by James Axler
“Fine by me,” Grant began, but before the last word had left his lips, a bright burst of dazzling scarlet light flashed outside like lightning and the Blackbird shook as though it had struck something. “What th—?”
A moment later the chopper shuddered violently, and Grant, Domi and the others found themselves tossed across the metal decking. They were under attack.
* * *
GRABBING AT WHATEVER PASSED for handholds in the chopper’s interior, Grant hurried forward as the craft continued to shake. Behind him, Rosalia’s dog was barking fearfully.
“What the hell’s going on?” Grant asked as he saw the startled pilot, Mahood, struggling with the controls.
Grant was surprised to see that the piloting system was not the advanced, sleek dash he’d expected. Rather, old-fashioned dials and plates had been wired together and a bucket seat was positioned in front of two stick-style yokes, something like an ancient whirlybird.
Mahood, an olive-skinned Iranian with glistening sweat in the pebbledash stubble atop his head, looked at Grant with wide eyes, shouting something in his own tongue.
“Again,” Grant instructed. “In English.”
“A light ray,” Mahood translated as he fought with the yoke. “Laser. Laser beam.”
Even as he said it, Grant saw another blast zap past the cockpit windows, bloodred and ascending in a thick vertical line that was at least a dozen feet across.
“Shit,” Grant growled. One hit from that thing and they’d lose a wing…or worse. “Can you get us down?” Grant asked urgently, placing a hand on the back of Mahood’s seat to keep himself steady as they rolled and yawed.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Mahood spit as he struggled with the controls, banking the chopper so that Grant had to hang on to stop his head from slamming against the ceiling. Through the cockpit window, Grant could see the narrow crescent of the moon, a thin sliver of white hanging in the darkening blue sky.
Grant was an accomplished pilot himself and he stared at the bucket seat that Mahood sat in, his ample backside resting atop a fluffy pink cushion at odds with the worn brown leather of the ancient seat belt. “Want me to take over?” Grant asked.
Mahood pulled up on the stick as another thick blast of laser light cut through the air ahead of them, its edges crackling like lightning. “We need to land right now,” he explained in his fractured English. “I got her but I don’t think we’re—”
Another blast lit the cockpit, and something on the far right of the dash suddenly burst into flames. Mahood stretched out his sandaled foot and kicked at the flames, stamping them until they went out.
“Must land here, Mr. Grant,” he explained. “But quickly.”
“Yeah,” Grant agreed, “I can see that.”
Mahood banked in on a tight vector as Grant hurried back to the cargo hold, where his four allies were anxiously waiting. Swiftly he explained the situation to them as the ancient chopper rocked in the air, illuminated by another of the all-powerful crimson beams of laser light.
“Be ready, people,” Grant said. “We might have to ditch.”
Rosalia looked up from where she was steadying her dog. “What is that light show, anyway?”
“Looks like a pulse laser,” Grant explained. “Single shot but deadly as hell. I don’t think it’s tracking us. Looks more like it’s automated to react to anything in the sky. But it’s a wide enough beam to cut us if we get unlucky.”
“Local defence, huh?” Rosalia hissed. “Painful.”
Touchdown was as rough as it was unexpected. Grant opened the cargo door and urged his companions out.
“Been a pleasure, man,” Grant said over the radio communicator as he stepped up to the open door. “Clear skies.”
He jumped out into the courtyard where Mahood had landed and sprinted for the cover of the nearby buildings.
As Grant reached the edge of the courtyard the laser blasted again, rushing up into the sky in a column of bloodred lightning. From high above there was an explosion as something went up in flames—the chopper, Grant realized.
He peered up, his eyes aching as they struggled to look into the red beam of the laser. And then it switched off, as suddenly as it had fired, and the sky seemed to be plunged into darkness, the single slit eye of the moon a blurred white streak on his retina.
Grant saw that the chopper had been cut in two by the laser light, an expanding ball of flame bursting from its side as the pieces began to drop. He knew that Mahood was doomed, and threw himself into the mouth of an alley to seek shelter from the flaming wreckage falling from the sky.
Chapter 7
Once he confirmed all his teammates were present, Grant tried to establish their location. He estimated they were no more than three-fourths of a mile from the outer wall. He activated his hidden Commtact link, switching to the frequency they had set aside to speak with their local contact, the man called Hassood.
“This is Grant from Cerberus,” Grant said, keeping his voice low as he spoke into his subdermal device. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were picked up by the wearer’s auditory canals, and dermal sensors transmitted the electronic signals directly through the skull casing, vibrating the ear canal. In theory, a completely deaf user would still be able to hear normally, in a fashion, courtesy of the Commtact device.
The units also functioned as real-time translation devices, providing they had enough raw vocabulary from a language programmed into their processor. And because they were directly connected to the body of the user, could amplify speech no matter how quiet. As such, Grant chose not to raise his voice when calling for Hassood, so as not to attract any unwanted attention in the mysterious dragon city. The place appeared deserted, but Grant knew he could not test the veracity of that observation. Best be careful, then.
“Local, are you receiving me?” Grant said.
The Commtact receiver remained silent for an agonizing stretch of seconds before a man’s voice, high-pitched and reminding Grant of a woman, came back to him. “Receiving you, Cerberus,” the man confirmed. “This is Hassood. I saw an explosion. What happenings?”
Grant winced. “I’m afraid we ran into some trouble,” he said delicately. “Your cousin…he didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”
There was silence again over the Commtact, and Grant could feel the eyes of his team burning on him as they listened to just one side of the conversation.
“Hassood?” Grant prompted.
Hassood’s voice came back over the Commtact. “Very sad day. Let us not make it any sadder. Where are you?”
“We landed wide of the field,” Grant explained. “About a half mile or so into town along the western edge. How close are you?”
“Head west,” Hassood responded after a moment’s thought. “You’ll see a towering thing, like…um…needle, yes? Knitting needle?”
“Gotcha,” Grant confirmed.
“Needle is made of white stone, in center of street,” Hassood said. “You will see it. I come, wait for you there.”
“Okay,” Grant agreed. “We’re on our way.”
Grant led his field team through the eerie, empty city. The lanes were silent, unlit. There were no streetlamps at all, not even the suggestion of ones that might have once worked. It left the city in darkness, shadows genuflecting to the tidal whims of the moon. The dragon city was made up of buildings of all shapes and sizes, everything constructed of a white stone. The buildings all appeared to be boarded up, every last one of them, doors and windows barricaded with pale-colored struts as if the inhabitants were preparing for a tornado, battening down the hatches. But if they were, then the locals were waiting now in silence—the whole city seemed to echo only with the footsteps of the Cerberus team, the panting of Rosalia’s dog sounding like a steam train as it reverberated
off the brickwork.
Beneath the single silvery line of the slimmest crescent moon, the roads were narrow and winding, made of dusty cobbles, sand sprinkled between them that billowed up to dance on the tireless eddies of the wind. There were several abandoned vehicles here, the odd motorized cart parked at the roadside, windows and hubcaps filthy with white sand. Grant urged them to continue, heading in a westerly direction to the arranged meeting place with their guide, Hassood. By keeping to one direction, Grant hoped that also they might find genuine signs of life amid the boarded-up buildings. But they didn’t. Instead, it felt like they were walking through a photograph, a picture of one of those great American cities just before the nukes had dropped, when people had boarded up their homes and shops in the hopes of surviving the unimaginable devastation to come.
The five-strong Cerberus team walked loosely abreast, spreading out across the road to make for multiple targets should a sniper appear from the shadows and to bolster their chances of survival against a single tossed grenade. They continued past a stripped-down SandCat sitting on blocks, its chassis holed with multiple bullet scars. There was no sign of its occupants.
Before long, twilight had turned to night, the skyline meeting the sand that surrounded the weird city in the shape of a dragon. Grant checked his wrist chron—it was 9:33 on a balmy July night. He and his companions were becoming increasingly aware that they were walking through a ghost town as they continued to make their way west. Mahood’s cousin had promised to wait for them until 10:00 p.m. local time, Grant knew, but since he had witnessed the destruction of the chopper he may very well be having second thoughts. Grant tamped down his irritation, feeling no guilt at the man’s death, only sorrow and anger. A Magistrate had no time for guilt, Grant recalled, his training protecting him from such useless and destructive emotions.
They kept moving, hoping to find a place that wasn’t boarded up. Rosalia’s dog whimpered now and again, and she hushed it; the animal didn’t seem to have much interest in exploring the city. Instead it seemed scared.
“Feels strange,” Domi murmured as they continued down the empty street.
Grant turned to her, his eyes roving the weird, boarded-up structures behind her. “Yeah,” he agreed. He couldn’t help wishing they had Kane with them. With his uncanny ability to sniff out trouble, his partner’s so-called point-man sense sure could help them out right now.
The street they were walking along narrowed, and abruptly they had reached a cul-de-sac, where the towering buildings on either side leaned inward so as to almost form an arch, their highest points touching. A wall sat across the end of the narrow road, blocking the way and reaching up to Grant’s shoulders. Grant stared at it, turned back for a moment to make sure they weren’t being watched then brought himself close and peered over the wall. Beyond lay another street, really nothing more than the other half of the one they were on, the wall apparently blocking it for no other reason than to be contrary, or like some kind of valve.
“Back or over?” Grant mouthed, his lips moving in silence.
Grant peered behind him once more, eyeballing the street. Domi waited at his shoulder while Kishiro and Kudo hung back, adopting safe positions in the shadows to either side of the street, unarmed but with their hands resting ready at their sheathed swords.
Rosalia was hanging farther back along with her dog, treading on light feet as she peered closely at the boarded windows and doors around them. She stopped for a moment, peering into the dark gap between two pale boards that seemed to have been painted—was it paint?—a creamy white, her exotic brown eyes searching inside for signs of life. Beside her, the dog whimpered sorrowfully as it peered at the boarded door. Rosalia glared at the dog, hushing it with a single look. Grant watched from the distance as Rosalia pressed her ear against the boards.
Other than Grant’s own team, the street itself was ghostly empty. More than just empty—it was silent, eerily so beneath the silver light of the thin moon. Weeds grew between the cracks in the cobblestones, life, as ever, finding a way. The buildings themselves looked aged, ancient, leaning toward one another.
Was this place built by human hands? Grant wondered as a nightmarish feeling began to tickle along his spine.
There was definitely something off about it. It had an indefinably false quality, the age of the buildings somehow premature, the apparent randomness of the structures not random at all, forming that great dragon shape from overhead. The mind that had planned this settlement knew what it was doing. But the question was, what was it doing?
Then Rosalia came trotting up to Grant and Domi on swift, silent feet. “There were people in there once,” Rosalia said in an urgent whisper, indicating the house she and the dog had been investigating.
“You sure?” Grant queried.
Rosalia glared at him, thrusting her jaw out, hands on hips. “Why would I say so otherwise?” she snapped contemptuously.
“Yeah, sorry,” Grant muttered. He was on edge, something about these ghost streets at moonrise worrying at him. With a determined effort, Grant put his mind back to the problem at hand. The road they were on was quite closed in, which meant that if they turned back they would need to retrace their steps for a couple of minutes. That was time wasted. “Let’s keep going west,” he decided, and the others agreed.
Grant reached up to the crest of the wall and pulled himself up with both arms, bumping his torso against the wall as he peered more carefully over it, arms poised vertically to hold himself up. As before, this street was empty, and in a moment Grant had pulled himself over the wall and dropped down to the other side.
“Come on,” he called, keeping his voice low. “It’s all clear.”
A moment later Domi came scrabbling over the wall to join Grant, a smile on her lips.
“Nice street you’ve found,” she teased. “Different.”
Grant looked up the street, peering into the shadows. It was hard to see now with so little illumination from the moonlight, and he reached for the polymer-lensed glasses he habitually carried in the inside pocket of his coat, propping them on the bridge of his nose. The lenses of the glasses were specially treated with chemical, providing a form of night vision that turned the street in front of Grant’s eyes into a sort of greenish-gray conglomeration of light and shadow. It wasn’t much different from the one they had just left. The buildings continued to stand at odd angles, closing in on them like falling dominoes, blocking out the moonlight so that what little light it gave became just a spear down the center of the street.
Grant turned back, gazing past Domi at the wall that they had climbed over. “What’s keeping the others?” he muttered.
* * *
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF the wall, less than ten feet away, the Tigers of Heaven warriors were working together to get Rosalia’s dog over the wall with as little fuss as possible. The dog grumbled a little but seemed to assent to the treatment, only to shrug the two men away and unleash a sudden bark, affixing its pale eyes on the far end of the street. Kishiro and Kudo held the dog, and Rosalia leaned down to its face, speaking softly to hush it. The dog looked inquisitively at her, then barked again, pulling past her. Again the Tigers of Heaven grabbed the dog as it glared at the end of the street, fighting their grip.
“Hold him,” Rosalia instructed, feeling her hackles rise. She looked behind her, trying to see what had worried the dog, eyes scanning left and right. The street remained ill lit beneath the moonlight, a smattering of stars adding nothing to its illumination.
Kudo took the dog while Kishiro reached for the wall, readying himself to climb over it. Suddenly Rosalia stopped them, holding up her hand for quiet as she peered intensely back toward the far end of the street. Something had moved back there, she was sure of it. Something swift, a silver flash in the subtle moonlight, like a knife blade.
Without a word, Rosalia took
three paces along the street, four, placing her feet silently on the cobblestones as she searched the dimly lit surroundings with her eyes.
There was something there; she was sure of it. It smelled like rain—a nothing smell, but a sense, a feeling.
Rosalia peered down the street for a long moment, calming her breathing as she searched, waiting for whatever it was to show itself. Off in the distance, a fox yipped, sounding like a baby crying, the sound faint but still audible in the silence. Was that what had spooked the dog? Nothing moved. Nothing appeared. No matter how much Rosalia willed it, nothing stepped from the shadows, nothing made a noise. Just that smell, like rainfall.
She peered up, eyeing the narrow shaft of the moon, white on indigo, the stars that crept behind it in their Dalmatian-spot patterns. She had known the constellations once, when she was just a little girl. They looked different here, a half step around the world. If the people of Cerberus were to be believed, it was somewhere up there that the Annunaki had begun, conquering this planet with the effortlessness of a man conquering the lightest dusting of snowfall.
Rosalia turned back, placing silent footstep before silent footstep as she returned to the five-foot-high wall where Kishiro and Kudo waited, holding her dog. She gave them the briefest of nods and they resumed their operation, Kudo hefting the dog up while Kishiro clambered to the top of the wall and readied himself to take the hound as it was passed to him.
Taking a single step backward, Rosalia ran at the wall and leaped, her left hand barely skimming it as she vaulted over and landed beside Grant and Domi on the far side.
Grant looked at her. “What kept you?” he asked.
Following Rosalia, the two Tigers of Heaven lifted her mongrel dog over the wall and placed it—squirming and snarling—on the other side. The dog trotted over to where its mistress stood, peering up at her with plaintive eyes.
“Good boy,” Rosalia said to hush it. “S’okay now.”