There was a variety of meals ready to eat available in the prepackaged rations, but as far as he was concerned, they all tasted the same—like shit. They may have contained all the minerals, vitamins, proteins and whatever else the dietitians said humans need to keep healthy, and since they were concentrated they didn't weigh much or take up much storage room. But all of them still had the same repulsive flavor.

  Now he made four sandwiches thick with ham and cheese wrapped in homemade bread, with a side dish of pickles, and a pot of coffee. It was a simple meal for what he knew in advance would not be a simple briefing.

  Kane would have preferred a full-course dinner, but the selection of foodstuffs in the galley was limited at that hour. The personnel usually assigned to food preparation were busy with cleanup duties elsewhere in the installation. However, the cafeteria contained a secondary kitchen where people could prepare small, individual meals as Kane did now.

  Most of the people who lived in the Cerberus redoubt, regardless of their specialized skills, acted in the capacity of support personnel. They worked rotating shifts, eight hours a day, seven days a week. For the most part, their work was the routine maintenance and monitoring of the installation's environmental systems, the satellite data feed, the security network.

  However, everyone was given at least a superficial understanding of all the redoubt's systems so they could pinch-hit in times of emergency. Fortunately such a time had never arrived, but still and all, the installation was woefully understaffed. Their small numbers had been a source of constant worry to Lakesh, but with the arrival of the Moon base personnel, there was a larger pool of talent from which to draw.

  Grant and Kane were exempt from crosstraining inasmuch as they served as the enforcement arm of Cerberus and undertook far and away the lion's share of the risks. On their downtime between missions they made sure all the ordnance in the armory was in good condition and occasionally tuned up the vehicles in the depot.

  Brigid Baptiste, due to her eidetic memory, was the most exemplary member of the redoubt's permanent staff since she could step into any vacancy. However, her gifts were a two-edged sword inasmuch as those self-same polymathic skills made her an indispensable addition to away missions.

  Kane carried the tray of sandwiches and the pot of coffee over to a corner table just as Grant, Brigid and Philboyd arrived. Philboyd regarded Brigid with a look bordering on adoration. Kane understood his devotion but he had little patience with it.

  Philboyd viewed Brigid as something of an anchor in his new life on Earth. Together they had faced the utter terror of contending with Enki, the last of the Dragon Kings, so he tended to look upon her as something of a security blanket.

  The four people sat and for the first few minutes concentrated only on sating their hunger and gratefully drinking their cups of coffee. Access to genuine coffee was one of the inarguable benefits of living as an exile in the redoubt. Real coffee had virtually vanished after skydark, since all of the plantations in South and Central America had been destroyed.

  An unsatisfactory, synthetic gruel known as "sub" replaced it. Cerberus literally had tons of freeze-dried packages of the authentic article in storage, as well as sugar and powdered milk

  After Kane washed down his last bite of sandwich with a sip of the coffee, he announced, "Brewster here was an eyewitness to the entire assault."

  "An active participant, I was told," Brigid said, smiling at the lanky astrophysicist warmly.

  Philboyd cast his eyes down self-consciously, and Kane grunted, "On our side, I hope."

  "Farrell was there, too," Philboyd retorted, not responding to Kane's gibe.

  "Yeah," Grant mumbled around a mouthful of ham, "but he's not ambulatory and you are. Besides, Reba has him zoned out on painkillers."

  In an encouraging tone, Brigid said, "Tell us everything you remember, Brewster. Step by step, minute by minute, shot by shot."

  Philboyd took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a paper napkin. "I'll try, but I don't have your gift for total recall."

  Philboyd began to talk. Except for inserting a question here and there, Kane, Brigid and Grant allowed him to speak uninterrupted for the better part of five minutes. In conclusion he said, "It's obvious now the anomalous energy signature Bry reported was Maccan's power glove. If he'd kept the matter stream confined to the gateway's pattern buffer, none of this would have happened." "One thing I've learned over the last couple of years," Brigid commented, sipping at her coffee, "is that trying to ascribe blame after the fact doesn't accomplish anything except to further hurt people who are already suffering because of a decision they made or didn't make."

  Dabbing at drops of coffee on the ends of his mustache, Grant glanced over at Brigid. "You called that power glove the what? The Silver Hand of somebody?" -

  Brigid smiled wryly. "I was thinking out loud, saying the first thing that popped into my head. But inasmuch as we already know that some mythological artifacts have their basis in reality, I might not be too far off-base."

  "Explain," Kane requested.

  "It's tied in with Maccan's people, the Tuatha de Danaan," she stated. "Nuadhu was their first king when they arrived in Ireland. In fact, some traditions have it that all of the Irish are descended from him."

  "I think I remember some of this:' Philboyd said. "Back on the Moon, you told us when the Danaan landed in Ireland they brought with them four great treasures—Nuadhu's sword, Lugh's terrible spear, the Dagda's cauldron and the Stone of Fal, the Stone of Destiny."

  Brigid nodded approvingly. "A couple of years ago we encountered a man who had stolen all of those artifacts and kept them in an underground vault in New London."

  Philboyd beamed as if he had just received a gold star from his beloved third-grade teacher. Kane tried to keep the annoyance he felt from being heard in his voice when he said, "I think I remember what you said now. The Formorians ruled Ireland when the Tuatha de Danaan showed up and they had a damn big battle someplace."

  "Right," Brigid said. "The Danaan first bargained for peace and the division of Ireland with the Formorians, but they were refused. So they met the army of the Formorians on the Plain of the Sea near Leinster. For four days, groups of single combatants fought. The Danaan chief, Nuadhu, lost his hand in battle, but the Formorian king, Bochaid, was killed and Prince Bress took his place. In a peace gesture, the Danaan offered the surviving Formorians one-fifth of Ireland and they chose Connaught."

  Kane and Grant exchanged surreptitious weary glances, but neither man decided to break into Brigid's dissertation.

  "After losing his arm," Brigid continued, "Nuadhu resigned his kingship. But Diancecht, physician of the Danaan, made him a marvelous silver hand. It could move like a real one, so it's apparent the Danaan had expertise in prosthetics. As a result, he was restored to kingship. When he used his so-called terrible sword in tandem with his silver hand, Nuadhu was invincible."

  "What was so special about his sword?" Philboyd wanted to know.

  "Allegedly no opponent could escape from it and no wound inflicted by the blade could be healed. It was reputedly so dangerous that even if Nuadhu pointed it at an opponent, serious injuries and sometimes death resulted."

  Brigid paused and a vertical line of concentration appeared at the bridge of her nose. "Which, now that I think about it, closely fits the description of what an infrasound weapon can do. It's possible the legend and lore of the sword and the silver hand were confused over the centuries."

  "Assuming the Silver Hand of Nuadhu was also an infrasonic weapon," Kane said, "how did Maccan end up with it?"

  Brigid smiled ruefully. "That's easy. He probably stole it from Nuadhu at the same time he tricked him out of his lands in the Boyne Valley, the tumulus of Newgrange."

  "That still doesn't tell us a whole lot," Philboyd observed sourly.

  Kane's thoughts flew back to what Brigid had said about Maccan when they were trapped in the DEVIL control nexus on the Moon. She had described Maccan as a chieftain among the Tuatha de Danaan, a name that meant "true vigor" or "young son."

  Maccan corresponded to the Welsh mythical figure Mabon and to the British Celtic Maponos, who was identified in inscriptions with the Greek god Apollo. He was also associated with a golden harp that made irresistibly sweet music that turned enemies into allies. As such he was the symbol of youth that denied the process of aging.

  Those were the legends. Kane had dealt with the vicious reality of the man. His neck muscles were still slightly sore from Maccan's enthusiastic effort to choke the life out of him. Still, he knew little more about Maccan's people than he had before encountering him. The historical and mythological record was more complete regarding the Danaan's age-old rivals, the Annunaki. Both races were responsible for—or guilty of— influencing most human cultures since before the dawn of recorded history.

  The Annunaki were the Serpent Kings, the Dragon Lords of Mesopotamian legend. They provided the basis of much culturally diverse ancient folklore in which a godlike reptilian race figured prominently. The Annunaki had come to Earth nearly half a million years ago from the planet Nibiru, a world in the solar system, but one that orbited a considerable astronomical distance away from the Sun, returning to the vicinity of Earth only once every thirty-six hundred years.

  Like the Danaan, the Annunaki were a highly developed race with a natural gift for organization. They viewed Earth as a vast treasure trove of natural resources upon which their technology depended. As labor was their scarcest commodity, the Annunaki's chief scientist, Enki, set about redesigning the Earth's primitive inhabitants into models of maximized potentials.

  The Annunaki remolded the indigenous protohumans, grading them at rough intellectual levels and classifying them by physique, agility and dexterity. After much trial and error, a perfect specimen was attained and served as the template for succeeding generations. But &ring the creation process a myriad of monstrosities was also birthed, which gave rise to the legends of the Cyclops, the centaur, the giant.

  The early generations of slave labor were encouraged to breed, so each successive descendant would be superior to the first. The human brain improved and technical skills grew, along with cogent thoughts and the ability to deal with abstract concepts.

  After thousands of years, the human slave-race rebelled against the Annunaki, who failed to notice the expansion of cognition on the part of their servants. By the time they did, Earth had become an unprofitable enterprise. Although the Annunaki were essentially a peaceful people, Enki's half brother, Enlil, arranged for a catastrophe to destroy their labor force. The catastrophe was recorded in ancient texts, and even cultural memories as the Flood. The Annunaki departed to their home world of Nibiru, determining to wait for another three and a half millennia before venturing forth to Earth again.

  As the waters slowly receded, the handful of human survivors bred and multiplied. Over the ensuing centuries, nations and empires rose and fell. It was during the Annunaki's absence that the Tuatha de. Danaan arrived. A humanoid race of aristocrats, scientists, warriors and poets, they settled in isolated Ireland. Although preferring their privacy, they taught the Gaelic tribes art, architecture and science. The essence of Danaan science stemmed from music—the controlled manipulation of sound waves—and this became recorded in legend as the "music of the spheres."

  But much of their science was interpreted as magic by the untutored clanspeople of ancient Ireland. But both the Annunaki and the Danaan understood and to some extent manipulated the indivisibility of space and time. They eventually discovered that matter and energy could be interchangeable—the deeper the Danaan probed into the minutiae of matter the more they found energy and complexities of energy at the bottom of everything. These realizations became not only the building blocks of their technology, but also millennia later, the entire template for Project Cerberus.

  After a several-thousand-year-long reign by the Tuatha de Danaan, a task force of Annunaki returned to reclaim their world and their slaves. By this time, the Dragon Kings were few in number and used guile instead of force to achieve their objectives. They worked to turn humans against the Danaan, by filling them with jealousy and fear. Mankind became embroiled in the conflict between the two races, a conflagration that extended even to the outer planets of the solar system, and became immortalized and disguised in human legends as a war in heaven.

  Finally, when it appeared that Earth was threatened with devastation, the war abated under terms. A pact was struck, whereby the two adversaries intermingled genetic material with that of humanity's to create a new race that was to serve as a bridge between the Danaan and the Annunaki. From this pact sprang the entities later known as the Grays, the First Folk and the Archons.

  The First Folk were charged by the Annunaki and the Danaan to act as custodians of humanity and to restrict their technological and cultural evolution. The Folk's forebears feared humankind's intellect would far outstrip its emotional development and lead to its destruction.

  The First Folk established many settlements all over earth, spreading out from the primary center deep in the heart of Asia. The people were cast in the mold of humanity, but they were not human as later generations would define the term. They were a branch on the mysterious tree of evolution, yet the twigs of humanity sprouted from their bough. They were a bridge, not only between two races, but flowing within them, mixing with the blood of their nonhuman forebears, was the blood of humanity.

  The First Folk were mortal, though exceptionally long-lived. Like the humanity to which they were genetically connected, they loved and experienced joy and sadness. Their cities were centers of learning and the citizens didn't suffer from want. They knew no enemies; they had no need to fight for survival. Their duty was to keep the ancient secrets of the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Danaan alive, yet not propagate the same errors as their forebears, especially in their dealings with humankind, to whom they were inextricably bound.

  Humanity was still struggling to overcome a global cataclysm, the Deluge brought about by Enlil, striving again for civilization. The First Folk insinuated themselves into schools, into political circles, prompting and assisting men into making the right decisions.

  They sought out humans of vision, humans with superior traits. They mingled their blood with them, initiated them into their secrets, advised them. During this thousand-year period, the Golden Age of myth, the First Folk began to feel it was blasphemous to restrict the growth of humanity. After all, they carried the blood of Homo sapiens, as well. They felt it was a crime to curtail Humankind's wisdom, to hide new sciences from him, to direct him away from new inventions, particularly those that would enrich the planet as a whole. the generations of the people living on the Moon and two factions arose—one following Enki and the other swearing fealty to Maccan.

  The First Folk knew their forebears possessed too many weapons in their arsenals, stolen and adapted from other worlds they visited and exploited to be able to defend Earth. They didn't have the resources to fight an all-out war, but now that they had aroused Danaan and Annunaki suspicions, they had to take action. Philboyd laid the blame on one of his own fellow scientists, a woman named Seramis. In the years preceding the nukecaust, she served as a Manitius's chief geologist and historian. She made the initial discoveries that a highly developed race had, in ages past, planted a colony on the Moon. She continued her work even after the nukecaust. She had already uncovered the clues that indicated the existence of a hidden city.

  They employed an energy field called "protoplanic force" and it demolished the lunar settlement. Enki and Maccan, the Annunaki and Danaan envoys, took refuge in suspended animation canisters, stasis units. Unfortunately there was a blow-back effect, a reverse reaction the First Folk hadn't foreseen. It nearly destroyed the Earth—and certainly decimated their civilization. Seramis and a group of followers performed excavations in the so-called Wild Lands and she discovered secrets about the Moon she never told anyone. She found tunnels and passages that led to the crypts of the Serpent Kings, the Annunaki. She plundered the tombs of their dead and stole much of their technology. Seramis claimed that a vast, lost knowledge was hidden in those catacombs, that on the Moon were secrets that were old when Sumeria was new, that were ancient when the pyramids were built in Egypt. The woman lost herself completely in the ancient culture of the Annunaki and became the sworn enemy of the Tuatha de Danaan, claiming they were a race of devils, the fallen angels referred to in Genesis.

  Shortly after the nukecaust, both Maccan and Enki were revived by one of the first Manitius base colonists, who for reasons no one ever discovered, decided Enki was a god and Maccan a devil. The division between the two entities was passed down over Judging by his behavior, classifying Maccan as demonic was not too far from the truth, despite the Danaan's history of helping Humankind. All the evidence indicated the Danaan were a very old race, even when they established a colony on Earth, at least ten thousand years ago, perhaps even before that. Even Maccan claimed the Tuatha de Danaan had four million years of accumulated history to look back on, but he had declined to expand on that history for Kane's benefit. He'd been too busy trying to kill him at the time.

 

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