Outlanders 28 mad gods w.., p.15
Outlanders 28 Mad God's Wrath, page 15
"It's a new phase of the same old war," Grant corrected him dourly. "We may have more allies to go along with more enemies, but the war is the same."
Kane nodded reflectively, remembering all the times he had told Lakesh that a war that was already lost could not be fought. A new one had to be waged. It wasn't until they learned that the Archon Directorate didn't exist that they devoted much thought to the means of waging the new war.
Before then, the missions Lakesh concocted never dealt with head-on confrontations. Always they involved finding some way to strike covertly at the Archon Directorate, not at the barons, their plenipotentiaries who actually held the reins of power.
After Balam's revelation that the Directorate was but a diversionary smoke screen created two centuries ago by corrupt government officials and military men to mask their own ruthless ambitions, an entirely new set of strategies had to be drafted.
The earlier tactics had been hampered by their own belief that they contended with a vast, omnipotent opponent, and by Kane's way of thinking they wasted a lot of time and energy searching for ways to fight an enemy that didn't exist.
He couldn't really blame Lakesh, particularly in lieu of the fact that he was the man who came to the pivotal conclusion that the Directorate was but a cunningly crafted illusion. Even so, he seemed reluctant to accept the findings of his own detective work, despite Balam's essentially confirming his suspicions.
Not that it really mattered at this point. Lakesh's self-assumed position as the final authority in the redoubt was no longer absolute. A smile tugged at the corners of Kane's mouth. It wasn't as if he, Grant and Brigid had ever obeyed him unquestioningly in the first place, but now any proposals for action had to be agreed upon by a majority vote.
Kane knew Lakesh bitterly resented this change in procedure, but to hell with him. His plans had nearly gotten them all killed—worse than killed—on a number of occasions. Lakesh often gave them just enough information to plunge them into serious trouble. That was all over now. Lakesh was a changed man.
At least Kane hoped so.
The jeep, all four tires gripping the cracked asphalt, topped another rise, turned another curve, and Grant exhaled a deep sigh of relief as the road widened to the huge plateau.
Kane tried raising the redoubt on the trans-comm again, but once more received only static. "They have to be receiving us," Grant said flatly.
Kane nodded, but folded the cover down over the comm and put it in his pocket. He didn't voice the anxiety that had crept over him like a shroud since their breakdown. His pointman's sixth sense howled an alarm. The skin between his shoulder blades seemed to tighten, and the short hairs at the back of his neck tingled.
Grant steered the jeep in a semicircle around the plateau and braked to a halt only a few yards away from the sec door. It was completely closed. Normally one of the panels was left open until midnight, until the security watch closed it. As it was, the security watch should have been alerted to their arrival by the motion detectors planted around the perimeter and the night-vision vid system.
"I don't like the look of this," Brigid murmured, her voice barely audible over the idling engine.
"That makes two of us," Grant concurred, unconsciously lowering his voice. He glanced over at Kane. "How about you?"
"I'm with Brigid," he answered, eyeing the wide, heavy door inset into the base of the peak. "I don't like the look of this, either. Not one damn bit."
Grant keyed off the engine, and the abrupt silence set their flesh to crawling. They heard nothing, no trill of a night bird or chirp of a cricket, not even the sigh of the wind stirring the boughs of the evergreen trees. The three people climbed out of the jeep, Kane wincing at the grate of his boot soles against the tarmac.
"Maybe everybody is waiting to jump out and yell `surprise,'" Brigid whispered.
A line of confusion creased Grant's forehead. "Why the hell would they do that?"
She smiled wanly and shook her head. "An old predark custom, a way to celebrate birthdays. It was called a surprise party." "That makes sense," Kane muttered dismissively, approaching the door. "Or it might under other circumstances" Since Brigid's forced exile, she had taken full advantage of the Cerberus redoubt's vast database, and as an intellectual omnivore she grazed in all fields. Coupled with her eidetic memory, her profound knowledge of an extensive and eclectic number of topics made her something of an ambulatory encyclopedia. This trait often irritated Kane, but just as often it had tipped the scales between life and death, so he couldn't in good conscience become too annoyed with her.
Grant's eyes narrowed. "I'm not even sure I remember how to get into this place from the outside when the front door is locked."
Kane threw him a startled glance, then raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure if I do, either. Have we ever had to do it before?"
Brigid sighed in mock exasperation and stepped to the thick metal frame. She ran her hands across its dull surface, then popped open the lid to a small, square panel set at shoulder level. Reaching into it, her fingers found a small keypad, then tapped in three-five-two.
A prolonged grating sound came from the top and bottom of the huge sec door. Her hand grasped a lever beneath the keypad and she forced it down, holding it in position. For a few seconds nothing seemed to happen, but they heard the faint groan of buried gears and the hiss of hydraulics. A slit of pale light appeared on the right edge.
"Oh," remarked Kane blandly. "So that's how you do it."
"Code," Brigid said. "You enter three-five-two to enter and two-five-three to seal the door again. You were briefed on it the same time I was."
"I forgot," Kane said. "Something you don't have to worry about."
"It has more to do with mental discipline than a photographic memory, Kane," she retorted. "But you know that."
Brigid was a trained historian, spending over half of her life as an archivist in the Cobaltville Historical Division, but there was more to her storehouse of knowledge than simple training.
Almost everyone who worked in the ville divisions kept secrets, whether they were infractions of the law, unrealized ambitions or deviant sexual predilections. Brigid Baptiste's secret was more arcane than petty crimes or manipulating the system for personal aggrandizement.
Her secret was the ability to produce eidetic images. Centuries ago, it had been called a photographic memory. She could, after viewing an object or scanning a document, retain exceptionally vivid and detailed visual memories. When she was growing up, she feared she was a psi-mutie, but she later learned that the ability was relatively common among children, and usually disappeared by adolescence. It was supposedly very rare among adults. Brigid was one of the exceptions.
The massive door began folding aside, opening like an accordion. It was so heavy, it took nearly half a minute for one panel to open just enough to allow them to enter. Seeing the twenty-foot-wide, vanadium- sheathed corridor gleaming beyond it, Kane felt a quick spurt of anxiety.
In the half light of approaching dusk, the open door looked like a maw, the mouth of some gigantic predator. After spending the past few days in the open, with no walls or ceiling except the trees and sky, returning to the windowless confines of Cerberus made him feel instantly claustrophobic.
Brigid released the lever and stepped up to the opening, peering around the flat slab of vanadium. "See anything?" Kane asked, stepping up behind her.
Brigid's reply, if she had one, was drowned out by the deep-throated boom of a heavy-caliber gun.
Chapter 13
Despite its caliber, the gun that fired the shot had been poorly aimed. The round whipped past Brigid's right hip, missing it by over a foot. The bullet didn't miss the jeep, slamming into the front grille and puncturing the hot radiator. Scalding water and steam spewed out, swiftly forming a cloud in the chilly mountain air.
A cursing Grant jumped first in one direction and then another, trying to decide whether he wanted to risk being shot or parboiled. He decided to brave the steam, shoulder-rolling through it and crouching on the far side of the sec door.
Kane and Brigid threw themselves against the exterior of the door, using the massive vanadium slabs as cover. Nothing less than an antitank shell could even dent it. Kane's Sin Eater sprang from its holster and slapped solidly into the palm of his hand. "Did you see anybody?" he asked Brigid.
Short of breath due to astonishment, she could only shake her head.
Holding his pistol in a double-handed grip, his left cupping his right, Kane inched toward the opening, back pressed against the metal. The jeep radiator continued to hiss and spray out steam, which he hoped might obscure his movements.
Reaching the edge of the opening, Kane crouched, inhaled a deep breath, then fell over the threshold, half in and half out of the redoubt. Index finger hovering over the Sin Eater's trigger stud, his eyes scanned the semidarkness of the corridor for a target. He caught the faint whiff of cordite.
A white blur of movement in a doorway a score of yards down the passageway caught his attention. Raising the barrel of his pistol a fraction, he fired a single shot. The report was muted by the sound-absorbing properties of the vanadium-sheathed walls and floors.
The bullet struck the wall above the doorway, right at the juncture point where a heavy support beam stretched up toward the rock roof. A spark flared and the round bounced back and forth from wall to wall with the keening whine of ricochets and the hammering clang of multiple impacts.
"Freeze!" Kane roared, using the Mag voice, a sharp, commanding tone at a volume that in the past intimidated malefactors and broke violent momentum. "Drop your weapon or I'll drop you!"
While the echoes of his bellowed "you!" still chased each other down the passageway, a big revolver sailed from the doorway and struck the floor with a metallic clatter. It slid to the opposite wall.
"Come out with your hands on your head!" Kane shouted.
A small figure in a white bodysuit stepped timidly into the corridor, hands clasped obediently atop her black-haired head. Surprised into speechlessness, Kane stared at Nora Pennick. After what seemed like a full minute, he finally regained his composure to demand angrily, "What the hell are you doing, Nora?"
The woman stared toward him, then leaned against the wall, apparently going weak with relief. Lowering her arms, she asked in a quavering voice but with an unmistakable British accent, "Kane, it's you, isn't it? Are Grant and Baptiste with you?"
"Of course," he growled, swiftly climbing to his feet. Glancing behind him, he saw Grant and Brigid peering around the edge of the door panel. With an icy irony he told them, "Don't worry, it was only sweet little Nora trying to blow our heads off. Welcome home, kids."
"Nora?" Grant exploded, stomping into the redoubt and down the corridor toward the woman. He paused only long enough to pick up the big Colt Python revolver from the floor.
"I'm so sorry," the woman said, a sob catching at the back of her throat. "I'm new at this and I overreacted."
"That's for damn sure," Grant half snarled. He started to say more, then cocked his head at her inquisitively. "New to what? Overreacted why?"
The woman's eyes darted from Grant to Brigid to Kane. They were wet, red and puffy, either from weeping or lack of sleep or both.
Despite her haggard appearance, Nora Pennick looked nothing like the woman the three of them had first met on the Manitius Moon base a month or so before. Then, she was dirty, undernourished-looking and her long dark hair was a tangle of uncombed Medusa snarls. Since her arrival in the Cerberus redoubt, she had been dipping into the supply of cosmetics left there by the female personnel of the installation before it had been abandoned in the days preceding the nukecaust.
The white bodysuit she wore clung tightly to her trim, small-waisted figure. Her hair was coifed, neatly trimmed and the makeup she had applied to her face was evidently in fashion before the nukecaust. But now the mascara and eyeliner were smeared across her cheeks.
In a thin, aspirated whisper Nora said, "Bry said not to expect you until tomorrow morning, so he ordered the door to be sealed. I was walking guard when you—"
"Hold on," Brigid broke in impatiently. "You're telling us the end, not the beginning. Why did he order the door sealed?"
Nodding distractedly, Nora dabbed at her eyes. They could tell the woman teetered on the verge of hysterics, brought on by overwrought nerves and too many hours without sleep. She began to speak, her lips trembling, when a group of four people in white body- suits emerged at a trot from around a corner. They held SA-80 subguns across their chests and took up positions in a half circle facing Kane and company.
Two of them were recent Moon base immigrants, neither of whom Kane, Grant or Brigid knew. The other two were Banks and Wegmann. The people gusted out noisy exhalations of relief and lowered their weapons.
"When we heard the shots," Wegmann said in his characteristically clipped, waspish manner, "we thought—"
He broke off, glancing away in embarrassment. In his midthirties, Wegmann was no more than five and half feet tall and weighed in the general vicinity of one hundred and fifty pounds. As such he was the only man in Cerberus shorter and slighter of frame than Bry, but he always seemed to possess the self-confidence of a someone twice his height and weight.
"Thought what?" Kane snapped.
Banks stepped forward. He looked almost as exhausted and stressed out as Nora Pennick. "We thought it might be another incursion."
"Another incursion?" echoed Grant incredulously. "What do you mean by that?"
Banks sighed. "I mean, that about twenty-two hours ago, Cerberus was invaded by a hostile force."
For a handful of seconds Kane, Brigid and Grant were too stunned to speak. Brigid recovered her emotional equilibrium first. "A hostile force from where? Who sent it? Sam? One of the barons?"
Nora shook her head, lips compressed in a tight, grim line. "A lot worse. It was Maccan and what was left of his followers. George Neukirk resurrected him and brought him here through the gateway. When Maccan left, he took Lakesh's interphaser and Lakesh himself."
ON THE WAY to the infirmary Banks provided a terse overview of the events of the night before. Kane wasn't too interested in the finer details, but Brigid seemed both shaken and enthralled by his description of Maccan's energy gauntlet. "The Silver Hand of Nuadhu? It can't be," she murmured.
Banks left them at the entrance, returning to clean-up-and-repair detail in the operations center with Wegmann.
Grant, Brigid and Kane took two steps into the infirmary and came to an unsteady halt, staring with disbelieving eyes at the number of injured people lying in the beds. Kane counted six injured people, all of them bandaged and receiving IV drips. He glimpsed Quavell flit past the doorway of the adjoining room, bearing a tray.
Farrell occupied the far bed of the infirmary. He, too, had an IV drip, but he was awake, staring at the ceiling as though it were a window. He looked terribly haggard, but he forced a smile when he saw them.
"You guys missed the big game," he croaked. "We damn near brought the mountain down."
"Almighty God," Grant husked out in a gravelly whisper. "How many casualties?"
"Seven dead," came DeFore's voice from behind them. "Six wounded."
They turned as the medic strode into the infirmary from the corridor, pushing a wheeled cart filled with medical supplies ahead of her. "We probably wouldn't have had any wounded at all if Farrell here hadn't tried a last-minute rescue of Lakesh."
She spoke without heat or accusation, only a bone- deep weariness.
"Domi," Grant blurted. "Where is she?"
DeFore pushed the cart toward the adjoining room. "In here."
Grant rushed ahead of her, Brigid and Kane on his heels.
For a couple of seconds they had difficulty locating Domi. The girl's marble whiteness blended in with the stark bedsheets. An IV bag hung upside down to the left of the bed, dripping slowly into a shunt on her arm. Diagnostic scanners hummed purposefully, monitoring her heartbeat and respiration. Lividly outlined in blue and red against the bone-whiteness of her skin, a network of ruptured capillaries and blood vessels spread across her forehead. Domi's sleep was fitful and she murmured and twitched.
Leaning over the bed, gazing into her face, Grant demanded, "Who did this to her?"
"I was told Maccan himself," DeFore replied. "With that glove of his. To get Lakesh to cooperate, he tortured her."
"Looks like Lakesh cooperated a little too late." Grant turned toward the medic, his eyes shadowed by his heavy brows. "What's wrong with her?"
DeFore shook her head, crossing her arms under her breasts. "I wish I knew. She's suffering from ruptured capillaries and some intercranial swelling. From what I was told, my guess is that Maccan's glove emitted infrasound waves. So I can only speculate she was subjected to a point-blank dose of it."
