Outlanders 48 serpents.., p.27
Outlanders 48 - Serpent's Tooth, page 27
“But we rock you with a grenade, you feel it,” Kane continued, egging the cobra prince on. Durga squinted, his eyes focusing on the human and his surroundings.
Kane opened fire again, scrambling Durga’s infrared vision as the bullet glanced off the enhanced being’s forehead. The Cerberus leader had been informed by Fargo that the nanomachines had offered a range of visual perception that could easily have located the bomb hidden beneath the statue.
Durga continued to walk forward, starting to laugh. “You cleave to my father’s form. Why? You thought that a big snake man made of stone might provide you with a little protection from another one like him?”
Durga spewed his flaming venom again, and Kane lunged backward between the legs of the statue. The prince strode more quickly now, the microscopic robots now powerful enough to restore his health since they didn’t have to deal with the extra bulk he’d absorbed. In seven strides, Durga had enough speed to leap across the main hall, striking the statue of Garuda in the chest with both feet.
Kane lunged out of the path of the falling sculpture as it tore loose from its pedestal. The flaming spear was held in place by the pipe system that fed its constantly burning natural gas lamps. Durga stood on the broken effigy of his father, laughter pouring out of him in a torrent.
“I shot this dumb bastard as he looked on me with approval,” Durga said to Kane. A kick smashed the jaw off the statue, skittering it across the floor. He turned toward the human, ignoring the pinpricks of pain as Kane’s bullets lashed his chest.
Kane got to his feet, pulling his combat knife.
“Oh, blades versus fangs?” Durga asked. “Of course, that little bodkin isn’t going to be any more effective than your gun, is it?”
Kane’s eyes narrowed. “I never was one for going quietly.”
Durga’s laugh trailed off. “I just hate stubborn people.”
“And I just hate megalomaniacs,” Kane replied. “Come on, I’m not getting any younger.”
Durga motioned for Kane to come closer. “One last free shot. I want to see what you think can stop me.”
Durga spread his arms wide, leaving himself open to Kane. “Go on. Stick a knife into an indestructible immortal.”
Kane leaped, slamming into Durga and driving him back into the burning spear as it wobbled on the pipe that fed it. With all the strength he could muster, the Cerberus warrior plunged the blade into Durga’s forehead. A spearing sheet of steel cut through the Nagah’s brain, filling his head with painful static.
“Warning! Central nervous system compromise!” the interface howled in his mind. “Emergency recovery protocols activating!”
Durga hurled Kane away with such strength that the human landed a dozen yards away, tumbling across the floor like a ragdoll. The knife was still stuck in Durga’s head, and the Sin Eater had been dropped when he had pulled the knife.
The Nagah prince reached up, limbs impelled by the nanomachines to wrench the blade out so that they could begin repairs on the pinioned brain. Durga coughed, chuckling.
“Nice…effort…” Durga laughed. The knife crunched through bone as it was released from the prince’s skull. “But the nanites are keeping my brain running, despite what bits you separated with this.”
Durga tripped, wincing as his strength faltered. “It will take a minute, but then I’ll enjoy pulling your arms and legs off….”
“Take a look at where you’re standing. On radar, if you can,” Kane offered.
Durga blinked, then looked down. “Interface, you heard the monkey.”
He heard the sound of retreating feet as he focused on a square block of some form of substance. A pulse hummed through the air. Glancing up, he saw Hannah’s unmistakable profile on his radar vision, standing at least a hundred yards away. She had something noisy in her hand, emitting a signal pulse.
“Call this a divorce, Durga!” Hannah shouted.
The object in her hand flared so bright that it blotted out the godling’s enhanced vision.
The world vaporized a heartbeat later, a natural-gas-powered fuel-air explosion smashing Durga apart with a thoroughness that the nanomachines couldn’t counter, their own microscopic mechanisms incinerated in the cleansing flame.
Kane had been hauled behind cover by Brigid, and he rode out the blast in her arms. As the roar faded, the two people lurched from behind the heavy barrier that had protected them.
Hannah crushed the detonator under her heel, then regarded the humans coldly.
“Too merciless?” Hannah asked.
Kane looked at the blast crater created by Fargo’s device. The vaporizing fireball had a radius of thirty feet. Even so, the overpressure of the shock wave had torn up marble columns and flagstones for another eighty feet. Had the hall not been evacuated for the duration of the emergency, people within 150 feet would have been killed. Kane’s mad dash had taken him out of the kill zone.
“Sometimes a little overkill doesn’t hurt,” Kane replied.
Hannah frowned, then nodded. Her dour mood lightened. “And a little compassion…will make things a bit better for everyone involved.”
“So what now?” Kane asked.
Brigid helped the battered Kane by letting him lean on her. “It would be wonderful if the Nagah could…”
“No,” Hannah said.
“But all we did…” Brigid spoke up.
“No. Not right now,” Hannah explained. “Our people have suffered. Enormously. The hangar, in case you didn’t notice, is more wreckage than working aircraft.”
“You don’t have enough to spare,” Kane agreed.
“Plus the deaths caused by the insurgents, and the loss of Durga’s personal guard…” Hannah sighed. “We have half a government left. Maybe in a few years.”
“Years,” Kane repeated. “We’ll try to keep the planet together for you until then.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer you return to Cerberus tonight,” Hannah said. “We have one helicopter capable of taking you to the temple.”
Kane nodded. “I wish we could have saved the interface to reprogram the cobra baths.”
Hannah managed a weak smile. “Manticor is a strong man. And he told me, ‘You don’t need feet to be a husband.’”
“One more thing—where did Fargo go?” Kane asked.
Hannah sighed. “I let him go. Repayment for the weapon that destroyed Durga.”
Kane nodded. “I’m too tired to kick his ass anyway.”
Hannah managed a soft chuckle at that remark.
He held out his hand. “Good luck rebuilding, even if your people decide to never talk to us again.”
She accepted the handshake. “And maybe someday we’ll be able to forget the likes of Fargo and the consortium, and just concentrate on good people like you.”
Kane rested his arm around Brigid’s shoulder. The two explorers turned and began their long trek to the hangar. The journey around the planet wouldn’t take long, thanks to the power of the interphaser, but the losses of the past few days would make it feel long. The destroyed twentieth-century technology and the burial of Enki’s secrets beneath thousands of tons of collapsed stone paled in comparison to the death of a kind matron and dozens of her loyal subjects.
Their consolation, though, would come in the thousands who had been saved.
That, and the fact that they weren’t leaving a nest of angry vipers.
When the Nagah would next appear to humanity, the Cerberus envoys would be there, ready to offer friendship. once again.
Kane rested his head against Brigid’s. “Let’s go home, Baptiste.”
ISBN: 978 1 472 08549 8
SERPENT’S TOOTH
© 2009 James Axler
Published in Great Britain 2009
by Harlequin MIRA, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
James Axler, Outlanders 48 - Serpent's Tooth
