by Mark Ellis
The Sin Eater slid into Kane’s hand and he fired it into the group of hybrids. Behind him, he heard the snapping of Brigid’s H&K and a drumming roar from Grant’s Copperhead.
The first trio of rounds from the Sin Eater reamed a path through the centre of the group. Then a giant’s blow struck his right arm, and he heard the wrist bone break. He caught only a jagged afterimage of a vibrating silver wand before he went down on the catwalk. Agony lanced up his arm into his shoulder as he tried to maintain pressure on the trigger. His hand didn’t seem to be there anymore.
His ears filled with a hideous yowling and sucker-ringed fingers clawed for him. Some of the fingers possessed sharp nails that slashed bloody furrows along the right side of his face. Kane drove his right leg forward, and his boot sole collapsed the nose of a Squidoo bobbing above him. He glimpsed Domi standing over him, slashing with her knife.
Through pain-blurred eyes he saw her thrust upward as a hybrid tried to bring a wand to bear. The blade parried the humming rod, the knife vibrated violently, but the wand clattered down beside him. As Kane reached for it, a hybrid’s foot kicked it away. He heaved himself to a crouch, grabbing the doll-like body up, carrying it with him as he sprang to his feet. He flung the hybrid into a pair of Squidoos, bowling them off their feet.
Domi stood beside him, hacking, slashing and stabbing with a merciless fury. Hybrids stampeded away from her, leaving the bodies of their brethren lying with bellies and scalps split open.
Kane fumbled with his Copperhead, bringing it to bear with his left hand. The burst he fired toward the retreating hybrids was poorly aimed, but the storm of slugs picked up couple and hurled them forward, tumbling them limply head over heels.
“See?” he roared hoarsely. “See? You little parasites can die just as easily as us apelings!”
The sounds from the hybrids and the Squidoos were chaotic, mingled cries of outrage, fury and terror. Kane turned to see Brigid and Grant, pale bodies and arms hauling at them from all sides. Grant hammered with the butt of his Copperhead, trying to fend them off. Brigid’s blaster was out of ammo, and tentacles whipped around her ankles. She bent to beat them off with the barrel of her H&K, and then flexible fingers caught wrists and brought her down. More of the Squidoos pulled themselves up on the walkway and leaped upon her.
Kicking and punching, Brigid managed to break free, but a long hand reached from the press of bodies and reached for her face. The fingers spread wide and the suckers attached themselves to her forehead a split-second before she squeezed her eyes shut. All the power of the sucker-pads was furiously, painfully applied and she cried out, fearing her eyeballs would be torn from their sockets.
She sank her teeth into slick, rubbery flesh, biting down until she felt the bones break. The Squidoo snatched his hand away, shrieking. Kane moved over to her, clearing a path by kicking and stomping. He struck the Squidoo with the barrel of his pistol. More hybrids slithered up onto the catwalk. Here and there gleamed the wands.
Taking a firm grip on Brigid’s arm, they raced along the walkway, following Domi and Grant, who fired his Copperhead ahead of them. The Squidoos and hybrids in their path were driven to the rails, and they slipped over, preferring the thirty-foot drop to facing the crazed humans in the narrow confines of the catwalk. The floor plates were slippery with blood and viscera, and Kane booted a Squidoo corpse out of his way.
When they sprinted past the two-tiered generator, Kane briefly considered planting the rest of his grens around it, but since he had no idea if the explosive loads would have any effect or an apocalyptic one, he discounted the notion.
A group of Squidoos shambled after them at a discreet distance, a hurried babble of hate-filled words rising from their tongues. They heard a few faint hums, and once the walkway under their feet vibrated, but the range for the ultrasound weapons was too great to have any meaningful effect.
When they reached the booth, Grant paused inside of it while Domi, Kane and Brigid made their way out into the hallway. From his bag, he took a pair of flares, shut his eyes and snapped the rods in half. A blinding violet-white light splashed the room with an eerie luminescence. The blaze of light was so intense that even through Grant’s visor and closed eyelids, it registered.
He tossed them against the hanging decam coveralls, and the old material ignited immediately. Before Grant rushed through the opposite door, flame flashed throughout the booth. He had reached the same conclusion about the creatures’ sensitivity to high light levels, and he prayed the fire and the near-blinding incandescence of the flares would discourage further pursuit.
He re-joined his companions halfway up the ramp. Because of his broken wrist, Kane had trouble clambering over the turnstile. His feet caught in the prongs and dumped him unceremoniously to the floor, but he shook off Domi’s helping hands and started running again. All four were gasping and aching when they reached the landing. Fortunately, the bulkhead still gaped open.
They staggered up the stairwell and, forgetting their earlier caution, clung to and hauled themselves up by the handrails. The door was unlocked as they left it, and as they entered the dim corridor on Level Four, Kane heard the distant whine and hydraulic hiss of a lift.
“On their way by the elevator,” he gasped out. He checked his chron. “Let’s hope they don’t arrive in the next two minutes.”
They turned the corner and saw the open door of the control room. Approaching the door from the opposite direction came a group of small, pale figures. The two groups saw each other at the same instant.
The four people surged forward in a wild rush. Grant snapped off a couple of shots, aiming into the press of bodies, hoping to knock down his targets and trip up others. The hybrids kept coming.
One of the hybrids outpaced the others and waved a silver wand over his head like a saber, racing bravely forward. Suddenly, with a spurt of speed, Domi bounded ahead, head back, legs pumping. The pair met in the corridor when they were abreast of the open door.
The hybrid slashed down with the wand, its point aiming at her. She left her feet in a long dive, her shoulders catching the small man at ankle level, smashing him sideways, bouncing him off the doorjamb and sending him careening into the room. She pounced atop him, wrestling with him for the rod.
She got the heel of one hand under the hybrid’s pointed chin and threw all her weight into a sharp push. There came a snapping sound, and the hybrid’s grip on the wand weakened. Domi wrenched it from his hand, turned it and touched the left side of his head with the humming, vibrating tip.
His skull collapsed where the point touched. It punched a small, perfectly round hole through the epidermal layers, splintering the cranial bones.
Kane Brigid and Grant shouldered their way into the room, sending covering fire down the corridor. Kane back-kicked the door shut behind them, and Grant wrestled a heavy chair across the floor, jamming the back beneath the knob.
Brigid helped Domi to her feet, taking the wand from her. Eyeing the teletransducer chamber door, she said, “That won’t hold against an ultrasound assault... it’s not made of transparisteel.”
“They’ve got less than one minute to prove it to us,” Kane said.
They climbed inside the chamber, Grant pulling the heavy steel door closed and spinning the wheel-lock until he heard the click of solenoids catching and holding. The single overhead light came on.
Kane, cradling his broken wrist, sat down with a loud exhalation of air. Brigid and Domi eased down on either side of him. Both women breathed heavily. Sweat and blood cut runnels in Domi’s combat cosmetics. Wincing, she probed her rib cage with her fingers.
Glancing at the wand in Brigid’s hand Kane asked, “Why are you bringing that thing along, Baptiste?”
She raised the rod to eye level and sighted down its length. “An artefact, a souvenir. It might tell us something about their technology.”
Grant, hunched ov
er beside the door, hushed them into silence. “I think they got in.”
As soon as he said it, they heard the buzzing whine, somewhat muffled by the heavy metal door and the thick concrete blocks of the portal unit. The door shuddered as it took the terrible impact of focused infrasound. The paint split and blistered and peeled away in long strips. The cross braces vibrated violently, and rivets and bolts rattled and clattered. Bits of concrete around the door frame flaked, showered down and fell away in chunks.
Kane looked at his chron. “He’s behind schedule”
“Or this was all a set-up,” Grant said darkly. “Just to get us out of the way.”
Domi shook her head vehemently. “Not believe that. Easier ways to kill us.”
The floor and ceiling disks sprang to glowing life. Mist gathered and thickened above and below. Tiny flashing sparks floated through the air.
Brigid sighed with relief. Grant sat down, putting his back against the wall, hands resting on his knees. “A one-percenter to remember,” he said wryly.
As the mist curled down and entwined with the tendrils spiralling upward, Kane closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “Dad,” he whispered. “Goodbye.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
IT WAS AN old road Kane walked, but since it was his first time, it was new to him. He had the impression of following the track of a giant broken-backed snake, whipping to and fro. The asphalt was cracked and deeply rutted.
The last crimson glory of the setting sun cast red shadows on the snow-covered mountain peaks above him. He breathed the fragrance of the wind that rolled up from the forests far, far below. Though craggy cliffs rose grey and gaunt before and around him, the foothills behind were rich with grassy meadows and green groves of trees.
On his right, the road wound and twisted and looped across the sheer face of a cliff, and to his left a deep abyss plummeted straight down a thousand feet or more. At one time, steel guardrails had bordered the lip of the road, but only a few rusted metal stanchions remained. Past the edge of the road, at the bottom of the abyss, were the metal skeletons of several vehicles. More than likely, they had lain there since the time of the Nukeday, weathering all the seasons that came after.
Now, in late Montana summer, they looked like tombstones. He picked up a rock from the roadbed and tossed it over the abyss, trying but knowing he couldn’t bounce it from one of the metal carcasses. He felt only the slightest complaint from the area where, just two days before, a burst of ultrasound had shattered his wrist. It was encased by a lightweight cast halfway to his elbow, but none of the nerves had been damaged and the bones should knit quickly—at least that was the prognosis of DeFore.
He walked carefully, alertly along the curving road, keeping close to the cliff face. Lakesh told him that when the stronghold was built, the road had been protected by a force field powered by fusion generators.
Kane went around a pair of bends in the road, and the split tarmac broadened onto a huge plateau. The scraps of a chain-link fence clinked in the breeze.
Inside the fenced perimeter rose the base of a mountain peak, and nestled against the rock face was a high gate, metal gleaming beneath peeling paint. The gate opened like an accordion, folding to one side, operated by a punched-in code and a hidden lever control. It stood partially open now. Brigid, Grant, Domi and Lakesh emerged from it. Lakesh leaned on Domi, as though he had lost his strength, but Kane was pretty certain he simply enjoyed leaning against a pretty young woman.
At least Lakesh had given him the whole story when they returned from Dulce. As Kane had already figured, Anson had accompanied his father to Dulce to bring back Balam. Only Anson and Balam made it. Having seen what went on there, knowing what would be the fate of the elder Kane, and not allowed to mount a rescue mission, Anson was consumed with guilt and horror. The knowledge was too much for him to bear and live.
Lakesh tried to tell Kane how sorry he was for not warning him that his father was there, but the apology was unnecessary.
According to Lakesh, Dulce was not the only installation where the cloning of human DNA and the splicing of it with Archon genetic material occurred. Furthermore, the hybrids they encountered in Dulce were only of a certain type. There were others.
Kane stopped and admired the sunset. It was difficult not to envision it setting behind the Administrative Monolith, but the glow around the mountain peaks was certainly more picturesque.
The others joined him. Without preamble, Lakesh said, “Friend Kane, I hoped that affairs would take a slower pace after your return. They have not. I’ve just come back from an emergency meeting of the Trust.”
“Minus a few, I imagine.”
“There are always more where Abrams, Ojaka and Guende came from. Besides, they’re not dead. Just discouraged. Unfortunately, the baron lives, as well.”
Kane shrugged. “More where he came from, too.”
Grant said, “They’re looking for us, Kane. In dead earnest. They’ve convened a council of the nine barons.”
Kane stepped closer to the edge, kicking a loose stone into the chasm. The wind tugged at his hair, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He saw the forests below, and then raised his gaze to the mountains, the sun and sky. Beyond that lay the vast web of the universe. He had the feeling that his father was out there, gliding among the stars, watching what he did next. Hoping and aspiring and having faith in his son.
He turned and looked at Brigid, letting their eyes meet in a wordless exchange. He liked her strength and flexibility, although she irked him with her cool logic. There was something else about her that spoke to a part of him that was hidden, unpractised, unacknowledged. As if in approval, he nodded at her, then scanned the faces of the others. They were good faces, strong faces, all different, showing age and wisdom, pain and determination, the courage of youth, and a kind of beauty and endurance. Human faces. Exiles from the world of their birth.
“Well,” he said at length. “So, the Council of the Nine are after us. All that means is we have our work cut out for us. Not just to save our own skins but to find the weapons to reclaim our planet.”
Once again Kane turned toward the abyss. He nodded toward the distant, reddish haze of Terra Infernus. “Like it or not,” he said, “to save ourselves, we’ll have to save the world...or what’s left of it.”
EPILOGUE
The Black Gobi, three months later
SHE CAME AWAKE slowly. First the black void turned to grey, then to a pale, shimmering yellow.
A cloying pain enwrapped her, pounding at her head in cadence with her heartbeat. She tried to open her eyes, but she couldn’t see anything and she wondered rather aloofly if she was blind. For a reason she could not understand, something sticky and thick sealed her eyes shut. Experimentally, she touched the tip of her tongue to her lips and she tasted a coppery, salty tang. Her stumbling thoughts groped for what it might be. Finally, she realized it was blood, and considering the sharp pain in her head, she knew it had to be her blood.
Brigid Baptiste ground her teeth and tried to move. Cramping needles of agony shot up her shoulders and arms. A persistent pressure compressed her wrists, squeezed them so tightly her hands were no more than numb, half-remembered appendages at the ends of her arms. By a tentative exploration with her fingertips, she felt strands of rawhide wrapped tightly around her wrists. Nausea was a clawed animal trying to tear its way out of her stomach. It was all she could do to swallow the column of burning bile working its way up her throat. Brigid tested her legs, shifting them slightly. They were not bound, though they were stiff, and she realized they had been crooked in an unnatural position beneath her. She didn’t brace herself with them. Although her thoughts moved like half-frozen mud, she knew it was best to keep as silent and motionless as possible. She heard the murmur of voices, speaking incomprehensible words.
Brigid squeezed her left eyelid as though she were
squinting fiercely, and a tear formed. By arching her eyebrow as high as she could, she tried to prise her eye open. The effort sparked more pain in her head, along her right temple. She kept up the squinting and eyebrow arching, and fluid oozed from the duct in her left eye. The tears slowly dissolved the dried blood, and on her tenth attempt, her upper eyelid peeled stickily away from the lower.
Flames danced from the bonfire several yards away. Men and women sat around it in a great circle. The wild horde from the mountain valleys of Khaldzan sat with the barely leashed eagerness of great cats, waiting for their prey to move so they could start their cruel game all over again.
Brigid realized she was in the same place, the same position before she had fallen into the pit of unconsciousness. Long spears had been driven deep and lashed together to make a crude framework, and from this frame she hung, wrists tied to the wooden shafts by leather thongs.
Two other makeshift scaffolds stood close by. Adrian and Davis hung limply between them, ragged red scarecrows. Members of the Cerberus stronghold, they had taken the teletransducer jump with her on their information-gathering mission. Scourged without mercy, the ground around them glistened damp and bloody.
Bautu had wielded the lash, and Brigid remembered watching him cut both of his victims with great care, the tapered steel tip of the long-oiled whip singing and flaying the skin like a flexible flensing knife.
When the scourging of the men began, she cried out in anger, flinging an insult in the Khalkha tongue. She was surprised Bautu understood her. She recalled only a fragment of what came next—a leather-shod fist, decorated with wafers of polished steel, driving toward her head.
She had never been knocked unconscious before, so she methodically reviewed what she knew about head trauma induced by a blow. A severe impact to the skull, she told herself, could cause not only concussion, but also coma, subdural leakages of blood, amnesia, a reduction of intelligence, and death.