Outlanders 47 death cr.., p.4
Outlanders 47 - Death Cry, page 4
KANE HURRIED TO CATCH UP with Grant as he left the ops center. The redoubt’s main corridor was a twenty-foot-wide tunnel carved through the mountain rock, with curving ribs of metal and girders supporting its high roof. “What’s the hurry, hero?” Kane asked, keeping his tone light despite the creeping exhaustion he felt washing over him now that he was out of the field. “You hardly said a word on the flight back here—something on your mind?” Grant held up his left arm, fist clenched and his wrist chron close to Kane’s face. “I promised I’d cook for Shizuka tonight,” he grumbled, “and didn’t expect to be out in the field most of the afternoon.” Tilting his head, Kane looked at the wrist chron and noted that it was almost six o’clock. “So?” he asked. “Cooking is just cooking, it won’t take that long.” “Sure.” Grant nodded. “Cooking will take no time at all. It’s not the cooking that I’m worrying about.” He brushed a hand over his chops and beneath his chin, feeling the first, spiky itch of forming stubble as it met with his fingers. “Shower, shave, clean clothes—gotta look my best.” Before he could stop himself, Kane blurted out a loud guffaw. “Man, when did you two become such an old married couple? Listen to you!” “Old married nothing,” Grant replied. “What are we doing all this for, Kane—what are we fighting this crazy-ass war for—if not for people like Shizuka?” He held Kane’s gaze for a moment before turning and heading to his private quarters. Kane remained standing in the corridor, stunned and feeling suddenly very alone. The war. Sometimes he forgot about the war. When he was in point-man mode, when it was all instinct, all action and do-or-die, he just went with the flow, didn’t think too much about where it was all leading. But Grant was right. They were in the middle of a war, a war that had raged on the planet Earth for more than five thousand years. An alien race called the Annunaki had arrived on Earth in an effort to prevent their own stagnation. They had toyed with the primitive creatures that they had found there, shaping them to their own ends, for their own amusements. And when the toys had begun to lose their luster, the Annunaki had unleashed a great flood to wash away the remnants of this childlike race called humanity and begin anew. New forms of terrestrial subjugation emerged, and humankind was once again exploited by the alien master race. Nobody really knew how long the Annunaki had shaped world events, and no one really understood why an all-powerful race would take so much time over what were, to them, little more than insects. And yet, the Annunaki had set events in motion to build up the Earth only to have the great civilizations destroy each other in another cataclysm, this time seemingly of their own making. Where water had failed the first time, fire took its place. The planned nuclear holocaust had served a simple purpose, akin to leaving a field fallow so that the crops could be better harvested in the next cycle. The small percentage of the population that survived that fateful day in 2001 reverted to a state of savagery that ensured only the very strongest survived. Two hundred years after that first nuclear strike, the Annunaki had reappeared as the overlords, reborn in new bodies formed from the chrysalis state of a mysterious ruling elite called the barons. As far as Kane could understand it, the whole trick had been pulled through a computer download; an organic computer on a starship called Tiamat found orbiting Earth, utilizing vastly superior technology to regenerate the godlike Annunaki pantheon. But for all intents and purposes, it was just another file download, a saved memory opened and accessed once more. And working with Brigid and Lakesh had taught Kane that one file download meant that you could do another. And another and another and another. Tiamat had taken a crippling hit during a recent squabble between different factions of the alien Annunaki, and their tight grip on the affairs of Earth seemed to be relenting, but Kane suspected—as did all of the Cerberus exiles—that the chances were good that a backup file of Annunaki personalities was just waiting to be downloaded. The threat had abated temporarily, but the war was far from over. Grant was right. He had Shizuka, the beautiful leader of a society of samurai warriors called the Tigers of Heaven who inhabited Thunder Isle in the Pacific. She was a noble warrior, every bit as brave and formidable as Grant. And who did Kane have? Who was his fight for? “The hell with it,” the ex-Mag muttered, turning toward his own quarters to take a hot shower to loosen the kinks in his muscles. He didn’t need to hang a face or a name on the person he was saving. He was there to save humanity, there to save himself and others like him. It wasn’t a war; it was basic survival.
AS LAKESH ATTACHED a new keyboard to the recovered computer in the ops center, communications expert Donald Bry, sitting several seats across from him, thought he saw a quick flash of code whip across the monitor at his workstation. A round-shouldered man of small stature, Bry wore a constant expression of consternation, no matter his mood, beneath the curly mop of unruly, copper- colored hair. Bry was a long-serving and trusted member of the Cerberus crew, acting as Lakesh’s lieutenant and apprentice in all things technological. Bry leaned forward in his seat, peering at his computer monitor, waiting for whatever it was to reappear. His monitor was linked to the Keyhole communications satellite, allowing Cerberus to remain in touch with field operatives and to pass information to them as required. As he watched the surveillance image with thermal overlay taking up the main window on-screen, he urged whatever it was that had flashed up to reappear. When nothing happened, he began typing frantically at the keyboard, then slid his chair a few feet along the desk to review the past forty seconds at a separate monitor to his left. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. No code. No flash. Nothing. Turning back to the live feed, Donald Bry leaned forward once again and ran his index finger across the lower right-hand side of the screen, where he had thought he had seen the code flash for a fraction of a second. Farrell leaned over from a nearby desk, a quizzical look on his face. “Everything okay, Donald?” he asked. Bry looked up, feeling awkward and suddenly stupid. “I thought I saw some- thing for a moment,” he told the other operator, “but it was nothing. Just tired, I guess. Been looking at the old boob tube too long.” Bry accepted when Farrell offered to cover communications monitoring for a while, and he got up to stretch his muscles and get out of the room for a few minutes, assuring his colleague he would be back shortly. As Bry passed him, Lakesh was hooking a new monitor to the recovered computer. “Be sure you save some of the action for me,” Bry instructed Lakesh with forced geniality before exiting the ops center into the vanadium-steel corridor. Outside the quiet hum of the operations center, Bry stood and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “What did I see?” he asked himself quietly, trying to remember. Whatever it was, if it had been anything at all, had flashed across the screen so quickly that it had to have been there for no more than a nanosecond, utterly subliminal. If it had been anything at all, he reminded himself.
Chapter 4
On the plateau outside the heavy accordion-style doors to the Cerberus redoubt, two figures were sparring. A rough circle had been etched in the dirt around them, stretching to a diameter of roughly twenty feet. The early-morning sun was rising over the mountain, casting long shadows across the ground as the two combatants paced the edge of the marked area as they prepared to battle.
The two figures could not have been more different. To one side of the circle stood Grant, the dark-skinned, heavily muscled ex-Mag dressed in loose-fitting combat trousers and a dark-colored vest. His outfit was finished by a pair of scuffed, black leather boots, a souvenir of his Magistrate days.
Across the circle, her bare feet crossing each other as she walked around the edge of the temporary arena, her eyes never leaving those of her opponent, was Domi. Lithe and thin, Domi was an albino, her skin chalk-white and her short-cropped hair the cream color of bone. She wore an olive-drab ensemble made up of an abbreviated halter top that barely covered her tiny, pert breasts and a pair of shorts, rolled up high in the leg. The most startling aspect of Domi’s appearance, however, were her ruby-red eyes. The young woman weighed little more than a third of her opponent, yet showed no fear as she prepared to do combat with the bigger man.
“First outside the circle, toss or misstep,” she told him, “either counts as a loss.” “I know the rules, Domi.” Grant smiled tightly. “Give it your best shot so I can toss your sorry ass out of here and get to the cafeteria in time to catch the decent breakfast chef.” Domi’s pale lips parted in a frightening, feral smile. “In your dreams, Grant.” She laughed. “I’m saving my best shot for someone good.”
With that, Grant loosed a cry of offended rage and charged toward her, his boots kicking up dirt as he closed the space between them. Domi watched calmly, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet as this relentless juggernaut of a man hurtled toward her, his head down like a charging rhinoceros. She timed the leap perfectly, her hand whipping out to scuff momentarily across Grant’s left shoulder where he held it low to the ground. Suddenly she was flipping into the air, her feet at the highest apex as she pivoted off the ex-Mag’s body. As silent and graceful as a ballerina, Domi landed behind Grant, pulling her body into itself. With Domi out of his way, Grant saw the edge of the circle in the dirt just three steps ahead of him and he rolled his body and slapped his right hand hard on the ground to bring himself to a bone-jarring halt. He slipped for a moment, his hand drifting perilously close to the circle’s edge, and managed to stop just short of the line. As Grant righted himself, lifting his huge frame from where he had slid, he heard Domi bark out a single laugh. “Ha! You’re getting sloppy, old Mag man,” she told him. Crouched low to the ground, Grant turned to look at the thin-framed young woman, his lips curling back in a snarl. She was clearly enjoying this rare chance to show off to one of her peers, but Grant was beginning to wonder how he had been talked into this morning sparring match. Domi, like Grant, Kane and Brigid, had once been a denizen of Cobaltville, though her position as sex slave had been far less salubrious than that of the Magistrates and the librarian. But circumstance had thrown them all together; a little unit that made up the solid core of the Cerberus exiles together with Lakesh as their mission controller. These days, Domi was sleeping with mission control, but that was a different story altogether.
As a child of the Outlands, she was naturally a loner, used to relying on her own wits and often abrupt around others, making them feel uncomfortable. But now and then she missed true company, that inherent human need for social contact, and Grant and Kane had always shown nothing but respect for her despite her background. Grant looked to where Domi stood in the center of the circle and he noticed Kane was now standing a little way back from the circle’s edge, over by the large doors to the redoubt. His eyes flicked to Domi once more, just standing there, waiting for his attack. Fine, he decided, you want an attack? You’ll get one. Grant was a massive engine of muscle as he drove forward, swinging punches left and right as he closed in on Domi. She weaved back, ducking low, and swung her right leg out in a sweeping arc, attempting to trip the bigger man. The front of her calf slapped into the top of Grant’s heavy boot and just stopped, like hitting a solid metal bar.
Domi yelped in surprise, pulling her leg back and rolling her body out of the way of Grant’s pile-driver punches. Suddenly she was standing again, a blur of motion as she darted her outstretched hands at him, holding them flat, like blades. Grant put up a rock-solid arm to halt her attack, blocking each blow between wrist and elbow as her hands flitted toward his face. He sensed the opening in her attack before he saw it, an old Magistrate instinct, and his right leg kicked out as he pivoted at the torso, dropping low to ensure that his foot made solid contact. Grant’s kick slammed Domi just beside the breastbone, and she staggered backward, the wind knocked out of her. She looked down as she drew a calming breath, and saw that she was just one footstep away from the edge of the circle that she had marked out before Grant arrived. “Not laughing so much now, huh?” Grant goaded as he centered himself and walked warily toward her. “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling, “I’m still laughing on the inside.” Grant stopped in his tracks, just outside of the range where Domi might reach him, and a wide smile broke out on his face. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”
Domi thought for a moment and shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seemed the thing to say.” Kane’s voice drifted over to them from the doors to the redoubt. “Blah-blah- blah,” he said, heckling. “Are you kids going to talk or are you going to fight? I came here to see blood, people,” he added, ensuring that they knew he was kidding by his tone. Grant gave him a sneer before turning back to his tiny opponent. “You want to finish this?” She nodded. “Ready when you are.” Kane had stepped over to the edge of the circle, a little behind where Domi was trapped. He punched a fist into his hand and began counting them in. “This is it, people,” he announced, “Beauty versus the Beast. My money’s on Beauty there, but don’t take offense—I’ve known him a lot longer than I have you, Domi.” “Har-har,” she responded, not looking back, taking a step closer to Grant. In a flash, Domi had spun her body, swinging first her left leg and then her right in Grant’s direction, repeating the action as he skipped back to avoid her kicks. Grant slapped her legs away from his face as he continued backward.
Grant timed Domi’s movements in his head, and suddenly his arm shot out and he grabbed her right ankle as it swung toward his face. Not expecting the move, Domi overbalanced and tumbled to the hard-packed ground, her momentum pulling Grant over with her. Together, the pair of fighters slammed into the dirt, with Grant spinning to avoid crushing Domi’s birdlike frame beneath his massive build. “You okay?” he asked her after a moment, letting go of her ankle. Lying prone on the ground, Domi peered over her shoulder down the length of her body at Grant’s concerned expression. His vest was darker now, she saw, where sweat had pooled between his pectoral muscles. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she told him. “Thanks.” Grant eased himself off the ground and stood over her, offering her one of his huge hands to help her up. “Aren’t you going to finish me off?” she asked, confused. Grant shook his head, pointing to the ground at his feet. “I stepped outside the circle when I rolled.” Domi took his hand, a sour expression crossing her features. “Yeah, but you did that to avoid hurting me.” Grant shrugged. “Still counts,” he assured her. “Besides, breakfast is becoming a nagging priority just now. Tough to fight on an empty stomach.” Domi brushed herself down and watched Grant return to the redoubt and disappear into the darkness of the tunnel mouth. After a few moments, she turned to Kane, still standing at the side of the circle. “Did you want to see me?” she asked him. Kane shook his head. “Nah, I just came out here to get some peace and quiet. Didn’t realize that fight club was in session this morning.” Domi smiled shyly, the barest hint of color rouging her pure white cheeks. “You wanna fight?” she asked Kane after a moment.
Kane looked out over the plateau, watching as wispy cotton-candy clouds drifted slowly over the distant sky, before he reached for the top of his shirt and began unbuttoning it. “What the hell, why not,” he told her, tossing his shirt to one side. “But no pulling hair, okay?” “I won’t if you won’t,” Domi promised him as she walked across to the far side of the dirt circle.
As he stepped into the circle and dropped his body into a fighter’s stance, Kane felt the nagging doubts of the past few days ebb away. It felt good to be alive.
BRIGID WAS BESIDE Lakesh in the ops center while Brewster Philboyd sat before them, tapping at the keyboard Lakesh had attached to the recovered computer. They had spent three days trying to decode the encrypted information, and every false lead had sapped just a little of their enthusiasm for the task. The question remained: what was stored on the hard drive and would it be worth this effort? Lakesh had one answer, and Brigid consoled herself that his was the wisest way to look at the problem. “It doesn’t matter what’s in the files,” he had assured her. “This is a scientific investigation to find out the truth—that there is something in the files.” In their ceaseless quest to find out what that something was, Brigid wasn’t entirely sure that any of them had gotten enough sleep. An astrophysicist, Brewster Philboyd was in his mid-forties and wore black- rimmed glasses above his acne-scarred cheeks. His pale blond hair was swept back from a receding hairline, and his lanky six-foot frame towered above many of the other scientists in the redoubt. Philboyd had joined the Cerberus team along with a number of other exiles from Manitius more than a year before, and had proved to be a valuable addition to the staff. He was the first to admit that he wasn’t a fighter, but Philboyd was as determined as a dog with a bone when a scientific or engineering problem crossed his path. He had stepped in to help with the Grand Forks database when he overheard the exasperated cries coming from Brigid and Lakesh on the second day of attempting to probe its files. “This stuff was really important two hundred years ago,” Brigid said, “but for pity’s sake, couldn’t they have put a time-sensitive release on the damn coding?” “There’s every possibility that it’s just as important today,” Lakesh said, chastising her lightly before turning back to the streams of code that whizzed across the screen, seeming to blur into one continuous, green glowing mass after three solid days of watching them flash before his eyes. “Well,” Philboyd chipped in, “we know that the code is alphanumeric and that it uses uniform block placement to disguise any natural patterns that might be there. Maybe if we drop some of the letters and transpose others…” “And stand on our heads and rub our stomachs,” Brigid added. Philboyd scratched at his head absently. “That might help, too,” he admitted.
