by James Axler
Touching the Sin Eater holstered at his forearm,
Kane said quietly, "Maybe one of us could pick it off."
"The Magistrates could be less than a mile away," Brigid objected. "They'd hear the shot."
Grant's lips peeled back from his teeth in a silent snarl of frustration. His ' 'Fuck it!" was a harsh, angry rasp. He lunged forward, the blade of the combat knife flicking out in a lightning-fast thrust. Since the blade was blued, it didn't flash, but the double-edged point slashed through the scorpion's tail, right below its bulbous barbed tip.
With a crunch of cartilage, the stinger arced through the air, seemingly propelled by a geyser of greenish-yellow ichor. The twin pincers snapped open and shut, clicking in a castanet-like rhythm of silent agony.
Grant's equally swift backstroke inserted the point between the bug's underbelly and Domi's shirt. He jerked up and levered the mutie creature off her back, its clawed legs kicking convulsively. As it landed on its ridged back, he hurled the knife in a blur of motion. The blade pierced the creature's unarmored underside, cracked through its black shell and impaled it against the ground.
Domi came to her feet in a lunging rush, panting heavily. Whirling, she bent, grasped Grant's knife by its nylex handle, whipped it loose from the bug, then stomped down hard on the wriggling body. With a snarl of satisfaction, she twisted on the heel of her combat boot, grinding the bug deep into the sandy soil.
"Hate these nuke-shittin' things," she spit. "Always have!"
She calmly handed the knife back to Grant and started rolling up her sleeping bag as if nothing more interesting than swatting a sand flea had happened. Grant bent over and shoved the blade into the ground to clean it of the scorpion's blood. "Next time, I pick the campsite," he said to Kane.
Kane said nothing, returning his energies to the task that Domi's wake-up crisis had interrupted. He went back to donning the pieces of his armor, once again wishing it weren't so awkward to carry. The individual pieces couldn't fit in a backpack, so it was easier to wear regardless of the discomfort. Grant was in the same quandary—a bit worse, actually, since his own armor wasn't custom fitted like Kane's. It had belonged to a Mag named Anson, who had briefly joined Lakesh's group of exiles some years before. Anson ended the association by blowing out his brains with his own regulation Sin Eater. Learning the truth behind the nukecaust and the future of Earth had been too much for him to bear.
He had left behind his armor, and though a big man, he wasn't as big as Grant. Pieces of it pinched and chafed him in places where a man was not designed to be pinched and chafed. The helmet, unlike the rest of the armor, was a shade too large.
As Kane snapped the shin guards into place above the top of his heavy-treaded, steel-toed boots, he glimpsed Brigid unfold a map and study it with slitted eyes. From a pocket of her khaki shirt she withdrew the symbol of her former office as a Cobaltville archivist. She slipped on the pair of rectangular-lensed, wire-framed spectacles and gazed first at the map, then behind them at the Sierra Nevada range. Although the eyeglasses were something of a reminder of her past life, they also served as a means to correct an astigmatism.
Still, she squinted at the map, first holding it close to her face then moving it back. Kane briefly wondered if her vision hadn't been further impaired by the head injury she suffered a little over a month before. Brigid seemed in good condition, and DeFore, the medic, had pronounced her fully recovered. The only visible sign of the wound that had laid her scalp open to the bone and put her in a coma for several days was a faintly red, horizontal line that crossed her right temple and disappeared into the roots of her hair. Her recovery time had been little short of uncanny. Kane was always impressed by the woman's tensile-spring resiliency.
However, he couldn't help but notice how she needed her glasses more and more in the weeks following her release from the infirmary in the Cerberus redoubt, which was built into the side of a Montana mountain peak. The redoubt could be reached from the outside only by a single treacherous road, so the mat-trans gateway usually ferried people and materials in and out.
"How far now?" Grant asked gruffly, struggling to seal his breast and back plate.
Brigid didn't answer for a long moment. When she did, her voice sounded uncertain. "Shouldn't be more than half a day's march."
"Shouldn't?" Kane repeated skeptically.
Irritably, Brigid shot back, "You know we didn't have any recent satellite pix of this region in the database—none more recent than fifty years, anyhow, long before Port Morninglight was settled."
The fact that the Cerberus redoubt could uplink with a Vela-class reconnaissance satellite and a Comsat had been a matter of astonishment to Brigid, Grant and Kane when they learned of it more than a year ago. Although all of them were aware that in predark years, the-upper reaches of the planet's atmosphere had been clogged with orbiting satellites, many of them designed for spying and surveillance purposes, ville doctrines claimed that all satellites were now simply free-floating scrap metal.
Brigid tapped the map.' 'This is all Lakesh and Bry could improvise, and it's largely guesswork, based on maps before the nukecaust."
"Fuckin' Mags know their way around," Domi said bitterly, kicking dirt over the smoldering remains of their fire.
Kane bristled at the hint of challenge in the girl's voice. "They have access to an Intel section. The
Mag Divisions of the nine villes share information about Outland settlements. All we know about Port Morninglight is what Bry overhead when he hacked into their system and listened in on the comm channels."
Over the past few months, Bry, the resident tech-head of Cerberus, had established a communications link with the Comsat satellite both to personnel out in the field and to the Cobaltville computer systems. Since all the villes had a form of wireless communication, the primary obstacle was finding an undetected method of patching into the channels, and Bry had come up with a solution that involved using the redoubt's satellite uplinks. The overall objective was to find weak areas in Cobaltville defenses and baron-sanctioned operations in the Outlands. The technique was far from perfect; the electronic eavesdropping could be adversely affected by anything from weather fronts to sunspots.
However, the last thing any of them expected to overhear was a plan to covertly dispatch Mags from Cobaltville into the territory of Baron Snakefish. Such an act was not only unprecedented, but it was also strictly forbidden by the terms established in the Program of Unification more than ninety years before.
"We know the Mags arrived at Redoubt Charlie yesterday morning," Grant interjected. "And they're doing a good job of covering their tracks."
"Yeah," Kane agreed. "But why? Baron Snake-fish's ville is at least sixty miles to the northwest. None of his Magistrates are likely to patrol out here.''
Brigid refolded the map and shoved it into a pocket of her whipcord trousers. Picking up her backpack, she shouldered into the straps. "I'm more interested in why a contingent of Cobaltville Mags is making an incursion into another ville's territory, raiding a coastal Outland settlement. It's a treaty violation and could be construed as an act of war."
No one argued with her. Instead, they picked up their packs and started walking through the scrub toward a distant green-brown tree line. As a concession to the warm temperature, Grant and Kane kept their helmets in their backpacks. They slung their Copperheads over their shoulders.
None of them knew much about the ville of Snake-fish or the baron who had taken its unique and grotesque name as his own. All of the nine villes in the continent-spanning network were standardized, so there probably wasn't much that would be unfamiliar.
However, Snakefish possessed a certain historical significance inasmuch as it had been an important commerce center on the Cific coast in the century following skydark. Although roughly half the state of California lay beneath the sea, the region around the ville had received only a light once-over with neutron bombs. Much of the mammalian l
ife was killed off, but many of the structures remained standing.
Several of the structures were part of a gasoline-processing complex, which in the decades following the holocaust made Snakefish one of the wealthiest villes in the country, at least by the standards of Deathlands. Other than having access to a resource more precious than the gold, the ville was the birthplace of a bizarre religious sect that worshiped the giant mutie rattlesnakes in the area. The religion and the source of the ville's wealth vanished at about the same time that sabotage caused the fuel refinery to explode. The ville itself burned to the ground, taking with it a goodly number of its two thousand inhabitants.
One of the few survivors was determined to rebuild the ville, to restore its former glory as the primary power on the far western coast. During the process, he took the name of Snakefish for himself. By the time of the Program of Unification, the new ville of Snakefish, although hardly as prosperous as its predecessor, was a power to be reckoned with and was absorbed into the ruling baronial oligarchy.
By the time the sun reached a midway point in the sky, both Kane and Grant were perspiring profusely. Neither man had worn the polycarbonate armor for any protracted length of time in a while, not since the op to the Western Isles. Even then they hadn't been on a forced march, so both men grew more uncomfortable and irritable with every mile.
Though the sandy soil was hard packed, they occasionally crossed areas where it was loose and their feet bogged down in it. When Domi stumbled, Grant reached out a hand to steady her. She jerked away from him, avoiding his touch.
Kane noted that Domi had yet to thank or even acknowledge Grant's actions in ending the threat of the scorpion. For that matter, she didn't even make eye contact with him. A palpable web of tension stretched between the two people, but Kane wasn't inclined to ask about it for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, though his and Grant's partnership dated back over a dozen years to their joint careers as Cobaltville Mags, they rarely spoke of personal matters. Secondly, Kane knew as much as he cared to about Grant and Domi's relationship, and he guessed Domi's resentment derived from a sexual issue—or a lack of one.
Domi was certainly not a stranger to sex, since she'd more or less sold herself into service as a slave to Guana Teague in exchange for being smuggled into Cobaltville. She ended her term of service by the simple expedient of drawing a knife across his throat while he was distracted with strangling Grant.
Since that day, more than a year before, Domi had viewed Grant as a gallant black knight who rescued her from the shackles of Guana Teague's slavery. In reality, quite the reverse was true; Teague was crushing the life out of Grant beneath his three-hundred-plus pounds of flab when Domi expertly slit his throat.
Regardless of the facts, Domi had attached herself to Grant, and though her attempts at outright seduc-tion were less frequent, she made it fiercely clear that Grant was hers and hers alone.
Despite that devotion, Domi possessed a hair-trigger temper in the most relaxed of circumstances. If questioned about her sullen attitude, she probably wouldn't stage a tantrum, but she was prone to extended sulks. She hadn't seemed very enthusiastic about joining them on the op in the first place, which was decidedly unusual. Normally, the albino refugee from the Outlands eagerly jumped at any opportunity to leave the vanadium walls of Cerberus.
Heaving a mental shrug, Kane placed the matter in his personal file drawer of unimportant matters. As long as Domi's efficiency with her .45-caliber Deton-ics Combat Master pistol was unimpaired, he wasn't going to concern himself with her emotional state.
As they pushed through the sagebrush, dotted with occasional saguaros, they saw very few signs of animal life. Domi pointed out some indistinguishable tracks that she tersely identified as a deer trail. A few minutes later, they came across odd, swirling, S-curve patterns in the sandy soil. They reminded Kane of large wag tires that been rolled around.
Domi nodded toward them. "Sidewinder. A big sidewinder."
Uneasily, Brigid asked. "Just how big?"
Domi's reply, if she had one, was drowned out by a rattling noise like a half ton of gravel being shaken inside of an empty oil drum.
Chapter 3
Grant and Kane skipped around, their Sin Eaters popping simultaneously into their hands, hearts thudding frantically within their polycarbonate-encased chests. Half-hidden by a tangled copse of mesquite and sage, a snake lay coiled tightly, its multibuttoned rattle vibrating furiously. The creature's striped and mottled hide helped it blend in with its sere surroundings. The serpent was about twenty yards away, so they were in no immediate danger.
"It's one of the mutie snakes that used to be worshiped around here," Brigid said, striving to sound calm. "I guess there are still a few alive."
"You think?" Kane asked with a cold sarcasm, trying to ignore the prickling at his nape.
Many species of animals that survived the nuclear exchange and the subsequent freezing temperatures of skydark had mutated into grotesque imitations of their progenitors. The first two or three generations of mutant animals had run toward polyploidism, a doubling or tripling of the chromosome complement. For a time, gargantuan buffalo and panthers and even wolves had roamed the Deathlands, but their increased size had greatly reduced their life spans. Only a few of the giant varieties existed any longer, or so all of them had been led to believe.
Still, it wasn't all that long ago since Kane, Grant and Domi had fought a gigantic constrictor in the jungles of Amazonia, one the local natives had decked out in a feathered headdress and christened Kukulkan, in homage to the ancient Mayan god.
This serpent was in no way as large as that one, perhaps only fifteen feet, but unlike Kukulkan it was a pit viper. As it lifted its wedge-shaped head, swaying on an arched neck, they saw a pair of six-inch-long teeth curving out from the maxillary bone of Jhe upper jaw. Beads of colorless venom glistened on the needle points of the hollow fangs. Its forked tongue darted in and out between them, and the fetid odor of its breath clogged their nostrils.
Domi reached for her blaster snugged in a shoulder rig, but Kane said curtly, "A shot from that cannon will carry for miles around here. As long as it's not bothering us, we won't bother it."
"Rattler meat is good eating," she replied petulantly.
"We don't have the time to skin it and pack out the meat," Grant told her dourly. "You'll have to make do with our ration packs."
Domi acted as if she hadn't heard, turning away. Kane and Grant backed up carefully, keeping their eyes on the flattened skull of the snake, just visible over the top of the brush. Its cold, slit-pupiled eyes watched them as they retreated, and after a minute it stopped shaking its tail.
The four people trudged on and reached a grove of pines. Although it was cooler beneath the thickly needled boughs, there was more undergrowth. Kane walked point as he always did, chopping a path through the tangle of thorny mesquite with his combat knife. Despite the fact that Domi was wilderness born, Kane always assumed the position of point man. It was a habit he had acquired during his years as a Mag, and he saw no reason to abandon it. Grant had the utmost faith in Kane's instincts, what he referred to as his point man's sense. During their Mag days, because of his uncanny ability to sniff danger in the offing, he was always chosen to act as the advance scout. When he walked point, Kane felt electrically alive, sharply tuned to every nuance of his surroundings and what he was doing.
After an hour, Kane called a halt so they could rest and drink. They sat in a clearing and passed around a bottle of water, drinking sparingly. There was abundant insect life beneath the trees, butterflies, bees and wasps darting this way and that, but none of them seemed to be of the mutie variety.
Kane and Grant had seen a nest of mutie hornets, and both retained vividly unpleasant memories of their six-inch wingspans, bloated, striped bodies and barbed stingers dripping with poison.
Grant said in a grumbling tone, "I wish we would come acro
ss another redoubt with a cargo gateway, like the one at Redoubt Oscar. That way we could make the jump with a Sandcat and stop this forced-march shit."
"Cerberus doesn't have a cargo unit," Kane pointed out. "So it doesn't really matter, unless we make the jump with the Cat in pieces and spend a couple of days trying to reassemble it."
Grant grunted. "Rather a couple of days of that than walking in armor."
As he handed the water bottle to Brigid, he added, "I still can't figure out why Baron Cobalt would send a force of his Mags into another baron's territory—to an Outland settlement, no less. Doesn't he have enough of his own?"
Brigid paused thoughtfully before taking a drink. "Maybe not. Or maybe he's saving them for something else. For whatever reason he dispatched the Magistrates, he's taking a big risk. If he's found out, he could alienate the rest of the oligarchy."
"No pun intended," Kane interposed wryly.
Brigid threw him a fleeting smile. "That's right."
All of them knew what every ville citizen knew about the formation of their society. In the century following skydark, self-proclaimed barons had warred against one another, each struggling for control and absolute power over territory. Then they realized that greater rewards were possible if unity in command, purpose and organization was achieved.
Territories were redefined, treaties struck among the barons, and the city-states became interconnected points in a continent-spanning network. More than ninety years ago, the Program of Unification was ratified during the Council of Front Royal, then ruthlessly employed. With Unity Through Action as the rallying cry, the reconstructed form of government was institutionalized and shared by all the formerly independent baronies.
The nine most powerful baronies that had survived the long wars over territorial expansion and resources divided control of the continent among themselves. A hierarchical ruling system was put into place, and the city-states adopted the name of the titular heads of state.