Survival Aptitude Test: Fury (The Extinction Odyssey Book 2) Page 4

  “Not honeybees, child.”

  “Then what?” Daoren asked.

  Laoshi held up a finger before the projection of Daqin Guojin. “We’re going to resurrect seeds.”

  4

  Breached and Broken

  DAOREN, HEQET, AND Cordelia stood in bewildered silence before the lumenglass stage. Laoshi’s ludicrous proclamation still echoed through the Void.

  Daoren rattled his head, convinced he’d misheard the old Librarian. “Did you say seeds?”

  “I did.” Laoshi limped forward to the edge of the stage. Daqin Guojin’s plasmonic projection glimmered behind him. “When you were digging deep to uncover the truth, did you come across the story of the seed vault?”

  The question cracked open a vault of dust-caked memories. Lucien had spoken many times about the vast storechamber of self-replicating food stocks, lost somewhere in the Great Beyond across the Sea of Storms . . . or the Western Sea . . . or the Great Eastern Regolith’s scorched plateaus. His father could never quite pinpoint its location, but he told the story with such passion that Daoren couldn’t bring himself to challenge its authenticity. Mako used to beg to hear the tale, usually as a stalling tactic before bed.

  Daoren vibrated with rasplaughter at the memories—and at the notion that Laoshi invested anything but contempt in the story.

  “My question amuses you?” Laoshi asked.

  “My father told us that fable,” Daoren said. “Food stocks blessed with Sha’s sapience, allowing them to reproduce of their own free will. Food stocks so abundant we could forever do away with grooll.” He glanced at Heqet. “Imagining such a variety caused Mako’s jaw to ache with desire.”

  Heqet’s wistful smile hinted that she, too, had shared memories of the fable.

  He shifted his focus back to Laoshi. “Of all the Cognos Populi’s fictions, the seed vault is my favorite.”

  “What if I told you I had proof of its existence and its location?”

  Daoren narrowed his eyes and studied Laoshi’s expression. It lacked any trace of irony. “Then I’d question whether you hit your head one too many times on your descents into the Void.”

  Laoshi pulled a glass scroll from his opaque satchel. He unrolled the scroll and scanned its surface with his quantum tile.

  A second, smaller plasmonic projection opened above the stage. It depicted a crudely rendered three-dimensional pyramid with a collection of interlinked chambers below its base. The appearance suggested it had been replicated from a drawing, one done by hand.

  “Five years ago, a silica-sourcing team was dispatched to the Great Saharan Desert. During test digs, they discovered artifact caches that yielded clues to the seed vault’s location.” Laoshi gestured to the pyramid. “It’s hidden beneath this structure.”

  Heqet’s shoulders rose and fell in time with a ragged gasp. She wrung her hands.

  “Is the stun shot still bothering you?” Daoren asked.

  Laoshi pressed on before she answered. “The team made the mistake of reporting their findings to the Unum. Within a month, they were dead and their report destroyed.”

  “How do you know this?” Daoren asked.

  Laoshi’s gaze darkened. “My son and his wife led the expedition.”

  Daoren glanced at Heqet, at last recognizing the source of her distress. It wasn’t the stun shot; it was her parents. If what Laoshi said was true, the levitran accident that had taken their lives five years ago was no accident.

  “What the Unum didn’t know,” Laoshi said, “was that they gave a duplicate of their findings to me. It’s taken years of work in complete secrecy, cross-referencing their clues with those buried in the Spire’s cultural scrolls, but I’ve pinpointed the structure containing the vault.”

  He manipulated his tile.

  The plasmonic view of Daqin Guojin zoomed out. Its perspective shifted southeast across the Mediterranean Sea to northern Africa and zoomed in on the mouth of the Nile River.

  “It resides in an area once known as the cradle of civilization.” Laoshi pointed at the projection. “Ancient Egypt.”

  Daoren gazed at the twin projections, one rendered with lifelike accuracy, the other with childlike crudeness. A faint eddy of hope purled in his gut. Could Laoshi be speaking the truth?

  For as long as he could remember, he’d viewed the seed vault as another oral myth passed down from generation to generation. Daqin Guojin was filled with them. The tale of the lost civilization living on the decayed western continent from which his family descended. The story of ancient humans roaming the moon and exploring the solar system’s planetary bodies with robotic craft. And dozens more. Parents used the fables to divert their children’s minds from the hopelessness of modern life.

  “Even if this were true,” Cordelia said, “won’t the seeds in this vault be thousands of years old?”

  “Our world has experienced mass extinctions before,” Laoshi said. “Seeds evolved a unique trait to survive such events. They can persist in a dormant state for millennia, then spring back to life when the right conditions are present.”

  “You know the right conditions?” Daoren asked.

  “I do. And with your help, we can bring them back to Daqin Guojin and break our dependence on grooll.”

  The faint eddy in Daoren’s gut gained strength. “And the Unum’s grip on power.”

  Laoshi grinned. “Clever boy.”

  “Just a moment,” Cordelia said. “You’re suggesting we go to ancient Egypt?”

  “Not suggesting. Insisting.”

  “But how?” Cordelia asked. “It must be over a thousand miles away, across the Sea of Storms.”

  Laoshi rolled the glass scroll and stuffed it back into his satchel. The plasmonic projections vanished with a tap of his tile, leaving him standing on the edge of the bare, black stage. “Are any of you afraid of heights?”

  “Heights?” Heqet asked.

  “Of course, my dear. We’ll be traveling by aerostat.”

  Cordelia and Heqet cast pleading looks at Daoren—as though seeking an ally to talk sense into Laoshi.

  Daoren couldn’t fault their obvious lack of confidence. Venturing Sha-knows-how-many miles to hunt for a well-worn fable in a boundless desert bordered on insanity, but if the vault held the slightest chance of success it was worth the risk.

  An alternate food source could eliminate the need for grooll, sparing countless prospects from monthly harvests and wresting the primary lever of control from the Unum’s hands. It could, as Laoshi had said, resurrect their lives—and the lives of every starving inhabitant of Daqin Guojin. And what was the alternative? Dwelling within the sanctuary of the Librarium for the rest of their lives while the rest of the population sank deeper and deeper into deprivation and despair? That might be called survival, but it couldn’t be called living.

  He reached up to help Laoshi off the stage. “So when do we leave?”

  PYROS TARRIED WITH Commander Cang on the transway outside the southern entrance. Levideck-mounted Jireni whisked beneath its archway, breaching a boundary that had been held sacred since the Librarium’s founding. Clouds of compressed air wafted skyward, swirling in the moonlight, obscuring the archway’s inscription.

  Of all the reforms he’d hoped to introduce after his swearing in as Primae Jireni four years ago, presiding over the violation of the Librarium’s sanctity had never entered his mind. History would record this moment. Hundreds of years from now, prospects would be able to read about this night and divine all its wretched details—assuming anyone was still alive to scan a scroll hundreds of years from now. For the rest of time, his name would be linked to the event. For the rest of time, his name would be tainted.

  On the opposite side of the archway, the Unum conversed with his son and niece. The trio watched the daunting cavalcade with unmistakable glee. Narses and Julinian applauded the streaming mass, their rasplaughter loud enough to penetrate the levidecks’ droning hisses.

  “This is a heavy business,” Cang said
, voice lowered in spite of the din. “I’ve never felt ashamed to wear the black bianfu until today.”

  Pyros also felt a burgeoning mantle of shame upon his shoulders, but what choice did they have? As the Unum commands, the Jireni obey.

  “Narses’ elevation to Unum Potentate complicates matters,” Cang said, hand raised to cover her mouth. “Removing the Unum from power won’t solve Daqin Guojin’s ills.”

  Pyros followed her lead—he wouldn’t put it past the Unum to have acquired the art of lipreading. “It will only compound them if Narses assumes the role of Unum.”

  “Julinian’s a problem as well,” Cang said. “She won’t accept a regime change lying down. We’ll need to factor her fate into our plan.”

  Pyros glanced at Cang. “Shall I cull all three of them here and now?”

  Cang’s eyes narrowed. “Are you serious, sire?”

  Pyros weighed the question himself. Was he?

  With three strokes of his dagger, he could resolve the issue at the cost of only three lives. With the old regime gone, he could order his men to stand-down, march into the Librarium, and declare Daoren the true Unum Potentate. The boy must have written a perfect S.A.T.—how else could Narses have attained the title?

  Somewhere beyond the southern entrance, Daqin Guojin’s deserving ruler tarried. If not for the Unum’s offer of reward, it might have been possible to step over three bodies to meet him. The promise of fifty thousand pounds of grooll had instilled a murderous zeal in the assault force that not even the Primae Jiren could pacify. Trying to stop it now would risk his own culling . . . and Cang’s. The dagger strokes would have to tarry for a more opportune moment, one backed by more proportional force. “Have they entered the Temple yet?”

  Cang consulted her quantum tile. “The advance team is minutes away. The bulk of the force is closing on the southern excavation tunnel. They’ll be in position to breach the site in ten minutes. The rest will guard the eastern tunnel and other egress routes from the Temple.”

  Pyros absorbed the report without emotion. Cang’s source for the investigation on Laoshi had located two excavation tunnels leading into the subterranean site below the Temple. Both appeared intact. The southern tunnel would allow undetected ingress, taking Laoshi, Daoren and the others by surprise—if they were down there.

  The Unum was wagering they were. Pyros hoped they weren’t, but logic dictated otherwise. The Librarium granted them sanctuary from the Jireni . . . at least until now. In a few minutes, it would grant them nothing but entrapment.

  The rear elements of the assault force passed through the archway. The night’s stillness reasserted itself, but it harbored no comfort.

  The Unum wandered over with Narses and Julinian in tow. Narses’ eyes gleamed like a child on the eve of his birthday. “Have you ever seen such an array of force?”

  Pyros wasn’t sure to whom the question was directed. He answered anyway. “A formidable display, Unum Potentate.”

  Narses chucklebucked. The Unum reached out and stilled his son’s mirth with one squeeze of his hand. “Take us to the Temple,” the Unum said. “I want to be there when their bodies are brought out.”

  “As you command,” Pyros said.

  DAOREN GATHERED WITH the others near the antechamber’s double-doors. They’d tarried in the Void as long as they dared. Longer than they dared, in fact. The urgency to get moving hectored him, eroding his patience and chaffing his nerves.

  Cordelia had collected whatever grooll she could find. That and the contents of their own pouches would have to suffice for the trip. Laoshi had spent ten minutes strolling among the tables of artifacts, citing that some items might be of use on the expedition. His pensive gaze betrayed his true intent; he was bidding them farewell in case he never saw them again.

  Daoren ached to talk with Heqet about what had happened in the Center—the kiss they’d shared, specifically—but the stun shot’s aftereffects still troubled her. It would have been wiser to let her recover before heading south, but they couldn’t afford the time. They’d need an hour to get out of the Librarium and at least another hour to reach the aerodrome. Each minute spent in the Void marked another minute closer to sunrise and another minute of the Unum’s rule.

  “Are we ready?” he asked, tone more gruff than intended.

  Laoshi and Cordelia nodded their agreement. Heqet purged a shaky breath before giving hers.

  Daoren held Heqet’s arm and guided her toward the antechamber. Her legs buckled after a few steps. She clutched at his tunic, face sickly white.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, knowing full well she wasn’t.

  “I’m feeling dizzy . . .”

  Daoren propped her up. “She can’t walk out of the Librarium like this,” he said to Laoshi. “Where do the Libraria keep their levidecks?”

  Laoshi hooked Heqet’s arm, steadying her. “There’s a utility shed. On the north side of the Spires.”

  Daoren dashed into the antechamber. “Tarry here. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  “Tread carefully,” Heqet whispered between gulps of air.

  “I always do. You be sure to—”

  The double-doors swished closed, severing the conversation. The antechamber ascended. Thirty seconds later, the doors opened onto the Temple’s gloomy parlor.

  Daoren hurried toward the main door. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows bracketing the door, moonlight yielded the only source of illumination. Distant buildings provided enough color contrast to silhouette a moving mass of shadowy forms.

  He cut his pace and squinted. During his time here, prospects had ventured outside at night, but never in such numbers. Maybe that had changed, or maybe a congregation of Libraria was returning to their living chambers from a late symposium. He edged closer to the windows, shifting to the side to gain a better view.

  Ten feet beyond the door, three unmanned levidecks rested on the tiled pathway.

  Three armored levidecks.

  The truth slammed into him like a sparring staff to the skull. The shadowy forms on the horizon weren’t prospects or Libraria. They were Jireni.

  “Oh my Sha,” he whispered.

  “Sha can’t save you now, slag.”

  Daoren pivoted to the growling voice.

  Three hulking forms loomed across the parlor. Enough light filtered from the antechamber to see that two carried dart guns. The third gripped a crystalline weapon with a bowl-shaped muzzle—a sonic rifle. Daggers and coils of wireglass glinted on their waist belts.

  “The others,” one of the Jireni said. “Where are they?”

  Daoren kept his voice calm despite his shock. “I’m here alone.”

  The Jiren stepped closer and leveled his dart gun.

  “Still your finger!” Daoren said, abandoning his calm.

  The Jiren held his fire. “Where are they?” he repeated.

  Daoren calculated his odds of survival. The answer held little promise.

  The Jireni cradled three state-of-the-art weapons. He had a quantum tile tucked into his tunic’s interior pocket, an obsolete model Laoshi had provided a few minutes earlier. Unlike the tile he’d surrendered outside the Librarium before his S.A.T., its glass wasn’t malleable. Fashioning it into a weapon wasn’t an option. Even if it was, the Jireni would put a half-dozen darts into his chest before he removed it from his pocket. If he tried to close the thirty feet to snatch one of their weapons, they’d cut him down before he took three paces. He needed to get near them without raising their guard, but how?

  He scanned the barren Temple. Its single desk and two divans offered no solutions. His searching gaze found the antechamber—and the answer. He steadied his breathing and feigned desperation. “If you promise us a quick death, I’ll take you to them.”

  The Jiren with the sonic rifle hawked and spat on the floor. “We should tarry here until the rest of the force arrives.”

  “Why?” one of the others asked. “So we can split the Unum’s reward three hundred ways instea
d of three?”

  The closest Jiren cacklebracked. “I’ve had my eye on a WhisperDart levitran for years. My share’ll get me it, but only if the reward’s split three ways.” He nodded at Daoren. “A quick death then. Lead on, slag.”

  Daoren heaved a defeated sigh, staying in character. “This way.”

  He led them into the antechamber and positioned himself before the handrail on the rear wall. His survival—and that of Heqet, Laoshi, and his mother—now depended on precise positioning and timing . . . and blind luck.

  The Jireni grouped near the doors, weapons trained. The closest Jiren kept his finger curled around his dart-gun’s trigger, cold eyes locked on his prey.

  Daoren maintained an aura of impending doom, screening his relief over the brute’s finger position. Without drawing attention, he jammed his grooll pouch beneath the handrail, anchoring it. The double-doors swished closed behind the Jireni.

  Daoren lifted his chin to the closest one. “Just out of curiosity, how much do you weigh?”

  The brute’s forehead furrowed. Before he could answer, the antechamber shuddered into free-fall.

  The Jireni’s feet broke contact with the floor. They yelped in unison, flailing their legs and groping for purchase.

  Daoren grasped the dart-gun’s barrel and reefed it sideways. He jerked the brute’s trigger-hand backward.

  Six high-pressure blasts pummeled the stunted compartment. Glass darts stitched two free-floating Jireni, pinning them to a wall. Globs of blood spurted from the wounds and hung suspended like miniature planetoids.

  Daoren wrapped both hands around the dart-gun’s barrel and wrenched it upward.

  The hovering brute’s body followed. He crunched head-first into the ceiling. Panels dislodged, exposing a grid of support beams.

  Daoren snatched the wireglass coil from the dazed Jiren’s belt. He freed his grooll pouch and pushed off the floor.

  Weightless, he rose to the ceiling and cinch-tied one end of the barbed thread around a support beam. He wrapped the other end around the Jiren’s neck.