The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (10 page)

Reluctantly, I walked on, making my way to
the far end of the room. Holos of Benedict, unfortunately, didn’t
seem to be running in the main chamber. I would have to appeal for
entry into a more secure level of the Comm Center—and pass through
the dreaded NDNA scan!

Changing my DNA into Wart’s had meant that,
courtesy of my Ergal, my brain cells had been transformed and now
contained his neurocache. The NDNA scan would recognize my brain’s
neurocache patterns as belonging to Ward Burton, of course. But, to
maintain my own consciousness inside his body, I, or rather my
Ergal, had had to encrypt my own neurocache among Wart’s. Would the
NDNA scan reveal that “Wart’s” neurocache patterns were subtly
different than those stored in Zygfed’s records from earlier
scans?

I couldn’t let those seeds of doubt be read
by the scanner. I had to ensure my anxious thoughts wouldn’t arouse
suspicion. I’m really glad I took those boring classes in method
acting after all. As I approached the portal to Security Level C ,
I started repeating silently to myself: I
am
Ward Burton. I
am
Ward Burton.

The scanner’s probe entered my brain.
“Purpose of entry?”

Ward Burton, Ward Burton. Urgent comm from
Terra Core.

“Scan in progress.”

Ward Burton. Ward Burton
.

“Scan completed.”

The pause seemed frighteningly long. I
struggled to stay calm. Finally, to my relief, the portal door I
was facing opened to allow me entry into Security Level C. I
wandered in slowly, breathing deeply to steady my nerves, and
searched among the rows of holo displays filling this smaller suite
for the holo station that displayed our target.

Most of the holos I passed in this suite
seemed to be of various Benedict cronies, who went about their
nefarious business unaware that Zygint was watching their every
move. There was still no sign of Benedict on any of the
screens.

I stopped, stunned. Right next to me, a holo
displayed a life-size Sutherland, robed and bearded as Saul once
again. Judging from the background, he
did
seem to be back
in Sidon, or, more accurately, marching down that same path to the
city Tyre that Yeshua and the Keeper had recently taken after
bidding us good-bye. I turned to face the holo, hoping that the
team monitoring me at Matshi’s could see what I saw, too.

“The evil eye knows,” a human voice boomed in
my ear.

It took all my training not to startle. I
turned to see a short, portly man who looked vaguely familiar. Had
I met him at Mingferplatoi? No, no, at Central, last year. What was
his name? Carl. Carlton Platt. Never liked him, but, Wart, Ward
Burton, probably does. I bestowed him with Wart’s friendly grin.
“Hey, Carl, you sound like a DJ.”

“It’s from an old radio
^xii
show, ‘The Shadow’,” he
did the voice again, “‘The Shadow knows …’

“Ah,” I said and forced a chuckle.

“But little do
they
know,” Carl nodded
at the other holos, then pointed to Sutherland. “Good job,
buddy.”

I was ready to blurt out that Sutherland’s
escape wasn’t my fault when I remembered I was Ward Burton. I said
carefully, “Thanks …”
What did I—Wart—do that was ‘a good
job’?

“Let’s go for a walk,” Carl whispered to me
in a conspiratorial tone, as he motioned for his neighbor to cover
his station.

I nodded, swallowing hard to clear the knot
in my chest. Was he inviting Ward Burton, or me?

* * *

“We’re shielded here,” Platt assured me as we
eased into the comfortable couches in the lounge. “Great work.”

I nodded again. “Means a lot,” I punted.

“Benedict’s very happy,” Carl added with a
broad smile.

“Great,” I answered instinctively, before it
hit me.
Oh, my God! They’re inside!
Benedict’s Andarts
are inside Zygint!
My hand quietly inched towards my Ergal. And
Wart, our Wart, was one of them!

“The one hundred mil in Deltan credits we
promised are in the Krøneckðr account,”
^xiii
Platt continued
smoothly. “But—”

I tensed. “But?”

Carlton spread his hands open. “Look, you’re
still uncontaminated. Why don’t you wait until Sutherland cleans up
in Phoenecia and
then
mute away. Until he’s done, we might
still need you.”

“Is that a request …?” I said quietly.

Carl’s tone got cold. “Benedict always
asks.”

I smiled, and waved a hand in the best
Wartian style. “Well, then, what do you think? Of course.”

Carl’s features relaxed. He leaned over and
slapped me on the back. “That’s my buddy. How ‘bout we go get some
lunch?”

* * *

I managed to get away from Carlton over the
salad, feigning an upset stomach. But exiting Central would be
almost as dicey as getting in. I was shaken to discover that our
Wart was a traitor, and worried that my anger and disappointment at
his betrayal would be picked up by the NDNA scan on my way out. As
the scanner light washed over me, I tried visualizing Wart’s
delightful sense of humor and remembered his friendly welcome and
support when Spud and I were starting as green catascopes at Earth
Core. The technique fortunately worked, and I was able to hold back
my tears until I’d made it through the lobby of the tall spire and
out into the comforting blanket of clouds once again.

As soon as the mist had enveloped me, I
Ergaled back to Matshi’s kalyvi. Grateful to be muted back into
Shiloh, I sat quietly in my chair, shaking my head. Spud was as
shocked as I’d been. Not only had Benedict’s men infiltrated
Zygint, but, incomprehensibly, our colleague Ward Burton, too, was
Benedict’s mole!

“That certainly explains how Sutherland
escaped,” Spud said bitterly, adding for the others’ benefit, “Ward
Burton prepared our transport cell.”

“There was never an E-shield …,” I
muttered.

“I doubt it, too,” Spud said. “He left the
cage door open, and Sutherland was free as a bird.”

“Speaking of shields, Carlton said Sutherland
was cleaning up back in Sidon. If Central
had
put a temporal
vector shield around Sidon—like Gary told us—how could Sutherland
get past it to go back there?” The thought alarmed me. “Maybe
everybody at Core’s dirty …,” I whispered, unconsciously shifting
away from Spud. Was there
anyone
I could trust?

Spud caught my move, and looked genuinely
hurt. “Not everyone,” he added quietly.

Oops. I winced. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean
…”

Matshi stepped in. “It is a fair question,
Escott. How did Sutherland get through the temporal vector shield
back to Sidon?”

“I am only theorizing here,” Spud said with
evident distaste, “but after we brought Sutherland to Core and sent
him to the holding suite, Wart could’ve hacked through the shield
and shot Sutherland back to Sidon to finish his mission. Nobody
else at Core would have those skills.”

“You mean the Sutherland we ported wasn’t
really--”

Spud shook his head. “Our whole transport
could’ve been staged with an avatar to fool us, Gary, the Drexels,
and anyone else who is dirt-free.” He stressed the last two words
with an edge in his voice.

Regretful, I tried to pat his arm, but he
pulled away.

Ulenem laughed heartily at our gullibility.
“You Terrans are so naive.”

Eikhus looked at us and asked, “Let’s just
assume Spud’s right. What do we do next?”

I shrugged, adding through clenched teeth.
“Obviously, we have to go back to Sidon and catch Sutherland once
more.” The thought suddenly struck me: how
had
Sutherland
caught on to us so quickly as impostors in Sidon, unless he’d been
warned by someone? Wart, again?

Apparently, Spud was thinking on the same
track. “Our covers have been blown. Either we go back with our DNA
muted, or someone else can …” He looked around the table. “In any
case, if it is we, we cannot let Core know we have resumed our
quest.”

I agreed. “Wart probably put has a DNA tracer
alert in the vector shield to notify him and track us if we show
up.”

Matshi raised two hands. “Then, we’ll go.
Ulenem and I can do it.”

Sneering, Ulenem pulled out his athame and
ran a finger across its blade.

“You sure?” I asked. “They’ll be expecting a
rescue this time.”

Matshi looked at his friend. “We’re up for
it.”

Ulenem twirled his serrated blade once again
and nodded with a broad smirk. Friends since childhood, Matshi and
Ulenem had been inseparable during their first months of training
at Mingferplatoi. When Matshi’d had his crisis of conscience and
decided to drop out of the Academy, Ulenem had reluctantly given up
his own ambitions of serving as a Zygan combat hero and followed
his lifelong comrade into a relatively obscure career as
mercenaries, soldiers-for-hire. The last two years had seen them
waste their talents as partners-for-hire on several trivial
missions for planetary security and police departments, or as
Ulenem had complained dourly, “plucking Felisils
^xiv
out of trees.” They were
both, obviously, itching to get back into big-league action.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking.

Spud glared at them both and said firmly,
“Alive. We need Sutherland alive.”

Chapter 5

Tyre

Phoenecia—two thousand years ago

Getting Matshi and Ulenem through the
temporal vector shield had been easier than we expected. Wart
must’ve sneaked in a few loopholes, Spud surmised. He estimated
we’d have a good chance to break through the vector shield and find
our targets by using a Trojan horse. In our case, our Trojan horse
was, literally, a Trojan horse. Ostentatious in the imperial Roman
sculpture tradition, the colossal marble statue of Homer’s equine
was M-fanned by my Ergal onto the grounds of a Tiberian governor’s
expansive estate on the outskirts of Tyre. As soon as nightfall
hit, our friends opened the portal in the horse’s belly, and crept
outside. Why reinvent the wheel?

I’d let the pair borrow my Ergal to deploy
during their mission, hoping that we could rescue Yeshua--and our
assignment--before anyone at Central found out. Matshi, anamorphed
into human form, still looked, frankly, scary. With his seven-foot
height, he towered over most of the villagers on the road to Tyre,
and his broad thorax, its exoskeleton covered by Ergaled human
skin, gave him the muscular appearance of a heavyweight fighter.
Ulenem, whose normal height was less than two feet, had, in his
human disguise, mega’d himself to look only slightly shorter and
less bulked up than Matshi. And, he was equally intimidating, even
with his athame and other weapons hidden in the folds of his
robes.

Raised in warm environments, both men were
much more comfortable in the hot, dry desert than Spud and I had
been. With Ergals translating, their Phoenecian and Latin were
passable, though Matshi did have a tendency to over-roll his
R’s.

Once inside the city limits, they quickly set
up a skinos (a large tent made of gamil leather) on a deserted
rocky ridge dotted with chaparral, from which they had a good view
of the part of town favored by immigrant laborers, many from Judea.
It was likely that Yeshua could be found among them. If Matshi and
Ulenem succeeded in getting to Yeshua before Sutherland did, they
could hopefully prevent the youth’s murder, preserve Earth’s
timeline, and recapture Sutherland for us once again.

At sunrise, Matshi stuck a head out of the
skinos and shivered. He said to Ulenem, “It’s only 321 degrees
Kelvin, bundle up.”

The Assassin snorted. “Earth’s always in an
Ice Age.” He draped his body and his weapons with several layers of
robes, and quickly joined his partner on the trek to the workers’
camps in the valley below.

Zygint’s monitoring of Sutherland had
included contact metrics for his location, most valuably date and
time. We’d figured we’d give our team a head start to reach Bar
Maryam first and, using the data from the Zygint holo, sent them
back in a few days earlier than Sutherland was due to arrive.
Unfortunately, none of us had contact metrics on Yeshua. Matshi and
Ulenem had to find him the old-fashioned way, pounding the
pavement.

The young warriors took that instruction
somewhat to heart, and didn’t waste time with the niceties Spud and
I had favored. Going from tent to tent in the immigrants’
settlements, they impressed the migrant workers with forceful
questions on the whereabouts of a Yeshua or a Saul. Matshi’s report
is a little sketchy on the details of their interrogations at this
point, but he does note that the results of their efforts led them
on several wild goose chases—Matshi uses a more colorful
idiom—based on inaccurate answers from what I suspect were
terrified and desperate browbeaten victims.

Finally, after a couple of days of
unsuccessful pursuits, Matshi opted to try a different tactical
approach. Several of the “interviewed” workers had identified a
gathering place about three kilometers on the other side of town
that was used as a temple by some of the more devout immigrants.
Matshi urged his partner to join him at the site.

“It is too late,” Ulenem averred, twirling
his athame. “We must first go ambush Sutherland. Then we have all
the time in the world to find the boy.”

“The Zygint holo showed that Sutherland
should be arriving at the road to Tyre in four and a half hours,”
Matshi advised, checking the contact metrics on his Ergal. “We
still have time to make the ambuscade if Yeshua turns out not to be
at this temple.”

Ulenem wasn’t easily convinced, but in the
end he reluctantly agreed to accompany his friend. Leaving the
warmth and goodwill of the camp residents behind them, or not,
Matshi and Ulenem set off for the Temple on the Hill.