The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (30 page)

“No,” Benedict said quietly. “
Then
, as
far as you’re concerned, I’ll just get out of your way.”

* * *

With Agriarctos as my partner and guard, I
flew the Nautilus off Benedict’s “Death Star” and ordered nav to
set course for Mikkin, Zyga’s capital city. I was tempted to
cryptocomm some disruptive nav orders to throw us off track, but
Benedict’s threat to kill Spud and the others, along with
Agriarctos’s stun gun pointed at my head, kept me from attempting
an escape.

“I gather Benedict’s going to try to go to
another brane with help from Nephil Stratum,” I fished, hoping that
Agriarctos was feeling chatty.

Agriarctos shrugged. “He doesn’t tell me his
plans.”

“Whose neurocache do you think he wants?”

The Ursan seemed annoyed. “I
said
, he
doesn’t tell me his plans.”

I sighed. “You think he’ll really let us go
if I do this?”

Another shrug. “But he won’t if you
don’t.”

“Thanks,” I said without enthusiasm.

Agriarctos shifted his gun so it was pointing
at my chest, and settled into a more comfortable position in his
jump seat. He looked out at the stars and avoided my gaze.

“Have you ever been to this RAM?” I asked
casually.

“No.” He continued to look out the
viewscreen. “It’s not open to the public.”

“I’ll say. The public probably hasn’t ever
heard of it.” I admitted, “They never said anything about it at
Mingferplatoi.”

“They don’t tell you a lot of things at
Mingferplatoi.” Agriarctos was clearly a cynic.

“What I don’t get,” I continued, “is why
Benedict just can’t access the neurocache he needs through his
Ergal. I mean, when I muted as this guy from Earth Core, or, as you
even, my Ergal got me the right DNA and neurocache.”

Agriarctos turned his snout in my direction.
“You ask too many questions.” He took out his own Ergal. “Let’s go
over what we have to do.”

* * *

Our plan was for Agriarctos to create a
distraction that would allow me to find and access the RAM. I’d
kind of expected he’d mega and do a King Kong on Zygint Central,
but Agriarctos had other ideas. Still keeping his stun gun
trained—well-trained—on me, he activated his Ergal. His hulky Ursan
torso slowly morphed into the lanky body of a tall lean youth
dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. Agriarctos had now Ergaled, or more
likely, muted, into Spud!

“Oh, no,” was all I could gasp. “You’re not
gonna get away with this.”

Agriarctos/Spud was confident. “You’re much
more likely to succeed in your mission with me,” he pointed at his
human form, “than with … me. After all, we’re catascope partners.
It’s natural for us to be together.”

“The accent’s supposed to be English,” I
said, shaking my head. “Oh, sure, this’ll really work.”

“Okay. Pip, pip, jolly good, cheerio!” “Spud”
teased. “How’m I doing?”

I buried my head in my hands for the second
time today. Doomed again.

* * *

We had an uneventful couple of hours until we
approached Andromeda’s border. I finally had to acknowledge that
Agriarctos did have a point. “Spud”
would
have an easier
time getting into Central. Easier than we were having getting back
into Andromeda past the Gliesers. Despite my advance comm, Gil
Pesci was very persistent about grilling us this time, even when I
tried to reassure him that we were just fine and simply piloting a
relaxed flight back to Zyga.

“You were in the vicinity of HD5924,” he
insisted. His holo showed him standing in front of a starmap.

“Just doing a little sightseeing with my
partner.” I nodded at “Spud” sitting next to me. Agriarctos
waved.

“We’ve had reports of Benedict operating out
of that quadrant in M82. Did you see him?”

“No, no,” we both said simultaneously. “We’re
fine. Just piloting a relaxed flight back to Zyga,” I repeated.

“So you don’t know what happened to the
planet?”

“What do you mean?” I asked as innocently as
possible, my heart skipping a beat.

“Our scans of the sector show that HD5924 is
no longer there.”

“Spud” piped in with a British burr, “Maybe a
black hole …?”

Hmm, the accent was passable after all.

“No,” Gil responded. “No disturbances in the
area. We recorded that the planet flew out of its orbit 6.8 hours
ago, headed in our direction. Then, 1.7 hours later we received a
general distress call from its tracked location. Twenty-seven
minutes ago it disappeared completely from our scanners.”

I looked at “Spud” in alarm. Benedict’s
planet-ship had disappeared?! How? Where? My friends!

Agriarctos did not seem distressed. He ran
his fingers over our scanning display. “Checking.”

I waited anxiously. If the Benedicts “vessel”
had vanished, my friends were gone as well. They could even be—

“Bollocks!” cried “Spud,” his fingers still
playing over the holo.

Dead … all dead…

“Got ‘em!” “Spud” grew a self-satisfied grin.
“They’re in the sixth octet of M81.” He raised a hand, adding,
“Don’t ask me how …”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Gil and “Spud”
spent the next few minutes talking about cutting-edge propulsion
systems and warped space, but finally we got the green light to
enter Andromeda and resume our trip. Now it was up to me to keep my
friends alive.

* * *

Zyga—present day

The other checkpoints were easier to go
through. Our catascope creds were good enough to get us through
routine planet screens, and we had a relatively pleasant entry into
Zyga’s atmosphere. We landed at the largest spaceport in Mikkin,
and micro’ed the Nautilus into Spud’s pocket.

We Ergaled to Zygint Central and entered the
building with a desperate air of confidence. Fortunately, as mutes,
the WHO scans easily cleared us, and we were admitted to the lobby
of the spire structure.

“Now what?” I whispered to Agriarctos, who
was busy studying his Spud-style cell phone Ergal.

“It’s this way,” he said quietly and motioned
for me to follow him to a bank of lifts.

Along with others in the lobby, we entered
the lift and levved up almost to the top of the spire. The trip
took several minutes—we had to stop and let out passengers on so
many floors—but by the time we reached the top, the two of us were
alone in the car.

The doors opened on a barren lobby, but
Agriarctos held me back. “Not here. Wait.”

Curious, I waited for the doors to close
again. Agriarctos had his Ergal out again and was activating it in
some way I couldn’t interpret. As soon as the doors clicked
together, we shot down as rapidly as the descent I so hated into
Terra Core.

I grabbed the railings of the lift to keep
from falling, and from floating up due to the loss of gravity from
the sharp drop. We kept going down for a distressingly long time.
“We should be arriving at Earth by now,” I joked, trying to lighten
the mood.

“Spud” didn’t laugh or comment. He kept
monitoring his Ergal intently until we started to slow down. The
car finally came to a surprisingly smooth stop, and its doors
opened again to reveal, astonishingly, a lush garden reminiscent of
the meadows around Benedict’s disappearing cottage. We stepped out
onto a wide path among the multi-colored flowers and shrubs. I felt
that I’d walked into a greenhouse designed by a graphics editor
with an infinite number of tints.

I had an irresistible urge to sneeze. And
then I realized that the flowers had no fragrance. I reached out
and touched one. It felt real. Breaking off a stem, I noted that
liquid oozed out from the broken ends. I put the flower to my nose.
Nope, no smell. Weird.

Agriarctos was already some distance down the
pathway and waving for me to catch up. I set off at a jogger’s
pace, amazed and troubled by my surroundings. Was this a holo? Were
we in an Enclave missing from my Zygography upload? Were we even
still on Zyga?

“Stay with me,” “Spud” barked. “We are not on
holiday.”

I snorted. “I would sure like to know where
we are.”

Agriarctos led us at a good clip before
answering. “If you must know, Nejinsen Medical Center.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Nejinsen?!
Nejinsen’s in Aheya! Hundreds of miles from Mikkin!”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” “Spud”
responded, before softening his tone and adding. “We came in
through the back door.”

“You’ve been here before …,” I guessed as we
started forward again.

Agriarctos nodded. “With Benedict.” His voice
was a whisper. “I hope we’ll succeed this time.”

* * *

I soon noticed that we had started to climb,
and that the terrain and vegetation were changing. Before long, we
had left the garden and entered sparse woods, and eventually, a
denser forest of equally odorless pines. The path on which we were
hiking was now blanketed with scattered twigs that crunched under
our feet as we trudged onward. Having slept little in the past few
days, I was starting to feel the fatigue, and hoping we would
either arrive at our destination soon or stop to rest.

Finally, I told Agriarctos I had to take a
break. There was a slight clearing in front of us surrounded by the
pine trees, and I insisted we pause for a few minutes. I found a
patch of cool moss and plunked down to relax. “Spud” sat next to me
on a sturdy log, leaning against a thick tree trunk and closing his
eyes.

I yawned and laid down, relishing the
refreshing wetness of the dew against my neck. As I looked up, I
saw streams of light breaking through the tall pines above me,
forming a vault, a cathedral of luminosity, which looked very
beautiful and familiar. And I remembered. This was the forest I had
awakened to in my vision in my—Benedict’s—cell.

I sat up quickly. If this
was
the same
forest, was there a chance I would I stumble upon Benedict—and my
brother—up ahead?

Chapter 23

Apocalypsi

I jumped to my feet, pulling “Spud” off the
log on which he was sitting. “I know this place. I’ve been here
before—I think. We have to go see! We have to find him!”

“Spud” raised a “Spud-ian” eyebrow—gosh,
Agriarctos was a good actor—and, groaning, got himself up as I took
off down the forest path. The road wound through the trees just as
I had seen it in my vision. At this pace, we would soon reach the
clearing where I’d had the last glimpses of my brother. Agriarctos
lumbered along behind me, his expression now filled with
concern.

Finally, the grove of trees broke open to
reveal the field of my dreams. “There it is!” I shouted as we drew
closer, pointing at the tall grass.

Agriarctos looked at me through narrowed
eyes. “Well, yes, but—how did you know?”

“Because I saw Benedict send … a traveler to
another brane through a portal here.” I motioned for “Spud” to pull
out his Ergal. “Scan. There has to be one.”

Agriarctos reluctantly complied, scanning the
surroundings with his Ergal. I could barely contain my excitement.
My brother had been wearing a Somalderis, a Fleece. Might he have
launched to another dimension from this very spot—and survived the
trip? If so, would we—would I—ever be able to see him again?

“No.” Agriarctos shook his head. “No portal
here. I think you must be mistaken.”

I crash landed—hard. Standing frozen, barely
able to breathe, I couldn’t speak for several minutes. I had so
desperately hoped that in this field of my dreams I could find a
path that would lead me to John. Or at least to the truth about him
and his fate.

Patience is the champion’s best tool.
His voice once again echoed in my ears. It took all my strength but
I finally responded with a simple “Yeah …”

“But,” the Ursan added, “we
are
only a
few yards away from RAM entry. Through that back door I was talking
about.” He pulled out my Ergal from his back pocket and handed it
to me with a forced smile. “You’ll need this.”

I took the Ergal without a word and, avoiding
his eyes, slipped it into my jeans. Fighting back tears, I followed
Agriarctos numbly to the opposite edge of the empty field and, when
he reached out his hand for mine, I took it and waited for him to
Ergal us into the RAM.

* * *

We M-fanned in a distinguished lobby under a
grand cupola. The marble floor felt hard under our feet after our
recent walk through the soft grass. The stun guns against our ribs
felt pretty hard, too.

We were surrounded by at least ten Zygfed
guards, with orange Zygfed Sentinel Corps insignia on their red
uniforms. Members of the elite unit were selected from the best of
the Zygint pool. It was a goal I myself had once hoped I’d achieve.
But, you had to prove yourself in the field for several years
before you would even be considered. It’s funny. Benedict would’ve
been a shoo-in for Sentinel Corps if he hadn’t gone against the
Omega Archon. Now he was their sworn enemy.

I kept my tone light. “We’re Zygint. Go ahead
and scan us.” I suggested in Zygan.

The team leader, a massive Chidurian, looked
directly into my eyes. “Catascopes are not authorized in this area.
What is your business here”—he scanned me quickly with his
Ergal—“Rush?”

Agriarctos jumped in. “Benedict,” he started,
to my alarm. Fortunately, after all eyes had turned to him, he
continued, “has infiltrated Zygint, and we think he’s gotten into
the RAM.”

A murmur of distress spread among the
Sentinels. Their Chidurian leader, however, didn’t seem entirely
convinced. “I will, of course, comm to check.”

“Of course.” “Spud” nodded genially. “It is
expected.”

The Chidurian gestured, and the remaining
Sentinels stepped back a foot or so, still pointing their stun guns
at us. I took a deep breath, my eyes glued to Agriarctos for my
cue. It was nice to have those guns out of our ribs.