The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2)

by Zen, Raeden

  “Should I cancel the birth?”

  Now Damy heard him. She felt hotter than a comet near the sun. She remembered that her team watched them.

  Damy had to steady herself, prove to them she was still capable of leading the Nicola Facility and their work on Project Silkscape. Their lives, and her unborn child’s life, depended upon her leadership. “The birth must proceed,” she said in a manner that ensured no debate from Verne or the bots.

  She transmitted to him, the bots, and her team, We will complete Project Silkscape within the parameters set by Chancellor Masimovian and the board.

  The bots nodded and their eye slits glowed, then dimmed. They attached more tubes to the synwomb.

  “Initiate the second iteration,” Damy said.

  Verne obliged.

  She looked upon the holograms that streamed above Granville spheres and examined the molecules, the DNA of the newly formed Deinotherium embryo.

  “Accelerating growth,” Damy said.

  She adjusted the views.

  The synwomb, shades of red and pink with veins, pulsated with Damy’s heartbeat.

  Sixty seconds.

  The cells divided and divided and divided, looking like bubbles rising beneath the sea.

  Three hundred seconds.

  Damy blocked out thoughts of Brody and her baby. She took controlled breaths. The negativity is your enemy. The enemy is your negativity. Ignore the negativity and defeat your enemy.

  Four hundred twenty seconds.

  Synconvert created a growing embryo with a 99.9995 percent DNA match to the Deinotherium.

  Six hundred seconds.

  A gestation period of six hundred sixty days had just been greatly reduced, as planned, for the shape of the Deinotherium formed. A hairless body curved with a trunk as thin as a straw, a tail no thicker than a mouse’s. It moved its mouth in a manner that was fishlike over a sustenance tube. Liquid streamed into the tube and into the Deinotherium, which grew bigger, bigger, its legs stretching the synwomb.

  It swung its trunk. It rolled. The synwomb burst, and the baby beast emerged, utterly lifeless.

  Medical bots swarmed and lifted it. Its eyes remained closed. It drew no breath. They lost their grip, and it thudded upon the turf.

  Damy connected to the ZPF and sensed its life energy. She turned to the exit and the entrance.

  No time, she thought. She broke apart a robotic arm, and swinging it as hard as she could, ignoring Verne’s objections, she sent a telekinetic burst into the ZPF and struck the graphene, shattering it.

  Red light overtook the facility.

  Damy sensed her team’s trepidation in the ZPF.

  I cannot fail, she thought. She lifted herself onto the turf and pushed the bots away from her and the baby beast.

  She squeezed its trunk and pulled the fluids from it and with all her strength, with Verne and bots pulling at her, she kicked the Deinotherium, again and again, screaming.

  Damy threw Verne and the bots away from her and nudged the Deinotherium with her shoulder.

  The baby beast slipped along the turf until a surge of energy in the ZPF halted Damy.

  The Deinotherium’s eyes opened, as did its mouth! It curled its short trunk.

  Damy collapsed next to it on the ground, gasping. The Deinotherium pawed toward her with its thick arms, then stood on shaky legs.

  Damy laughed, madly and lovingly, her helmet fogging from her breaths. The bots lifted her to Verne, who dragged her away from the flooded turf.

  The next day, when they returned, the beautiful beast was walking through the Nicola Facility’s back-end habitat.

  Developmental accelerants, not dissimilar to those used on Harpoon candidates but adjusted for the Deinotherium genome, were continuously injected overnight. Already, the Deinotherium’s tusks formed, while its leathery skin looked a darker shade of gray.

  “What will we name him?” Verne said.

  “How do you know it’s a—”

  Damy saw her answer. She wondered if she presently carried a boy or a girl, and what she would name her baby. Then she averted her thoughts, lest Marstone, and Lady Isabelle, question her delay in registering her unborn child. She’d already lost control of her monologue too often. She feared she’d already given the commonwealth enough traitorous impulses to arrest her. Yet she didn’t care. Brody had been sent away from her, and she didn’t know what to do. I don’t know if I can do it, she thought, her hand over her belly on the outside of her bodysuit, give you to the chancellor, to his Harpoons, and risk losing you to the Lower Level.

  She hoped no one noticed her bump today.

  “His name is Antarctica,” Verne said proudly. When Damy didn’t respond, he said, “Antarctica?”

  Her mind wandered. She couldn’t make this decision without Brody, for if she chose unwisely, she couldn’t put his life in danger too.

  “Damy?”

  “What’s happening?” Damy said.

  Verne wiped a tear from corner of her eye. “You succeeded,” he said.

  “Not without your help.” She nearly let her tears flow freely but stopped herself. Verne didn’t have to share this burden with her. She would have to decide whether to obey the Fifth Precept, not him. “Antarctica?” she said. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The Deinotherium was native to the Northern Hemisphere, not the Southern.”

  “So?” Verne said. “He’s been extinct for nearly two million years, how would he know the difference?”

  Damy laughed. “I suppose he wouldn’t. Antarctica he is then—”

  Red lights winked, just like when Damy had broken through the graphene containment during the birth. She felt light-headed. The entranceway cleared, and two medical bots rushed inside. “What’s wrong?” Damy demanded. “Is it Brody? Did he return? Why would you interrupt us? Why did the lights flash? What’s—”

  “Aha, Madam Scientist,” a research bot said, “the chancellor has requested all supreme scientists attend the festivities in the Valley of Masimovian.”

  Damy wondered why the Office of the Chancellor didn’t contact her. Then she knew. “Brody’s returned.” She gasped. “I should’ve stayed in Phanes, no, I should’ve gone to Peanowera, no, I should’ve—”

  “Aha, the Barão Strike Team has not yet returned to the solar system, Madam Scientist.”

  “I see,” Damy said, catching her breath. She found herself holding Verne’s hand. “Will you come back to Phanes with me?”

  ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão

  Unknown Time

  Planet Vigna

  Milky Way Galaxy

  Radioactive columns grew electrified, heated, and swirled; metal rotated into gigantic tornadoes. An electromagnet, Brody thought. Similar to Earth. This motion protected Vigna from the radiation of its three stars.

  He was thrown into one of the columns through the spinning metal, an electrified twister, still protected, it seemed, for he still saw and heard all, the sounds of fire, of explosions, a combination of motion and heat. Down, down, down through this twister he fell, to the center of Vigna, where the hot and high-pressure outer core, full of iron-crystal shards hundreds of meters tall, blocked Brody’s descent.

  Strange, he thought, everything should be liquid here.

  Or perhaps the pressure was so high no space existed for the iron molecules to expand and liquefy. In that case, and in any case, how was he alive to see it? Was this all in his mind? A hallucination designed by the Lorum? He touched the edge of his transparent cocoon, his fingertips still covered with the metallic organic substance. It bulged but did not break. He looked up. On the other end of this hell, Nero and Verena, suspended as he, bounced upon the massive iron shards, likewise surrounded by a transparent shield that swayed with the colors of the liquid metal, revealing glimpses of their faces and bodies.

  Nero and Verena struggled, as did Brody, and he pondered whether they were all prisoners here. To what purpose had the Lorum captured them? When would it show itself? Or perhaps it ha
d already. Perhaps he was encased in it even now.

  Brody steadied himself in the weightless environment as the iron crystallized, bit by bit, molecule by molecule, until the iron shards grew rapidly and deliberately, stratified, forming a base upon which Brody stood. Verena and Nero were far away from him, tangled in the iron as if it were vines, squeezing them.

  Brody could sense the heat and pressure here, where no living creature should exist. He again mistrusted his senses, as he had nearly this entire mission.

  The iron blotted out what lay overhead now, forming as if it was a terradome upon the Earth or Mars. What was the Lorum doing? Was this some message? Suddenly a sky formed, as illusory as this inner sanctum of Vigna, Brody assumed, yet it did seem like Mars.

  He understood at once that the terradome was similar to the one over Candor Chasma. The time in Brody’s life he tried so desperately to forget, the time when he’d worked on Mars with Antosha Zereoue. Brody turned. Antosha stood in the courtyard of stone with the ansible. This was later in their research, Brody knew, for Antosha had that look, that gleam in his eyes, the snowflakes in them moving rapidly and uncontrollably, and his arms shook as if timed to a tune from his deodar violin. But there was no music; there was just the signal, the quantum energy from the ZPF through which Antosha communicated with the Lorum as he projected his consciousness out to the cosmos. Using the CRISPR system, he dissected and pulled pieces of the Lorum’s DNA apart.

  Is this it? Brody thought. His methods revealed?

  Antosha had implied to Brody they could travel to Vigna by way of the transmigration, though Brody had never quite understood what that meant, how it would happen, or why Antosha sought to do so, until now. The Lorum showed him the truth by way of images, molecules, chromosomes, and data. Antosha was not, apparently, trying to decipher the Lorum’s language, not seeking to understand the origins of life or find new exoplanets that could support life without failure-prone terradomes, as were the directives of their mission upon Candor Chasma. He instead focused on the Lorum’s DNA, believing portions of it could be harvested, converted, and applied to the transhuman genome.

  The Lorum resisted Antosha’s prying, for with the keys to its genome, Antosha could have killed them. Is this what drove Antosha mad? Brody thought.

  He’s dead, Brody heard himself lie in the ZPF. You don’t have to fear him, or transhumans. We won’t hurt you.

  The Lorum didn’t answer. Could the alien speak Beimeni’s language but not understand it? Was that even possible? How was it sending these impulses into Brody’s mind even now, enabling him to learn, showing him what he had missed, or forgotten, from his days upon Candor Chasma?

  Antosha shut down the ansible, and the terrain shifted to a colorless rendition of Palaestra Square, with its marble, mirages of steps at the four corners, arches, and the bioluminescent light in its fountains. Hundreds of Janzers lay dead, genetically poisoned by Antosha.

  Brody, with his striker and strategist tethered still in Vigna’s core, faced Antosha alone now, the same as he had in the past, until his former shadow’s likeness altered … transforming to his Gemini. Like Antosha then, as quickly as his Gemini pushed into Brody’s neurochip, Brody reversed its progress and prevented access through the ZPF.

  The Gemini persisted, communicating with Brody in ways Antosha had perfected with the CRISPR system, these methods of utilizing synbio with the ZPF and communications with the transhuman body reserved for the great houses of development, under strict controls and regulations.

  Brody felt something crawl over his body, a sensation, as of ants emerging from his pores. He blinked. His heart pounded. Scorpions, crawling and stinging, pierced Brody’s skin, pulled at his eyes, slithered into his mouth, down his esophagus, even as Brody knew he should still be protected by the organic, liquid metal.

  He choked, dry heaved, and fell to his side.

  Forced to use the ZPF, intrusively and aggressively, Brody felt power he’d tucked away after Antosha’s arrest, telepathic talent that he feared would destroy him the way it had his former friend.

  The Gemini convulsed as Brody destroyed its DNA, cell by cell, and the Gemini’s face shifted once again into Antosha’s and then into the living liquid metal that pulled Brody here.

  The colorful metal swirled, forming into a humanoid with features that Brody could only assume were designed to mimic a transhuman’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

  Palaestra Square disappeared, and Verena and Nero still struggled beneath rods of iron, though they, along with Brody, descended from the outer core to the inner core, filled with a ball of radioactivity that enabled life upon Vigna’s surface.

  Without gravity, they dangled in the inner core.

  I know you can understand me, Brody sent. You’ve seen me regain my full control in the ZPF, so you must know that I will not allow Antosha to harm your species, I will not let him use knowledge of your genome to—

  The iron rods tightened around Verena and Nero, and Brody could feel their bones breaking as if they were his own.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have lied to the Lorum about Antosha at the outset; or maybe he should have resisted this plunge into the core at the start.

  He accessed the ZPF as strongly and decisively as he ever had during his sessions with Antosha, piercing into the Lorum’s consciousness as he had with his Gemini, setting fire to the equivalent of the Lorum’s mind, burning his way to its secrets … to more knowledge Antosha withheld.

  Brody heard Verena and Nero scream.

  If you kill them, I’ll kill you, Brody sent.

  When they cried out louder, Brody adjusted. I see your dilemma, much as you’ve seen mine. We are at a stalemate, and you know it.

  The iron rods loosened.

  You hold my strike team captive, but I hold your mind in my grasp. If I tear it apart, your species will die, but so will we. You know it’s true, and you know I have the talent in the ZPF to do it!

  The iron rods disappeared.

  There’s a different choice than death. We share a similar dilemma, we have no viably accessible and usable resources left within the Earth, and we’ve destroyed most of our natural energy sources as well. Yet I can help you! We heard your distress signals, but we didn’t get it. I do now. With your genome installed in our technology, I will find the extremophiles near our planet’s core, much as they once existed in abundance near Vigna’s, or die trying.

  Let me and my team go home, and I will do this. Defy me and your species will disappear.

  The core darkened.

  When light returned, Brody stood upon mossy stone in his bodysuit across from Verena and Nero, who didn’t act or look harmed by the Lorum’s attack.

  He threw himself over them.

  “How do we know your planet has the extremophiles we require?”

  Brody heard the artificial, organic, utterly alien voice that he’d heard earlier with the Gemini and beneath the Vignan falls. You don’t, he sent, but I believe that it does. The formation of our planets likely resulted from similar processes. But to find the extremophiles, I’ll need a piece of the Lorum. This was true, for with present Beimenian technology, Brody could never synthesize its genome or that of its extremophile prey so close to the Earth’s core.

  “How do we know you’ll serve us?”

  Brody dropped to his right knee, as did Nero and Verena. They put their right hands over their hearts. We will send the extremophiles you need to obtain energy, Brody sent, and in return what I ask from the Lorum is your cooperation with Earth and our people in Beimeni.

  The multiple cloud layers suddenly swirled and cleared the view to the tops of the mountainous jungle, where the Cassiopeia still hung. The vines lowered it, slowly and consistently, until it sat in a clearing not fifty meters from the Barão Strike Team.

  “Hullo?” Brody cupped his hands over his mouth. “Lorum!?” He jogged farther from the shuttle. “Hullo!?”

  A blue, purple, and topaz twilight crept over the jungle, the cliff
s, and the mossy mountain.

  “Captain,” Verena said, her hair no longer in a bun and whipping around her head in the breeze, a smile on her face. “It answered you.”

  Near the shuttle, a glowing orb colored as the Lorum dangled as if weightless. Brody put his hand beneath it, and the orb, a piece of the Lorum, a part of the organic river, fell into his palm. It was smooth, warm, and aromatic, like a heated oil.

  Its movements were mesmerizing.

  “Something’s happening,” Nero said. He peered to the sky. “This dusk isn’t natural …”

  The ground pounded and shifted as if from an earthquake. The team stumbled.

  “Smoke,” Verena said. “Look at all the smoke!” She pointed toward the mossy mountain.

  “An eruption,” Brody said.

  The tremors increased, and the Cassiopeia shook. Deep crevasses opened in the ground. There was a blast of smoke and fire, and bright red lava shot high above. The team fell on their backs. The jungle darkened with ash and dust. The ground beneath them cracked, crumbled, and slid, while Cassiopeia moved like a tortoise on its landing legs. Brody sprang to his feet and cradled the Lorum orb. He fell forward. Flashes of violet, green, and gold lightning through the smoky clouds showed glimpses of Verena and Nero, their faces visible, then obscured.

  Brody tightened his grip on the warm orb. He waited out another tremor, and at the next reprieve dashed to the shuttle’s entry ladder and climbed, Nero ahead of him.

  “Where’s Verena?” Brody said.

  “Preparing for takeoff.” She emerged from behind the center column in the hull and closed the hatch.

  The ground shifted.

  The shuttle shook and dipped.

  Nero fell and crashed into Brody. The Lorum orb fell to the ground and rolled to the back of the ship.

  The shuttle slid deeper. Brody and Nero activated the Granville panels upon the Cassiopeia’s walls. The landing gear lifted, and the landslide around them sparkled, as did the jungle and mountain. Images of dust, fire, and lightning surrounded them.