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

by Zen, Raeden

  Then he heard a voice.

  “Brody.”

  He heard his name, called quickly as if from the trees. He sheathed his sword and grasped his pulse gun. “Verena?” he said, though he suspected the voice wasn’t hers. Sparkles of light materialized near a distant tree trunk. “This cannot be,” Brody said, for the Gemini formed, one by one, ethereal and unreal, all 346 Gemini created in Brody’s likeness over the years for clinical trials in treatments to thwart Reassortment: the Gemini on whom Brody’s treatments failed.

  He stepped back. The Gemini spread out and dashed throughout the jungle, blending with the tree trunks, which turned bright blue, blending with the sky and starlight.

  “Brody.”

  The protohumans surrounded him, and one of them spoke to him, loud and unafraid and alive. Brody darted between the plants and tripped over one of the amphibians. The animal turned around and opened its mouth and bared its countless sharp blue teeth. Then it sprinted into the colorful flora.

  “This isn’t real,” Brody said, holding his arms to the sky. “You aren’t here!”

  “You’re a failure.”

  The Gemini spoke in unison.

  “Failure!”

  One of the Gemini emerged from behind a tree, and Brody ran to it, but after he swung around the trunk, he saw nothing but bright light.

  He breathed in the mossy, humid, herbal air.

  “Failure!”

  Another Gemini poked out its head, and Brody ran to it, but again, nothing there.

  “Failure!”

  From behind the trees emerged 346 faces that looked almost like Brody’s.

  “Failure!” they said and disappeared.

  He sprinted to a clearing and dropped to his knees. “I did all that I could to save you!” Or was it to save humanity? Or was it to save himself? He covered his face and noted a glow from his eyes illuminating his hands. Something’s using the ZPF against us.

  He stood. “Where’s Verena!” He turned. “Where’s Nero!”

  The Gemini materialized from behind the trees, one after another, leisurely surrounding Brody. They locked arms, rotating and swaying, and one of them chanted something incomprehensible before they swarmed him, lifted him above their heads, and passed him along their train. He writhed. I won’t give in, he sent, if anything happens to my team, I’ll hold the Lorum accountable!

  The protohumans didn’t listen. Blue sapphire sparks burst around him, and an ivory fur hide materialized in which the Gemini wrapped him and carried him toward the aqua river. The Gemini threw him far from shore, and the current dragged him, down, down, down. Organisms no longer or wider than a benari coin, streaked with white phosphorescent light that looked electric, swam over and around the fur, his synsuit, his face, neck, and hair.

  He escaped the fur, broke through the surface, and gasped. He twisted and turned. Both shores were distant, and the current was strong, rolling over stones with waves as tall as he. He steadied himself on his back and crossed his arms and bobbed in the water as it took him downstream. The light emitted from the organisms obscured his view at times, but it didn’t harm or discomfort him. The water was as warm as Vigna’s jungle. The harder he pushed his legs, the more, it seemed, the river fought against him. When he relaxed, it carried him along.

  The crystalline cliffs neared, and Brody grabbed on to a stone that jutted from the water. He gasped. The waves gushed against him with increasing force until he lost his grip and spun over the top of the river and tumbled down the falls.

  The first level dropped several meters. Brody landed on his elbow, protected by the water and his synsuit. He kicked up through bubbles, seaweed, and vines and thrust himself up for air.

  The clouds reformed within the temperature inversion below, and he couldn’t see the next rim. How far would he fall? He grabbed hold of vines outgrown from the cliffs, but with the water’s insistent current and his lack of grip, he tumbled onward, through the clouds, to the next level.

  He splashed and bobbed into a basin along the cliff side, its edge lined with a substance that reminded him of Earth’s stromatolite formations, outgrowths upon stone synthesized by bacteria. He lunged out of the water for another gulp of Vigna’s tangy air until it pushed him under again and down the alabaster falls. All he heard was the crashing and rushing of water as it took him through another layer of colorful clouds broken here and there by scarlet and magenta rays.

  He fell through the fog and into a sea colored with many shades of violet, red, and green, which provided more light here than Vigna’s three stars. Mist in the distance. He turned and gazed up at the falls behind him. Brody contemplated what led him here, for he knew the Gemini couldn’t have thrown him in the river. They couldn’t be on Vigna, could they? Of course not, he thought. It’s the Lorum, using some other life form on this planet for its will. Or were they the Lorum?

  He sensed uneasiness in the ZPF, an energy signature similar to what he’d felt in the shuttle with the pulsar, and during the descent to Vigna, but less concentrated, unsure, as if the Lorum feared him and his team more than they feared it.

  He searched his memories of Candor Chasma, of his and Antosha’s sessions beneath the terradome on Mars. They stood on terraformed soil as two beads in the universe. What did the Lorum tell him? Brody knew there was something, some revelation that excited Antosha, who was convinced he understood the transmissions where no one else did. But Brody’s memories blurred from those years. It had been better to block them out than reconcile them, perhaps.

  “Your actions led to the most underground deaths in the RDD in the Age of Masimovian,” Chief Justice Carmen had ruled at one of Antosha’s hearings. “You will never again set foot in the Beimeni zone of the underground.”

  Brody shook off thoughts of the dead scientists and Antosha. He rubbed his face. What did the Lorum tell Antosha? Brody thought. What did Antosha assure me? Or was it something left unsaid he should remember? He waded through the water to the basin’s edge and climbed out. The land here wasn’t filled with the overgrowth he’d encountered above. His breath puffed in clouds. The air, while humid, was much cooler than near the shuttle.

  Was his mind affected by Vigna’s atmosphere, its high oxygen concentration and low pressure? The first symptoms of oxygen toxicity included chest pain, Brody knew, but he felt better than he had in decades, with enough energy to take on all the Reassortment organisms in Earth’s atmosphere himself. Brody again sought the ZPF but couldn’t connect. Were the Lorum blocking him? Why? Nero … Verena, where are you? He projected his mind into the world as he had infinite times before, though he suspected he spoke only to himself.

  A path of dark stone shards led to the left. Brody didn’t want to find out what lay in that direction. He moved the opposite way and reached for his sword, but it was no longer sheathed across his back. His supply pack had also been dislodged during his trip down the falls. With no water, no food, no weapons, no team, he sat on a boulder. When did his eternal life fall apart? Was it when he took over for Jeremiah Selendia as Supreme Scientist of Regenesis? Or when he purchased Antosha Zereoue at the Harpoon Auction?

  My ascent didn’t cause this, Brody thought, and neither did Heywood, an obvious catspaw—but for whom did Heywood act and to what end?

  Brody sprang to his feet. Whatever choices had brought him to this point, it would be his choices here and now that got him out of this mess. He rounded the cliffs—and gasped. Colorful light on all sides blinded him. He protected his eyes as he would from the Granville sun. The gold, scarlet, black, silver, and yellow radiant matter spun counterclockwise as it rowed up the cliffs and through the temperature inversions overhead, where clouds broke apart in many layers up the cliffs. He extended his hand, though he didn’t know how he would secure a sample or ascend back to the shuttle. He moved closer. He heard whispers.

  “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “You aren’t wanted here.”

  “Ver
ena?” He spun left and right and back and forth. “Nero?”

  “I feel your fear.”

  This was the answer to the mystery of Vigna and the mystery of Nero and Verena’s location. He turned toward the flowing metallic matter.

  “I’m not afraid.”

  The liquid fired out tentacles that pulled Brody into its current, and he flew up the side of the cliff, ever faster, through three cloud layers and into the landmass. He spun and twisted, and the liquid stripped his synsuit from his body.

  My death is assured, Brody thought. His body could never handle such a rapid change in atmosphere and pressure without protection.

  He landed in a lagoon, gasping, heaving, but alive. How he survived he didn’t know. The air wasn’t as pure as on the Vignan surface, a bit more saline, but it was breathable. His eyes took in the gold, scarlet, black, silver, and yellow metallic substance that drooped down gemstone walls around the perimeter. Light blue, yellow, and green hues reflected off the interior’s crystals. It was as if he stood inside a geode on the Earth.

  The organic substance that had carried him up the cliff slithered in streaks away from the wall.

  Brody found a slab of stone and lifted himself onto it.

  The substance bubbled and spun.

  Through all his decades of travel and research, from the depths of Beimeni to the canyons of Earth, the mountains of Mars, the fiery hell of Venus, and the frozen oceans of Europa, Brody had never seen anything that compared to the insides of Vigna or this life form. It curled around him like a spider web until it covered him, completely and thoroughly, inside and out.

  Brody choked and grabbed his throat.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  He fell to the ground and lay unconscious.

  When he woke, he was descending even quicker than before, ever faster, into a tunnel, it seemed, and into a sea of stone, down through Vigna’s crust. The substance carried him faster, farther, until he lost all sense of time.

  He looked up. Above him lay the bottom of Vigna’s crust, he assumed, a world of inverted peaks and valleys and mountains, pushed down into what must be the beginning of Vigna’s mantle. He was cocooned by another organic barrier, though this one allowed him to breathe, then thrown even deeper, where the wintergreen stone heated and melted, rising, falling in a convective manner. It crept up, cooled, sank, heated, rose, and fell, like him, toward the center of Vigna.

  Brody assumed he’d traveled hundreds of kilometers into the exoplanet now, for he was surrounded by gemstones—diamonds, he assumed, though there was no way for him to know for sure. Transhumans could never survive here, not even in a synsuit. Somehow the current kept him alive. Down, down, down, kilometer after kilometer of heated wintergreen rock and finally into what seemed … liquid … a vast underground ocean! Slabs of Vigna’s crust folded atop one another, layer after layer of this exoplanet’s geological history for Brody to experience, until he descended even farther, closer to the center of the labyrinth, the edge of Vigna’s outer core, lit with molten radioactive hues, where bits of rock floated out toward the mantle’s underside, appearing not unlike upward-melting snow.

  A corridor shifted in the snow, and Brody floated into the core.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Isabelle Lutetia

  Beimeni City

  Phanes, Underground Central

  2,500 meters deep

  The preparations are complete, Lady Isabelle sent, her arms raised, her chameleon cape fluttering around her legs and boots. She stood in the center of the Cerebral Core in the DOC to ensure a secure connection with her beloved Antosha. Your voyage across the Infernus Sea is but hours away.

  And my control over Project Regenesis, is that secured? Antosha sent.

  Not yet … soon. Isabelle lowered her arms.

  We must awaken Dr. Shrader at once!

  It took much effort to get you back to the commonwealth.

  Which I appreciate. But the Barão Strike Team will fail on Vigna and give the Lorum access to our genome. That should concern you, my lady.

  Isabelle shook her head and folded her arms. This evening will go down in history as the night when you returned to our great city to a welcome worthy of a supreme scientist, and the night the Liberation Front fell. Let that be enough for now.

  I wonder if you truly understand the power of the Lorum.

  I understand more than you know. We will discover what Dr. Shrader can tell us about the Reassortment Strain. But first we must mend your relationship with the people. It will take some time, after your exile.

  The truth was that Isabelle didn’t know if the people would ever accept Antosha. If they didn’t, she’d be prepared to lead the Great Commonwealth herself.

  I wonder if you’ve risked too much.

  The gambit will succeed, my love. Isabelle checked the time on her armlet. Now I must depart for Navita, but I’ll return to Phanes in time for your arrival.

  May the gods be with you.

  Artemis Square

  Beimeni City, Phanes

  Isabelle counted four thousand Janzers and five hundred tenehounds. She could hear herself breathe in a place normally bustling with minstrels, commoners, shopkeepers, and aristocrats. In the First and Second Wards, cautious Phaneans watched from balconies and terraces, some nude, others dressed in silken capes or tunics. Isabelle nodded to the people, turning her head. I will protect your way of life, she thought. I’ll ensure the great city never falls to the BP and anarchy.

  Tonight she would bring the Front to an end and fulfill her place in the commonwealth’s rich history. The city’s librarian bots would write how she saved the people from the BP, ushering in a new era of peace, prosperity, and the Beimeni way. They would write how she and Antosha led the people to the surface of the Earth. And the people would chant her name.

  The Janzer lines parted, revealing Lieutenant Arnao. He bowed deeply. “My lady, the contingency plans are set. The equipment is in position, as is your army. We will deliver death to the Beimeni Polemon.”

  Isabelle patted her former courier’s jaw. “Sometimes you’re not such a waste.”

  She hand-signaled the Janzers, and in response they smashed their boots to the ground, left, right. They streamed across the square and onto North Boardwalk toward Tortonia Station, where military transports hummed, ready to depart.

  The march to the transports reminded Isabelle of the departure prior to the invasion into Haurachesa Territory. For all the difficulty involved in its maintenance, Beimeni’s southernmost territory had been an important part of the commonwealth, once viewed as the launch point for expansion into South America. Though it had been inaccessible through the land at first, owing to seismic activity, Chancellor Masimovian demanded the RDD’s engineers find a way to penetrate the bedrock from the sea, and it was from the sea that Isabelle’s forces had entered Port Newland, then Hautervian City, and the maze of tunnels below.

  She sighed. She had lost two hundred Janzers in that battle and expected similar losses below Navita today. A Janzer cost about five million benaris to produce, a significant figure in the Beimenian economy in recession. Isabelle seethed inside thinking about the better use of one billion benaris: investments in the commonwealth’s shanty wards, transport systems, villages, coolant piping, synbio research, and in Harpoon education.

  Gods, how she hated the BP.

  The Hautervian system of tunnels was not unlike those the Janzers had recently displayed for her beneath Navita Territory. She’d had the bedrock adjacent to and below Navita City searched before, but never so thoroughly. It took more than forty days from her and Atticus’s first conversation about Navita to gather the necessary tradecraft. She’d sent the Janzers under the guise of diggers, drawing up plans for an expansion of Navita Territory, a long-held wish for Minister Orosiris. Isabelle could have dispensed with the secrecy if she wished, but the last thing she wanted was to tip her hand to the Polemon, giving them time to run.

  During the surgical searches, they’d discovere
d what they believed were the beginnings of a vast labyrinth, one that they hypothesized could hold hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Polemon. She’d ordered the Janzers to return to Phanes at once and indicated to Minister Orosiris that more detailed work would have to be done on the structural integrity of the territory prior to expansion.

  Isabelle approached her transport, ebony and painted with doves. She latched herself next to Arnao and closed her eyes, imagining the Earth’s surface. The day she and Antosha breathed fresh air under true sky, this would all be worth it.

  Navita City

  Navita, Underground East

  Isabelle and Lieutenant Arnao stepped out of the transport at Induan Station onto the platform of a roofless station under a starry night sky. This city was unique in the commonwealth, layered down the limestone—not unlike the manner in which a city would’ve been built into a mountainside on the Earth’s surface—fortified with carbyne and diamond. The cold water from the commonwealth’s coolant piping flowed down the city’s layers, branching out into thirty-seven sinuous streams. The streams combined at the city’s midpoint, draining into the Archimedes as the Great Falls of Navita. Where Isabelle and Arnao stood near the city’s top layer, the air was humid, reeking like ocean and garbage, rising with the heat. Holograms along the walls depicted the bid-and-ask prices for contracts on goods, services, and speculations, the value of shares on the Beimeni Contract Exchange.

  “I might stay a while after we’re done here,” Arnao said. His teeth settled on his lower lip, his eyes distracted by working girls along the station’s exterior. Isabelle ignored him. The girls and the traders they wooed disappeared when the first lines of Janzers marched through.