by James Axler
It had split seas and engaged in battle against other weird weapons of its ilk. And it had picked Kane, chosen him, sifted through the thousands upon thousands of minds on Earth, choosing him as its wielder.
But the fear he held of it had changed. Kane’s mind, Kane’s being was still his own. The damned stick hadn’t swallowed him, casting him into oblivion, uprooting him from his body and hurling him along the line to another identity, another organism in another dimension. He had recognized glimpses of other casements, other eras, ones that could not have existed within this world, at least as far as he could tell.
The real fear was of what he could become. Kane hadn’t touched the staff since he’d healed Nathan of his injuries. He didn’t want to know what he could be capable of with it in his hands. It was more than just another tool, as he’d imagined. It was an amazing weapon.
Wielding it, a man could be considered a god, or the right hand of said god. There were times when Kane had wanted to possess such power, as when he’d fought face-to-face with Enlil and his alien brethren. Kane tried to reason with himself, regarding the Sin Eater on his forearm.
As a magistrate, one of the first things he’d been drilled on was the discipline needed to carry the deadly folding submachine gun in its hydraulic forearm holster. With a simple motion, a twitch of his wrist, the Sin Eater would shoot into his hand. Without a trigger guard, the gun would fire immediately upon striking his hooked index finger. Kane had learned how to control that impulse, learned the discipline, the restraint necessary to prevent an unnecessary reaction. A magistrate in training needed to wear the holster and gun, unloaded, for six months before being trusted with ammunition for the weapon.
Just like the deadly firearm that could kill at a mere twitch and reflex, Nehushtan was something that required discipline. If Kane couldn’t trust himself with the ancient staff, then he shouldn’t trust himself with a less powerful gun. He’d fought for the world, and gladly placed himself into the line of fire between those who would maim indiscriminately and those who could barely protect themselves. He was the living line in the sand between predators and prey.
As such, Nehushtan, despite the power it demonstrated in Kane’s memory, should not be so terrifying to him.
“Are you back with us?” Grant asked him.
“Never left,” Kane answered.
“And grouchy as ever. Good. It didn’t steal your soul.”
Kane used his middle finger to wipe his lower eyelid, getting some dried seepage out of the way, another answer, half mocking, half serious, to Grant’s diagnosis of his mental condition.
Neither Grant nor Brigid missed the implication, but they smiled.
“Welcome back,” Brigid said. “What did you learn from Nehushtan?”
Kane narrowed his eyes. “Who said it talked to me?”
She frowned. “I was carrying it. It transmitted all manner of thoughts to me as I was bringing it to you...but I couldn’t make anything out.”
“Really?” Kane asked. If anything could surprise him, it was the knowledge that Brigid Baptiste, with her brilliant intellect and quick working mind, could be left befuddled by any instance. That Nehushtan’s communications were gibberish only went further toward his realization that the ancient relic had some truly remarkable abilities.
Brigid shook her head, and her smooth brow wrinkled as she understood the source of Kane’s question. “What did it tell you?”
“It didn’t tell as much as it related memories,” he answered. “I was viewing the world through the eyes of my predecessors. It told me that this wasn’t the first time I was resistant to wielding it.”
“Told you. As in spoke?” Brigid wondered.
“Remember our first incident with the Nagah at Garuda? When I was in telepathic congress with Enlil?” Kane asked.
“It occurred at the speed of thought. One moment you were drifting off, the next you were floored by what appeared to be a heart attack,” Grant said.
“This occurred at that kind of time frame. I didn’t realize it at first,” Kane muttered. “I just knew that I had to save Nathan’s life, and didn’t want to waste a single moment.”
“You were able to interact with the device,” Brigid mused. “Meanwhile, I seemed to have been more pulled along than anything else.”
“It manipulated you?” Grant asked. The big man frowned, his gunfighter mustache emphasizing the expression.
Kane didn’t know what caused Grant’s discomfort at first, but then remembered the efforts of Enlil’s son, the mad god Ullikummis, and his attempt to break Brigid Baptiste’s spirit, turning her into his right-hand man. It had been a daring ploy by the stone-skinned Annunaki, but Brigid had found a way to fight against his brainwashing, storing her true identity away in her brain, allowing the appearance of servitude to shield her from further soul-breaking. She’d allowed Ullikummis to construct a shell that she had named Brigid Haight, and the brilliant archivist had proved herself an unwavering part of the rocky demon’s crusade to conquer the world. Only at the last moment had she shed the false identity, and assisted Kane and Grant in defeating him.
That Nehushtan could work her over, make her into a puppet and courier for its transportation to Kane’s hand showed that there was even more power to the artifact.
“So, we’re all of the same opinion on Nehushtan,” Kane stated. “It’s a damned scary stick.”
“No kidding,” Brigid returned. “I’m just glad that you can handle it.”
“Me, too,” Kane muttered.
He spent the next half hour describing to them the sights he had seen. Battles in jungle tombs with gelatinous beings, wars with all manner of demonic soldiers who left scars upon the world, walks in ancient Atlantis, and journeys across barren, inhospitable deserts. Brigid seemed to brighten at mention of individual incidents, as if something had sparked within her memory.
If anything, that made Kane only more uncomfortable. It was as if Nehushtan had given the woman hints, but was still playing it close to the vest. The staff was allowing her glimpses into things it had fed into her mind, seeming to unlock them only with the proper reference from Kane himself. She remained quiet on this point, which proved unsettling. At least she was able to provide references for some of the things that Kane had observed, thanks to the staff.
While they talked, North, Lomon and Jonas were busy going over the creatures that Grant, Kane and Nathan had killed. It was North who did the majority of the postmortem examination of the creatures, while Lomon and Jonas provided security. Shuka was in the redoubt with the newly healed Nathan and the three travelers from Cerberus.
Finally, the two Zambians and the archaeologist returned from their investigation.
“Any sign of other kongamato?” Brigid asked as they arrived.
North shook his head.“No. Just the three of them, gutted. We took care of the bodies, dumping them in the river, but we found this.” He held out a plastic bag that seems to be full of wet garbage.
North reached into the sack and pulled out a bloody, torn uniform fragment. There was a badge on the chest, and Nathan took a closer look.
“Lomon and Jonas already confirmed that it’s a Harare military uniform,” North stated. “And the badge shows that they’re stationed at the power station on Harare’s side of the river.”
“Kariba to be exact,” Lomon added.
Brigid looked closely at the torn scrap of uniform. “This was in the creature’s guts?”
North nodded.
She examined it. Sure enough, there was a small sewn-on badge stating it was from a militia member protecting the Kariba station. She bit her lower lip, immediately turning her thoughts to the map of the region provided by Cerberus’s computers and satellites. Kariba Dam was shared between the two territories of Zambia and Harare, a balance that had been in existence since Harar
e was known as Zimbabwe. The very hydroelectric dams and power stations that allowed the two nations to maintain twentieth-century living standards, with some improvements over the two hundred years in skydark’s wake, had its terminus at the dam and the massive gorge it had been named after.
The Harare station was mirrored in Zambia to the north, across the Zambezi River, though the south station was the first of them built, Brigid recalled from her quick brush up. If they were in the Harare section of the Kariba gorge, it would explain why Nathan had been chased to the Zambezi, and why the Zambians had been taken by surprise. Nathan hadn’t seen any details of the ominous shadow that had slain his father, but with the brutality of the kongamato, it was unlikely that the winged beasts would have been warned off by the arrival of a young man.
Then Brigid recalled the surge she had felt when she had been given power by Nehushtan. She also remembered that Nathan had described his own encounter with the creatures, and their unwillingness to come in contact with him or the staff as he swung it as a weapon. Him being relatively untouched in comparison to heavily armed soldiers had to be due to the protection Nehushtan provided.
“This means we’re going exploring,” Kane mused as he listened to Brigid’s assessment of the new evidence. “Do you know anything about the Kariba station? I mean, we just came from one that had a redoubt hidden beneath it....”
“I’ll conference with Bry. We’ll look at records on the dam,” Brigid said. “If there’s nothing from Africa about it, there might be in some European databases, as this was designed by an Italian firm, which means that this could have been a front for the Totality Concept.”
“Two redoubts, right across the river from each other?” Grant asked.
“It seems unlikely, I agree,” Brigid responded. “But there might be a connecting tunnel, somewhere beneath the river. Most redoubts have their nuclear generators buried underneath enough bedrock to block their radioactive output, not only limiting the danger to people living within them, but lowering their profile for any outside source seeking it by radiation signature.”
“Makes sense,” Kane mused. “Do you have any direct communications with Kariba?”
Lomon rubbed his chin with his thumb. “Usually. And they should have called if they had come under attack....”
“We also didn’t get a chance to send out our own distress call when those things struck,” Jonas added. “And they were in a more blatant mood to intercept Nathan.”
Nathan looked around at his new friends. His quest had brought all six people into perilous conflict with an inhuman foe. Lomon, Jonas and Shuka had lost a dozen compatriots to the kongamato, and Nathan himself had nearly died, costing Grant and Kane the opportunity to take one of the beasts alive and possibly speaking. However, neither group seemed to be flinching from the fact that they needed to head to the Harare nation’s Kariba station to seek out the main body of the winged horrors.
“I know that I didn’t do a good job....” Nathan spoke up at last.
Kane held up his hand. “It was a lucky strike by the kongamato.”
“That’s the problem. It wasn’t a chance hit. This time, I wasn’t under the protection of the staff,” Nathan countered. “I’m pretty good with it....”
“Do we really want to bring him along?” Shuka asked.
Lomon shot a harsh glare at the younger Zambian. “This young man braved the frontier between his home city and the Zambezi River. Whether it was the staff or not, he has proved himself a man. If he wishes to join us in our fight...we simply do not have the manpower to reject anyone.”
Lomon then looked toward Brigid, and nodded to her. “Would you turn aside her assistance, as well?”
Shuka glanced toward the flame-haired woman. Brigid Baptiste was tall, and the shadow suit she wore only emphasized her physique. She still had curves, but after years of battling the barons and their magistrate shock troopers, fighting pirates and conspirators, challenging godlings and other alien menaces, she was lean and fit. Shuka could see from the way her muscles moved beneath the black high-tech polymers, and could tell from the TP-9 pistol resting in its holster, and other assorted battle gear, that she was no stranger to conflict and danger. The exclamation point to his quick perusal of her worth as a fellow fighter was the sharpness of her emerald eyes, bright with defiance and confidence.
Shuka turned back to Nathan, who had the same resolve to join in this quest. “Seven against Kariba?” Shuka mused. “And the gods know how many kongamato are present there.”
“I was thinking six,” Kane offered. “No offense, Lomon.”
The eldest of the Zambian soldiers nodded. “You want someone manning this base.”
“In case reinforcements free up from the search for the beasts, I’d rather have a Zambian officer present to greet them. I’d also like you to keep in contact with Cerberus base. If something does show up banging at the door, a second team will arrive within moments,” Kane stated.
“Similarly accoutered as you,” Lomon added.
“CAT Beta,” Grant explained. “Cerberus Away Teams. For when we need backup.”
“I wouldn’t be averse to having them come over now,” Lomon mused. “I’d be outnumbered, but honestly, the three of you have the body armor and the technology to have overpowered us already if you wanted to.”
“Then let’s get in contact with Cerberus,” Brigid offered. “I’ll confer with Bry about the presence of plans and layouts for the Kariba Dam and its complex, and we’ll have Domi and the others hop over.”
With that, the seven people returned to the mat-trans control room.
* * *
DURGA SAT IN silence as he listened to the report from Thurpa, his scout. One thing shared between the subcontinent of India and the continent of Africa was the presence of the hooded elapids known as cobras. As such, the presence of a Nagah humanoid in Africa was akin to the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico. The Spaniards resembled their god, another serpent, the feathered Quetzalcoatl in human form, and thus, the Aztecs accepted the armed, technologically superior Spanish conquistadors into their city. Only the fighting skills of the Spaniards had kept them from being slaughtered by the Aztecs.
While the nations of Zambia and Harare were at relative peace with each other, and thanks to that state of equality, able to maintain higher standards of education as well as technology, the wastelands, stricken by famine and barbarians, were not so enlightened.
With powerful weapons culled from the stash that Enlil had shared with him, Durga’s scout had impressed a militia, who assumed that Thurpa and his millennialist allies were, though not gods themselves, impressive enough to join. Once Durga’s other men had found the cloning facilities for the kongamato, Thurpa had pointed out the added power these creatures would bring to their militia. So enabled, Durga’s local forces were growing.
Makoba, a millennialist, from the Ivory Coast, interpreted the exiled prince’s head motions as he conveyed Durga’s satisfaction to Thurpa. Then Makoba seemed a bit confused.
“He wants to speak directly to you,” Makoba said.
Durga blinked, then nodded, almost imperceptibly. The communicator was put to Durga’s ear.
“Sir, there is one thing you must know above all others. When the young man was attacked, he was mortally wounded.
“So?” Durga rasped. His earlier speech had left him weak, but his annoyance was growing at the delay of this “vital news.”
“In less than a minute, the red-haired human woman arrived with the walking stick that Nathan Longa had possessed. Kane then took the staff and healed him,” Thurpa said.
Durga grunted.
“There was a powerful glow, and the youth no longer required direct pressure on a deep lung injury. His clothes were a mess, but I could see his wound through my scope. The skin was closed.”
Durga swa
llowed.
“I know you wanted to draw Kane and his allies into a trap, but it was Kane who used the rod to heal Longa,” Thurpa said. “Perhaps...”
“Yes,” Durga responded.
“What is the plan?” Thurpa asked.
Durga’s upper lip curled. Speech and movement were difficult things, so that even writing instructions was a laborious task. However, now that Kane possessed the artifact, one Durga already desired as a weapon of enormous power, and one that could open the hidden doors to a trove of power placed there during the days before the Great Flood, filled with alien devices and organisms beyond the wildest imagination of mere humans, he was motivated to action.
“Wait for me,” Durga ordered.
With that, he nodded slightly, and Makoba took the comm back from his ear.
“We’re going to Kariba?” the millennialist inferred.
Durga nodded.
“I shall get the Threshold, then,” he stated.
Rather than be loaded into a chair for an arduous cross-country trek, Durga was glad to have discovered an ancient Annunaki Threshold, a gemlike artifact that could open up gateways, akin to how the mat trans and the interphaser of Cerberus redoubt did. It would take only instants, the alien device zipping him through hyperspace, along a network of lines of electromagnetic force that naturally crisscrossed the surface of the Earth.
Humanity had eventually learned how to duplicate the process, but it required massive bases to house nuclear power plants to generate the necessary energy to open temporary wormholes. The Threshold was actually attuned to a more readily available font of energy, receiving its power from an ancient Annunaki source that could transmit from a central generator to anywhere within a vast radius. Before the fall of Tiamat, Enlil’s personal starship, Durga had assumed that the Threshold operated off of power from the bowels of the massive space cruiser. Since her near total destruction, Durga wasn’t so certain, but considering Leviathan might not actually be dead, but in some hibernation state, his original hypothesis could have been correct. However, the Annunaki and their Tuatha de Danann counterparts likely had other sources of energy on Earth, for Tiamat had been away for aeons.