushed his light blue robe to his sides, and stepped to the workstation in front of the mercury pool, across from Masimovian at the other end. Above a Granville sphere, a humanoid shell formed in the colors of the Lorum, swirls of gold, scarlet, black, silver, and yellow. The humanoid disappeared, replaced by geometric shapes and symbols that represented its molecular structure.

Masimovian leaned forward and caressed the stubble of his beard. “What is this?”

“
This
could be the resolution to the Reassortment enigma. It could send us back to the surface.”

Brody shifted the hologram from the Lorum’s molecular structure to a city with ivory skywalks, greenery, and reservoirs beneath a transparent terradome. It was Sky City, the city built on the surface over a hundred years ago by Supreme Scientist Ninara Granville, she of Granville panel, sky, and sphere fame, who had been demoted and later perished in obscurity after Chancellor Masimovian tired of her failures—and exiled her to the Lower Level.

May her soul rest in peace
, Brody thought,
and may I see her project to completion
.

“No dome we now utilize can withstand Reassortment, at least not for an extended time,” he said.

The problem, as ever, was not just that Reassortment permeated the Earth’s atmosphere, but that it also seeped throughout the Earth’s soil. Brody didn’t know how or why Reassortment penetrated the terradomes, though it was clear that through some osmotic, diffusive process, from the ground or the air, it consistently and thoroughly corrupted every terradome ever built.