by Zen, Raeden
They discussed more of the logistics, when and where Damy would need to arrive for her treatments and checkups, how neither Damy nor Brody should see their twins after they arrive in Halcyon Village, at least not until the days leading into the Harpoons, in order to ensure a smooth transition. They received digital forms to complete for the Harpoons, with a line for the most important information of all, the names for the boy and girl.
“Oh,” Damy said, “we’ve only just begun to think about the names.”
Brody spoke softly to Damy. “I liked our choices this morning, the top ones for boy and girl.”
Damy smiled and said, “Pasha for our boy and Oriana for our girl.”
“Wonderful, I love their names,” Tim said. “May the gods be with you during your pregnancy and with your twins during their development and the Harpoons and the auction.”
On Brody and Damy’s approach to Tortonia Station, amid thousands of Phaneans who shopped and chatted in the bazaar, a child flew through the crowd, a Courier of the Chancellor. His dark mohawk reminded Brody of his striker, Nero Silvana, the newly named lord of Palaestra City’s Neptune District.
“Captain,” the boy said. Brody gasped. “For you, for your eyes only.” He disappeared into the crowd.
“No,” Damy said. She stomped her foot. “What is this madness from Chancellor Masimovian?”
Brody had recently returned from a commonwealth mission designated by the Office of the Chancellor, in which each member of his team had earned the elusive Mark of Masimovian, the marks for significant conversion, the highest level of scientific achievement in the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni.
Brody must not agree to go on another mission, Damy thought, not this soon, not with Antosha Zereoue back in the RDD.
Brody accessed the z-disk in his extended consciousness and lowered his head. He crushed the z-disk in his hand.
“What is it?” Damy said. “What could the chancellor possibly want now?”
“He’s sending me to the Judgment Center for a hearing with Chief Justice Carmen.”
ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
2,500 meters deep
The courier’s z-disk didn’t indicate how long the hearing would last, though it had already been hours, with no end in sight. Chief Justice Carmen reviewed all aspects of the Mission to Vigna. Brody found it odd that he kept circling back to the exposure, as if this violation of the Fourteenth Precept would somehow undo his Mark. The chancellor wouldn’t dare, Brody assured himself during a brief reprieve.
Carmen’s eyes moved rapidly back and forth as he rummaged through his extended consciousness from his perch at the center of the dark onyx dais. His hands were folded, his silver wool robe was slung around his neck and the rest of his body. A maroon insignia of the Office of the Judiciary hung over his garb. The remaining judges, four to the left and four to the right, seemed like his clones, even the women. Their skin, dark and blotched with discolorations, folded in wrinkles over their faces and necks and hands. While they all were given a life term on the Great Court, they weren’t eligible for athanasia treatments in Fountain Square, which provided Homo transition its theoretically infinite lifespan. As an unregistered child, Brody had heard about their emotionless and unforgiving approach to justice; having escaped it when he was ten true years old, he never imagined he’d find himself here now.
Three Janzers stood in front of the dais, and General Norrod and Lady Isabelle loomed on maroon marble podiums on either side. The general wore a Beimeni beret, black with a phoenix feather sewed upon the front, along with a dark suit with golden buttons lining the left side. A pin shaped as the Flag of Beimeni surrounded by an iron hand, the insignia of the Department of Peace, hung upon his right breast. Now and then he twitched his long mustache or shook his head, but never did he object to Carmen’s questioning, which was part of his role. Isabelle, wearing a Phanean gown lined with pearls, hadn’t stirred during the entire hearing.
Brody, Nero, and Verena sat side by side on wooden chairs. The sweat under their armpits was visible, and their faces were as flushed as the lamps overhead. The wires attached to their arms and legs and chests burned like cinders. A manufactured breeze wafted in, filled with the stench of wood, tinged with a rot comparable to Beimeni’s sewer system. Brody didn’t recall it smelling so bad during Antosha’s public hearing some fifteen years ago. Why would a private hearing differ?
“Captain Barão,” Carmen was saying. He looked all of his eighty-five years and spoke loudly enough for all of Phanes to hear. “I’d like to review the atmospheric failure.”
Again, Brody thought.
“In your report to the Office of the Chancellor, you noted: ‘An electromagnetic burst in the zeropoint field disabled the Cassiopeia and we crash-landed in the Vignan jungle canopy. When we awakened, the atmospheres in our helmets failed, and initially we couldn’t locate the spares. We believe the Lorum altered our perception of reality, preventing us from finding them. We suspect it did this knowing we’d search for our fallen comrade, Striker Nero Silvana, and that it would pull us to the planet’s core; to do so, it covered us with itself, stripping our interstellar synsuits. It knew the only way we’d make it back to the Earth was if we had usable spares to wear after our emergence upon the surface.’ Is this accurate?”
“Yes, Your Exalted.”
Carmen activated a z-disk. Above a Granville sphere between the Barão Strike Team and the judges emerged a hologram of the Mosaic Consortium headquarters in Beimeni City, concealed by opal bricks and a glass enclosure with a bright blue light that read MOSAIC, WHERE DREAMS BECOME REALITY.
A man dressed in a biomat spun through a revolving glass entrance. He held out his hand, and the Beimeni Commonwealth space helmet materialized above his palm. “In the event of an atmospheric failure, tiny bulbs, here,” he smoothed his forefinger over the helmet’s base, “light up orange, and a backup reservoir on the side activates.” The images of the headquarters, the scientist, and the helmet then disintegrated into granules and dispersed.
“Captain Barão,” Carmen said, now speaking as if scolding a child in development, “will you sit before the Great Court and repeat your prior comment? Or is there more information you think we should know?”
“I stand by my prior comment. The helmets warned us as this man described, the failure ensued, and we removed our helmets in order to survive.” Perspiration gushed down Brody’s chest.
“No evidence exists of this purported atmospheric failure in the shuttle log.” Carmen looked side to side, observing his fellow judges with what might’ve been a smile or a sneer. Brody couldn’t tell. “In addition, many on this dais view the action of an alien hiding your spare synsuits differently. It’s likely the alien viewed your team as invaders—”
“Saviors, Your Exalted,” Brody said. “The Lorum viewed us as their last chance for survival.”
“Why?”
“Without the extremophiles from the Earth, the Lorum will join the category of extinct species like so many others in the universe before it.” Brody hadn’t been entirely truthful to the court. He’d left out of his report the part about the Lorum’s transmigration during his Mark ceremony when the desperate species had connected to his mind and threatened to pull his consciousness to their planet if he failed to uphold the treaty terms he’d negotiated. In return for his team’s freedom from captivity in the exoplanet’s core, Brody promised to send the Lorum the extremophiles from inside the Earth that they required to survive. The Lorum had sent Brody back to Earth with an orb that contained their species, which Brody hoped to use to descend to the Earth’s core and retrieve the extremophile prey. But the chancellor had assigned the Mission to the Earth’s Core to Antosha. Brody had hypothesized that the presence of the Lorum orb in Area 55 had facilitated interstellar communication between the Lorum on Vigna to the Lorum on Earth and ultimately to him at the ceremony. So he designed a z-wall to hinde
r telepathic communications in the ZPF and placed it around the Lorum orb. He didn’t trust Antosha to fulfill the treaty terms; he also couldn’t let the Lorum interfere with his work on Project Reassortment.
“An explanation with some logic, perhaps,” Carmen was saying. He lightly tapped his gavel. “Or perhaps the Lorum preferred invaders of its land to expose their bodies to its environment? Have you thought of that, Captain?” When Brody tried to speak, the chief justice cut him off. “Moreover, Captain, have you thought of why the chancellor wrote the Fourteenth Precept?”
Brody knew the reason, to protect from pathogenic or other unseen contamination. He didn’t respond. He wouldn’t take the bait.
Carmen swiped his wrinkly jowls. “No, without direct, observable evidence of what you suggest, we are left to assume that you admit you broke a precept of your chancellor.”
“We did what we did to survive. Those lights activated, and I know when I’m suffocating. I know what that feels like, Your Exalted. I know because unlike you, I trained for the Harpoons, and on one occasion I was accidentally shoved deep down into a pool until my world turned black.” A whiff of sewage tickled Brody’s nose and throat, and he coughed. If the smells were meant to influence his mind, he wouldn’t allow it. “I know, Your Exalted, that we were about to die.”
“That’s an impressive speech, Captain. I have to admit that none on this panel give a hoot what you endured during your development. You think you’re unique? You think you underwent some process unknown to the rest of Beimeni or this panel? We all served for twenty years as Couriers of the Chancellor. We all took our civil service exams, which some have suggested are more challenging than the Harpoons. We too could have ended up serving the commonwealth in the Lower Level if we’d not scored high enough on those exams. Yet we, and all Beimenians, follow the law. Do you think that because you’re a supreme scientist that you’re above the chancellor’s precepts?”
“I understand the law—”
“I would hope so. What I’ll say is that we’ve received official testimony from Mosaic and from other strike teams and from other supreme scientists, and in no case can we find a situation where exposure to a foreign atmosphere occurred, readily and willingly. Except here you sit and lie that you had no choice but to break a vital precept of your chancellor designed for the protection of more than three hundred million citizens—”
“I never—”
Carmen raised his voice. “You’re not above the commonwealth.”
“I told you—” Brody choked. “The truth! What would you have us do in that situation! You have these wires attached to me and my team! You’ve made it stink worse than a rotting corpse in here! Marstone’s in our head!” He turned to Lady Isabelle. “You tell the chancellor if he has an issue with my team, he doesn’t need to go through this court! He should’ve contacted me himself!”
“Don’t speak as you would to a neophyte,” Carmen countered. Brody faced him. “We both know someone with your skill in the zeropoint field can elude our systems.” The judges on either side of Carmen mumbled and nodded to each other. Carmen paused, awaiting silence, then, “Captain, I reach a single conclusion based on your testimony and that of your team from the evidence in our possession: you made a conscious decision to disobey one of the sacred precepts of our supreme chancellor Atticus Masimovian, he who will always—”
“No! I saved my team from certain death so that we might complete the chancellor’s mission!”
“Precepts are precepts! You will not interrupt me again or I will hold you in contempt of your chancellor!”
Brody didn’t react. The heat, the repugnant air that made him cough, the wires in his skin, the chief justice’s tone—it all combined in a pernicious mix upon his body, and he desired nothing more than to smash his fists on the dais. He licked his chapped lips.
Don’t accept this, he thought.
“There must be a reckoning for your haphazardness, Captain. What would happen if we did nothing? What would the other teams think?” Carmen activated a Granville sphere that lay before him and telepathically signed page after page of the electronic decision decree. He wrapped his wrinkled hand around his wooden gavel. “Supreme Scientist Broden Barão, by the power vested in me by the supreme chancellor of Beimeni and the supreme ministry, and the gods, I regret to inform you that you and your team will no longer be part of Project Regenesis—”
“Your Exalted, that won’t be—”
Carmen slammed his gavel on the dais three times, each one like a pulse blast fired through Brody’s chest.
“Hearing adjourned!”
Brody jolted off the chair. The needles ripped out of his arms, his blood oozed down his skin, and wires flailed as he lunged for the dais.
Nero and Verena joined him, their blood spurting out from where the needles once pierced.
Two Janzer divisions emerged from behind the dais and held Brody and his team back.
“You can give him Regenesis!” Brody said, spittle flying from his mouth. “You can give him the Tomahawk Facility, but Antosha Zereoue will NOT take Project Reassortment.”
“Captain, you will restrain yourself,” Norrod said.
The general waved off the Janzers, who let Brody and his team go and accompanied the Lady Isabelle. She pranced beside the judges as they made their way out, her gown sweeping the marble floor behind her.
“General, you have to—”
Norrod put up his hand. “Broden, I don’t care. Let me tell you something. There’s a bigger mission. It’s in the works. I’m lobbying for you. These outbursts won’t help. Go home. Relax. Spend time with your woman. Got it?”
“What could be bigger than Reassortment?” Brody spoke above Norrod. “You listen to me, General, I won’t let Antosha take Reassortment from my team—”
“Who said anything about Antosha?” The general sighed. He squeezed Brody’s shoulders. “For all your many years since the team-training days, you’ve been loyal and productive, a true strike team captain. Vastar Alalia would’ve been proud of you.”
Vastar was the last commander of the strike teams, killed in 273 AR, the teams were told, by the Reassortment Strain during a surface excursion gone wrong. Brody didn’t think a commander of the strike teams would’ve allowed his demotion. In fact, Brody thought it might’ve led to a civil war.
He forced Norrod’s hands away from him. “Vastar Alalia would’ve upheld strike team autonomy,” Brody said. While the commander avoided open conflict with the chancellor, he wasn’t afraid, at times, to push back against commonwealth overreach. It had led to an uneasy alliance between him and Masimovian. “Vastar wouldn’t have even allowed a hearing—”
“He would’ve wanted peace,” Norrod interrupted, “don’t forget that. Don’t let that change. Keep the commonwealth and teams united.” He ducked his head toward Verena and Nero, who stood obediently, arms folded, sweat and blood leaking through their tanned bodysuits. “Get your team together. Celebrate. You’ve earned it.”
Celebrate a demotion? Brody was livid, but he nodded, put his arms around Verena and Nero, and led them away.
“And, Captain,” Norrod said.
Brody turned.
The general held his right hand over his heart. “Serve Beimeni …”
“Live forever.” Brody mirrored the general’s pose and smiled wanly.
When the general departed, Brody lifted his lips in a half grin. “We earned those Marks. We earned the chancellor’s pass on that precept. He thinks Antosha can succeed on Regenesis where we failed. Antosha can have Dr. Kole Shrader, but as long as I breathe, he won’t work on Reassortment—”
“Captain, Regenesis wasn’t what this was about,” Verena said. She paused. “They spit on the memory of Vastar Alalia and our ancestors.” She seemed to search for her voice. Brody looked up to the eye in the sky. Verena’s face twisted into a scowl. “Captain, the evisceration of the teams’ autonomy is now complete.”
Though he didn’t want to admit it
, Brody knew she spoke true. For if the chancellor could use the judiciary to demote the People’s Captain, what couldn’t he do to any strike team? What would the other captains think? How would their strategists, strikers, and aeras react? Would they rally to him if he needed them? Or would they defect against him?
Brody pondered what he could’ve done differently, but no solution arose.
“This isn’t about politics,” he said, “it’s about leading the people back to the surface. It’s about fulfilling our oaths—”
“For the next few hours, I don’t give a darn about the surface.” To Nero, Verena added, “I don’t want Antosha to use our work for his benefit. You must come with me to stop him—”
“Stay out of the Tomahawk and Taos Facilities,” Brody said. “Don’t give the chancellor or Antosha a reason for discipline. The way we beat them is to beat Reassortment. That’s how we win this war.”
And it was now a war.
Before Brody had left for Vigna, he’d assumed the chancellor would use the commonwealth mission as cover for Antosha’s return. Now Brody wasn’t as sure, for it didn’t seem to be the Lorum the chancellor sought with the Warning Communiqué to Brody’s team. It had been designed for this end, for this demotion. He’d been publicly Marked, privately vilified. But Brody still didn’t understand how the Lorum and Vigna and Antosha’s reinstatement fit into the chancellor’s plans, or if a link even existed.
ZPF Impulse Wave: Antosha Zereoue
Beimeni City
Phanes, Underground Central
2,500 meters deep
“Aha, you’re free to leave,” said the medical bot.
Antosha sat upon a levitated gurney in Medical Center One. He wore a dark bodysuit. The alloy tips in his boots clanked against the ground, and the bot helped him into his transparent lab coat. Antosha slung his violin case and supply pack over his shoulder.
