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

by Zen, Raeden

  “You’re not ready yet, Captain,” Verena said. “Mission protocols require you to rest for—”

  “I’ve had enough rest,” Brody said, in a tone he hoped would ensure agreement. When Nero hesitated, he said, “Striker, fire the missile.” To Verena, he added, “Make sure you’re ready for the next ten jumps.”

  Nero looked to Verena, who shrugged.

  “Executing,” Nero said.

  The missile streaked from the Cassiopeia to a distance of one thousand kilometers and exploded, forcing the exotic matter into a dense pellet. The exotic portal formed, dark but for its colorful rim where exotic matter ended and normal matter— Boom!

  A solar flare burst from the blue star like a lash from a whip.

  Brody felt his heart race. He concentrated his mind-body-cosmos connection and manipulated the ZPF, creating a telekinetic shield around the exotic portal. He simultaneously focused upon the wavefunctions at the Lagrange points in CCCCm E49725674.57-8731594.7, which held the hot Jupiter, and at CCCCm X46782167.67-2179452.2, the next star system on their itinerary.

  Steady, steady—

  “Captain!” Verena yelled. “There’s too much radiation, the temperature around the portal’s too hot for the shuttle, we must divert—”

  Nero forced the shuttle into an evasive maneuver, and it swerved below the exotic portal.

  Brody lost his concentration, and the solar flare slapped the exotic portal, destroying it.

  The explosion sent the Cassiopeia spinning uncontrollably through space, away from the Lagrange point, the blue star, and the hot Jupiter.

  End over end they tumbled, so fast that Brody thought the sustenance he’d consumed intravenously would find a way to escape from his mouth.

  He manipulated the vacuum in space with the ZPF, aiding Nero to steady the shuttle.

  They again settled in the void, pointed away from the angry blue star.

  “Everyone okay?” Brody asked, catching his breath.

  Verena and Nero raised and lowered their heads. Beneath their egg-shaped helmets, their faces looked as ill as Brody felt, their bronze skin as pale as white stars and slick with sweat.

  “Well that was exciting, wasn’t it?” Nero said with a relieved grin. “Why don’t we try again, perhaps this time without burning or crashing,” and when Verena raised her brow, “I’d like to live to smoke leaves another day.”

  Brody laughed. Verena rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide the smile from her face. Nero brought up the coordinates for two more Lagrange points, one of which lay on the dark side of the exoplanet. Brody requested Cassiopeia take them there.

  When they finally arrived, Brody turned to Nero. “Ready when you are.” Nero fired another missile filled with exotic matter. Brody pushed his consciousness outward into the galaxy, and collapsed the wavefunction at the Lagrange point near CCCCm X46782167.67-2179452.2.

  The exotic portal formed, and this time the shuttle entered unimpeded as the quantum particles of the Cassiopeia and the strike team at CCCCm E49725674.57-8731594.7 joined with the particles at CCCCm X46782167.67-2179452.2. On and on they went, star system to star system, and along the way Brody found his strength in the anticipation of the arrival to Vigna. The massive exoplanet would be the most unique of all the worlds they’d see on this cosmic road trip.

  At the star system prior to Vigna, CCCCm A57914678.37-1794256.2, Nero settled the shuttle in a stable orbit at the Lagrange point beside an Earth-like exoplanet. The exoplanet orbited too far from its yellow star to harbor advanced life, its surface covered entirely by ice, its atmosphere a jumble of bright light-yellow clouds, its poles colored reddish-silver.

  When Brody hesitated to issue the launch order to Nero, Verena said, “Captain, what’s wrong?”

  “No matter what happens at Vigna,” Brody said, “I want the two of you to know I won’t let us lose the war with Reassortment, and I won’t let the teams fall into obscurity.” He reached for their hands and squeezed. “Together, my friends, we’re going to lead humanity back to the surface of the Earth.”

  “Yes,” Nero said.

  “Yes,” Verena agreed.

  “When we exit this last portal at Vigna,” Brody continued, “we must act swiftly, retrieve the sample and leave before—” He grimaced, for a soft, yet piercing signal drummed his head. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Verena asked.

  Nero shook his head no. He examined readouts from the Cassiopeia in his extended consciousness.

  The signal rushed into Brody stronger now, jolting him like lightning. It happened two more times.

  The shuttle lingered in the void.

  Nero broke the silence. “It’s a pulsar,” he said, “not a light year from here.”

  Brody narrowed his eyes.

  Verena turned from Nero to Brody. “You don’t think so, do you?”

  “I think it’s time for us to go,” Brody said. “Nero, launch the missile.” Brody pushed his head against his column, exhaled, and closed his eyes, again fixating upon the wavefunction in the present star system and the Vigna system.

  The exotic portal formed and the Cassiopeia shot for it like a dark arrow through space.

  At a distance of five hundred meters to the portal, the signal again interrupted Brody’s connection to the ZPF.

  For a heartbeat he lost his concentration on the quantum particles near Vigna.

  “It’s not a pulsar.” Brody’s blood quickened.

  “What is it?” Nero asked.

  “Or maybe it is, but, it’s being used by … a consciousness.” Brody channeled his mind through the ZPF, refocusing upon the Lagrange point at the Vigna system— The Cassiopeia lost power, again. Darkness covered the hull as methodically and completely as an eclipse.

  “I have no access to Cassiopeia!” Nero said.

  “We must abort!” Verena said.

  “It’s too late!” Brody said. He collapsed the wavefunction as the Cassiopeia entered the portal.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Damosel Rhea

  Research & Development Department (RDD)

  Palaestra, Underground Northeast

  2,500 meters deep

  Damy fled the transport outside the cylindrical Nicola Facility.

  “Wait!” Verne said.

  She glared back and saw him chasing her, the gold buttons on his shirt glinting beneath his transparent lab coat. His neatly creased slacks looked like he’d picked them up from the syncleaners that morning. He didn’t even dress like a scientist.

  “Damy, please.”

  She ran past the Nicola Café, toward the building’s side entrance. Several faces looked up from their morning coffee and media download as she passed. Near the entryway, more scientists in colorful lab coats stared.

  “Damy!” Verne grabbed her elbow. “I’ve never traded mortality contracts! I swear on my honor as a Variscan candidate!”

  She shook him off, staring at his brown-and-yellow striped suspenders. “You’re a filthy, heartless snoop of a trader. That’s what you are! How dare you talk to me about honor?”

  His eyes looked watery. Damy felt a knot in her chest. That Verne seemed as if he might cry didn’t change anything.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I don’t care, I don’t want to talk to you anymore. What happened to my parents is absolutely none of your business, as you should damn well know. Or did the Variscans forget to teach you common courtesy? Gods, if only I’d known what you really are before I requested you last trimester.”

  “Didn’t you know I was a trader?” he said. “Didn’t they tell you?” He searched her face. “The Registration Department didn’t tell you, did they? Someone in Nicola did after I performed so well …”

  The sink to his lips and eyes made her chest even tighter. She steeled herself. “It’s all about you, isn’t it? Verne, Verne, Verne. Well I’ve had about enough of Verne. There are plenty of fresh recruits coming in, one in particular who possesses that rare combination of talent and humility th
at you completely lack.”

  Verne stepped back. Damy relished the look of growing concern on his face.

  “It’s my team, Vernon. Perhaps you’d forgotten?”

  He offered no comeback, no snarky retort. He just stood there, his blue-gray eyes more vulnerable than she’d ever seen. Was this the real Verne, or an imposter?

  She crossed her arms. “What would you do if you were me?”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking, Damy. I should have realized it was a sensitive subject, your parents I mean. I was just … well, I was shocked when I learned about it.”

  During the transport ride from the Research Superstructure to the facility, he told her he’d conducted research in Palaestra City’s archive that morning and discovered a surface excursion led by her parents to the North Pole, plus mortality contracts that traded higher and higher in Navita City prior to their departure and during the mission. The contracts paid aristocratic Beimenians and traders well enough to purchase the rights to entire villages when her parents died from Reassortment exposure.

  An investigation by Lady Isabelle’s department had ruled out either insider trading or foul play, but Damy never believed the DOC report.

  “You know what else is not your business,” Damy said, “me, Brody, the Mission to Vigna. Today’s not the first time you crossed a line.”

  “You’re right, I’m sorry. Look, I … let’s start over, work together. I can be professional.”

  Damy stifled a laugh.

  Verne smiled and drew an X across his chest. “I can! Cross my heart. Besides, it’s the only way we’ll finish Silkscape. And we need to, for both our sakes.”

  That was true enough, for the project had already been delayed longer than the chancellor preferred. More delays could lead to demotion, or worse, a Warning. For while her Mark should protect her, it didn’t seem as if the chancellor was following his own rules any longer, given the censure of the Barão Strike Team.

  “Or,” Verne added, “I could transfer out of your facility—”

  “I never asked for that,” Damy said, more abruptly than she expected. “Why don’t we grab a cappuccino at the café?” After she spoke the words, she couldn’t believe she’d asked him. Part of her hoped he would decline.

  “Sure, I’ll go.”

  Damy squinted and nearly smiled before she plucked one of his suspenders. “You can even wear these in there today.”

  The Nicola Café was carved from quartz and lined with Granville panels that displayed lake scenery, a spring sun, and evergreens. A mixture of coffee beans and pinecones scented the air. Beimenians overflowed the café. Damy nodded to a group of her researchers sitting at a table near the front counter. Verne ignored them, entranced, it seemed, by the multitude of other visitors to the café on this day.

  Amid a steady hum of conversation and clanking trays and glasses, Damy heard murmurs of the Warning and the commonwealth mission. “I heard the chancellor sent a courier during the debriefing,” came one comment, “so I’d say the captain’s done, for sure.” His friend replied, “I purchased more contracts for Vigna than I did during the Jupiter mission.” And on the other side, “How much did you wager?” said a man with a sleeve of animated tattoos. A woman, also tattooed, replied, “Five hundred benaris,” and he answered, “Damn! You crazy, crazy, but I love it! I love it!” Then they kissed.

  Damy felt as if she might vomit. Verne didn’t seem any better.

  “Verne, what is it?” she asked.

  His mouth was wide, but he didn’t speak.

  “Verne?”

  Now he looked the way he had when they’d discovered a new breakthrough in their synbio research, that trader’s grin that Damy hated, a fascination out of place for a visit to the café.

  “Verne—”

  “What’s happening here?” Verne said.

  “Looks like a coffee break to me.”

  “Most Palaestrans wear lab coats, have dark skin, and act more like the bots than transhumans. But today … is … different …”

  Verne and Damy glanced around the café. Women’s chests and backs were covered with animated tattoos of swaying seaweed and fish, their hair flipped and styled, not secured by plastic caps as usual, and the men, most also splayed with colorful animated synisms, wore tank tops, their hair spiked or greased to the sides.

  “Where did these Palaestrans come from?” Verne said.

  Damy accepted an iced cappuccino from a waiter bot and paid. “You didn’t see the South at all before you came here, I take it.”

  Verne gawked at a woman near the counter. An aquamarine shark and glowing dove lined her upper back; her sea blue breasts bounced while she argued with a waiter bot.

  “And I guess you missed the last open house,” Damy said.

  “Open what?”

  “It’s called an open house. These are tourists from other territories, mostly from Piscator and Jurinar and Haurachesa by the looks of them, foul beings they are—”

  “Oh … no … I haven’t seen … I’d recall people like this.”

  “It’s been a while since the board allowed tourists into the department, but the Palaestran economy needs it.”

  Verne seemed intoxicated. “The atmosphere’s uplifting, more real with the tourists … more like—”

  “Home.”

  Verne agreed and swallowed nervously. “You hate all Navitans, don’t you?”

  “I never said that—”

  “Didn’t have to.” Verne grabbed his iced cappuccino. “You want to get out of here—”

  A woman at the table to their left made a loud comment about Brody’s odds of survival. The group laughed. Damy recoiled. “Gods, what is with them?”

  “—take a transport to the lake?” Verne said.

  Damy hesitated. She glanced to the lake scene in the café. She was about to tell him no when Verne said, “I’d understand if you’d rather stay here, meet with the team—”

  “I think I’d prefer to escape from the Piscos for a little bit.” In fact, she sought to escape her team, and Project Silkscape, if only for a while, not the Piscos, but she didn’t want Verne to know this. “It’ll give you an excuse to get out of those ghastly suspenders.”

  Verne smiled, plucked his suspenders with his thumbs, and bounced on the balls of his feet. “I thought you said—”

  “C’mon, I have something in my office you can wear.”

  Palaestra Lake

  Palaestra, Underground Northeast

  Damy wore a prim violet silk dress and strapped sandals, while Verne dressed in a pair of Brody’s charcoal shorts and a gray cutoff T-shirt with the commonly recited strike team vows—FIDELITY WITH HONOR. LOYALTY AND PROTECTION—sewed into the back. Damy could tell Verne felt awkward in the baggy clothes, but she preferred this to his suspenders. Verne had seemed shy changing at her office, in her private bathroom. She found his modesty a bit surprising, and endearing.

  They stepped out onto the boardwalk. The lake crawled with Palaestrans. Perfect bodies, styled hair, manicured and pedicured nails. Damy frowned when she overheard more ruminations over the mission, Beimenians who suggested Brody and his team would be sent to the Lower Level, who discussed their trades, who even hinted that Brody and Verena were sleeping together. She couldn’t escape, not even here!

  She blocked them out, took controlled breaths, and thought: The negativity is your enemy. The enemy is your negativity. Ignore the negativity and defeat your enemy. She couldn’t lose her temper over rumors and innuendo, not without breaking a precept of the chancellor and her oath to the RDD, not without hurting Brody.

  She found herself holding Verne’s hand, wishing it was Brody’s.

  He looked at her through the corners of his eyes.

  Damy felt his stare. She dropped his hand. They removed their sandals, then dipped their bare feet in the latte-colored sand, warm and lenitive, and Damy breathed in the salty air, remembering how much she loved Palaestra Lake, held above them by diamond and carbyne—t
he deepest man-made lake ever designed. She couldn’t recall when Brody last took her here, he was so busy with Reassortment and Regenesis, she with Project Silkscape.

  Verne haggled with the keeper bots at the rental booth. He pointed to Damy, whose dress fluttered in the wind beneath her arms. She held their iced cappuccinos. She heard him say she was a nonresident and his guest. The bots said they had to charge more for them to bring the drinks. Another asked him to confirm his ward, and Verne touched his finger to the DNA scanner. When Verne was accepted, a bot snatched a twenty-benari coin from him, while another emerged from the back with their chairs.

  Flanked by one of the bots, Damy and Verne walked beneath the lake. She admired it, the rush above, the peace below, the pillars, the forever Granville sunset that spread shades of yellow, red, blue, and violet over the sand.

  They ambled over a quartzite path. Forever young golden palm trees shorter than Damy swayed around them. Verne found an unoccupied dune on an unoccupied sandlot near a bed of seaside goldenrod.

  The bot set down their chairs and said, “You have two hours. Enjoy your visit.”

  They thanked the bot. Damy sat and glanced up to the lake, its blue bioluminescence, the blurred image of the true sun, its rays distorted through thousands of meters of water molecules, turned inside out as if part of a kaleidoscope. The view beneath Palaestra Lake was the only true view of the surface from Beimeni. It was strategically placed between the Earth’s five Great Canyons, formerly called Great Lakes. They had dried up before the Second Hundred Years’ War.

  Verne sipped his iced cappuccino and looked up. The bioluminescence turned green, and the seaweed lifted where fish swam to and fro. The lake was bombarded with radiation to protect from Reassortment seepage; the life inside it was created by Granville spheres scattered about.

  “What do you think it would be like to sleep for a few hundred years,” Damy said, “and wake up in Beimeni?”

  “You mean, what would I do if I was Dr. Kole Shrader and awakened to,” Verne spun his forefinger in the air, “all this?” He smiled sadly. “It’d be worse than any nightmare, any hell, any abyss imaginable, at least for me.”