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

itself, stripping our interstellar synsuits. It knew the only way we’d make it back to the Earth was if we had usable spares to wear after our emergence upon the surface.’ Is this accurate?”
    “Yes, Your Exalted.”
    Carmen activated a z-disk. Above a Granville sphere between the Barão Strike Team and the judges emerged a hologram of the Mosaic Consortium headquarters in Beimeni City, concealed by opal bricks and a glass enclosure with a bright blue light that read MOSAIC, WHERE DREAMS BECOME REALITY.
    A man dressed in a biomat spun through a revolving glass entrance. He held out his hand, and the Beimeni Commonwealth space helmet materialized above his palm. “In the event of an atmospheric failure, tiny bulbs, here,” he smoothed his forefinger over the helmet’s base, “light up orange, and a backup reservoir on the side activates.” The images of the headquarters, the scientist, and the helmet then disintegrated into granules and dispersed.
    “Captain Barão,” Carmen said, now speaking as if scolding a child in development, “will you sit before the Great Court and repeat your prior comment? Or is there more information you think we should know?”
    “I stand by my prior comment. The helmets warned us as this man described, the failure ensued, and we removed our helmets in order to survive.” Perspiration gushed down Brody’s chest.
    “No evidence exists of this purported atmospheric failure in the shuttle log.” Carmen looked side to side, observing his fellow judges with what might’ve been a smile or a sneer. Brody couldn’t tell. “In addition, many on this dais view the action of an alien hiding your spare synsuits differently. It’s likely the alien viewed your team as invaders—”
    “ Saviors , Your Exalted,” Brody said. “The Lorum viewed us as their last chance for survival.”
    “Why?”
    “Without the extremophiles from the Earth, the Lorum will join the category of extinct species like so many others in the universe before it.” Brody hadn’t been entirely truthful to the court. He’d left out of his report the part about the Lorum’s transmigration during his Mark ceremony when the desperate species had connected to his mind and threatened to pull his consciousness to their planet if he failed to uphold the treaty terms he’d negotiated. In return for his team’s freedom from captivity in the exoplanet’s core, Brody promised to send the Lorum the extremophiles from inside the Earth that they required to survive. The Lorum had sent Brody back to Earth with an orb that contained their species, which Brody hoped to use to descend to the Earth’s core and retrieve the extremophile prey. But the chancellor had assigned the Mission to the Earth’s Core to Antosha. Brody had hypothesized that the presence of the Lorum orb in Area 55 had facilitated interstellar communication between the Lorum on Vigna to the Lorum on Earth and ultimately to him at the ceremony. So he designed a z-wall to hinder telepathic communications in the ZPF and placed it around the Lorum orb. He didn’t trust Antosha to fulfill the treaty terms; he also couldn’t let the Lorum interfere with his work on Project Reassortment.
    “An explanation with some logic, perhaps,” Carmen was saying. He lightly tapped his gavel. “Or perhaps the Lorum preferred invaders of its land to expose their bodies to its environment? Have you thought of that, Captain?” When Brody tried to speak, the chief justice cut him off. “Moreover, Captain, have you thought of why the chancellor wrote the Fourteenth Precept?”
    Brody knew the reason, to protect from pathogenic or other unseen contamination. He didn’t respond. He wouldn’t take the bait.
    Carmen swiped his wrinkly jowls. “No, without direct, observable evidence of what you suggest, we are left to assume that you admit you broke a precept of your chancellor.”
    “We did what we did to survive. Those lights activated, and I know when I’m suffocating.