The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) Read Free

commonwealth mission designated by the Office of the Chancellor, in which each member of his team had earned the elusive Mark of Masimovian, the marks for significant conversion, the highest level of scientific achievement in the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni.
    Brody must not agree to go on another mission , Damy thought, not this soon, not with Antosha Zereoue back in the RDD .
    Brody accessed the z-disk in his extended consciousness and lowered his head. He crushed the z-disk in his hand.
    “What is it?” Damy said. “What could the chancellor possibly want now?”
    “He’s sending me to the Judgment Center for a hearing with Chief Justice Carmen.”

ZPF Impulse Wave: Broden Barão
    Beimeni City

    Phanes, Underground Central

    2,500 meters deep

    The courier’s z-disk didn’t indicate how long the hearing would last, though it had already been hours, with no end in sight. Chief Justice Carmen reviewed all aspects of the Mission to Vigna. Brody found it odd that he kept circling back to the exposure, as if this violation of the Fourteenth Precept would somehow undo his Mark. The chancellor wouldn’t dare , Brody assured himself during a brief reprieve.
    Carmen’s eyes moved rapidly back and forth as he rummaged through his extended consciousness from his perch at the center of the dark onyx dais. His hands were folded, his silver wool robe was slung around his neck and the rest of his body. A maroon insignia of the Office of the Judiciary hung over his garb. The remaining judges, four to the left and four to the right, seemed like his clones, even the women. Their skin, dark and blotched with discolorations, folded in wrinkles over their faces and necks and hands. While they all were given a life term on the Great Court, they weren’t eligible for athanasia treatments in Fountain Square, which provided Homo transition its theoretically infinite lifespan. As an unregistered child, Brody had heard about their emotionless and unforgiving approach to justice; having escaped it when he was ten true years old, he never imagined he’d find himself here now.
    Three Janzers stood in front of the dais, and General Norrod and Lady Isabelle loomed on maroon marble podiums on either side. The general wore a Beimeni beret, black with a phoenix feather sewed upon the front, along with a dark suit with golden buttons lining the left side. A pin shaped as the Flag of Beimeni surrounded by an iron hand, the insignia of the Department of Peace, hung upon his right breast. Now and then he twitched his long mustache or shook his head, but never did he object to Carmen’s questioning, which was part of his role. Isabelle, wearing a Phanean gown lined with pearls, hadn’t stirred during the entire hearing.
    Brody, Nero, and Verena sat side by side on wooden chairs. The sweat under their armpits was visible, and their faces were as flushed as the lamps overhead. The wires attached to their arms and legs and chests burned like cinders. A manufactured breeze wafted in, filled with the stench of wood, tinged with a rot comparable to Beimeni’s sewer system. Brody didn’t recall it smelling so bad during Antosha’s public hearing some fifteen years ago. Why would a private hearing differ?
    “Captain Barão,” Carmen was saying. He looked all of his eighty-five years and spoke loudly enough for all of Phanes to hear. “I’d like to review the atmospheric failure.”
    Again , Brody thought .
    “In your report to the Office of the Chancellor, you noted: ‘An electromagnetic burst in the zeropoint field disabled the Cassiopeia and we crash-landed in the Vignan jungle canopy. When we awakened, the atmospheres in our helmets failed, and initially we couldn’t locate the spares. We believe the Lorum altered our perception of reality, preventing us from finding them. We suspect it did this knowing we’d search for our fallen comrade, Striker Nero Silvana, and that it would pull us to the planet’s core; to do so, it covered us with