The Song of the Jubilee (The Phantom of the Earth Book 1) (5 page)

From the precipice, Hans could see the main cavern in its entirety. Endless rows of Beimeni Polemon, as the rebels were sometimes known, sang and danced between the streams. From where Hans stood, the water appeared to flow faster, the bioluminescence burned brighter, and the melodies echoed louder.

Soon the songs and drums softened. Hans’s heartbeat calmed. The crowd of four million quieted.

Hans took the president’s place between Gage and Charlene in front of a crystalline pedestal that held the Formation of the Underground, the historical constitution that the chancellor purported to adhere to. Murray took his place with the Cavern’s representation. The people dropped to one knee. They raised their right hands, as did Hans, mirroring Gage and Charlene.

“Do you, Johann Selendia, pledge yourself to the people of the underground?” Gage said.

“I do,” Hans said.

Charlene picked up the Formation and held it in front of Hans. “Do you, Johann Selendia, pledge yourself to restoring the Formation of the Underground to its rightful place as the law of the land?”

“I do …” Hans hesitated, looking to Murray, who nodded and eyed the Formation. Hans remembered the next step. He put his left hand upon the Formation’s thick leather-bound cover. “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the Liberation Front, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Formation of the Underground.” The Formation had been written during the early days of the Livelle city-state, the place from which humanity spread throughout the underground after the Death Wave. It guaranteed certain rights, including freedoms of speech, thought, profession, development, and life, none of which had been upheld by the Masimovian Administration. The chancellor’s precepts had instead superseded the Formation since he took power in 168 AR. Hans, like all the BP, vowed to end Masimovian’s rule.

He turned to the crowd. Discreetly, he connected to his people in the ZPF, understanding the world through their consciousness.
They believe in me
, he thought,
they still think we can win the war.
Hans nodded to the crowd, raising his arms the way his father would. The movements felt awkward to him, but when the crowd stood, their chants warmed his heart:

When they silenced, Hans led the Liberation Front in the recitation of the Polemon Proclamation, the words his father first put into z-disks in 308 AR that permanently set the Front at war with the commonwealth. Lady Isabelle never referred to the rebels by the Liberation Front, instead preferring Beimeni Polemon. Jeremiah had liked it so much, he renamed their proclamation after it in the year 327 AR.

After they finished, the crowd cheered. The sounds of guitars, drums, and chatter spread beneath the stalactites, between the bioluminescent falls, streams, and limestone columns of the Hollow. The smells of beer-battered chicken, fried fish, and seared steak filled a rapidly constructed bazaar. Hans walked through the crowd, greeting his people. His head throbbed. He missed Maribel. He couldn’t wait for the evening to end.

Squeals from a group of excited children stole his attention. Hans turned. There among them stood Zorian.

Hans felt his blood quicken. His older brother lifted one of the little girls, holding her as easily as he would a fish. Smiling and waving his hand in circles, weaving his fingers, he telekinetically juggled seven garnet gemstones. They were the size of kiwis, Hans’s favorite fruit in Vivo. The girl screamed happily, reaching for the gems just beyond her fingertips.

“Look who it is, sweet one,” Zorian said to the child, “my little brother, in my father’s clothes!” He let the girl take one of the gems and set her on the ground. She ran away, and her friends gave chase. Then Zorian let the remaining floating gemstones fall to the hard sandy ground, one by one, in a line between himself and Hans, near a stream’s shoreline. “How does it feel to be President of the Liberation Front?” He stepped over the gems and kissed Hans’s shaved, painted cheeks.

“Wrong, unnatural …”

“Because
I
should be the President.”

“Because our father isn’t dead, Zorian.”

“Or is he?”

“Our contacts would have heard and told us. No, brother, he still lives, and we must rescue him.”

Zorian sneered. Hans tried to peer into his older brother’s mind the way he did most Beimenians. Yet, as always, he could neither hear his brother’s thoughts nor search his neurochip. It was as if he were dead.

“What have you heard?” Hans said. His older brother continually sourced intelligence from the commonwealth. He’d even broken into the Department of Peace, and somehow survived to share the tale and the intel.

Zorian said nothing. He folded his heavily muscled arms. He had the sharp Selendia features: high cheekbones, crested hairline, and aquiline nose. His tank top revealed the animated tattoos of seaweed, coral, and cephalopod feelers that swayed over the skin covering his arms, shoulders, neck, chest, and back.

“I guess now that you’re President of the Liberation Front, I have no choice but to obey you.” Zorian leaned closer to Hans and smirked.

The children returned and demanded Zorian’s attention. He stepped away from Hans and ruffled a boy’s hair, then looked back. “I’ve been worried sick about you since Father’s capture.”

Hans sighed. This was typical Zorian, prickly as a puffer fish one minute, his best friend the next. “It’s good to see you in uplifted spirits,” Hans said, and when Zorian smiled, “I can’t help but ask: Why have you missed shifts during the peak season in Piscator, and why haven’t you been answering the Leadership, or me, through the zeropoint field?”

Zorian knelt to another boy and snapped his fingers, creating the illusion of sparks and smoke that formed into phoenixes, which flew away. The children ran after the phantasms.

“Why did you miss the Leadership’s assembly?” Hans pressed. “And what have you learned about Father?”

On one knee, Zorian looked at Hans from the corners of his eyes. “You left Connor in Piscator?”

He had a way of searching Hans’s mind, even as he somehow shielded his own thoughts from Hans’s probing.

“Connor’s safe with Arturo.”

Connor had been Hans’s charge since he returned to Piscator following the initial increase in Janzer security in Vivo some fifteen years ago. Chancellor Masimovian had sent ten divisions, or sixty Janzers, led by Lady Isabelle to search out and destroy members of the Beimeni Polemon. By the time Hans and Zorian arrived in Piscator, the Janzers had killed their mother, but she and the other surviving BP managed to hide Connor, the baby brother the elder Selendias didn’t know they had. Arturo, who also fled to Piscator, also cared for Connor.

“That Father could be apprehended in Piscator suggests the territory is under enhanced surveillance,” Zorian said. “Lady Isabelle will find Connor if he stays.”

“No harm will come to him.” Hans studied his older brother’s mind, found nothing. “Tell me what you learned.”

“It’s a matter of when, not if, they will take Connor.”

Connor’s telepathy wasn’t advanced enough for him to fight the commonwealth’s agents, least of all Lady Isabelle. And though Hans had wanted to bring him to the Hollow or the Cavern years ago, Father wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t want his youngest son to live among the BP’s secret societies at the Earth’s shallower depths—he didn’t want Connor involved in the war.

Hans rerouted. “Maybe you’re right, brother. Maybe you should take Connor to a distant safe house, given the heightened surveillance.” He knew Zorian wouldn’t agree but hoped this would alter his psyche, create an opening to his neurochip. Zorian disliked Connor, blaming him for their mother’s death.

Hans probed but could penetrate neither Zorian’s neurochip nor his mind.

The children once more had returned and persisted in getting Zorian’s attention, screaming his name, pulling on his tank top. He gently, telekinetically lifted the wooden and limestone toys—swords, pulse guns, batons, shuriken, and grenades—from their hands, into the air. They yelled and laughed, jumping up to reach them. Zorian lowered the toys to their grasping fingers. “Go on now! Be off! I have business to discuss with
Mr. President
.” They seemed worried Zorian or even Hans might try to take their toys, preventing them from playing Commandos and Janzers. Screaming, they darted through the crowd.

Zorian turned to Hans, and his smile faded. “No, brother, I’m afraid that isn’t going to work.” He again lifted the garnet gemstones with his power in the ZPF, moving them in circles, counterclockwise between himself and Hans. “If you’re captured, I will rescue you. But if I’m taken,” he tenderly patted his chest, “my life is lost, like all the rest. Many of our comrades have been arrested by the commonwealth over the last three years. We can’t risk more.”

“You think you’re so far advanced past me,” Hans said.

Zorian leaned forward, inhaling deeply. “I don’t think.” He closed his eyes and opened them, exhaling. Now he spoke directly into Hans’s mind, whispering,
I know.

The air around Hans’s head seemed to heat, as if by the Earth’s core. Sweat swam down his face, taking parts of the painted maze with it. Then the air cooled, and Zorian balanced and stacked the gemstones above his right hand. With his left hand, he handed Hans a z-disk.

“Father
is
in Farino Prison, and I’ve got the prison schematics, right here, along with a plan to break him out. Take this to the Leadership, the commandos, and even lovely Maribel if you want. Get their assessments, but don’t delay, or we’ll never see Father again.”

Zorian rotated the gems around Hans, just above his head. Hans reached up, but they slithered behind him, descending toward one of the Hollow’s many streams, spinning, swirling like a snake. They fell into the stream, splashing and steaming. Hans turned. A mother carried her baby boy in her arms. A father held his daughter’s hand. Brothers, sisters, and friends walked, chatting and shopping. Hans’s eyes darted from person to person, group to group. He probed in the zeropoint field. The BP moved to and fro in the alley of the bazaar, between the tents, beside the streams and limestone columns, beneath colorful stalactites.

Zorian was gone.

Piscator City

Piscator, Underground South

2,500 meters deep

Hans sped between the pedestrian path and the transport trench. He avoided eye contact with booth operators in the early-hours bazaar and deftly combined the power of his recaller with telepathic shielding to protect his mind from Marstone. The recaller intercepted brain impulses and sent new acceptable ones into the ZPF. It looked like a benari coin, made of the commonwealth’s proprietary blend of silver, platinum, and gold. The portability of this latest model, not too hard to find on the black market assuming one could afford it, was most liberating. For many years, BP had only been able to think and speak freely in their own homes, where a clumsier version of the tech shielded their thoughts and words.

The plan is sound
, Hans thought.
Mari will understand. This is the only way forward for us.
He continued toward the buildings ahead. The Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Wards of Piscator City were sometimes referred to as the shanty wards. Unlike the first five wards, where structures were expertly built, the buildings here were part alloy, part limestone, and appeared as if the surrounding rock had regurgitated them. A Janzer pair emerged from behind one. They looked like ghosts in their diamond synsuits, which, though supple, protected them from extreme temperatures and pressure, as well as any citizens resisting arrest. Hans stopped and waited for the Janzers to pass. Then he dodged around two working girls, one of whom drew a calloused finger across the animated tattoos—damselfish, yellow tang, and sea horses amid seaweed—on his arm as he slipped by.

He flitted through a dark alleyway and arrived at the mound of rock that housed his unit’s entrance. He inserted his commonwealth card and placed his hand, each finger covered with synthetic prints, to the scanner beside the illusory wall.

WELCOME FARKAI. His alias flashed on the readout screen, and the wall disappeared with a crack and a snap.

Maribel perked up when he strolled inside. She sat on a settee made of amber, translucent in the dim light. Her hair fluttered with the gentle wind sent over her from their wooden ceiling fan. She appeared tense, her bluish-hazel eyes questioning. “You shaved your beard.”

“For the inauguration, for the painted Polemon—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Hans nodded.
You’ll forgive me when we return to Vivo
, he thought.

He handed Mari the z-disk. Her eyes sped back and forth as she browsed the three-dimensional hologram it generated in her extended consciousness, viewable for her alone.

Unlike Hans, she’d been properly developed by Lady Eulalie and Lord Rueben Variscan, of House Variscan, among the most elite houses in the commonwealth. She was then purchased during the Harpoon Auction within the top 10 percent of all Harpoon candidates in her class and placed with the Berriasian Consortium, known for the quality of its farms in Vivo Territory. Hans had seen her in the fields one day, on the forty-fifth floor of the building next door, commanding grower bots.

I’ve asked her to give up so much already
, he thought, hanging up his dirty cape. The shirt he wore beneath was torn, and a seaweed smell clung to his pants, though they were hand-washed daily. He’d changed back into his Piscatorian clothes for the journey home.

“This won’t work,” Mari said.

“It will.” Hans sat next to her. “Zorian’s design is meticulous and—”

“If this plan is so sure,” Mari interrupted, as she often did when Hans discussed a Polemon operation, “why doesn’t Zorian go with you to Farino? Don’t you need him?”

Hans’s face flushed. “You know why,” he said, and when Mari raised her brow, “it’s too difficult to work with him—”