Read The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) for Free Online Page A

teeth and grimaced but did not yell and would not cry when he threw her to the ground. She grasped a marble pedestal and limped to him. She spit in his face. “I’ll never serve you!”
    “Cross me again, young fool …” Antosha wiped his face and lifted his hand, and the Granville sphere flew to his grasp. He activated a new hologram above it and around them.
    Oriana knew the Island of Reverie. Its streams rushed, its weeping willow trees leaned under cover of twilight.
    “… and I’ll send all whom you love here. The surface, without any treatment, without any protection, without any hesitation, and they’ll suffer, the way I have suffered, then they’ll die.”
     
    Ventureño Facility
     
    “Preposterous,” Captain Ruiner Holcombe said to Antosha. “What you’re suggesting cannot happen.”
    Oriana had suspected the same when Antosha had told her and Pasha on their way to the facility that they would train with Ruiner, an experienced strike team captain. Standard procedure required entry to the training program with consortiums such as Blackstone or Ionian or Floian, and from there, selection as striker or aera, strategist, or captain. As much as Oriana had always wanted to become an aera, this title wasn’t designated. It was earned.
    “Oriana and Pasha were made for this mission,” Antosha said.
    It was at least the third time he’d said this. Did he think his repetition would weaken Ruiner Holcombe’s resolve?
    Ruiner was taller than Antosha, though not as chiseled. His beige bodysuit faded at his elbows and knees, weathered from missions, Oriana figured, though his face appeared as youthful as Pasha’s. He must have visited the Fountain of Youth since his recent return from a years-long deployment to Candor Chasma Central Command on Mars.
    “They’re still neophytes ,” Mintel Hurrows said. He was the team’s strategist. Next to him stood Dahlia Weztna, the aera. Both were lean and as cut as jaguars.
    “Heywood’s mission—” Dahlia said.
    “ My mission,” Antosha corrected.
    Oriana rubbed her leg. The bone and bruise had all but healed, thanks to uficilin, but the memory was as vivid as daybreak. She didn’t tell Pasha about her fight with Antosha, and she couldn’t reach Nathan.
    She focused on the mission, imagined her and Pasha on a space shuttle launching into the void, a ceremony in Artemis Square on their return, their victory, their Marks of Masimovian. Then she’d have the credibility with the chancellor to free her father and Lord Nero Silvana, and keep Nathan safe.
    “Did you not review our Harpoon scores?” Oriana said. The Holcombe Strike Team exchanged looks of surprise at her boldness. She turned to Antosha and added, “We’re honored to serve a supreme scientist and the chancellor in a commonwealth mission.”
    Ruiner raised his voice. “You may be, but this mission will require a hardened aera and a wise strategist to have any probability for success.”
    Dahlia and Mintel nodded sharply. She sensed the Holcombe Strike Team’s distrust went beyond her and Pasha’s selection for the mission. It had to do with Antosha, for which she couldn’t blame them.
    Kiss him now , Oriana thought, cut him later.
    “I’d welcome the opportunity to train in the ways of an aera,” she said. “Supreme Scientist Zereoue is as wise as he is thoughtful.” To Ruiner, she added, “Captain, Pasha and I won’t let you down. My brother is skilled with telepathy, mathematics, and science and can learn the ways of a strike team strategist. And I fought products from House Variscan in the heart of the dwarf planet Ceres—”
    “In a simulation,” Mintel said. “Darling, you don’t have real-world experience.”
    “I agree,” Dahlia said. “Wherever it is in the galaxy that Supreme Scientist Heywood Querice would send our captain, we should follow.”
    “I’m the supreme scientist covering Reassortment,” Antosha said, “and this mission is being run through my facility.