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

by Zen, Raeden

  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.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Oriana Barão

  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:

  NATHAN STORM

  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 th
ree-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.

  Within seconds, they both opened their eyes and groaned.

  “What happened?” Nathan said. The life in his reddish-green eyes brought a smile to Oriana’s face. She leaned against his chair and pressed her helmet to his. “My head feels … awful …”

  “You’ve been inverted for too long,” she said. “I’ll unlatch you. Hang on.”

  “We rolled,” Duccio said. “I remember …” He choked. “I remember the moment … the rover slammed into us … I told your princess she should accelerate to six hundred kilometers per hour and turn ninety degrees north—”

  “No you didn’t!” Oriana said.

  “This isn’t helping,” Nathan said. “We’ll have to go on foot.” Still upside down, Nathan activated his armlet. “Damn,” he said, “the other teams have a four-hour start on us.” He peered toward the rolling dust balls. “What chance do we have now?”

  “It’s all her fault!” Duccio said.

  “We couldn’t see anything,” Oriana said, “and we don’t know what’s in there, we don’t know how extensively the mine was damaged. All we know is that the scientists are trapped—”

  “And we are still here,” Nathan said. “The second half hasn’t ended.”

  The men snapped out of their belts and swung down. Oriana opened another supply trunk surrounded by emergency red light. The contents crashed down on the roof—pulse guns, rifles, and grenades, as well as rope, first aid kits, canteens with IVs, diamond swords, and utility belts. Oriana slipped the belt around her waist. She threw the weapons and first aid kits to the Cererian surface, fell forward, and rolled along the ground. She slung a sword and pulse rifle across her back and hung a first aid kit and a canteen on her belt.

  The men fell next to her. Duccio grabbed a sword and a pulse gun. Nathan picked up a sword, a pulse rifle, and a pulse handgun.

  The surface had settled, now relatively free of blowing dust. Jupiter loomed above them. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of overturned and twisted rovers pocked the landscape.

  Oriana darted up a jagged hill. “We’ll get a better view from up here.”

  While wider and longer, the view was not better, for she’d never seen so many dead bodies. Arms and legs jutted from the rubble every which way. Not candidates, who returned to the halls when they perished in the Harpoons, but soldiers. It was no wonder none of the space explorers and fighters survived after the Reassortment Atmospheric Anomaly struck the Earth, Oriana reflected.

  She manipulated her quantum field, projecting herself as far as she could in this virtual world.

  Pasha, can you hear me?

  No response.

  “What do you see?” Nathan yelled from the base of the hill. “Do you see an entrance to the mine?”

  “I know where we have to go,” Oriana said. “Come up here.”

  Nathan and Duccio trudged up the hill.

  “There.” Oriana pointed. The only structure still intact was a grand tower ribbed with windows and carbyne, surrounded by eight secondary towers—all of them bright white. Six enclosed cylindrical bridges connected the central tower to the outer ring. Bulbous piping descended from two disks at the top of the central tower.

  “How do you know that’s a mining pit?” Duccio said. He turned. “What is that … sound?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Oriana said. To Nathan, she added, “Whoever’s in there would’ve had time to establish a position—”

  “I know I heard something,” Duccio said.

  “We shouldn’t follow the crowd,” Nathan said. “What if there’s a more efficient way? What if—”

  “Look out!” Oriana said.

  She pushed the men and backflipped over the rover that barreled over the hill. When she landed in the dust, she searched for Nathan and Duccio. They’d flown a lot farther than she expected. “You guys all right?”

  Nathan winced and gave a weak thumbs-up, while Duccio brushed the dust from his helmet. Oriana hustled back to the top of the hill. A wake of powder rose behind the rover as it drove. When it finally arrived at one of the distant towers, ten kilometers away, the team exited, and pulse blasts took them down.

  Shadows in the towers, Oriana thought.

  Just like her training.

  She focused on the windows. When Nathan and Duccio arrived she said, “Shadows just took them out. Why would there be shadows if those towers weren’t an important aspect of the maze?”

  “All right, sweet princess,” Duccio said, “maybe that’s so, but then how do you propose we get past them?”

  Oriana’s head ached. A memory surged through her. Duccio’s last comment, before he’d dropped her: Good night, sweet princess. She sneered to him, then descended the hill.

  “Hey,” Duccio said, “where do you think you’re going?”

  Oriana didn’t respond. She retrieved her pulse rifle and set herself in a groove. She used the rocky soil as a makeshift tripod, squeezed her right eye into the scope, and scanned the towers.

  Too many shadows to count.

  Duccio pressed the nub of his rifle into her chest.

  “You’re not the team captain, sweet muffin,” he said. She looked at him, and he added, “Why don’t you let me take this shot?”

  She kicked the rifle from him, mounted him, and pushed her forearm over the weak part of the synsuit, near his neck, choking him—

  “What … you’ll … kill …” Duccio said
, “… like your father—”

  “Admit that you dropped me during the Trek!”

  Duccio laughed at her. She screamed and unsheathed a diamond dagger from her thigh plate. She was about to bring it down upon his helmet when Nathan grabbed her wrist.

  “Don’t.”

  She let him take the dagger. Nathan glared at her. She released Duccio, who coughed violently on the ground. “Why would you pick him?” she said to Nathan. “Of all the millions of candidates, you chose the one who tried to kill me—”

  “He’s my friend, like you, please, Oriana, I can’t do this without you.”

  Oriana didn’t know what to say. She went back to the groove on the hill where her pulse rifle lay on its side. She again pushed her right eye into the scope. She took a deep breath, held the air in, then exhaled deeply. Accurate as the First Aera. She squeezed the trigger, and a shadow in one of the west towers fell. A plume of smoke rose from the ground where it struck. She panned to the other windows.

  Shadows disappeared, one by one.

  “Let’s go,” Oriana said, and she slung the pulse rifle over her back.

  She wasn’t sure what she enjoyed more, that she was as good a shot as the Summersets told her, or the expression upon Duccio’s face.

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Gwendolyn Horvearth

  Vivo City

  Vivo, Underground Central

  2,500 meters deep

  The transport, transparent and filled with growers, hummed along the maglev track toward the Archimedes River bridge, which led to Vivo City. The water was so clear Gwen could see schools of colorful fish swimming in synchronized movements below. The Granville sun’s twilight rays stretched over the photosynthesizing skyscrapers, which angled to geometric peaks, rising and falling, the exposed portions brimming with wildlife. Down below, near the opposite shore, red bioluminescence scattered throughout the shrubs.