Chapter 1

  The crack of the whip echoed through the fetid swamplands. The bits of jagged metal braided into the leather strands at the whip's end easily cut into the victim's back.

  Crouched in the shadows of a lightning-blasted cypress tree whose branches were filled with Spanish moss, Kane listened to the woman's shrill screams of pain. Tall and rangy, he resembled a wolf in the way he carried most of his weight in his shoulders.

  His dark hair hung in damp ringlets from the incessant humidity. His blue-gray eyes took in the details of the scene while his mind kept the raw emotion at bay. Kane readied the M-14 rifle he carried. He wore a loose-fitting, long-sleeved chambray shirt in mottled denim over a Kevlar vest, and his patched jeans were tucked into combat boots. A Colt Government Model .45 rode at his right hip in a paddle holster. The large canvas rucksack at his feet held spare ammunition clips, as well as other weapons.

  The small boy beside the woman cried out and reached out to hold on to his mother. The boy's efforts to help his mother only hindered her. She tripped over a gnarled root in the inches-deep muck of the swamp that was quickly drying out now that the summer season was upon the land. That was a source of part of the humidity. The other was their relative proximity to the Gulf of Mexico.

  "Mama!" the little boy squalled, trying to wrap his mud- encrusted arms around his mother's leg. "Mama!"

  The woman was gaunt, and her skin was reddened from the sun. Mud and leaves matted her long brown hair, turning it into a snarling mess. Still, she was young enough and probably attractive enough once she was cleaned up that she would bring a good price in the slave markets near what had been the Grande River before the nukecaust transformed the world on January 20, 2001.

  Kane shifted in the shadows of the cypress, his stomach clenching at the sight of the slave line stumbling through the muck of the dying swamp. Farther east, the swamps were thicker, filled with harsh, flesh-eating acid rain and mutie alligators. But the land here held the oppressive heat and dangers of its own.

  The whip cracked again, targeting the small boy this time. The metal braided into the ends cut deeply into the boy's cheek. Blood ran down the side of his face and dripped onto his scrawny chest. Instinctively, the boy cowered, dropping to his knees in the muck and falling face forward. He wrapped his skinny arms around his head and screamed out in pain. Chained as he was to the twenty-three other slaves and given that they were all nearing exhaustion, the boy held up the line.

  The slaver drew back his whip and cracked it again, opening a new bloody welt across the boy's shoulders.

  The new onslaught of pain caused the boy to dig more deeply into the muck as he tried to escape. His terror-filled screams reverberated between the tall trees and caused nearby birds to take flight.

  "No!" the woman yelled, stepping protectively in front of her child. Clad as she was in a ragged pair of cloth pants and tattered T-shirt, she was also vulnerable to the whip. Her full, round breasts and slim hips showed through the thin material.

  Clothing wasn't important to the slavers. Once the slaves were on the auction block, the buyers judged them by how healthy they were.

  "Kane," Brigid Baptiste whispered from her position less than ten feet away.

  Kane kept himself steady as he watched the brutality unfolding. They had come across the slavers' trail by accident only a few hours ago. They already had a mission of their own, but the evidence of footprints of at least three small children had set them into this hunt.

  As a former Magistrate in Cobaltville, Kane had an intimate knowledge of brutality in all its forms, and slavery was a common sight in the Tartarus Pits, located in any of the nine baronies.

  However, the recent wars had taken their toll on the labor force available to the barons. Since Magistrates weren't going to be sent out as slavers, several of the barons, including Baron Samarium, who ruled the local barony, had started subsidizing slaver rings to bring in the new slaves. Slavery wasn't a new endeavor in the Outlands, which encompassed all areas outside the baronies proper, but lately it had become more aggressive.

  "Kane," Brigid called again. "We've got to do something."

  "We will," Kane promised.

  The nine slavers all had the look of hard men familiar with the life's work they had chosen, They were better fed and in better condition than the two dozen slaves they herded. They rode horses and were armed with assault rifles and pistols.

  "Don't you hit him no more, Luther," the mother ordered as she stood in front of her son. "He's just a boy. This trip's hard on him, if you'd stop and give him a little rest, he could make it."

  After trailing the slavers the past twenty minutes, Kane was certain Luther was the leader.

  Rawboned and twitchy, Luther showed all the signs of a heavy jolt addiction. Down in the swamplands, there were plenty of places to pick up the addictive drug, and it was almost accepted that anyone who had the jack would be a user.

  "I should have chilled that fuckin' titsucker when I first laid eyes on him," Luther declared harshly. "I been in this business long enough to know if a kid ain't old enough to walk on his own, he ain't gonna make it."

  The slaver leader twitched his whip again, and bright metal shards gleamed in the merciless sun. Sweat beaded his face and neck, and his skin color was flushed with anger and the strong drug moving within his system. The horse stamped its feet tiredly, and the hooves splashed the thick mud.

  "I ain't going to let you chill my son," the woman announced.

  The boy cried out and reached for his mother.

  A grim grin carved Luther's narrow face. "I don't see how you can stop me, bitch."

  "You'll have to kill me, too, and I know you don't wanna do that," the woman said.

  Brigid shifted in the brush nearby, and Kane hoped that none of the slavers would hear her. She wasn't used to this kind of work, but Kane knew she was getting better at it. Brigid had been an archivist in Cobaltville less than two years ago, before being recruited by Mohandas Lakesh Singh to join the group of rebels in Cerberus redoubt. In their war against the baronies, they were fighting the tyranny and deceit of the baron—and their mysterious backers.

  Now a fugitive, Brigid knew how to kill, but she still lacked finesse when it came to timing an ambush.

  Kane glanced to the other side of the trail. Even with his keen eyesight and knowing that Grant was there, Kane couldn't see his partner of many years. But he trusted Grant implicitly. When the chips were down, Grant would be at his side.

  This day would be no different.

  Lifting the M-14 combat rifle he had chosen from the Cerberus, Kane centered the open sights on Luther's neck. His finger settled easily over the trigger and took up the slight slack. He snugged the rifle butt up against his shoulder and settled into his crouching position.

  Luther laughed, throwing his head back and whinnying like a horse. The other slavers laughed, as well.

  "Woman, you got what we call an overinflated sense of yourself," Luther said. He raised the battered Colt CAR-15 carbine and pointed it at her. "You see, I'm in charge of this here expedition. Anybody who gets in my way gets fuckin' chilled. And that's an ace on the line. Hell, I'll load you and that damn titsucker up on the last train headed west myself."

  The woman stood uncertainly for a moment, gazing around at the other twenty-two slaves. All of the other slaves dropped their heads and looked away from her.

  Kane didn't hold their decision against them. Chained and unarmed, they stood no chance at all against the slavers. It would be mass suicide to side with the woman and her child. To their way of thinking, it was better to be sold as a slave than to die where they stood. At least there was some chance of escape from the Tartarus Pits.

  "Step away from the titsucker," Luther ordered, peering over his rifle.

  "No!" The woman pulled a rock from the muck and threw it at Luther.

  The rock hit Luther's horse in the muzzle. Startled, the animal reacted by bucking. Luther cursed and grabbed for the saddle horn in an effort to keep from being thrown. The effort failed, and Luther flew from his mount, crashing to the ground nearby.

  Kane followed the man with the M-14's sights.

  "Stupe bitch!" Luther roared as he got to his feet unsteadily. His anger made him shake all over. He pulled the assault rifle to his shoulder. "Now you're gonna get chilled, bitch! Keep standing there in front of your brat like that, and it won't take but the one bullet between you!"

  Kane saw the man's finger whitening on the trigger. "Kane!" Brigid implored.

  This time, the slavers heard her.

  Cursing, Kane followed his target's swinging head, knowing the other slavers were already targeting their positions. He squeezed the trigger and rode out the M-14's recoil, moving on to his next target because he knew with grim certainty that Luther would no longer be in the game.

  The M-14's steel-jacketed 7.62 mm slug cored through his target's throat, smacking into the spinal cord and shoving it in glistening shards through the back of the man's neck. Luther collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut as Kane centered the rifle's sights in the middle of another slaver's broad chest.

  Kane snapped off the round too quickly because the man was already in motion.. Knowing he had missed his target, Kane threw himself to the left, toward Brigid's position because he didn't think she knew the danger they were in.

  A swath of bullets hammered the area behind the cypress tree where Kane had been hiding. The bullets clawed finger-long chunk

s of bark from the tree to reveal bright white patches.

  Just as Kane had thought, Brigid stood behind a tree but was coolly taking aim with the Copperhead she was carrying. The close-assault weapon was gas operated and had the potential to cycle 700 rounds per minute through the barrel. However, the magazines of 4.85 mm ammunition held only fifteen rounds. In the hands of an amateur, someone not trained to fire in 3-round bursts, the assault rifle would be emptied in nothing flat.

  Brigid Baptiste, beautiful and now deadly, had learned how to fire 3-round bursts. She put two tribursts into the slaver nearest her, punching her target off the horse.

  From the corner of his eye, Kane noticed for the first time that not all of the slavers were men. As the slaver that Brigid had shot tumbled to the ground, pale blond hair shook free from under her floppy hat and neckerchief. The woman slaver flailed out weakly, tried to push up twice, then collapsed to the ground.

  By that time, another of the slavers ripped a gren from the bandolier across his chest and threw the explosive toward the tree Brigid took cover behind. Brigid was so intent on protecting the slaves that she didn't notice the lobbed gren.

  Kane scooped her up in one long arm as he rushed by her. His momentum pulled her along with him, and he drove his feet hard against the ground, trying to put as much distance between himself and the explosive as he could. Bullets ripped through the leafy canopy above their heads. Then an unseen cypress root caught Kane's foot and sent them both sprawling.

  Recovering quickly, Kane shouldered the M-14 as one of the slavers rode toward him, an Uzi subgun in his right hand. The Uzi stuttered and jerked in the slaver's grip, and 9 mm rounds sliced through the air.

  Kane registered the heat of a bullet passing his face even as he squeezed the rifle's trigger. It had been that close.

  The heavy 7.62 mm round caught the approaching slaver in the upper chest and knocked him off the back of the horse. Freed from the rider, the big animal got its head and ran to Kane's right.

  "Why did you do that?" Brigid demanded as she pushed to her feet.

  Before Kane could explain, the gren went off. The explosion ripped through the swampy forest with deafening intensity. All sound evaporated for just a moment, and Kane's head filled with staticky white noise.

  The explosive had been an antipersonnel charge. The pellets spread in a killing radius of thirty feet, tearing through brush instantly. The horse was broadside to the blast, and the pellets tore through its rib cage, ripping its lungs to shreds.

  Knocked from its feet, already dying, the horse fell within arm's reach of Kane. Blood sprayed from the animal's nostrils as it breathed its last.

  Kane's hearing returned in a rush. He heard the distinctive roar of Domi's .357 Magnum revolver, backed up by Grant's Copperhead.

  "I didn't know," Brigid said, gazing down at the dead horse. Her reddish-gold hair was pulled back in a ponytail and hung at shoulder level. Although slender, she was full- breasted and stood nearly as tall as Kane. Her olive-drab T-shirt was tucked into military-style camouflage pants. Her emerald-green eyes peered at him anxiously from her beautiful face. "Are you all right?"

  "No foul, Baptiste," Kane replied, then turned his attention to rescuing the rest of the slaves.

  The surviving slavers had fled to the forest, taking advantage of the cover there. The slaves, however, had not been so fortunate. Linked by collars and chains, unified by a single thought but not a single mind, the slaves had tried to rush in all directions at once. They only succeeded in becoming a confused jumble in the center of the clearing.

  Seeking to vent their anger and fear on something or someone, the slavers opened fire on the slaves. Their bullets chopped down a man and a teenaged girl. With those bodies attached by the chains, the slaves had even less chance than before.

  "Grant!" Kane yelled.

  "Go!" Grant responded in his deep voice.

  Kane surveyed the tree line the slavers had chosen for cover. "I'm going to flush them out."

  "Do it," Grant replied. "I got your six."

  Moving forward, Kane quickly searched the corpse of the man he'd shot from the horse's back. The dead man's bandolier held two more grenades. Kane took them both, guessing that they were probably antipersonnel, as well. He glanced up and saw Brigid looking at him.

  "Stay here," Kane said. "If you get the chance, see if you can free those slaves. They're too exposed where they are." He scanned the tree line again and noted the shadows shifting among the trees.

  Evidently, the slavers were certain how many people they were up against and thought perhaps they might still be able to salvage some of their human cargo. And if they couldn't, Kane knew there was every chance that they would try to kill the slaves as payback for the people they had lost.

  Kane moved expertly through the brush, keeping his eyes and ears open. The earlier explosion still caused ringing in his hearing, but it wasn't anything he couldn't compensate for by watching.

  A horse snorted somewhere in the tangle of brush ahead of him.

  Kane kept moving swiftly, taking advantage of the cover offered by the trees along the way. A line of bullets tore through the branches over his head. He hunkered down behind the nearest tree, and then felt it vibrate as more bullets slammed into the trunk.

  "Grant," Kane called, then heard the sudden roar of Grant's Copperhead burning through an entire magazine at once. It wasn't something Grant did without extreme provocation. Magistrates were chosen and bred for their military abilities, and then they were drilled until the day they died.

  "Can't help," Grant replied. "Brigid's making her bid at a one-percenter."

  A one-percenter was a common term among Magistrates. It generally referred to the chances a Magistrate had of surviving a chosen course of action.

  Kane craned his head around the tree and peered toward the area where he'd left the former archivist. Her reddish-gold hair flashed in the sun as she raced across the clearing to the slaves. Bullets from the concealed slavers smacked into the thick mud around her.

  The mother who had tried to protect her son now crouched over him protectively, her arms wrapped tightly around him. On one side of her, a dead man lay facedown in the mud. Chained to the dead man, she had no hope of getting her son or herself to safety. The little boy screamed and kicked his feet against the mud, crying out so loudly now that his voice broke.

  It was a trap, Kane knew. The surviving slavers had deliberately left the woman and her child in the open as bait. They probably thought Brigid was family, hell-bent on rescuing them.

  Without warning, one of the slavers spurred his horse into the clearing. He was young and lean, and lay down over the top of his mount like another layer of hair. He rode straight for Brigid, a long-barreled pistol coming up in one hand.

  "Brigid!" Kane shouted. But he knew the warning was too little too late. He started to get up, then a bullet smashed into his sternum. The breath left his body in a heated, rushing gasp.

  Even as everything started to go black, Kane saw more men approaching at a quick trot. The slavers had been closer to reinforcements than Kane had expected.

  Chapter 2

  Mohandas Lakesh Singh stared at the huge Mercator map on one wall in the command center of the Cerberus redoubt, which was located in the Bitterroot Mountain Range in Montana. A headache throbbed at his temples, and he finally turned away from the map. If there were any answers there to the problems that he faced now, he didn't see them. Nor had he seen them in days.

  The command center represented his own personal world within the world that was represented by the huge Mercator map. Inside the command center, Lakesh had control of everything that went on. It was a microcosm that he had both learned to appreciate and hate over the years.

  Periodically, the long room with its high, vaulted ceilings was still small enough to feel like a prison. Perhaps, had the imperator not offered him a glimpse of his youth and briefly reawakened all those memories of what it had been like to be young and full of passions, he would not feel so trapped some days.

  The command center held walls full of comps and electronic devices that had allowed him to access worlds of knowledge that included the past and the present. Amazingly, Lakesh had lived in both of those worlds. Before the nukecaust that devastated the world, he had been part of the Totality Concept, a secret government program set up to use incredible technology ostensibly given to them by an alien race that called themselves the Archons.

 

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