The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (34 page)

Nero’s eyes widened at the sight of the Lorum orb at the bottom. It hung beneath the fifty inclined stairwells placed every five meters around the perimeter, which led to the base. The orb swirled with the gold, scarlet, black, silver, and yellow that he remembered from when Brody had first retrieved it on Vigna.

Strange that they would leave the orb out in the open,
Nero thought. He wondered if they should turn back. To Aera, he sent,
Stay sharp, they know.

He extended his consciousness and scanned. At least ten Janzer divisions guarded the facility. Aera had handled the Janzers in the Crypt with such ease that Nero thought about storming the Lorum, taking it now, and sprinting into the city’s surrounding caverns, which connected to supply lines in the inaccessible region, where Pirro awaited their arrival.

That would be unwise, traitor.

Nero recognized Antosha’s voice.

Antosha’s face formed in the Lorum’s light, the shade of his likeness, mesmerizing, dizzying, and only when it disappeared did Nero understand what was happening.

A maroon light blinded him—an overhead spotlight.

In unison, the Janzers raised their pulse rifles, the tips aglow.

“Get down,” Aera said.

She slammed Nero to the granite ground, and he clutched his chest, the wind knocked out of him. He wouldn’t have thought this possible beneath the Janzer synsuit, but the force with which Aera threw him compared only to the force he’d experienced in his descent to the center of Vigna.

Pulse blasts flew over them.

“EMP, now,” Aera said.

Nero managed a breath and slapped the activator attached to his leg. A flash burst from his synsuit.

The maroon spotlight disappeared, as did the steady hum that emanated from the workstations. The Lorum glowed, dimly lighting the ground floor. Useless pulse weaponry clattered to the ground as the Janzers tossed it aside.

“Night vision,” Aera said.

Nero shifted his visor. A lime hue splayed the conical facility, illuminating a swirl of Janzers in attack formations.

Aera drew her diamond sword and sprinted down the stairs. Nero followed close behind. He watched her flip over a division and swing so fast and hard she decapitated one Janzer and broke two others’ necks. A Janzer slashed toward her throat, but she ducked, swept his legs, took his sword, and spun it into his visor. She screamed and swung the two swords with fluid grace, cutting into another Janzer’s head.

Nero dashed after her, still only midway down the facility’s layers as she approached the bottom.

Janzer reinforcements streamed in from a shelter behind the Lorum. Nero peered down. They seemed to fill every nook and rim in sight. He pushed aside the realization that had haunted him since Givetia Station.

The operation could fail.

Aera activated her EMP, silencing the pulse blasts that streamed around them.

Nero reached her position. Several divisions stood between them and the orb. A Janzer broke formation and charged Nero, but Aera took him out. Nero bent his knee, and she hopped off him and flew through the air like a tigress. She waved her swords and sliced them through two Janzers. She spun through the division with a single stroke, a twister of death and elegance. Nero flung grenades, unaffected by the EMP, into the Janzer swarm. The explosions lit up and shook the facility.

Aera flipped and rolled and drove her sword, pushing their position forward. Nero took out the sidewinding Janzers that rotated toward her flank. She stole another’s sword, backflipped, and backflipped again. She avoided the Janzers’ shuriken and swipes, sweeping and stabbing until all of them lay still.

All Nero heard were his and Aera’s gasps.

“Is that all of them?” he said.

“That wasn’t enough?” Aera injected herself with uficilin. She dropped a Janzer’s sword and swiped the blood from her blade.

They hopped down to the bottom layer. The center circle held the Lorum orb.

Hundreds of opaque entryways cleared along each layer in the facility.

Janzers streamed in from all sides, on all layers.

Aera grabbed the orb, sealed it into a satchel, and ushered Nero into the vast, dark, inaccessible region tunnels.

Dunamis City

Dunamis, Underground West

2,500 meters deep

“How do you think you performed?” Nathan said.

Oriana didn’t care. She couldn’t stop thinking about Pasha, wondering how Lady Isabelle would communicate his first-half score to the Navitan traders. He still wasn’t speaking to her. She gulped water from a glass while Pasha and Desaray chatted near the wall. “Not well enough. I’ll have to make up for it in the second half. Any ideas what’s coming?”

“I’ve heard rumors about an underwater challenge, a scavenger hunt … like the Trimester Trek …”

The way he said Trimester Trek made her think about the bridge. “You still think I jumped.”

They’d argued less and less about “the bridge incident” recently, especially after she’d confronted him about his tryst with Gaia. Nathan had apologized so many times for it Oriana had lost count. She thought he finally believed her about Duccio, until now. “I don’t want to talk anymore about the Trek or Duccio,” he said. “Whatever happened, happened, it’s over—that was then, this is now.”

“Duccio dropped me!”

“I said let’s forget it.” Nathan looked beyond Oriana, and she whipped around. Falcon’s crew huddled in the middle of the hall beneath the harnesses. “He hasn’t forgotten.”

“You’re changing the subject,” Oriana said. The boy with the skulls down his arms gestured lewdly toward her. She scowled. “I didn’t know they were from Dunamis.”

“They aren’t. Instead of entering the exams in Palaestra Hall, they entered here. They want to increase the probability they’d be placed near your team—”

“I can handle them.”

“I know.” Nathan removed a sapphire trinket that dangled over his bodysuit. “For you.”

“It’s … gorgeous.” Oriana held it, an angel sleeping above a spa with its wings curled. It shimmered beneath the hall’s lights. “What is it?”

“A gift from my mother for the exams, a protector … and … I know what you’ve been going through … so … I thought you’d appreciate it.”

“I can’t accept this.” Oriana held out the angel. “This is meant for you and you should keep it.” Nathan turned away. She held up the trinket. It
was
pretty.

“Will you help me put it on?” she said.

He clipped it around her neck. Oriana rubbed its soft edges between her forefinger and thumb.

“Attention, candidates,” Lady Isabelle said. “The critical-reasoning portion of the Harpoons is about to begin. Please clear the center of the hall to the warning tracks behind the white lines so the harnesses may be lowered.”

Harpoon VR

Oriana stood in a familiar candidate stadium, clouds above and below the wooden planks. She looked up. A Granville world reformed where the Harpoon insignia had once hung, a depiction of Earth as seen from outer space. A yellow globe as bright as the stars descended through the cumulous clouds and rotated around the world. The Earth’s atmosphere darkened and streaked with red lightning. The globe disintegrated and spewed crystals that lit up the candidates’ faces.

When the crystals disappeared, the Earth’s surface was rendered visible. It was scattered with fire, smoke, and ash.

Oriana heard Marstone in her mind.

In the Second Hundred Years’ War leading up to the Reassortment Atmospheric Anomaly, the Quaternary Extinction Event, the Eastern and Western Hegemonies battled throughout the solar system. They fought for copper, iron, nickel, platinum, fresh water, and other resources, which man depleted from the Earth.

Images of battlements rolled, bombs exploded, planes soared, and troops marched upon distant asteroids, moons, and dwarf planets in the solar system.

The Western Hegemony, led by the Autocrat, moved to grasp control of a prized possession of the Eastern Hegemony.

The Autocrat, a bronze-skinned woman, gestured and orated upon the Earth’s charred surface. A line of space battleships stood behind her, as black as midnight and painted with eagles, spewing smoke.

The view within the sphere backed out from Earth and into the void of outer space. It passed asteroids, with visions of Jupiter and Saturn near, a colorful nebula and stars afar.

Impact craters and hills pocked a gray celestial body. Beneath it hung a hollowed carbyne cylinder with spokes attached to a thick pipe in the center. A grate rotated rapidly around the wheel-like structure. Oriana assumed it was designed to create a centrifugal force, to establish gravity.

For thousands of years, man had understood the great untapped resources of Ceres, the dwarf planet between Mars and Jupiter. It held more fresh water than Earth ever did, and nearby asteroids in the belt provided abundant minerals.

The Eastern Hegemony had established a colony on the surface, where gravity was adjusted to three-quarter Earth’s. The establishment provided the Eastern Hegemony a monopoly over the largest vestiges of naturally occurring usable water in the solar system. The Autocrat believed that if her forces flipped control of Ceres, the Western Hegemony could finally win the war, and likewise, her forces’ failure would secure victory for the Eastern Hegemony.

Candidates, your assignment for the critical-reasoning portion of the Harpoons is to navigate the battlefield on Ceres to the water mine where a group of Eastern Hegemony scientists are trapped. Their survival is vital to the Cererian colony. They must be rescued. Time is limited; their oxygen supply is low, and the destruction on the surface has rendered many of the entry points inoperable.

No alliances permitted.

Your performance will be evaluated by more than calculations and speed.

The Eastern Hegemony scientists should be thought of as Beimenian comrades, and your comrades will depend on your creativity, your intelligence, your fortitude, and your stamina for their survival.

Candidates, now is your time to show the bidders why this class has been hailed the best in a generation. Designated captains, please select your teams.

Oriana stood alone in a blackened void. She awaited Marstone’s declaration.

You’ve been selected to a team.

Her captain’s name and likeness appeared, chiseled in neon blue:

Harpoon VR

Ceres

“I can’t see anything!” Oriana said.

Nathan sat beside her, and on the other side, Duccio. She wanted to puke when she’d first seen his ugly face.

“Let me take over then,” Duccio said.

“Just find the optimal entry point to the mine,” Nathan said.

Duccio obeyed. He telepathically manipulated a three-dimensional rendition of Ceres while Oriana steadied the rover. Millions of rovers, as large as Beimeni transports and held up by wheels as tall as maple trees, stirred the Cererian surface into a storm. Even Jupiter, with its many swirling shades of orange and yellow, disappeared from view.

Oriana shifted the Granville panels to infrared. The other rovers appeared as bright red-orange blotches.

“I can’t believe they put all thirteen-million-plus candidates on the surface,” Oriana said. She hoped the other teams were having as much difficulty with navigation as she was. Judging by their movements, they were. She adjusted her trajectory as the blotches in the Granville view crashed and swerved around the falling missiles.

A rover smashed into theirs.

“Keep it steady, O,” Nathan said.

“She doesn’t have control,” Duccio said. “Let me take over!”

“Where are you with the mining entrance?” Nathan said.

Before Duccio could respond, a mass of red blotches swarmed near a pillar of pulsating energy, and Oriana turned sharply. Duccio and Nathan moaned, and she upped the speed to maximum.

Another rover smashed into theirs.

They flipped end over end.

When they came to rest, upside down, Oriana reached to unlatch her buckle, grateful the onslaught had ended.

A rover slammed into them, knocking them unconscious.

Oriana awoke dangling upside down, her arm stretched overhead, pain spreading from her ribs down her sides and into her chest with each breath she took. She looked up. The buckle and strap had pinned her left arm against a carbyne sheet.

“Nathan?” she said, her voice cracking. She coughed. “Duccio?”

No one answered. She commanded the rover AI to shift the view to standard. When it didn’t respond, she turned. The front of the rover had been sawed off, revealing the Cererian landscape outside. Mangled rovers, lifeless Eastern Hegemony soldiers, explosion craters, and other remnants of the battle lay scattered about.

She unwound the buckles from her arm, thankful for the synsuit that protected it. Then she unlatched and flung her legs down to the lifeless Granville panel upon the rover’s roof. She staggered, bumped her head into a seam cut into the rover, and fell forward into the seat.

She opened a compartment on her chair, and out fell a flashlight. She turned it on and searched for the supply trunks. She found one intact. Alloy boxes labeled FIRST AID fell when she opened it. She found vials filled with smelling salts, which she inserted into the external atmosphere receivers on the men’s helmets, near their necks.