The Descent into the Maelstrom (The Phantom of the Earth Book 4) (40 page)

In the arena, Lady Isabelle stood on a golden pentagonal dais, a Janzer at each corner.

“Congratulations to the Second Trimester Class of 368,” Isabelle began. Though her lips lifted in a grin, her somber tone belied her displeasure, with what, Oriana couldn’t even begin to guess. “No matter what happens today, all of you should be proud. You have taken the most rigorous tests of intelligence, strength, and skill humanity has ever known. And no matter where all of you end up, you’ll contribute to the greatness of Beimeni.

“Without further delay, it’s my honor to begin the Harpoon Auction. Please maintain decorum during the process. You can imagine that with more than thirteen million candidates in one arena, even a whisper by a tenth of you would be distracting to the bidders.”

Several holographic, rectangular carbyne plates shifted above the stage. They spun side to side and stopped. The bids rolled in so fast Oriana could hardly keep up, as the numbers appeared and disappeared, higher, higher.

B
5,000,
B
15,000,
B
25,000.

Oriana held her breathe, peering to Pasha beside her. She sensed his unease in the ZPF but not his thoughts. He hid himself from her, the way he had prior to the Harpoons. He didn’t look like the boy she once knew, so kind, confident, and durable. This man was a stranger to her, as foreign as the Earth’s surface.

B
75,000,
B
100,000,
B
125,000.

The candidates gasped as the bids surpassed seventy-five thousand benaris, the prior Harpoon Auction record. Oriana could barely breathe. She felt so hot, as if she bathed in fire. She pondered the candlestick puzzle, as she had so many times since Pasha fell into the flames, screaming and writhing on his way down. Would Lady Isabelle dare nullify his first-half score? Could she?

Oriana cleared her mind of the images and emotions, hiding her fears and regrets and her waking nightmare: the idea that her twin might not join her in the commonwealth.

B
200,000,
B
300,000,
B
400,000.

Oriana shivered. Only a Variscan candidate could garner a price so high. She’d lost the wager. Nathan would have to work for years to pay Falcon Torres. She found Falcon in the crowd near Ursula, whispering in her ear. They looked like a god and goddess among men and women, those Variscan candidates.

My father was one of them. So was Vernon.
Oriana pondered whether her father had acted the way these Variscan candidates did; if he and Verne had scored consistently in the top one hundred during Harpoon simulations; if they knew, without a doubt, they’d receive a bid, serve the commonwealth, and live forever. Or were they different? Did their humble beginnings, orphans to an orphan commonwealth, make them better? She hoped one day to meet her father, in this life or the next, and find out.

B
500,000,
B
600,000,
B
700,000.

“Pasha,” Oriana said softly. “Pasha?” He ignored her, even as the murmurs roared around them. “Pasha, there hasn’t ever been a bidding war like this.”

He turned to her.

“You made it to the end.” Oriana put her hand on his shoulder. “The traders
must
bid on you as well.”

“Not if they think I cheated.” He broke away from her and looked down. “Not if they don’t know I completed the first-half queries.”

Fear suddenly gripped Oriana like a snake. Lady Isabelle was nothing if not honest with the candidates. What would Oriana do if she kept her twin’s score from the Navitan traders? What
could
she do to the Master of the Harpoons?

She diverted her mind, thinking about Nathan and Desaray, Gaia and Duccio, Ursula and Falcon, candidates near and far whom she’d competed with, knowingly and unknowingly, in Harpoon classes and simulations, in the first-half queries and second-half maze, for the first thirty days of what she hoped would be her eternal life.

Her brother was smarter and more talented with the ZPF than any one of them!

Finally, a rectangular plate lowered itself into the light and turned sideways with the first commonwealth code.

Oriana fell to her knees and gasped.

When the bid value materialized, the Second Trimester Class of 368 AR gasped too.

Oriana’s face felt so hot she wondered whether she’d turned purple. The bid was a new record, and it must’ve been entered by the government-run research consortiums in Palaestra. No private consortium could bid that high.

Pasha kneeled and hugged her.

She would’ve fallen to the ground if he hadn’t.

Nearby, candidates snickered and laughed, and she heard their whispers. They called her less than transhuman, the worst champion in history. She blocked them out.

Janzers arrived at Oriana and Pasha’s row. Candidates cleared the way for them.

More bids followed, but none with Pasha’s commonwealth code, and none even close to Oriana’s valuation.

He deserved the second bid
, Oriana thought.

The Janzers pulled her away, even as she fought them.

“I can’t leave him!”

“Madam Champion, you’ve been purchased and are due at the RDD’s neophyte dormitories,” the Janzer said to her.

Madam Champion.
The words sent a chill through her body, until she looked at Pasha. “What about my brother?”

They clutched her, but she shook free.

More bids were released, none of them for Pasha.

“I won’t let them take you to the Lower Level,” she said.

He didn’t react.

Thirty more bids.

The Janzers nudged her. Oriana screamed.

“I won’t!”

The Janzers pointed tranquilizer guns at her. “Madam Champion, you will come with us, by your own legs or in our arms.”

“Go,” Pasha said, his eyes red. “
Go.
”

Thousands more bids flipped above Lady Isabelle, none, of course, as high as Oriana’s, these in the tens of thousands of benaris.

None bid for her brother.

Oriana lowered her head and followed the Janzers down the stands into a tunnel at the rounded end of the stadium labeled NEOPHYTE ROW. Hundreds of thousands of transports stood waiting.

A Janzer pair and a keeper bot escorted her toward a transport labeled HARPOON CHAMPION.

“Aha, Madam Champion,” the bot said, “can I be of service?”

“Who bid that high for me?” she said.

The bot didn’t respond.

“I’m a Harpoon Champion,” Oriana said, “you
must
tell me.”

“The supreme scientist Antosha Zereoue.”

The Janzers forced Oriana into the transport and sealed the door.

Farino City

Farino, Underground North

2,500 meters deep

Brody had smelled the stench of death upon his arrival at Farino Prison, burning flesh unmistakable in the darkness. Day and night, chains rattled between his ankles and wrists, while the Janzer rocketcycles and prisoners’ screams echoed around him. He had felt the clamps dig into his skin the first few days, but now they could saw off his limbs and he wouldn’t know. He no longer smelled the stench. The dark wool hood took his vision. He’d lost his telepathy first to the Converse Collar, then to the cosmos after they’d removed his neurochip. He didn’t need taste, for they injected him with sustenance synisms and fluids that kept him alive.

They took him to an elevator, which descended, deliberately at first, then far and fast, diagonal and down for what seemed like years. The doors opened. A Janzer forced him out and led him forward. They bolted a synsuit to him. They removed his hood and sight returned. He was in some kind of containment area. Prisoners were attached to him by chains, front and back. They latched a transparent helmet to his head, like the one he’d worn during the Mission to Vigna.

The Janzers marched them forward. A burnt-fish smell filtered into his helmet, along with sounds of something boiling.

“This
isn’t
possible,” Brody said.

The crack from a telekinetic whip struck around his neck, unseen but not unfelt. It choked him, and he fell backward and pulled down the prisoners latched closest to him. The chains jangled.

“No noise!” the Janzer said, and cracked the whip again. The exiles moaned and cowered and marched on.

They came to a stop along a stone path that led to an alloy dock and a carbyne vessel. Leafless alloyed branches formed the masts upon this ship that seesawed in the legendary Infernus Sea. Magma curdled up the sides of the vessel, radiating heat and light.

The Janzers marched them aboard.

The Lower Level of the Earth burned as hot as Mercury, powered by the Earth’s core. The crimson lashes amid the darkness above seemed placed by the Devil himself.

Thousands of exiles lined the massive deck. The Janzers streamed between them and instructed them to hold the poles.

The Janzer nearest the bow whirled his hand high, the latches detached, and the ship rumbled through the magma.

Brody’s stomach churned, overcome by what he could only compare to space sickness. The Lower Level was a place he’d heard, and indeed, believed, was vital for humanity’s survival, for if Reassortment seeped into the Beimeni zone, civilization required a deeper refuge to avert extinction. That it had transformed into the final destination for unbid Harpoon candidates and criminals hadn’t bothered Brody—not all transhumans were fit for the Great Commonwealth. Yet here and there he’d heard whispers of starvation, cannibalism, harsh labor conditions, and a poisonous atmosphere. He’d dismissed them as rumors.

When the vessel docked, the Janzers scanned the exiles and brought them to a dozen tracks, where transports lay in wait.

The ground beneath Brody’s feet was soft. He tried not to tangle the chains or crash into the man in front whose trembling gait yanked him forward, or trip up the woman who staggered behind him. A Janzer freed Brody from the links and led him to track 7. He was latched inside the transport with at least a hundred other exiles.

The transport glided up a ramp and over an elevated monorail to the landing structure. Red and orange bioluminescence flowed next to dripping magma vents. A Janzer led the exiles out. Another grabbed Brody’s arm, scanned his eyes, and ordered him to continue through the entrance labeled REGISTRATION. Brody stared back at the drawn faces, faces of despair, disdain, disappointment, of lost dreams, lost causes, and lost conversion. How many Beimenians had he sent to this despondency? Did he unwittingly usher them all to their deaths?

A Janzer stripped Brody’s synsuit, leaving him in his bodysuit, drenched with sweat. A holographic fiery salamander sizzled upon the ceiling. Brody heard a shrieking, “NEXT!” through a speaker, and a Janzer escorted him to a dilapidated wooden table under a maroon spotlight. The woman on the other side had burnt hair, chipped nails, blistered lips, and sunken skin around her eyes.

“Name?”

He tried to remember.

“Broden … Barão.” His voice rasped in his throat.

“Date of birth?”

“One-six-seven … dash two-four … seven.”

“Place of former residence?”

“Unit 32485 … Beimeni City, First Ward.”

“Nice.” She tapped the digital display with her pointy nail, and a compartment from the table opened. She removed a silver tag attached to a silver chain. “I know you’ll
love
our world. Wear your tag at all times. It’ll be our way of knowing where to send your ashes.”

Brody stared at the chain. He swigged the hot, foul air.

She thrust the tag into his hand. “Welcome to Region 7 of the Lower Level. You’re what we call a
permanent resident
.”

Thanks for reading
The Descent into the Maelstrom,
the fourth book in The Phantom of the Earth series. I hope you enjoyed it. The supplemental material beyond this note contains Marstone’s Database and Appendixes 1-6. I thought long and hard about whether or not to include this material in each book or simply provide it on my website. In the end, I included the material based in part on beta reader feedback and in part because I think it provides useful perspective into the characters and world building of the Phantom Series.

Please visit
http://www.raedenzen.com/
for more information including a form for my newsletter, details about the first five books in the Phantom Series (all available now on Amazon), the spectacular concept art, detailed maps, and PDF versions of Marstone’s Database (labeled by book; to avoid spoilers, don’t skip ahead), Appendixes 1-6, charts, and graphs. I also included a page to credit the team; over the last three years, a talented group of more than thirty people, including readers, editors, scientists, and artists, among others, from six countries and three continents helped me put this project together. I also listed them, and other inspirational sources, in the acknowledgments on the product page and at the end of the book.

Finally, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could post a review to Amazon. Reviews are a great way for fellow readers to discover a new series like The Phantom of the Earth and for new writers like me to learn from mistakes and improve. Please feel free to email me at
[email protected]
with any other feedback you’d like to share with me.

August 2015

Marstone’s Database contains classified dossiers on citizens of the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni. All information herein is the property of the Department of Communications and Commonwealth Relations, and the Office of the Chancellor. This iteration of the database was derived from Marstone for the government and is current as of the 226th day of the year 368 AR.

SEX:
Female

HEIGHT:
180 centimeters (5’ 11”)
WEIGHT:
62 kilograms (137 lbs.)
HAIR COLOR:
Blonde, red, brown
EYE COLOR:
Gold, silver
BIRTH YEAR:
173 AR