Survival Aptitude Test: Fury (The Extinction Odyssey Book 2)

by Mike Sheriff

  The night’s miserable weight eased from his shoulders. The lifting of the burden was enough to make him smile. He grasped Cang’s shoulder. “With Sha’s sapience.”

  “Indeed,” she said.

  IN THE AEROSTAT’S control gondola, Daoren leaned over a workstation with Pyros, Heqet, Cordelia, and the two Jireni. The quantum tile embedded in its surface detailed their strategy to bring sound and fury to the Unum.

  They’d spent five hours shaping the plan, much of it with input from Commander Cang via the air-link transceiver. With her input into the situation on the ground, they’d revised the plan’s phases and timings, clarified its objectives, and thought through its many contingencies. If it unfolded the way Daoren foresaw, they’d seize power within three hours using the minimum amount of kinetic force necessary. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t live to see the consequences of their failure.

  Daoren dismissed the thought. “You’re sure Commander Cang can do what needs to be done?”

  “Certain,” Pyros said. “She’ll have everything ready for our arrival.”

  Daoren tapped his lips. She’d better—the plan’s success relied on it. “So that’s it. Does anyone have any questions?”

  The others lifted their gaze from the workstation and exchanged looks of cautious satisfaction. Like him, they probably knew that no plan survived first contact with the enemy. Only so much could be done in advance; the rest was up to fate.

  No questions were forthcoming, but Pyros offered his hand. “It’s a daring plan, Unum Potentate.”

  Daoren took his hand. They shook; one palm up, one palm down.

  He detected a coating of sweat on the Primae Jiren’s palm; the only indication of concern on an otherwise serene façade. He ignored it and wandered to the forward windows.

  To the east, the loom of morning twilight brightened the sky. To the north, tan-colored coastline stretched across the horizon; the southern tip of Daqin Guojin.

  Heqet sidled up next him. She took in the view and took his hand. “It’s a daring plan, Unum Potentate, but will it succeed?”

  Daoren squeezed her hand. “It has to.”

  17

  Sound and Fury

  MORNING SUNLIGHT STREAMED through the glass doors leading to the balcony. Its beams had grown more and more intense over the past hour.

  The Unum paced the chamber’s crystalline floor, favoring its shaded areas. He couldn’t recall when he’d spent so much time on his feet. His arches protested the relentless movement, but his mind’s disquiet made it impossible to stand still.

  What in Sha’s name was taking so long? Commander Cang had been gone for six hours. Three hours ago, she’d called to say she was accompanying Commander Hyro to meet with the leading dissenters in Feizhou Cheng. He hadn’t heard from her since. He’d summoned Cang’s aide three times in the past hour to raise her, without success.

  Had she been culled?

  Had she been taken prisoner by the dissenters?

  Worse, was she in league with them?

  As usual, Narses furnished no insight nor assistance. He munched grooll, seated in sunlight on the divan near the balcony doors. The shame he’d displayed upon his return from the Great Saharan Desert had all but evaporated overnight, but he remained as oblivious as ever to the current situation’s gravity.

  The Unum rolled his eyes and stalked past his son. The entire world could be collapsing around the boy’s ears and he’d maintain the same vacuous expression . . . and the same voracious appetite.

  Narses stuffed another handful of grooll into his mouth. “Don’t fret, Papa. The seed vault isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Daoren without his aerostat.” He licked his fingers. “Once we’ve defeated the insurrection, we’ll send a fleet of aeroshrikes to—”

  “Shut up, will you?” the Unum said. “I need your advice like I need a—”

  Cang’s aide rushed in from the outer chamber without knocking. The young Asianoid waved a quantum tile. “Unum! There’s a call for you on the emergency frequency!”

  “Is it Commander Cang?”

  “No.”

  “Commander Hyro?”

  “No, Unum.”

  “Then who?”

  “The caller wouldn’t identify himself.”

  The Unum snatched the tile and lifted it to his mouth. “This is the Unum. Who is this?”

  A high-pitched thrum ebbed from the tile. A crackling voice cut through the noise. “This is Daoren al Lucien.”

  Narses flinched atop the divan. Pieces of grooll slipped through his fingers and spilled down his tunic.

  The Unum tensed his abdomen to steady his voice. He willed levity into his tone to mask his surprise. “Daoren al Lucien! I trust you had a pleasant journey to ancient Egypt?”

  “Most pleasant. I made an interesting discovery there.”

  “So I heard. And what did that old cudd Laoshi discover while he was there? The doorway to the Great After?”

  “I want to talk to you about my discovery and its potential.”

  “As do I, boy. But wouldn’t you rather discuss it face-to-face? Perhaps we could meet at a public venue if you don’t feel comfortable visiting me here in my chamber.”

  “That might be difficult.”

  The Unum glanced at Narses.

  His eyes gleamed with self-satisfied triumph beneath his misaligned studs.

  The Unum nodded at his son; perhaps he’d done some more good after all. He refocused on the tile. “I know, Daoren. It’s unfortunate you’re stuck in the dunes of the Great Saharan Desert without an aerostat.”

  “Am I? Go out onto your balcony.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So you can see where I am.”

  The Unum frowned. He strode to the balcony doors. Narses followed and joined him at the balcony’s railing.

  A geology aerostat soared three hundred feet above the open square, approaching from half-a-mile distant. The thrum of its airscrews matched the thrum emanating from the tile, creating a phase-shifted flanger effect.

  The Unum scowled at Narses. “I thought you said you’d destroyed it with a screw mine.”

  “I . . . I must have input the wrong timer setting.”

  Daoren’s voice crackled from the tile. “Do you see me?”

  The Unum resisted the urge to fling his son off the balcony. He raised the tile to his mouth. “Yes, I see you.”

  “Good. It’s important that you do.”

  The Unum snorted. “What’s your plan, boy? Do you intend to use the seeds to bargain for your life? Do you really think I’ll—”

  A chill slinked up the Unum’s spine. He swiveled to the balcony doors.

  Inside the sunlit chamber, Cang’s aide was gone.

  The Unum twisted back to the aerostat, now fifteen hundred feet away. A colder, darker ache invaded his skull.

  Cang’s disappearance . . . her aide’s disappearance . . . the aerostat’s appearance.

  All too neat . . . all too convenient . . . all too foreboding.

  He raised the tile to his mouth. “Sha damn your eyes, Daoren!”

  He drew his arm back and heaved the tile. It plummeted three hundred feet and smashed onto the square.

  Beside him, Narses’ brow crumpled. “Why did you do that, Papa?”

  “Sha damn your eyes as well, boy,” he said. “We’ve been betrayed!”

  DAOREN GRIPPED THE quantum tile with both hands. A recording of the geology aerostat’s airscrews thrummed while he gazed at the two air-linked camera views on its screen.

  One camera view captured the Assembly’s façade. Crystal columns buttressed a two-level roof with wide, flared eaves. Smaller columns supported open balconies on its imposing face. The highest balcony was by far the longest, leaving no doubt it belonged to the ruler of Daqin Guojin. It also helped that two figures in purple mianfu lingered at its railing.

  “Targets in sight,” he said.

  The second camera view panned the rack of screw mines in the aerostat
’s cargo hold. Five guidance panels glowed bright green on five large mines, anticipating his command.

  He poised his finger over the screen and looked up.

  Heqet, Cordelia, and Pyros fronted a mass of denizens and Jireni gathered outside Yindu Cheng’s arms depot under Commander Cang’s direction. Their expectant stares drilled into him.

  His thoughts drifted to the three people who weren’t among the crowd. He pictured Mako, Lucien, and Laoshi in turn. Each urged him to avenge their culling. Each urged him to save Daqin Guojin from itself. He felt their will working through his hands and shoring up his strength. This strike was as much for them as it was for the future of the city-state. He drew a deep breath. “Now for sound and fury.”

  Daoren tapped the screen.

  THE UNUM BLINKED in horror.

  One moment the geology aerostat hovered a thousand feet distant; the next it transformed into a million glinting fragments amid an ear-splitting thunderclap.

  The blast’s spherical shockwave surged outward, condensing water vapor into white fog. Its leading edge struck the open square. Ceramic tiles rippled into the air, unseated by the appalling force.

  The Unum whirled to the glass doors and dove inside the chamber. The shockwave hit a millisecond later, slamming into the Assembly’s façade with a deafening roar.

  The overpressure walloped his body, propelling it halfway across the chamber’s floor and popping his ears. Glass and ceramic missiles saturated the space, destroying the walls, the desk, the sculptures, everything. The riotous clatter lasted half a minute.

  Prone on the floor, the Unum raised his head.

  The Newton’s Cradle lay inches from his face, its elegant frame twisted and warped. Four of the crystal orbs were missing.

  He rolled onto his side. A tritone ringing muffled his hearing, but certified his survival. His muddled gaze found the balcony.

  The glass doors were gone. Beyond the ruinous opening the balcony drooped, dislodged by the blast.

  The Unum crawled toward it, dragging himself over a bed of shards, ignoring the pain in his hands and thighs. He reached the brink of the chamber’s floor.

  Eight feet below, Narses slouched against the balcony’s twisted railing. Blood streamed from his ears. His stunned gaze found the Unum, the whites of his eyes stained red.

  “Papa!” he said, voice distant and distorted. “Papa! Help me!”

  The Unum straightened his arm, body resting on the chamber floor. “Give me your hand, Narses!”

  Narses shifted onto his knees. The balcony rumbled and sagged further.

  “Give me your hand, boy!”

  Narses rolled onto his feet. He braced a sandal against the railing, teetering on the angled surface, and extended his arm. His fingers brushed the Unum’s palm.

  “Reach up for me!”

  Narses jumped. His hand found the Unum’s and latched on.

  The Unum took his son’s weight, grunting at its rapid onset. His body slid toward the opening, inch-by-inch. He flailed his free hand, groping for a hard-point to arrest the slide.

  “Pull me up, Papa!”

  The Unum ground his teeth. He dug his nails into the floor, desperate for purchase. “I can’t!”

  Narses wriggled his body, swaying from side to side.

  The Unum’s body slid another few inches toward the opening. “Stop moving!”

  Narses ignored the scream. Half the Unum’s chest now protruded over the floor’s edge, extending into open space. A few inches more and he’d lose his leverage altogether.

  A knot of panic tightened in his gut—his son was dragging him to his death.

  Narses’ eyes bulged as if he’d reached the same conclusion. “Don’t let me go, Papa! Don’t let me go!”

  The Unum locked his gaze onto his son’s eyes. He released his grip.

  Narses dropped feet-first onto the mangled railing. A shrill crack issued below the balcony. It parted from the façade.

  Narses fell away, still holding out his hand, bloody eyes bulging with terror. He plunged in tandem with the severed balcony. Four seconds later, they smashed to pieces on the ruined square.

  The Unum squeezed his eyes shut. The expression on his son’s face when he hit was anything but vacuous.

  DAOREN PEERED AT the blank screen, its camera feeds lost. He petitioned Sha that he’d calculated the blast properties correctly; powerful enough to cull the Unum and Narses without causing undue damage and casualties within the Assembly. He looked up from the tile.

  Before the arms depot, two hundred Jireni and double the number of denizens stared back at him. Inside the depot, four Jireni guarded Laoshi’s body. They had strict orders to watch over the old Librarian until relieved.

  Two Asianoid Jireni stepped forward. One stood nearly a foot taller than the other. Pyros motioned to the taller woman. “This is Commander Cang of Zhongguo Cheng.”

  Daoren nodded in greeting. Cang dipped her chin, her eyes never leaving his face. He sensed a veil of caution behind them.

  “And this is Commander Hyro from Riben Cheng,” Pyros said.

  “You’re shorter than I expected,” Hyro said.

  Daoren snorted. “And you’re a long way from home, commander.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed this gathering for anything.”

  Daoren studied the assembled. The mix of men and women encompassed all ages, vocations, and social castes. The emaciated woman and other free denizens who’d sheltered him and Heqet dotted the crowd. Like the others, they cradled dart guns, sonic rifles, and heavier crew-served weapons. All the faces before him reflected varying degrees of determination and doubt. The common denominator uniting them was hunger—if their gaunt frames were any indication—and an appetite to unseat the Unum.

  “My thanks for meeting us here,” he said. “We’ve just taken the first shot in the fight to end the Unum’s rule. Now we must make sure it has hit its target. We must go to the Assembly.”

  “Even if the Unum is dead,” one of the denizens said, “what chance do we have of defeating his personal guard and loyal Jireni?”

  “We’ll defeat them by undermining the source of the Unum’s power,” Daoren answered. “We’ll defeat them by doing away with grooll.”

  Astonished murmurs and wary rasplaughter swept through the crowd. “And how will we do that?” another denizen asked.

  Daoren nodded at Heqet. She held out her hand.

  It cupped a dozen plump, brown seeds.

  Denizens and Jireni alike pressed around her. They gaped at the seeds, transfixed by the strange objects.

  “You’ve all heard the tale of the seed vault,” Daoren said. “If you’re like me, you dismissed it as a fiction all your life. But it exists. And we’ve found it.”

  Exclamations of wonder filled the air. Denizens and Jireni, high caste and low caste, and young and old exchanged incredulous glances. The looks suggested their desire to believe wasn’t strong enough to overcome a lifetime of lies.

  “It’s true,” Pyros said. “I saw the seed vault with my own eyes. Its contents will feed the entire city-state. And there’s one other truth you must know.” He pointed at Daoren. “It was Daoren, not Narses, who wrote the perfect S.A.T. He’s your true Unum Potentate.”

  The assembled absorbed the revelation. They bowed their heads. All but one.

  The emaciated woman stepped forward. She took Daoren’s hands in hers. “I once told you we had hope that something better could arise if the right kind of people found their way into power.” Her eyes pooled and her voice thickened. “Now I know who that person is.”

  She released his hands and bowed her head. One by one, the others raised theirs.

  Their eyes conveyed an emotional quality that Daoren had never encountered in such abundance. It took him a moment to recognize its source.

  Hope.

  He cinched a conformal air-pack onto his back and slung a dart gun over his shoulder. “As your Unum Potentate, I have only one question for you. Will you come help
me create a new order in Daqin Guojin?”

  The multitude bowed their heads again, this time in unified agreement.

  Daoren returned the gesture and led them to a line of sand-colored Hexalite levicarts.

  THE UNUM LAY weeping on the chamber floor near the demolished balcony doors. The ringing wrought by the airburst had receded, allowing him to hear the phlegmy rasp of each sob.

  Three hundred feet below, Narses’ shattered body sprawled upon the shattered square. It hadn’t moved in five minutes. It would never move again.

  His son.

  His heir.

  His legacy . . . gone.

  All he’d dreamed.

  All he’d hoped.

  All he’d planned . . . ruined.

  In his heart, he knew he’d been betrayed. Cang had fed him lies to keep him in the chamber, exactly where he needed to be for Daoren to guide the aerostat to its point of detonation. Pyros must have acted as the conduit between her and Daoren.

  The Unum hammered his fist into the floor. He’d reward their treachery in good time. He’d mete it out over weeks—over months—with the kind of patience an Unum alone could muster. A single course of action remained.

  Cull Daoren.

  With his death, there was hope of holding onto power. The Unum still had his personal guard and billions of pounds of grooll. He could buy the loyalty of the other Jireni commanders. He could buy the loyalty of the influential members of the Assembly. He could buy the loyalty of millions of denizens if he had to, but only if Daoren, the true Unum Potentate, was dead and his alternate food source destroyed.

  Glass crunched behind him. The Unum raised his head.

  Six members of his personal guard inched into the chamber. Their faces registered utter disbelief at the destruction. “Unum!” one of them said.

  The Slavvic Jiren rushed over and helped the Unum to his feet. He rocked onto his heels; the assault to his ears had impaired his balance. Every muscle and joint in his body throbbed with inflammation. His dry mouth made it difficult to swallow, never mind speak.

  “You’re injured.”