The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (23 page)

Father hand-signaled Connor again, and he returned the molecules back into the orb.

“Our intelligence also suggests Antosha may have the prototype ready in less than a trimester,” Charlene put in. “And when that happens, he’ll retrofit it for himself.”

“We cannot allow Antosha to keep the Lorum,” Pirro said. He turned to Nero. “And you, my boy, seek your captain in Farino Prison.”

Nero moved his chin up and down, suspiciously. Connor couldn’t blame the striker for his wariness, especially after they had imprisoned him for a time in the Hollow.

“If we commandeer Antosha’s new technology,” Father said, “we will have the leverage to combat Antosha and his mystery ally in the Masimovian Administration.”

“Put plainly,” Charlene said, twisting in her chair toward Verena, putting her hand upon the strategist’s arm, “we will free your captain, but you must first work with us to obtain the Lorum.”

“How can we trust you?” Verena said, pulling her arm away. “How can we be sure you would stand by your word?” And to Father, she said, “How can we know we wouldn’t be shifting from one tyrant to another?”

“There is no way for you to know,” Father said, “not truly.” He paused and smiled in a way that Connor always found soothing. He wondered how the strategist and striker would receive it. “Search your heart, my lady,” Father added, “you know me, you know what I seek, what I wrote about and spoke to you about in the RDD.”

“I remember when you turned against your chancellor—”

“Or was it that I sought to return to the days of the Formation and the city-state, when the ministry and the government served its people—”

“Not the other way around,” Charlene said.

“The era of the city-state and Underground Realm was filled with chaos,” Nero said. He rose from his chair, and Connor thought he might leave, until he turned toward Father. “Without Masimovian’s leadership, where would we be now?”

“Let me ask you something, striker,” Father said. “Would you ever dare disagree with your chancellor?” Slowly, Father rose from his seat, his tunic flowing around his feet.

“No.”

“Would you ever dare criticize one of his decisions?” Father moved closer to Nero.

“No.”

Father crossed his arms. “Would you ever dare not register your children with his DOC?”

“No.”

“Would you ever dare speak against the policies of his departments?”

“I get your point.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Verena swiveled in her chair, waving her hand. “If you have the assets to break into Palaestra, why don’t you go to Boreas and take the Lorum yourself? Why would you need us?”

“We’d never be able to traverse the Northern Passage or Area 55,” Aera said, “and we don’t have enough crushers.”

Connor just noticed that Aera’s heels lay upon the table, where they had been for the entire meeting. She was fiddling with shuriken as if they were fish.

“Our team’s disbanded,” Nero said. “We’d have no means for legitimate entry to the area.”

“That’s true,” Father said, “but you still have a powerful ally in Palaestra.”

Nero threw his head back and laughed. “Minister Charles wouldn’t conspire with the BP—”

“No, but he would conspire with you,” Aera said, removing her feet from the table, leaning toward the striker, “for your captain’s sake.”

Nero turned stoic. “If this works, and you execute your coup, I want your word on,” he turned to Connor, then eyed Jeremiah, “Connor’s life, that you will assure Brody’s freedom.”

“You have it,” Father said.

“And if your contingencies fail,” Verena said, “you will deliver this new … synsuit to me personally and help us free our captain.”

Father nodded and raised his arms openly. “If it comes to that, the Lorum and whatever new technology comes from it are yours.”

Verena looked to Nero, and Connor knew then his father had them.

Pirro said, “Then we have an accord, my boy?”

Nero extended his hand toward Father’s and shook. “We do. Captain Barão for the Lorum—”

“The Lorum for liberty,” Father said, raising his chin.

“Now on to other equally pressing matters,” Charlene said. She stood and leaned over the table, putting her palms flat upon it. The group turned to her. She twisted her lips. “Zorian has escaped our prison.”

“Prison?” Connor said, and to his father, “You told me you let him leave! You told me he wanted to go back to Beimeni and you allowed him!”

“Lower your voice,” Father said. “Zorian gave me to Lady Isabelle. He left Hans to Isabelle in the Dunes of Phanes. He’s a traitor and he can’t be trusted.”

Connor sucked in his lower lip. “But I thought you trusted me …”

“My boy,” Pirro said, and Connor imagined if he still had his cane, he would have poked him with it as he often had as an old man, “our contacts suggest Zorian may have truly given away the Cavern’s location to Lady Isabelle in return for clemency, and if he did, we have only one option.”

Connor turned away from them. Part of him hoped his eldest brother would return to the BP, and to his family. “And what option is that?” he said, though he knew the reply before his father spoke.

“We evacuate,” Father said. He turned to Pirro and to Charlene. “Old friends, you must lead the people to safety. Connor and I now move on to Volano Territory.”

“To what end?” Connor said.

To prepare,
Connor heard his father’s voice in his head.
Should our plans fail, we must be ready. We cannot trust the Barão Strike Team or any strike team to do what’s necessary for the good of the people.
Jeremiah smiled toward his son, then looked at Verena and Nero. “To end this forever war, on the people’s terms.”

Palaestra City

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

Celestial light spilled over Minister Tethys Charles, who sat on one of hundreds of cubes that filled the spherical Neptune Hall. A collision between an asteroid and a dark planet looped on the walls and the domed ceiling. Tethys wore his official ministry garb, his green silk turtleneck shirt with silver cufflinks, silver pants, a dark gray wool cape laced with synisms that projected Palaestran landmarks, and a Beimeni beret off center. The cube beneath the minister’s feet shivered, dropped, and melted into the floor. He dusted off his cape and clapped the dirt from his hands.

“Are you going to watch me from the shadows all night, Lord Nero?”

Nero and Verena emerged from the shadows.

Tethys froze the collision beside them. He clapped his hands, and thousands and thousands of cubes—magnetically suspended to form oval stadium seating for the hall’s performances—descended into the floor. He bowed slightly. “My lord, I assume you don’t require a welcome to your former district.”

Nero had been granted lordship over Neptune District of Palaestra City, including its famous entertainment hall, after he, Brody, and Verena succeeded in the Mission to Vigna. That seemed like a parallel universe now, one he’d never return to.

“I don’t, Minister.” Nero felt the z-disk in his pocket—the one Aera had given him—and he thought about what she’d sent him:
You might not want to see what’s in here.
He’d listened to her. For while he thought about it often, as now, he worried whatever it contained might distract from his objectives here and in Area 55, and ultimately, in Farino Prison.
I must convince Tethys to help us,
Nero thought.
I can’t leave Brody behind.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Minister.”

“I wish I could say the same.” The minister requested three cubes, which rose and rotated, elevating as seats, one each for Verena, Nero, and Tethys.

Verena and Nero obliged, then Nero requested a cube of his own, a thinner one, and he placed a recaller upon it.

Tethys eyed it warily. “What makes you think I didn’t report you to Lady Isabelle already?”

“Because without our captain, your daughter would be dead.” Nero lifted a new cube through the ground, this one equipped with Granville syntech. “That’s why you took the risk of speaking on his behalf during the hearing, is it not?” Images appeared upon the side of the cube—Tethys and Brody shaking hands in Palaestra City, Brody congratulating Tethys and his daughter after the Harpoon Auction, where Brody bid for her though she’d underperformed, Brody speaking for Tethys at a special meeting of the ministry for enhanced security in Palaestra, and finally, the hearing with Chief Justice Carmen.

Tethys held his forehead. “I wish I could’ve done more for him,” he paused and rubbed his knee, “but don’t misunderstand my love for your captain as an eternal debt. This meeting never took place—”

“You’re right, yet without us, and without your help, our captain will not survive.” Nero raised his arms and shifted the imagery in the cube to the quarantine laboratory in Area 55. The scene shifted from white walls, workstations, and bots to glass doors and a room with a pulsating orb inside. Five Janzer divisions stood guard, split between back and front entrances.

“This chamber beneath Area 55 holds the key to our captain’s freedom.” Nero leaned toward Tethys. “Please, Minister, remain objective until the end, can you do that?” When Tethys nodded, Nero added, “You and I know that Brody wouldn’t have killed an RDD scientist, not like that anyway, even if he wanted to. He’s not so clumsy. And you’re aware that Antosha has proved himself a reeducated man in our chancellor’s view—”

“His return was … surprising.”

“His
attack
on Verena notwithstanding, we underestimated his abilities with the zeropoint field and his obsession with chaos.”

Tethys fiddled with one of the links on his golden necklace. “Get to the point, Lord Nero.”

“He’s going for it all,” Verena said. She pressed her hands together. “Yesterday it was Captain Barão, tomorrow it will be Chancellor Masimovian, the next day it may be you.” She pointed at him.

“Yet,” Nero said, “that isn’t why we summoned you here.” He paused. “We’ve made a deal with the BP—”

Tethys stood. “No,” he said, “no, no, no—”

“Please,” Verena said reaching for Tethys’s wrist, “let him finish—”

“
No!
”

“Carmen sentenced Brody to Region 7 of the Lower Level,” Nero said, standing. “So what does he have, a trimester …”

“Maybe two,” Verena said, joining Nero, holding him, “and the BP has resources, Minister. We understand the difficulty they’ve created for your people, but you need to see it from
our
side—”

“You two have gone completely insane, haven’t you now?” Tethys turned back and forth to Nero and Verena. “Work with the BP.” He grunted. “Work with the BP,” he said slowly. “The BP that has killed hundreds of scientists. The BP that has stolen tens of thousands of drums of our precious resources.” His tone rose. “The BP that seeks to destroy the commonwealth from within. The BP that stoops so low as to use underdeveloped
children
in its acts of terrorism.” He threw up his arms. “No, I say! I grow tired of repeating myself.”

“Minister,” Nero said, “I don’t think yours and their goals differ as much as you might believe—”

“My dear Lord Nero, this is where you’re more than wrong. Some of my objectives may overlap with that movement. Some. But my methods are well understood by the ministry and the chancellor. I pose no threat to his popular rule or the commonwealth’s structure.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “You don’t know what the world was like before Chancellor Masimovian. You don’t want to.”

“They aren’t what they seem,” Verena said. “They’re led by one of our own. By the supreme scientist Jeremiah Selendia—”

“
Former
Supreme Scientist Selendia is long dead by now, my lady.” Tethys furrowed his brow. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Your captain was here, not long ago, asking about Jeremiah.” Tethys breathed loudly. “He’s dead, yet you lie to save your captain—”

“She doesn’t,” Nero said. “I saw him with my own eyes. I rescued him from a secret prison.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence. If a supreme scientist of his stature lived,
imprisoned
,” Tethys fiddled with his chains, “Chancellor Masimovian would be violating every oath he swore to uphold.”

Nero lifted another cube. Tethys turned as if to exit, but Verena grabbed ahold of him.

“Wait!” she said.

Nero closed his eyes and connected to the ZPF, summoning his memories of the raid.

The cube glowed, then darkened, blurred, and focused upon a supply shaft in Permutation Crypt.

Nero opened his eyes.

Tethys eased back onto his cube. He watched the BP team, Nero with them, fight off Janzers in the Crypt. He watched Murray die, cut in half by a diamond blade.

“I’ve seen enough.” Tethys stood and tugged on his cape, rubbed his chains.

After the battle, Jeremiah Selendia lay in Nero’s arms the way Zorian had handed him over, wounded, abused, split open, as thin and weak as the elderly.

“I said
enough!
”

“I will relieve you,” Nero said, “but that doesn’t make the chancellor’s actions any less real, any less traitorous, in your own words.”

Nero blinked. The cube went dark.

“I’ve done everything in my power to improve the lives of humanity for centuries,” Tethys said, “but to cross into this realm with you would mean my death and the death of my citadel. The destruction of my citadel, my people’s lives, sacrificed—”

“We understand,” Nero said, “and that is why you mustn’t speak or think of this conversation when you leave this chamber.” He handed Tethys the recaller. “Use this from now on.”

Tethys took the alloyed coin-shaped object in his hand. He shook his head. “What do you want of me?”

“Universal access to Area 55 and your ministry pass code to Marstone’s Database,” Verena said.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you …”

Verena folded her arms. “Minister, don’t allow one injustice to serve another.”

“Neither Chancellor Masimovian nor Minister Sineine were comfortable keeping the Lorum within Boreas, even in Area 55—”

“Where is it?” Nero said.