Kane opened fire with his Sin-Eater again

“Lakesh, we’ve got trouble. I just hit Durga with an implosion grenade, and all it did was knock the wind out of him.”

The Sin-Eater’s heavy slugs tore into sections of bared flesh, but no blood trickled from the scale-shorn meat. Durga lifted his head, golden eyes filled with fury and disdain for the human who simply would not die.

“Keep fighting, mammal,” Durga growled. “The longer you survive, the more time you give your friends to make peace with their gods.”

“What makes you think you’ll survive killing me?” Kane called back.

Durga laughed, rising to rest on the coiled trunk of his serpentine lower half. He hadn’t recovered fully yet, but scales began to form over the flesh that had been scoured by the implosion grenade. “You amuse me, Kane. I’ll name my first extermination camp after you.”

Serpent’s Tooth
Outlanders®
James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks to Doug Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.

A Countryman’s son by accident trod upon a Serpent’s tail, which turned and bit him so that he died. The father in a rage got his axe, and pursuing the Serpent, cut off part of its tail. So the Serpent in revenge began stinging several of the Farmer’s cattle and caused him severe loss. Well, the Farmer thought it best to make it up with the Serpent, and brought food and honey to the mouth of its lair, and said to it: “Let’s forget and forgive; perhaps you were right to punish my son, and take vengeance on my cattle, but surely I was right in trying to revenge him; now that we are both satisfied why should not we be friends again?”

“No, no,” said the Serpent; “take away your gifts; you can never forget the death of your son, nor I the loss of my tail.”

INJURIES MAY BE FORGIVEN, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.

—Æsop’s Fable

The Road to Outlands—From Secret Government Files to the Future

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

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

Chapter 1

A parrot squawked and its multicolored wings blurred as it exploded from its perch in the lowest branches of the tree. The bird’s shriek was close enough to the cry of a woman being murdered that the expedition froze in startled anticipation of violence.

Austin Fargo’s hand dropped to the massive revolver on his hip, his other tightened around the handle of the machete frozen in midstroke at a green branch barring his progress. It took several minutes before the explorers had recovered enough composure to breathe steadily.

Had this been sooner on their journey, Fargo would have relaxed his tightly wound nerves with a laugh, but the hard rubber checkering on his handgun dug into the pads of his fingers and his throat was so tight that he almost choked. Two days earlier, when the expedition set out, Fargo was looking for a gold mine of technology, the materials that the Millennial Consortium would need to wrest control from such adversaries as the rebels of Cerberus redoubt or the Tigers of Heaven. Stockpiles of weapons in the Kashmir region would give the consortium an edge in creating their new empire. Which was why Austin Fargo had twenty trained soldiers and twice that many technicians on hand. The hundred bearers packing their supplies were paralyzed with worry, and only Fargo’s display of stern discipline kept the lot of them from deserting the human train as it crawled through the uncharted forest.

It was one thing to be cut in two by the snarl of a Calico machine pistol, and even the slash of a machete brought a quick demise. The coiled loops of leather that hung on Fargo’s hip, on the other hand, peeled flesh from the body in inch-wide strips, one lash at a time. The Indian deserter whom Fargo had singled out was a giant, six and a half feet with a barrel chest, and long arms and legs as solid as tree limbs. Fargo took his time, peeling the big Indian’s skin off with the crack of tightly woven leather. After an hour and a half, Fargo’s arm started to grow tired. The Indian hung by his wrists, bared ribs and shoulder blades gleaming where the whip had flayed skin and muscle away.

The deserter had been reduced to a gibbering mass, a once powerful man stripped of his strength by the cruelty of Fargo’s whip. Eyeless sockets cried tears that flowed in crimson rivers down his cheeks. The bearer begged for death, for an end to the pain. Finally, well into the third hour of his exhibition, Fargo wound the whip back up, hanging it on the metal hook in his belt. Somewhere in those last few minutes of lashing leather, blood loss or shock had stilled the big man’s heart.

Thoughts of rebellion were crushed. Fargo would make them pay, and the display of violence was foremost in the thoughts of the Indians laden with the expedition’s supplies.

That should have been enough to keep everyone well behaved, but then the ghost sightings began. Humanoid shadows flitted in the darkness just beyond the path that the expedition carved in the forest. The soldiers fired on the ghostly forms, but no blood was spilled by the chattering weapons. Fargo hated to call the stalkers ghosts, but the only other whispered explanation came from the primitives who had borne the supplies on this arduous trek. They called the shadows Nagah, legendary snake creatures that lived beneath the surface of the world, interacting with men only when they chose to. Fargo was well acquainted with the idea of reptilian humans from his adventures in England to interactions with the Annunaki overlords and their scaled Nephilim slaves. The snake men, with their hinged and poisonous fangs, were feared by the natives of postskydark India.

The Kashmir region had for centuries been a contested territory, warred over by the nations of India and Pakistan for strategic purposes and for the vast agricultural benefits it had provided. While Fargo saw evidence of ancient combines, overgrown and now conquered by weeds and new tree growth, he couldn’t imagine this land as farmland. It was too empty, too abandoned. On the other side of the forest, the remnants of Pakistan’s survivors held their ground. Likewise the Indians stayed on their side of the edge of the forest. No one even went to the tree line to harvest logs to create more housing in the snarled shantytown. To leave such resources untouched nagged at Fargo.

A shadowy figure, manlike in size and shape, stepped onto the trail ahead of him. At first, the millennialist thought it was a figment of his overactive imagination. His fingers wrapped around the black rubber grips of his .45-caliber revolver as he realized it was more than just a phantom. Gleaming yellow eyes, partially obscured by a silhouetted hood, flashed as the figure’s nod acknowledged Fargo’s attention.

“Have you not listened to the men you have enslaved?” came a harsh, sibilant challenge.

“I come to you representing the Millennial Consortium. I am here to make contact with the keepers of a trove reported in this area. We are a peaceful group, seeking to negotiate a deal with you,” Fargo answered. His thumb rested on the teardrop-shaped hammer of the big hogleg in its holster, ready for a fast draw. The challenger’s golden-yellow eyes flicked down to his hand.

“You’re well armed for a mission of peace,” the hissing silhouette noted.

“I’d be a fool to come unarmed into a nation filled with tribal feuds and bandits,” Fargo stated. “And in the south, there are violent cultists.”

“They call themselves the Nagas,” the shadowy sentinel added. “They believe themselves to be like unto us.”

The jungle grew silent around them, as quiet as a tomb as birds and insects became too frightened to chirp. The shadowed, amber-eyed stranger was not alone. Odds were that the expedition was surrounded. Fargo glanced back to the Calico-toting millennialist enforcers and nodded.

Safety catches clicked off with the chatter of a sudden metallic rainstorm.

“This can either be peaceful or painful.” Fargo’s words punctuated the chatter of twenty machine pistols going from rest to wakeful readiness. “Your choice, stranger.”

“Please, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot,” the tall figure said. He stepped into a shaft of sunlight piercing down from the forest canopy. “My name is Durga, prince of the true-blooded Nagah.”

Fargo watched Durga flip back the hood of his long, formless black cloak. Rising from his shoulders like a trapezoidal Central American pyramid, Durga’s head and slender neck were blended into a flat, powerful sheet of muscle that instantly solidified the truth of the legendary cobra men of India. Save for the folds of the cloak that clung to broad, powerful shoulders, Durga was naked to the waist, his chest laden with large segmented plates in a paler hue than the scales that adorned his arms, face and ribs. The belly armor was the color of age-stained bone, while the smaller, finer scales glimmered metallic blue and green, shimmering almost like silk. The cobra man’s yellow eyes remained locked on Fargo, and his thin, scaled lips were turned up at the corners in bemusement.

“Brothers, step out and introduce yourselves. Slowly and politely,” Durga added as an afterthought.

Perhaps as many as thirty similarly cloaked figures strode from the shadows of the trees.

Like their self-proclaimed true-blooded prince, they were lean, slender figures. All were hairless, though not all of them had the perfect sheens of snakelike armor that their leader sported. On the Nagah men who weren’t completely reptilian, bared patches of human flesh seemed like swollen, discolored rashes rather than normal sunburned flesh. Scales twinkled like dew-wet grass amid the untransformed flesh.

Fargo thought back to the semireptilian guardsmen in England, men genetically augmented to be more than human. The Englishmen so transformed looked pathetic in comparison to the powerful, graceful, cobra-hooded Nagah that Fargo looked upon now. The explorer wondered if the treatments of Lord Strongbow were clumsily copied from whatever procedure created the snake men he now encountered.

“Make your weapons friendly, lads,” Fargo called out. “Muzzles down but triggers hot.”

Fargo nodded to Durga. “Just a precaution.”

Durga shrugged. His lean, powerful shoulders flexed, making his segmented chest plates ripple over tight pectoral and abdominal muscles. “Understandable. We are strangers. Indeed, we are obscenely alien to your mammal eyes.”

Fargo shook his head. “Not completely. I have met others who have transformed themselves, but not as well as you have.”

Durga nodded. “Ah, yes. The Englanders. Strongbow had sent scouts to seek a refinement of his crude process. We greeted them as brothers, but sadly, our lost relatives once more were lost. It is no wonder that our appearance does not panic you.”

Fargo glanced back to his millennialist allies. He could hear the hushed whispers of Indians speaking among themselves in Hindi. “No. Not completely.”

Durga’s thin lips pursed in frustration. “Such a shame.”

Fargo read the disappointment in the cobra man’s words. Where the rest of his party displayed confusion, the millennial explorer’s muscles tensed in anticipation of hell unleashed.

Durga took one step forward, but by then, Fargo had sidestepped, barely avoiding the slashing rake of unhinging fangs in the Nagah’s mouth. A spray of fluid issued from Durga’s venom sacks as they squeezed themselves out, disgorging their deadly payloads.

Fargo cracked his whip across Durga’s flat face, a blow that would have lacerated any normal man down to the gleaming, bloody white bone beneath. It was a fast-draw slash that had split faces open from forehead to chin in the past. Instead, one yellow eye was clamped shut and Durga stumbled off balance.

The whip crack preceded the discharge of a half-dozen Calicos, but dozens of other men screamed in agony as venom seared into tear ducts and mucus membranes, burning like acid. Fargo whirled and bolted into the foliage, realizing that the poison-blinded guards and bearers had been neutralized.

The explorer trusted only two things to get him out of harm’s way—his booted feet. They stomped through leaves, breaking saplings and low branches, putting distance between himself and the savage hisses behind him. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see the sinewy Nagah lunging at blinded, agonized humans, curved knives and distended jaws slashing into pink and brown flesh alike. Dagger and fang carved through human skin, cutting agonized wails short.

“Him!” Durga bellowed. “Get that miserable ape and drag him before me!”

Fargo noticed one millennialist unaffected by the gushing clouds of vision-destroying venom. His machine pistol hammered loudly, bullets chopping one snake man who staggered but still continued to advance. Mere handgun rounds deflected off the tough chest plate armor of the Nagah, though hits to the finer scales of the arms and thighs betrayed bloody swathes where copper-jacketed lead tore the weaker reptilian armor. Fargo left the fool to stand his ground, charging toward the frontier. The millennial gunman stopped firing, and the guard’s fate was broadcast by a strangled death cry as hinged jaws and folding fangs stretched into a face-piercing lethal bite.

Other guns chattered sporadically, but were quickly overwhelmed by the coordinated assaults of the Nagah’s ambush force.

Behind him, Fargo could hear the snap of branches and rustle of leaves. That could only mean that others were rushing through the thickets after him. As no bullets speared through the foliage, it had to be the knife-and fang-armed Nagah. The cobra-hooded warriors were in hot pursuit of the fleeing archaeologist.

Move, he commanded himself, legs pumping. Vaulting over roots, rocks and ruts with the ease of a man who’d run for his life across six continents, Fargo avoided tripping and stumbling. The Nagah hunters behind him snagged their feet on vines or stepped into open space where they expected solid ground. The snake men’s yellow eyes had been focused on Fargo, not the ground before them. For a moment, the archaeologist was elated that, despite their venom and tough scales, they were as fallible and clumsy as any human. The crack of a rifle, accompanied by the eruption of a tree trunk, informed Fargo that the Nagah were perfectly willing to make use of modern tools to slay their foes.

Fargo changed course and allowed gravity to drag him down a muddy hillside. He rocketed to the bottom of the slope and sprang into a dead run through a copse of trees. Rifles chattered behind him, but Fargo kept up his frantic pace. Soon the single shots changed to fully automatic fire as machine guns were added to the mix.

Fargo plowed on, ricochets pinging and whining all around him. Trunks thumped as they caught the storm of bullets meant for him. He remembered his mental map, visualizing a steep cliff bordering off into a turgid river. It had forced the expedition to change its course by five miles, slowing the trek to a tedious crawl. He remembered that the height of the drop-off was around forty feet.

Boots filled with sloshing mud, wet pant legs clinging to his calves and thighs, Fargo knew his pace would rapidly slow off from constriction and lack of sure footing. One misstep would be the end of Fargo’s explorations of the Kashmir region. While he would consider himself likely to catch an instantly fatal bullet, the ideal outcome was a splash in the river, its powerful current carrying him south and away from the serpentine assassins on his tail.

On foot, the Nagah warriors would not be able to keep up and shoot at Fargo at the same time, he suspected. The trees thinned out and the ground began to slope. Fargo’s mud-caked boots turned into wet slicks, his footing dissolving into an arm-windmilling effort at balance as gravity whipped him into a wild slide. The rattle and crack of bullets around him faded as the slope pulled him below the arc of fire laid out by the cobra men. The skid downhill came to a sudden end as Forgo rocketed out into the air over the roiling waters beneath.

There was an odd, queasy moment of weightlessness as Fargo sailed to the waters. The surface of the river shimmered like ribbons of living, writhing glass. The world had gone silent around him, an envelope of calm providing him with a respite from the frantic race for his life. The snake men had stopped firing, it seemed, and in his peripheral vision, the millennialist trespasser knew why. Just before he knifed into the river, he had caught sight of a helicopter hanging over the tree line like a bloated, mechanical bee.

Fargo plunged under the surface of the roiling river, momentum pushing him nearly to the bottom as the water exerted its braking force on him. The current shoved hard, toppling him into a spin that he kicked out of, arms and legs dragging him toward the silty bottom.

With a twist, he looked up through the surface of the river, seeing the warped image of the sky and ledge hanging over him. Fargo knew that he had barely a minute before his lungs forced him to surface, but cold dread of that helicopter stilled his urge to swim upward.

Seconds ticked on as his lungs burned, wanting to return to their normal schedule of inhalation and exhalation. The helicopter’s black shape poked out of the overhang of the ledge. Its fattened fish profile blotted out the sun while rotor wash created a flat dish in the water, creating a lens that the Nagah could see through.

Fargo had no trouble seeing the huge bulk as it hovered, and given the clarity of the river, he was easily visible to the airborne pursuers. A cobra man leaned out of the door and fired his automatic rifle, bullets knifing toward the millennialist. One plucked at his forearm, but Fargo bit his tongue to resist the urge to cry out, expelling needed air from his lungs in the process. The current dragged him along, a cloud of dark blood smearing behind him in a corkscrew.

Had it not been for the refraction of the crystal-clear water, the Nagah sniper would have riddled Fargo’s chest. The explorer kept his cool, playing dead. His lungs burned as the enemy helicopter ascended and joined two more aircraft. Together they whirled in the sky for a moment before they broke north, back past the forbidden frontier that Fargo had dared to penetrate.

In three strong kicks, he broke the surface, sucking in sweet, life-giving oxygen. His arm ached badly. The bullet had glanced off his ulna, one of the strongest bones in the human body. Fortunately, the imprecise hit didn’t have the power to cause more than a hairline fracture. Fargo knew it wasn’t broken because he could still move his fingers, albeit stiffly.

He dragged himself to shore, crawling between two dense bushes to shield himself from discovery in case the humanoid snake warriors saw fit to return.

With his good hand and his teeth, he tore a scarf from around his neck and fashioned a compress and bandage for his gunshot wound, sealing the puckered injury to control further blood loss and stave off infection. He had a strip left over from the bandages, but it wouldn’t support his arm properly. He slipped his belt out of the loops in his pants and cinched the wounded limb to his torso, immobilizing it above the elbow. He wound the last strip of scarf around his forearm and the belt, multiple loops providing sufficient stability to the injured limb.

It would be dark soon, and he needed to get to a warm shelter. A fire was out of the question, not this close to the enemies who had killed more than a hundred trespassers with quick, ruthless efficiency.

No, Fargo needed something just a little better, perhaps the tall, intertwined roots of a tree or a nice cave, provided there were no native, actual serpents present within. The irony of dying from a real cobra bite after escaping a hybrid of man and snake would shame Fargo to no end.

The Millennial Consortium wouldn’t be pleased at the loss of the expedition, especially now that it had been proved that there were operating aircraft in the stockpiles possessed by the Nagah. When the millennialists were disappointed, they tended to shoot the messenger. Already, though, the redoubt raider had a plan to minimize the blame and to appease the consortium.

For the plan to work, Fargo had to get to the Bitterroot Mountains.

The outlanders Kane, Grant and Brigid Baptiste could succeed where a consortium expeditionary force had failed. If they didn’t, they would still inflict horrendous losses upon the snake men, giving a new millennial strike team sufficient advantage to finish the job. Should Kane and company prevail, then a force meant to crush an army of serpent warriors would be more than enough to deal with the Cerberus interlopers.

It was the kind of win-win scenario that would allow the survivor Fargo a chance to retain his position and support within the consortium.

The journey of a thousand miles, however, needed to start with one step. Leaning on a branch for support, Fargo hauled himself achingly to his feet. With each stride, the explorer put distance between himself and the forbidden frontier. It was a temporary separation, though.

Austin Fargo would return, bringing vengeance to the snakes who had struck at him.

Chapter 2

The return to Cobaltville was meant to be a mission of mercy, but as Kane crouched in the shadows, watching the coldhearts holding Brigid Baptiste and Grant at gunpoint, he was reminded that strength and mercy were two qualities that had to go hand in hand.

“Come on out!” the leader of the bandits snarled. “All we want are the meds, not trouble from you!”

Kane wrenched his fighting knife from the ribs of the raider who’d tried to ambush him. It had taken considerable effort to free the blade from where it was lodged in the breastbone. Still, Kane was not a man to leave a perfectly good weapon behind, especially when he was outnumbered.

He would need information about the coldhearts, which meant that he would have to carefully get in touch with his companions over the built-in Commtact communicator implanted behind his ear and attached to the mastoid bone. “What happened?”

From his vantage point, Kane could see the massive Grant, clad in a tank top and cargo pants, clasping his hands behind his bald mahoghany-colored head as he was surrounded by raiders. Thick, powerful arms glistened like dark bronze in the sun. The big ex-Magistrate’s lips didn’t move, but Kane could see his jaw flexing as he subvocalized, loud enough for only the implanted transceiver to hear. “The fuckers popped out of the woodwork while I was moving crates. With my hands full, they swarmed us.”

“I take the blame,” Brigid’s voice added. Kane’s glance shot to the striking former archivist. Where he had a pang of concern for Grant, his fellow Magistrate for years and the closest thing to a brother that the lone warrior had, the sight of the flame-haired woman held at gunpoint was worth a full wince. “I should have waited until you returned from your errand, Kane.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Kane replied. He scanned the pair from his vantage point. Four bandits now surrounded Grant. It was always a risky proposition to bring medical supplies into the shantytown known as the Tartarus Pits, a sprawl that had grown in the shadow of the tower that housed the subjects of the hybrid barons. The medicine used by the healers at the Cobaltville clinic was almost as valuable as a cache of firearms in the lawless Outlands. Kane, Brigid and Grant were making the delivery, utilizing wheelbarrows to ferry the supplies to the healers who worked in the area.

Colin Phillips, the leader of the ragtag group of physicians and their assistants, had warned Kane and the others about the presence of the band of raiders. They were led by Lombard, a man familiar to Kane. The head bandit was a former Magistrate who operated almost exclusively in the Tartarus slums. The allure of easy money and quick satisfaction had corrupted Lombard, something the other Magistrates had done their best to ignore. Lombard disappeared after killing a fellow Mag, knowing his life was now worthless if he encountered any of the grim group that he’d betrayed.

With the barons now long gone from Cobaltville, most of the Magistrates had also moved on, working as sec men for caravans or small settlements while the more corrupt went into business for themselves. Lombard saw Cobaltville as easy pickings.

Not that the ex-Mag was alone. Lombard had assembled easily a dozen men, according to Kane’s observations, and he wasn’t certain that there weren’t more.

The bandit leader glared toward Grant and Brigid, alert enough to make out the low guttural subvocalizations as they communicated with Kane over their Commtacts. Lombard reached for the flame-haired archivist’s chin, but Brigid jerked it away.

“Communicators?” Lombard asked as he gave her jaw a squeeze.

Brigid grabbed his wrist and pried the grubby, grasping paw away from her face. Around them, Phillips and his fellow healers remained still. They knew the drill, having endured previous raids, but Kane could see the frustration in their faces. The cold-blooded marauders had taken Brigid’s and Grant’s weapons at gunpoint, enticed by the new meat before them.

“So, where is your friend?” Lombard inquired. His thumb glided over the silvery plate of the Commtact implant behind Brigid’s ear.

“It’s a radio, not a radar unit, dimwit,” Brigid retorted. “Besides, do you think that a Magistrate like Kane would give away his position to you?”

The predatory marauders were bold when it came to unarmed victims, but the presence of a Magistrate, especially the legendary Kane, would make the formerly cocky thugs pause. Kane flexed his forearm muscles, the sensitive actuators in his holster flicking his sleek, folding machine pistol into his hand. The full-auto Sin Eater would be necessary in the eventuality of a furious firefight, but Kane held his fire. The Cerberus warriors didn’t want stray bullets to harm any of the healers whose only crime was endangering themselves for the sake of the huddled masses in the remnants of Cobaltville. Besides, Kane had learned long ago that mind games and intimidation could reduce the need for violence or control the reactions of his quarry.

The coldheart grimaced. “Fucking Mags? Kane nonetheless?”

Lombard glared at the massive Grant, a towering figure in his own right. The olive-green tank top left little doubt about the awesome power contained in his muscular arms and shoulders. It had been years since Lombard had last seen Grant. To assist with his disguise as just another guy the size of a collossal statue, Grant was wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and had traded his forearm-holstered Sin Eater for a belt-holstered Heckler & Koch MP-5 K. In a nearby wheelbarrow Grant had hidden both a Sin Eater and a compact Copperhead assault rifle, ready to be reached through a precut opening.

“Then who the fuck are you?” Lombard asked.

“I’m just a delivery boy,” Grant said. “Does she look like she hauls around crates full of this shit?”

Lombard glanced over to the slender but fit young woman. Brigid didn’t look like a delicate flower thanks to years of adventuring across the globe. Though it was obvious that she was in very good shape, Kane knew that there was a mentality among his fellow Magistrates to dismiss women as incapable because of their softer bodies. At first even he had trouble adapting to Brigid’s competence and capability as a fellow adventurer.

Kane also quietly admitted to himself the stomach-churning anger at Lombard’s sneering familiarity with Brigid Baptiste. Though she could take care of herself, having proved her inner strength across several years and every continent on the planet, Kane still possessed an instinctual protectiveness for the archivist.

Brigid shrunk from the renegade Magistrate, and Lombard chuckled.

“Still, it’s only one Mag bastard,” Lombard said aloud, as if to calm his companions.

“Well, I guess if they measure those guys by you…” Grant said, shrugging.

“Ruben, if this overmuscled cock head talks again, shoot him with his own gun,” Lombard snapped.

Grant looked down at the bandit Lombard had spoken to. Ruben, a young, tattooed punk wearing a leather vest, was a foot shorter than Grant. He gripped the machine pistol with whitened knuckles.

“Don’t shoot yourself with that thing, kid,” the big Cerberus warrior whispered to him.

Even without being close enough to see Grant’s face, Kane could tell that his partner was smiling. The mind games against the coldhearts were now in full effect.

Ruben glared at Grant. “I’m not simple, you damned big freak.”

“You could have fooled me,” Grant replied. “You keep pointing that muzzle at your friends, too, and your finger’s locked on that trigger. If it weren’t for the fact that you haven’t deactivated the safety on the gun, you’d have shot your partners twenty times over.”

Kane could see Ruben’s nearly comical double take as he glanced down at the machine pistol. The Cerberus rebel fought to restrain a snort of amused derision at the reaction. His partner’s mockery had struck another blow against the raider’s confidence.

Kane dragged the corpse of his ambusher into a ditch and submerged the body beneath two feet of shantytown sewage. He had relieved the dead man of his walkie-talkie, as well as the twin single-action revolvers that he’d worn. The radio would give Kane even more intelligence against the bandits. The handguns were typical of what the robbers had, a blend of pump shotguns, bolt-action rifles and old revolvers, which explained Ruben’s confusion over Grant’s more complicated HK. In the two centuries since skydark, technology was no longer uniformly equal, and maintenance-intensive devices such as automatic weapons were nowhere near as common as manually cycled firearms and tough old solid-state circuitry, which could be reconstructed from simple wire. The bandit radio was one such cobbled piece of technology, presumably a simple circuit board, some magnets and wire wrapped in a hard little case. Kane figured that if he ran out of ammunition, he could use the boxy walkie-talkie to smash open an enemy gunman’s skull and not even cause harm to the electronics within.

Kane thumbed back the hammer on one revolver, then cut loose with a terrified death cry. The revolver boomed, a cordite cloud filling the alley.

“Banyon! Banyon! Report!” the coldheart’s voice cut over the walkie-talkie and the Commtact in stereo. “Second team! On Banyon’s position now!”

Grant chuckled. “Good luck catching Kane.”

Lombard whirled toward Ruben. “I thought that I told you to shoot that loudmouth!”

“I can’t get the gun working,” Ruben complained.

“You really think that shooting me is going to affect a hard bastard like him?” Grant asked.

“You’re annoying me, shithead,” Lombard grunted. “I’ve heard of Kane, and he’s nothing special.”

“No. He’s only the most dangerous man ever to patrol the Tartarus Pits,” Brigid countered. “Who else would I hire to protect us?”

Lombard grimaced. “Listen, bitch, Kane might have been hot shit in the old days, but I know all of his—”

“Lombard!” a bandit interrupted, shouting into his radio to the left of Kane’s hiding place. “We found a puddle of blood.”

“Banyon’s body?” Lombard asked.

“Nothing,” came the reply.

Sandwiched between two makeshift huts, Kane observed the search party that had stumbled upon the crimson slick that was the last evidence of Banyon’s existence. Six marauders milled around, their eyes wide and fearful. Counting the five hanging around Lombard, watching Brigid, Grant and the doctors, that made a full dozen coldhearts, with a few more most likely still hanging back on perimeter security.

Sure enough, Kane’s observation skills proved correct as a radio message crackled over his captured unit. “We found another wheelbarrow full of supplies. No sign of any Mags, though.”

“Son of a bitch!” Lombard cursed. “Leave the meds for now. Find that fucking Mag before he turns everything to shit!”

“Where’d your bravado go?” Kane taunted softly into his radio, loud enough to transmit but not enough to betray his roost to the hunting bandits. From his vantage point, Kane could see the blood drain from Lombard’s face.

“Show yourself, Kane! Or we start killing your people! And we’ll make it slow!” Lombard snapped.

Kane decided to up the ante. “Go ahead. I already have the first half of my pay. I’m sure I could find a good buyer for the dread bandit Lombard’s severed head, too.”

Lombard dropped his radio as if it were a venomous snake, dancing back in fright. Nothing like striking a cruel, casual predator with the knowledge that he was nowhere near the top of the food chain. Where Lombard had set himself as a brutal ruler of the Tartarus Pits, the bandit now lived with the knowledge that an even bigger bastard was poised to snatch him and carve him apart for blood money.

“Pick up your damned comm, coward,” Kane growled.

The rumble of Kane’s threat attracted the attention of one of the brighter members of the marauders’ hunting party. The shotgun-toting thug stalked cautiously along the alley between rows of huts, looking for a clear view of Lombard. Kane heard the man’s approach. If it hadn’t been for Kane’s well-honed senses, the thief would have been stealthy. Instead, every footfall and kicked bit of debris locked Kane on to the approaching gunman like drumbeats.

Lombard tentatively reached for the radio. “Okay.”

Kane reversed the revolver in his grasp and whipped the handle violently into the bridge of the curious bandit’s nose. Steel and wood crushed bone, pounding splinters of skull into the marauder’s brain for a sudden, decisive kill. Swiftly Kane snatched the still-standing corpse and hauled it between the two huts, jamming it down into the clutter on the walkway floor. He keyed the radio to Lombard. “You want the medicine, then you don’t need to bully those sheep. Walk away and I won’t have to waste any ammunition killing you fused-out pricks.”

Lombard glanced at Grant, who let his powerful shoulders sag in a display of false helplessness. Brigid also put on the airs of cornered, helpless prey. It was a good act, and if Kane hadn’t witnessed their efficacy against countless enemies, he would have been convinced. The two companions were figuring out the angles necessary to take down the bandits with maximum efficiency and the least harm to the Cobaltville healers.

“Where’s Russ?” a searching bandit asked. “Fireblasted punk…Russ!”

Lombard turned his attention toward the source of the shout. In that quick glance, the marauder leader glimpsed the silhouette of the wolf-lean Kane. “There! There he is!”

The five raiders around Lombard spun in unison, ignoring their “harmless” hostages as they raised their guns to burn down Kane. The warrior in the shadows lunged out of his hiding spot, twin revolvers cocked in unison.

“That’s right, idiots,” Kane whispered to himself. “Follow the bouncing bogeyman.”

GRANT EXPLODED INTO ACTION first, his long, brawny right arm circling Ruben’s throat. With a hard yank, the bandit’s feet were dragged into the air, whipping across the head of a second coldheart with stunning force. Ruben gurgled in surprise, watching his partner drop to the ground after the wrenching impact of booted feet on his skull. Grant’s left hand clawed the MP-5 K loose from stunned fingers, thumb stabbing the safety down to full-auto. As a third gunman fired his bolt-action rifle at the spot where Kane’s silhouette had been only moments earlier, Grant pumped a half-dozen bullets between the killer’s shoulder blades.

Brigid was only a half heartbeat slower than Grant. She pulled a box cutter from a nearby table and thumbed the razor edge out of its blunt-sheath nose. It was a quick, practiced movement. She whipped it in a savage backhand across the cheek and forehead of a fourth hostage-taker. The sharp blade carved skin and muscle down to the bone, the angled point raking through his eye socket. Milky fluid gushed from the gunman’s ruined orb, and he shrieked in horror, dropping his weapons to free his hands for the task of holding his face together. She scooped up the half-blinded man’s pistol in a lightning-fast movement.

Lombard and the remaining bandit were torn between the options of shooting Grant, Kane or Brigid. Grant rendered the dilemma moot with a withering hail of machine-pistol fire that stitched Lombard’s shotgunner from sternum to forehead. Lombard took a fourth option and charged down an alley. Brigid hammered off a single round at the rogue Mag, but the bullet was just a second too slow to catch the fleeing coward.

KANE STEPPED INTO THE VIEW of his pursuers, both revolvers held at eye level, their triggers snapping down twin hammers in unison. One shot missed Kane’s initial target, the buffoon who’d cried out for the clever but dead Russ. It was no matter, as Kane’s other revolver shot punched through the loudmouth’s face. The slug gouged out his brain, and the back of his skull erupted in gore. The brutal death of their comrade stunned the remaining four gunmen. That bought Kane the time to cock and fire the revolvers in his hands twice more. One of the marauders folded over in agony, a bullet burning in his bowels. A second gunman whirled with a shattered shoulder joint, collapsing as he clutched his ruined limb.

Kane sidestepped, taking cover behind the corner of a hut, but the remaining two bandits were in no mood to fight back. They were fleeing for their lives. Just to make certain, Kane put two more quick bullets into the dirt at their heels. The rebuffed predators only picked up speed, not even weaving to avoid being shot in the back. Terror, not tactics, ruled the minds of the pair. Any thoughts of returning fire had been abandoned with the elimination of their friends.

The man with the bullet in his belly lay in an ever growing pool of bright arterial blood. It had been only a few seconds since the initial hit, meaning that Kane had severed the bandit’s aorta. Unable to be staunched by tourniquet or direct pressure compress, the marauder was doomed the moment the bullet tore through the central trunk of blood flow in his body. The other raider, his shoulder reduced to stringy, bloody pulp, fumbled with his rifle, flipping it across the alley toward Kane.

“I give up! Don’t shoot!” the wounded man cried out. “I’m unarmed.”

“You think I’m blind?” Kane growled, stalking closer to the surrendering bandit. “Pull the pistol from your belt.”

The raider looked down at the handle poking from under the folds of his shirt. His left hand slapped at the gun, clumsily dislodging it while avoiding any semblance of grasping it firmly. The predatory instincts that had made the wounded robber into a thief had been quenched with his crippling injury. Kane stooped and helped the wounded gunman in his surrender.

“How large was Lombard’s gang?” Kane inquired.

“There were twenty of us,” the crippled prisoner answered.

Kane nodded, doing the math. “Baptiste, Grant, we’ve got about ten more raiders out there,” he subvocalized over the Commtact.

“We’ve got two prisoners here that confirm those numbers,” Grant responded.

“No medics were harmed, except for the initial rough-housing by the bandits,” Brigid added. Over the Commtact, Kane could hear Brigid check the action of her 9 mm pistol. “Do you think Lombard will regroup and try to finish the job?”

“Lombard lost half of his crew trying to get these meds,” Kane answered. “I don’t know. Black market medicine is worth a hell of a lot, but money won’t bring you back from the dead.”

Kane escorted his prisoner to the intersection, seeing Brigid tend to Phillips. The medic had a cut on his forehead, and blood stained his white coat pink from the seeping wound. On closer examination, though, Kane was relieved to see that Phillips’s eyes were focused.

“No concussion, just a mess,” Brigid confirmed.

“Good luck for me at least,” Phillips grunted.

“Us, too,” Kane answered. “I wouldn’t want to lose any allies here in Cobaltville. You’re worth more than any five gunslingers we could recruit.”

“Especially for rebuilding Cobaltville,” Brigid added.

Phillips winced. “I appreciate the sentiment, guys. Just wish these bastards hadn’t cracked my head open.”

Phillips slowly got up and started dealing with the bleeding laceration of the man Brigid had carved with the box cutter. Kane had packed the shoulder of his prisoner with a kerchief and tied it down with a belt, so he wouldn’t need immediate attention. Ruben was rubbing his throat, looking weak and sickly after being swung around as a human weapon.

An orderly looked at Phillips, then shook his head. “These guys attacked us. They hurt you.”

“And they’re not a threat anymore,” Phillips snarled. “Damn it, even Kane, a Magistrate, tended to his prisoner’s injury. Maybe you feel like you can pick and choose when to apply mercy, but that’s not the oath I took.”

Kane looked at the angered medic. “Besides, I don’t think the danger’s over yet.”

In the distance, the rumble of diesel engines sounded.

Lombard had gotten back to his war wags, and from the sounds of things, they were returning to deal with Kane and his allies.

Chapter 3

At the sight of the stranger in the forest, Domi slipped her satchel full of scrounged books from her shoulder, hiding it in a corner between the raised roots of an ancient tree. The small but cord-muscled albino woman didn’t want to lose her latest haul from the library in the event of a chase, or if the stranger had allies who would capture her. Armed with only her dagger and a pistol crossbow for catching game while in the wild, the youngest, most feral member of the Cerberus redoubt focused her ruby-red eyes intently on the newcomer, sizing him up.

The security of Cerberus had been breached many times in the scant years that Domi had called the redoubt her home. As commander of Cerberus Away Team Beta, however, she’d proved to be more than merely a wayward refugee in the ancient facility. She’d battled reptilian invaders with spacecraft and gods armed with technology that could have been mistaken for mythical weaponry, all in the name of protecting her lover, Lakesh, and the ever growing population of the predark bastion of technology, knowledge and security.

The man wending his way toward the Bitterroot Mountain stronghold had, no doubt, picked this arduous route to avoid Sky Dog and the Lakota Indians who were staunch allies of Cerberus. Domi had crossed this particular terrain with the nimbleness of a mountain goat, spring-steel leg muscles bounding her along the rocky, uneven path with preternatural ease. She noticed that the man was no stranger to hard journeying, but exhaustion weighed on his powerful limbs. Domi regretted leaving behind the Commtact implant at the redoubt as she observed the lone traveler. She had gotten into the habit of isolating herself on these solitary expeditions to achieve a measure of solace, as Lakesh described it. Such trips were meant to escape the confines of the base, abandoning both people and modern technology. The act of shedding the Commtact was the ultimate statement of that mental journey. The machine-woven fibers in her tank top and shorts and the polymer materials of her crossbow were the only evidence of her connection to the Cerberus redoubt and the technology it represented.

Domi’s thumb snicked off the safety on her crossbow. The bolt was now ready to be released with only the touch of her finger on the trigger. The broad-headed tip was an aggressive assembly of four vaned blades designed to inflict enormous trauma as it pierced the organs of animals as large and as fierce as bears. Domi avoided contact with the carnivores who hunted in this region, leaving them a wide berth. However, a shaft capable of killing a bear would be more than sufficient to take any human invader. She wondered at the stranger’s affiliation and his motives for approaching the redoubt. From his focus and his direction, there was no way that he could miss the base. Nothing else was nearby for hundreds of miles.

The man was armed with a large revolver stuffed into a leather scabbard that rode on his thigh. A coiled bullwhip hung from a hook on his opposite hip. His machete sheath was empty, for now, as he was using it to hack through thick briars that halted his path. Hardly the arsenal of an invader, even with the two-foot blade in his grasp. Cerberus guards would easily overpower him in the event of a hostile confrontation, but Domi’s curiosity had been piqued, and she strove to get in closer.

The man paused, wiping his brow with his brawny forearm. He laid his machete on a rock, then reached for his canteen. As soon as he was committed to pulling a swallow of water from the canister, Domi stepped out, crossbow leveled at his chest.

“Hold still,” she challenged.

The man’s eyes went wide with surprise. He managed a swallow, then tilted the canteen so he wouldn’t waste his water by drenching himself. “Can I recap my canteen?”

“No sudden movements,” Domi said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Austin Fargo. I am on my way to the Cerberus redoubt to meet with Lakesh and Kane, the men who rule there, to ask for their assistance.”

“Anything you can say to them, you can say to me,” Domi told him. “What do you need?”

“As I said, I am Austin Fargo,” he began. “I am an explorer and scientist.” He nodded to Domi in deference. “Can I move now?”

Domi flicked the crossbow’s safety back on. “Any sudden movements and the crows will feast on your eyes.”

Fargo chuckled nervously. “I don’t doubt that. You must be Domi. Your name is almost as well-known as that of your companions.”

“Flattery,” Domi said, wrinkling her nose. “In my experience, that usually leads a lie.”

“I’m just attempting diplomacy,” Fargo returned.

“Yeah? Well, you’re being diplomatic with the guard dog,” Domi replied. “Follow me, and I’ll confirm with the owner of my house that I was right for not chewing your face off.”

“Don’t denigrate yourself, Domi. You’re far more than a mere guard animal,” Fargo said as he followed the albino woman. They backtracked the two hundred yards necessary for Domi to retrieve her satchel of scrounged books. He paid special notice to the fact that her small but sinewy hand never strayed more than an inch from the handle of her fighting knife. From the stories that the Millennial Consortium had cataloged about her, the wiry little albino had the speed and skill to pull that blade and separate a man’s head from his torso in the space of a heartbeat. It was an unspoken threat, a warning that Fargo had to keep on his best behavior.

“You’re on the right path to meet up with my people,” Domi said.

“Not the easiest, but for me, the safest,” Fargo admitted. “Then again, my trek has been one of great effort.”

“You can hold the sympathy dirge for someone who actually gives a shit. I caught you sneaking in my back door as a trespasser. Until you get approved by those who I actually do trust, keep your mouth closed,” Domi growled.

Fargo took a deep breath. She could see that he was restraining an insult. Domi didn’t mind; she didn’t care if strangers saw her as a snarling bitch just one flinch away from gnawing out someone’s entrails. When it came to defending the redoubt and her loved ones, that image was exactly what she wanted to project. A harmless, cuddly defender rarely caused an intruder to shy away from hostile activity.

“I understand,” Fargo spoke up. “You’re only protecting your family.”

“Damned straight,” Domi replied curtly. Her tone was meant to shut the stranger up so they could concentrate on scaling the back trail.

Cloaked in stern silence, they made their way to the redoubt.

THE SNARL OF DISTANT DIESEL engines reached Kane’s ears as Grant scrounged the dead raiders’ fallen rifles. The powerful Cerberus exile smiled as he picked up a gun that actually looked normal sized in his massive hands.

“What in the hell is that thing?” Kane asked.

Grant partially opened the lever action, finding a round seated under the hammer. “A Marlin .45-70. Just the thing for when you absolutely, positively have to kill a wag in three shots or less.”

Kane sighed. “Should have figured these coldhearts would have wheels.”

A gun in the distance thundered, corrugated tin roofs rattling as the walls beneath them shuddered under powerful impacts. The Tartarus residents screamed in terror as the distant heavy machine gun raked their shacks.

Kane grit his teeth. “They’ve got a Fifty…” He scooped up the walkie-talkie, transmitting his bellow. “Lombard! Cease fire!”

“Cease fire?” the bandit leader asked. “You kill my men in cold blood, and when I look for payback, suddenly it’s off-limits? Fuck you, Kane.”

“Damn it, Lombard! These people aren’t involved in our fight!” Kane growled. “Stop shooting. You want me or the meds, we can make a deal.”

“Deal?” Lombard broke out, his laughter rattling as if captured in a tin can. “Where’s the cold bastard who executed ten simple businessmen?”

“There’s no profit in killing these refugees. How much is that ammunition costing you?” Kane asked. “You want business? Fine. Even killing three people per bullet, there’s no way your temper tantrum is worth the trigger pull!”

There was silence on the other end, and thankfully, the Fifty mounted on one of Lombard’s war wags remained silent, as well. The only sound left was a chorus of frightened sobs. Thankfully, there were no cries of agony anywhere, but the Cerberus champions realized that the gunfight only moments earlier had sent the Tartarus inhabitants to cover. Kane glanced at Grant, then nodded. The two men knew that Kane was going to have to put himself in the line of fire to prevent an all-out slaughter. Of course, that meant Kane would have to rely on his partner’s marksmanship. Grant took his borrowed monster rifle and a belt stuffed with spare ammunition, then disappeared into the maze of houses.

Phillips rose from where he put the finishing touches on securing a bandit prisoner’s bandage, wrapping his slashed-open face. “We have to check for dead or wounded from that blast.”

“No,” Brigid said, placing a calming hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “From the general tone, there are no cries of mourning indicating a death, nor calls for help. However, if you stray from this area, the next time Lombard’s men do fire that cannon, there’s a chance that some of you could be harmed.”

Phillips grimaced, protest already flashing in his eyes. “But—”

“You and your people are too valuable,” Kane added. “If Cobaltville is to have any hope of maintaining and improving on what little shred of civilization remains, then it needs smart healers. Stay put until I clear everything.”

Phillips looked between Kane and Brigid. Given the penchant for bickering that they displayed, to see them in such solid agreement pounded the message through to the healer. “Be careful…”

Kane handed Grant’s Copperhead to Brigid. “If things go rotten…”

“I’ll escort the medical staff to safety,” she replied, accepting the rifle. “Watch yourself, okay?”

Kane nodded, then jogged to the road. Over the Commtact implant, he heard Grant give a solemn whisper. “They’re in my sights.”

“What have they got?” Kane asked.

“Thankfully, just old military-style transport trucks. Nothing like the armored Sandcats,” Grant said. “I wouldn’t be able to punch a hole in one of those. These aren’t quite as hard skinned.”

“But they can still mount a heavy machine gun,” Kane said.

“Only one,” Grant replied. “The other truck has to make do with riflemen in the back.”

“How many?” Kane asked.

“Five split between the two vehicles,” Grant told him. “And there’s literally someone riding shotgun with each driver.”

Kane figured the odds. From the drone of the diesel engines of both trucks, he was getting close enough to eyeball the bandits and their transportation. “We’re going to have to make these bandits very afraid.”

“The old ‘one Magistrate, one riot’ strategy?” Grant asked. “I feed you intel and back you up with sniper shots, making you look like the baddest ass on the planet.”

“That’s the one,” Kane answered. “Where’s Lombard now?”

“Standing next to his machine gunner. He’s got an automatic rifle of some form,” Grant said. “He just reached for his radio.”

“Kane! Come out and play!” Lombard shouted over the airwaves.

“I have been,” Kane answered. “You’re the one hiding behind the trucks. Now I’m thinking that it’s time for me to quit being so kind and gentle.”

“Kind and gentle?” Lombard asked. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about it’s time to stop playing with you and just put you down like the rotten little turd you are,” Kane replied. “You’re just some goon with some fancy guns. You don’t even rank in the ten biggest gangs of bandits I’ve ever fought.”

“He’s telling his man to shoot,” Grant warned.

Kane dived into a shoulder roll, zooming into the open just as a roar of autofire shredded the tin-and-wood hut he’d been hiding behind. Kane and Grant fired their weapons, both drowned out by the roar of the mighty Browning Fifty. Anyone watching, though, wouldn’t have seen Grant’s hidden muzzle-flash, while the Sin Eater’s barrel blazed angrily.

The machine gunner jerked violently, his right forearm disintegrating under the impact of the monster hunting rifle in Grant’s hands. The Fifty stopped its bellow, the gunner’s screams piercing the air as blood sprayed in Lombard’s face.

The men mounted in the trucks looked at the man who’d been at the controls of their crowd-killing device, then at the lone ex-Magistrate getting to his feet, out in the open. A tendril of smoke curled from the muzzle of the Sin Eater. Lombard scrubbed at his eyes, grimacing as the injured bandit wound a cord tightly around his arm to tourniquet the injury.

“You gentlemen think that because Lombard’s with you, you know how to deal with a real Magistrate,” Kane said, walking toward the trucks.

From the grumbles of discomfort among the marauders, he knew that his ploy had worked.

“That’s bullshit!” Lombard shouted. “He’s got to have a partner somewhere!”

Kane ignored Lombard, addressing the rest of the bandits. “Your partners are all dead. I killed them, because Lombard was just too stubborn to realize that he’s second class. Now I’m going to appeal to you, because I hate wasting good ammunition.”

“He didn’t kill the others by himself,” Lombard snarled.

“No, he didn’t,” a woman’s voice called out. Brigid Baptiste strode into the open, Copperhead SMG held against her curvaceous hip. “He had the help of women and doctors. People with no combat training.”

Kane repressed the urge to smile, remembering the steep learning curve of Brigid’s early years at Cerberus, when the young woman had grown from an archivist to an adventurer who was a deadly shot and a tough fighter.

The bandits looked at Lombard.

“So you have a choice,” Kane offered. “Ditch your boss and find somewhere else to hunt, or you can all die where you stand.”

“How do you want him?” one of the bandits asked. “Dead or alive?”

“You fuckers!” Lombard spit. He lunged at the Browning, but Kane and Grant fired at the renegade Mag.

Kane’s bullet plucked at Lombard’s bicep, while Grant’s cannon round smashed the belt of ammunition feeding into the machine gun. The mounted weapon and Lombard spun almost in unison under their respective impacts.

Marauders lunged at Lombard, seizing him tightly.

“Whatever is easier for you,” Kane said, pushing his Sin Eater back into its holster on his forearm.

“God damn you!” Lombard shrieked as his men hurled him over the cab of the truck. He crashed into the dirt road, then clawed swiftly to his feet. Angry eyes glared at Kane, and he tensed. “This piece of shit isn’t so hot!”

“Then prove it!” another bandit shouted. “You got a Sin Eater. Show us you’re worth following.”

Lombard looked around, confused. He eventually rested his eyes on Kane, who stood, arms folded, shaking his head.

“Not a good idea, man,” Kane warned.

Lombard glanced toward Brigid.

“Don’t look at her. She’d just as soon shoot you, but she’s not paying for the bullets,” Kane snapped.

Lombard’s eyes flicked to the Sin Eater on his forearm. One flex, and the autoweapon would rocket into his hand. Kane knew, though, that a fast draw with the hydraulic holster was a perishable skill. The movement would be fast, but getting the first shot on target required regular practice. Lombard was a thief who attacked unarmed doctors, not a master gunslinger who constantly honed his skills.

In the meantime, Kane had just proved his lethality against younger, hardier men. Lombard reached slowly for the straps on his Sin Eater, unfastening them. The machine pistol landed in the dirt at his feet, and Lombard dropped to his knees, lacing his fingers behind his head.

Kane turned to glare at the truckloads of remaining bandits. “Go.”

The new leader of the robber gang looked at the rest of his men. The diesels roared as the wags ground into Reverse, backing away from the edge of the town.

“They’re not slowing down,” Grant confirmed. “They’ve taken the hint.”

Kane walked toward Lombard, pausing only to scoop up the renegade’s fallen weapon. “What to do with you…”

“Grant…” Lombard snarled. “That big ape—”

Kane took a swift step forward and kicked him in the face. The impact split a seam of skin from eyebrow to the corner of Lombard’s mouth. Blood flowed from the fresh gash.

“Talking about my partner like that is always a bad idea,” Kane said.

“You’re crazy!” Lombard snapped. His hands covered his battered, bloody face. “What are you going to do with me?”

“We’ll see if Dr. Phillips needs someone to do grunt work,” Grant said, rejoining his partners. “Though nothing too complicated.”

“You lied when you said there weren’t any other ex-Mags,” Lombard complained.

“And you were dumb enough to not recognize me,” Grant countered. “Your bandits were plain and simple outsmarted. We had the communication, we had the knowledge, and now you’re just a footnote. Twenty marauders with big trucks and big guns, taken down by three people, two of them who you’d disarmed.”

Lombard grimaced, then noted that Kane was disassembling the surrendered Sin Eater, handing magazines and the holster to Grant. They looked distracted by the menial task as they whispered softly to each other, probably discussing plans. Lombard reached down to his boot, coming up with a gleaming little pistol in his hand.

The deposed bandit leader pulled the trigger, but his gunshot jerked into the sky as Brigid pumped a single Copperhead round into Lombard’s chest.

“Fool,” Brigid muttered. “So busy concentrating on you two, he forgot all about me.”

“Well, that solves the problem of what to do with the asshole,” Grant said with a sigh.

Kane smirked. “A self-resolving problem, most likely. Thanks, Baptiste.”

“What thanks?” Brigid asked. “I need one of you two to grab that last wheelbarrow full of meds. I’m not busting my back for it.”

Kane chuckled, kicking the gun out of Lombard’s dead fingers. “I love you, too, Baptiste.”

Brigid returned the smile. There was an uncomfortable pause, but she regained her composure. “Let’s go. We should get back to Cerberus to see if anything new has come up.”

Kane nodded. “No rest for the wicked.”

Chapter 4

Mohandas Lakesh Singh stood just outside the anteroom of the mat trans chamber as Kane, Brigid and Grant returned from their sojourn to Cobaltville. He waited alongside an impatient Domi, who paced like an anxious panther in a cage.

Kane looked the two people over and knew that whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good. “Who showed up? Erica? Sindri?”

“Why would it be them?” Lakesh asked.

“Because Cerberus is still standing, but you’re chomping at the bit to let us know some shit’s up,” Grant answered for Kane.

“Neither Erica or Sindri,” Domi answered, her voice quick and clipped. “Ran into a millennial guy crawling around our back door.”

Kane sneered. “Millennial Consortium? They found us here?”

“I know that they said they have extensive files on us, but I’m surprised that they know the location of Cerberus,” Brigid stated.

“Why not? Erica knows. So do Sindri and the overlords. And the consortium has done business with each of them in the past,” Kane said. “In fact, Erica’s calling them allies now, after that blowout in China.”

Brigid frowned. “And you let him in?”

“He wasn’t in uniform,” Domi replied. “No coverall. No button. No Calico. But he’s consortium. I feel it.”

Brigid glanced at Lakesh. “Any corroboration?”

Lakesh shrugged. “Nothing definitive. However, he’s hale and healthy, with evidence of having received professional medical treatment. A recent scar on his arm confirms to DeFore that a real doctor stitched it up.”

Reba DeFore was the redoubt’s chief medical officer. With the influx of staff from the Manitius Moon Base, the position didn’t weigh on her skills as much as it used to, but in the years preceding it, she’d gained a sharp eye toward medical treatment. The stranger’s apparent access to such treatment left few options open as to his affiliation. The Millennial Consortium was a budding technocracy, seeking to rebuild America in its own image. Those in charge of the consortium paid lip service to the creation of a utopian society, but their ruthlessness in the pursuit of that goal had brought them into savage conflict with the Cerberus warriors on multiple occasions.

The consortium wanted a utopia, and its representatives were willing to kill every person who stood in the path to that objective. Unarmed foes were just as open to murder as the Cerberus personnel.

“I also inspected the stranger’s gear,” Lakesh told the others as he led them toward the briefing room. “His kit includes a leather bullwhip that appears to have bloodstains.”

“He also couldn’t stop buttering all of us up,” Domi added as they entered a room where Sela Sinclair and Edwards, members of the Cerberus away teams, stood guard over a bored man.

“Worse than Lakesh in the beginning?” Kane asked, slipping into a faux Indian accent, trying to dispel his habitual unease with Balam’s old stomping grounds. “‘Friend Kane, beloved Brigid…’”

Lakesh rolled his eyes but chuckled at Kane’s antics. “Not the same, but the man knows how to get his nose browned.”

“What’s his name?” Brigid asked. Looking him over, she seemed to be turning over a memory in her mind, not quite believing it.

“Austin Fargo,” Lakesh answered. Fargo sat, dressed in a white shirt, brown pants and a battered old leather jacket. A wide-brimmed hat sat on the table in front of the man. “And yes…he’s dressed almost note for note like the old movie archaeologist.”

Kane tilted his head. “Has he gotten the earful from Sinclair about that?”

Grant rolled his eyes. “Yeah, she only made me sit through those movies three times.”

Kane glanced toward his partner. “I thought you liked ’em.”

“After the third time, with Sela saying all of Dr. Jones’s dialogue line for line, it got tiring,” Grant responded. He glanced nervously toward Brigid. “Not that memorizing things is annoying, mind you.”

Brigid winked at Grant. “No offense taken.”

Kane examined the heavy revolver, the machete and the curled bullwhip. He picked up the whip, examining its light tan leather bandings. “You think you found blood?”

DeFore knocked on the door, interrupting Kane’s thoughts. The medic, a stocky, buxom woman with bronze skin and ash-blond hair, brightened from a dour mood, seeing that Kane and the others were back from their trip to Cobaltville. Despite this, she remained businesslike. “I brought some chemicals to run a test on the whip.”

“It wouldn’t mean much. He could have used it in self-defense, or the blood could have been from an animal,” Brigid suggested. “Or the chemical could luminesce in the presence of copper, horseradish, even bleach.”

Kane handed the whip to DeFore. “So, how many times have you seen someone flay a horseradish root with a bullwhip?”

“All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best,” Brigid returned.

Kane nodded. “And you say I never learn.”

Brigid managed a smile. In the darkened observation deck, DeFore sprayed the whip, and iron traces left behind by blood illuminated the last four feet of the wicked lash, glowing brightly. She pulled some tweezers, digging into a seam between two strips of leather.

“What did you find?” Lakesh asked.

DeFore turned on a small lamp, and the two scientists inspected the scrap trapped between the tweezer’s points. “Looks like skin. Dried out and desiccated, but skin. And this was just one clump of many that the chemicals exposed.”

Kane glanced through the one-way mirror toward Fargo. “No fur?”

DeFore shook her head. “None on closer examination.”

Kane looked at his friends. “And what does Fargo want with us?”

Lakesh looked at the whip as if it were a coiled cobra. “He said that he had discovered a cache of military technology in the Kashmir province of the subcontinent. A place between what used to be Pakistan and India. Both nations claimed the land before skydark, but it was always hotly contested, with terrorists and minor border skirmishes constantly erupting.”

“So he came to us? We’ve got all the gear we could ever need here at Cerberus,” Grant interjected. “And if not just here, there’s also stuff at Cobaltville. Even the most dedicated army of looters couldn’t take all of the equipment stored in a ville.”

“There’s got to be something more. Especially if he came to us, instead of returning to the Millennial Consortium,” Brigid said.

“You think he’s consortium now?” Kane asked.

Brigid nodded. “Your instincts are rarely wrong.”

“What do you think?” Kane asked her.

Brigid regarded Fargo through the glass. “We’ve had troubles in India before.”

“Scorpia Prime and her doomsday cultists,” Kane noted. “Nagas, right?”

Brigid confirmed Kane’s guess. “We might have solved the problem of Scorpia Prime, but the cult we dealt with may only have been a splinter of a much larger group.”

“He claims to have encountered a much more dangerous group than just a few snake worshipers,” Lakesh stated.

“They were savage enough,” Grant said, remembering his horrific stay and the suffering he endured at the hands of torturers.

“No doubt, Grant,” Lakesh returned. “My apologies.”

“It wasn’t you,” Grant said, ending that branch of the conversation.

“He claims to have encountered a new party?” Kane asked.

“Different from the overlords. He even referenced the genetically augmented soldiers of England. I wanted you to get a look at him, figure out what he actually was before we all talked with him,” Lakesh explained. “And if necessary…”

“Loosen his tongue,” Kane concluded.

“Shall we?” Lakesh asked.

Kane picked up Fargo’s gear, hefting the bullwhip thoughtfully. “We shall.”

SELA SINCLAIR HEARD Kane’s voice over her Commtact as she sat in the interrogation room with self-proclaimed archaeologist Austin Fargo.

“Talk to him,” Kane said. “Make it seem like you give a shit what he’s all about.”

Sela grunted an affirmative. “So, are you a freezie, or did someone show you the movies?”

“Excuse me?” Fargo asked.

“The hat. The jacket. The bullwhip we relieved you of,” Sela said. “Fairly iconic figure you copied your style from.”

“Only her favorite vid hero,” Edwards added. Obviously he’d received the same message from Kane on the Commtact. “If she wasn’t going to ask, I would’ve.”

Fargo sighed. “A traveling show passed through my town when I was little. It was a wag with its own generator and a wide-screen monitor. When I saw him, I knew what I wanted to be.”

Sela nodded. “This doesn’t mean we’ll be holding hands in the shower and taking midnight walks on the beach, so don’t get too friendly.”

“I’m not,” Fargo answered. “I’m just an archaeologist, looking for what’s still useful from the past.”

“With skydark’s destruction and the Program of Unification, I wouldn’t think there would be much left to archaeolog,” Edwards noted.

Fargo and Sela both raised an eyebrow at Edwards’s newly invented verb. Fargo finally chuckled. “There is still presky-dark tech not assembled by the unification program or various other parties. Besides, when the barons abandoned their villes, they didn’t leave behind many of the keys to their kingdoms.”

“And you get paid well for finding stockpiles of weapons, vehicles and electronics,” Sela added.

Fargo nodded. “That’s right. But my main goal is to discover what we have lost as a race.”

Sela noticed that Fargo had allowed his voice to drop an octave, taking on a seductive tone. It hadn’t been lost on the archaeologist that Sela was a survivor from another time, preserved in suspended animation for centuries, safe from apocalyptic turmoil. The past that Fargo longed to discover lived in the woman. His attention to her lithe, athletic figure also showed that more than a little lust had influenced his sudden focus on her. Fargo was a tall, handsome man in his own right. If Lakesh’s and Domi’s instincts hadn’t been tripped by him, Sela wouldn’t have minded the attention. The suspicions about Fargo’s affiliations prevented any reciprocal appreciation.

The door quickly opened, jarring Fargo from his observation of Sela. Domi and Lakesh entered, moving with swiftness of purpose.

“My colleagues will be by shortly,” Lakesh informed Fargo, taking a seat across from him.

“Kane, Grant and Baptiste?” Fargo inquired.

“The same,” Lakesh answered brusquely. “The map you submitted is of interest. You claim to have encountered a hidden society in what used to be India. One in possession of twentieth-century military technology.”

“My expedition was wiped out, and when I made my escape, they pursued me with a helicopter,” Fargo explained. “I also have a feeling that they possess genetic reengineering technology.”

Lakesh frowned. “What did you say they called themselves again?”

“They called themselves Nagah, individually,” Fargo stated. “No relation to the Naga cultists both your people and mine had encountered farther to the south.”

Lakesh glared at Fargo. From a prior encounter, Lakesh knew that the millennialists had a penchant for trying to unsettle the Cerberus warriors by appearing astonishingly well-informed. “Interesting.”

The door opened again, pausing the conversation as three more people entered the room. As large as Edwards was, Grant was even taller, his shoulders even broader. By contrast, Kane was a lean, tightly muscled figure, his body as sleek and efficient as if he were a wolf recast in human form. Kane’s eyes held a predatory intensity as he glared at Fargo. The most interesting addition to the population of the interrogation room was Brigid Baptiste. Had her beauty been any less striking, she’d have been swallowed by the imposing ferocity of the two men she accompanied. However, even with her flame-tinted curls pulled back in a severe ponytail, and her voluptuous body wrapped in a plain redoubt bodysuit, Brigid was an explosion of beauty.

As the trio stared Fargo down, he could sense the flavors of their intellects. Grant emanated cynical distrust. Kane’s hard glare tore deep, formulating the most efficient means to kill the archaeologist if necessary. Brigid’s observations were cold and clinical, dissecting his every aspect like fibers underneath a microscope.

Without saying a word, the three companions had dispelled the chance that tales of their exploits were hyperbole. The trio had an energy to it that was unmistakable, a lethal mix of power and intellect. No wonder Fargo’s fellow millennialists had considered the three adventurers the greatest threat to their goals of world superiority.

“Do I meet with your approval?” Fargo asked, trying not to appear cowed by the force of personality standing before him.

The bullwhip clattered on the table in front of Fargo, thrown there by Kane. “That’s seen some hard use,” the ex-Magistrate said. “Found bits of human skin in there.”

“And despite the effort to disguise your allegiance, you possess considerable backing. Where else would you have received such competent medical treatment?” Brigid said, noting the line of the scar on his forearm. “Not to mention the quality of your clothing and other equipment.”

Fargo glanced at Grant. The big man merely shrugged. “I got nothin’ other than I do not trust strangers caught creeping around my back door.”

Lakesh cleared his throat. “We were just discussing his claims of a hidden society operating in northwestern India.”

“So the Millennial Consortium wants us to take a look where their own expedition failed?” Grant asked bluntly. Fargo raised an eyebrow at the sudden accusation, but Grant waved off the man’s reaction. “Sure, think of me as the dumb muscle, but Brigid’s implications only give me one real option. You’re not some mind-controlled toady, so you can’t be Erica von Sloan’s errand boy. The snake-face survivors are too disorganized, looking for their old toys to bother with hairless apes. All that’s left is the consortium.”

Fargo nodded. “I’ve worked for them, but this is not their call. They sent me to get a big, fat prize, and the force they supplied me with died. I left empty-handed and alone.”

“So, the millennialists don’t love you anymore,” Kane mentioned. “Even if I believed that, why not try to ask the dragon queen for help? She loves ancient artifacts, and she’d provide a good word to get you back into the graces of the consortium.”

Fargo chuckled, a rueful look on his face. “I’d taken a few of her things during a weekend at the Xian Pyramid. Since Erica joined up with the consortium, she’s been looking for an excuse to expel me out into the cold, cruel world.”

Brigid echoed Fargo’s laugh, drawing Kane’s attention.

“What?” Kane asked.

Brigid smiled. “Never thought that I’d sympathize with the wicked bitch of the east. You call yourself an archaeologist, but you’re nothing more than a common thief.”

Fargo shrugged. “Knowledge is power, but it doesn’t keep a belly full.”

“It pays the bills, right?” Brigid asked. “A lot of excuses for mercenary activity. After all, aren’t you just seeking what we have lost as a race?”

Fargo’s eyes narrowed. “I knew it. The waiting game was just to shake my tongue loose. You wanted the truth about me? Fine. I know you’re not paranoid when you actually do have someone out to get you.”

Kane smirked. “Spoken like someone who has plenty of enemies of his own.”

“So what about the Nagah?” Grant asked. “They like the other cultists in the south? Snake worshipers?”

“Worship, nothing,” Fargo said. “Scaled skin, hinged fangs, complete with venom sacs capable of spraying blinding poison. They also have hoodlike structures, webbing along the sides of their heads that leads down to their shoulders, capable of flexing like a true cobra’s. Crazy is strong enough for a lot of things, but not enough to change a madman’s species. That’s why I said they possessed the facilities to reengineer genetics.”

“It’s possible to make enormous changes with the proper technology,” Lakesh spoke up. “I’m living proof of that. Enlil-as-Sam utilized a swarm of nanites to rebuild my internal organs and store my youth.”

“That was utilizing Annunaki technology,” Brigid said.

“Nanites?” Fargo asked.

“Molecule-scale machines capable of deconstructing and reorganizing matter,” Brigid explained.

When the look on Fargo’s face betrayed his level of comprehension, Grant laughed. “Really tiny robots that can change an old man into a young guy, or a normal person into one of your cobra freaks.”

“Thanks,” Fargo muttered.

“I know how tough it is, listening to Brigid explain things for the first time,” Grant added.

“Grant and I jockeyed to get first crack at science books when we arrived,” Kane said. “Understanding the basics really helps.”

“Do you two mind?” Brigid asked. “Besides, I thought you didn’t trust him.”

“We don’t,” Grant said. “We don’t like or trust the murderous little prick.”

Kane nodded. “But, like you sympathized with Erica, we can sympathize with him.”

Lakesh sighed loudly, wishing to return to Fargo’s story about his serpentine adversaries. “The snake men seem to correlate with mythologies that extend back at least three millennia. Though the name ‘Nagah’ is localized to the Indian subcontinent.”

“If you read between the lines, however, there are beings like mer-people, Lamia, even gods such as the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl. Snakelike humans are not a unique mythology,” Brigid interjected. “As well, Lord Strongbow had modified his troops with reptilian aspects, obviously inspired by ancient creatures such as the Formorians.”

“Durga mentioned Strongbow’s people,” Fargo said. “How they utilized an inefficient form of transformation.”

Brigid tilted her head. “The Tuatha de Danaan and the Annunaki entered a truce and combined their technologies. However, one of the regions where they engaged in fiercest conflict was the British Isles. Perhaps the Formorians were these serpentine humans.”

“I thought that was a leftover memory of when the snake faces and the Tuatha were at war,” Kane said.

“Perhaps,” Brigid said. “There is also a disturbing similarity between the reptilians that Fargo describes and the Nephilim that the Quad V hybrids evolved into.”

Domi raised her hand and both Brigid and Lakesh looked at her. “Brigid, you were helping me do some research on reptilian humanoids, after we’d encountered the Hydrae mutants in Greece. There was someone…Yuck…”

“Icke. David Icke,” Brigid replied. “It popped into my mind, as well.”

Lakesh rolled his eyes. “I was around when he posited some of his ideas.”

Brigid nodded. “Icke’s theories were odd, but they may have had actual scientific basis. He theorized that there were shape-shifting but basically reptilian creatures who secretly ruled the world in the twentieth century. They were purported to have had limited shape-shifting abilities, but his position that many world leaders were actually nonhumans strained credulity. This, of course, diverges from the traditional mythological texts where these creatures were not shape changers. As well, the Nagah were not an antagonistic race. They lived in a subterannean realm beneath India. There were also hints that the Nagah originated on another continent.”

“Like Lemuria or Atlantis,” Kane suggested.

“You’ve been taking notes,” Brigid complimented him. “Which brings our friend’s comparison to Lord Strongbow’s troops full circle.”

“So, the Nagah were not shape-shifters?” Fargo asked.

“Unlikely,” Brigid answered. “Even Icke’s contemporary John Rhodes stated that such accusations of saurian humanoids were unfounded paranoia. The ‘reptoids’ of Rhodes’s description were, like the Indian Nagah, subterranean, but with origins in the era of the dinosaurs.”

Fargo squeezed his brow. “That’s a lot to bite off in one session, and I saw the fucking things.”

The archaeologist glanced at Kane. “So, are you going to go to India?”

“Yes,” Lakesh spoke up. “I want to come, as well. I proved I can handle myself in the field, with our last journey to India, and the sortie into China.”

“You’re not making me sit it out like you did in China,” Domi said curtly.

“Darlingest one, it’s too dangerous,” Lakesh countered. The slap across his cheek wasn’t entirely unexpected. Lakesh, having seen Domi in conflict, knew that she pulled her punch, because his head wasn’t swimming and he was still on his feet. Her ruby-red eyes glowed angrily in the interrogation room.

“I’m perfectly fine with danger. It’s my job. Besides, you’re too important to risk without having someone specifically looking out for you. Kane and the others will be too busy to babysit you, keep their eyes on Fargo and deal with high-tech snakes at the same time,” Domi told him.

Lakesh nodded. “I forget. You’re not some fragile flower.”

“And it’s not like I can tell you not to go, because you speak the language,” Domi added. “So, I’m coming along. No bullying this time.”

“Fine,” Lakesh said.

He turned to Sela. “You and the other away team members can handle things here?”

“Absolutely, boss,” Sela replied. “Just don’t forget to bring me something back as a souvenir.”

“What were you thinking about?” Fargo asked, slipping back into the role of seducer.

“How about your balls if you betray my people?” Sela asked.

Fargo glanced at Kane.

“Sympathy or no, if the consortium shows up to this party, you’ll be the first one to catch a bullet,” Kane told him.

Fargo didn’t doubt the Cerberus warrior.

Chapter 5

The crystal-clear water of the underground pool slid off the shimmering blue-green scales of the naked serpent woman as she walked up the slope of the beach. She climbed past the water’s edge on long, sinewy legs. The serpentess ran slender, deceptively delicate fingers down her body, wiping away droplets that clung to her curvaceous form. A sarong of flowered blue silk lay in a puddle on a flat rock that she used as a table, and she picked it up once she had assured herself that her scaled flesh had been brushed clean, no dewy droplets remaining to mar the simple wrap. The cloth snugged around her sleek, full hips, covering her from her vestigal navel down to just above her knees. With a deft fold, she looped a ribbon-like strap around her neck, covering her breasts, a throwback to her mammalian hybrid heritage. The wrap obscured her nearly invisible nipples in the center of each glimmering orb. The women of the Nagah, entitled Nagani, betrayed their half-human heritage, possessing the curves reminiscent of human female anatomy, and as such, had developed a need for concealing those differences from their male counterparts.

“Hannah, my queen, my apologies,” the voice of her bodyguard echoed to her. The echo of his words bounced from the cavernous tunnel to the subterranean lagoon. “May this unworthy servant enter thy glorious presence?”

Naji Hannah finished tucking her sarong down. “Come in, Manticor. There is nothing unworthy about you. And I am not queen yet.”

The bodyguard strode into view. He was six and a half feet tall, lithe limbs resembling thick cords of steel cable, having a silvery burnish as they ran down from copper-brown shoulders. Manticor, like all Nagah men, was naked from the waist up, clad only in pants from his hips to his knees. The tough chest plates that rolled down his torso were the same hard, sandy shells that protected the soles of his feet, surer protection and traction than any hand-cobbled footwear. Like many of the Nagah, his toes had fused together, giving him the illusion of shoes. Those who had been gifted with the “change” and whose lower bodies had become truly serpentine were considered the children of their creator. Such instances were rare, resulting in beings who had to drag themselves along by their arms, resting on a long, undulating monolimb that was not designed for supporting the weight of a human torso.

“Naja Durga has returned from his recent expedition,” Manticor stated. “He requests the company of his promised bride.”

Hannah’s eyes narrowed. “In other words, ‘I’m home. Where’s my fuck?’”

Manticor winced at the harshness of his charge’s language. Hannah knew that Manticor was also pained by the thought of Hannah being pressed into a loveless marriage. “I am sorry, Excellence.”

Hannah ran her delicate fingertips across the tough chest plates on the snake man’s pectoral muscles. Her hazel eyes sought his, penetrating deep into their brown, smoldering depths. “I am sorry, as well, my loyal protector. I meant no crudeness for your ears. Tell my cousin that if he wishes to see me, he can find me in my chambers.”

Manticor’s scaled lips tightened into a bloodless line. “He won’t be pleased.”

“If Durga deems it necessary to punish you, he will never know my touch again,” Hannah promised, rage giving edge to her voice. “No. He’ll know the touch of my feet once I’ve finished kicking him to death.”

Manticor stepped away from her touch. Shame had smothered whatever joy had been awakened by Hannah’s caress. Manticor’s duty was to the Nagah Protectorate, the elite who defended the royal family. That duty meant that he would give his life for the precious Princess Hannah. In the larger scheme of things, it meant that he had to ensure that the crown prince’s bride would bear him the means to carry on his family dynasty. His life, influenced by an affection and attraction to Hannah, was commanded by an oath to see the thing he loved most in the world hauled off to an embittered being who saw her only as a means to extend his genetic viability.

Hannah regretted being so familiar with Manticor, speaking the thoughts that flashed behind dark eyes. She regretted that his devotion to her had sparked a kindred love. Manticor was the shining knight every girl wanted, be they human or Nagah. Tall, strong and selflessly committed to her, Manticor was Hannah’s body and soul. All she had to do was ask, and he’d be hers forever. Were there a place for the two Nagah to flee in the human world, she would abandon her crown and leave with him. Instead, she was trapped. Serpents were not welcome aboveground, and the humans who interacted with the Nagah were rare outside of the underground realm. Hannah and Manticor would be hunted by snake and shunned by man.

“I will tell Naja Durga of your intentions,” Manticor said. After a pause, he chuckled nervously. “Intention to wait for him in your chambers, not the kicking thing.”

Hannah gave him a weak smile, then the official gesture of dismissal. Released, the bodyguard left the lagoon chamber, and his discomfort. She watched him bow as he left the private swimming area. Hannah made her way slowly to her chambers.

The dread-filled wait for Durga’s arrival began.

DURGA ROLLED OVER, spent in his carnal energies. His member retreated back into its protective sheath of armored scales, smearing his and Hannah’s mixed love juices on the flat plates of his groin. He licked at Hannah’s hood, tongue trailing to the crook of her neck before kissing her. “Be a dear and clean our mess off me.”

Hannah, panting and sore, glared at him. Her eyes flicked down to the glistening cocktail in his lap. “I am a princess of the blood, not some bathing maid. Get a washcloth.”

She rolled on the mattress, pulling away from his grasp, staring at the tapestry on her chamber wall. Hannah hunched her shoulders, trying to create a wall between Durga and herself. Powerful fingers dug into her shoulder, and Hannah grimaced as he whipped her around so that they were face-to-face. She looked at the damaged scales over his right eye. The scar was a livid, jagged slash carved into his armored skin. His once golden iris was muted as it swam in a bloodshot orb. It was a memento of his encounter with the humans of the Millennial Consortium. The eye that peered at her looked harsh, unhealthy.

“Your king demands your service,” Durga snarled threateningly.

Hannah’s upper lip curled back, her fangs flexing into position. “You’ll regret it.”

Durga pushed her away, sitting up. “We are of the same royal blood. Your venom would not harm me.”

“No, but my teeth are still sharp enough to tear your dick to shreds,” Hannah returned, exiting the bed to get away from him.

Durga watched her move. Even angry, she had the grace of a dancer. “You would end the trueblood? For what? Dignity? Even sucking me off, you’re still a queen.”

Hannah tugged her wrap around her naked form, stepping closer to the chamber entrance. “Then why act as if I’m just a whore?”

“Take one more step, and it will be you who will harbor regrets,” Durga promised. His hood flexed, flaring as the muscle stretched his neck in anger.

“If your touch leaves a mark, the Nagah will forget about your pure blood and let you know how they feel about your bigotry,” Hannah warned. “When the bulk of your people are newbloods, you don’t have much room to alienate them.”

Durga smirked, his orange eye flashing like a fire in a pit. “Manticor.”

“You wouldn’t,” Hannah stated.

“He would follow my orders. He’d assault the gates of hell armed with a toothpick if I told him to,” Durga replied, sneering at her. “He will do his duty, and his duty, ultimately, is my will.”

“I would damn you to hell,” Hannah said, sighing, “but you’d be in charge inside of ten minutes.”

Durga smiled. “Come here, lover. On your knees.”

Hannah clenched her golden eyes shut, tear ducts burning like acid.

“Your dignity or my majesty,” Durga taunted. “Make your choice.”

Hannah’s eyes snapped open in a glare, but in her heart she knew the true choice didn’t involve either of the royal Nagahs’ pride. The life of a good, upstanding, selfless being was at stake. Even if Hannah hadn’t harbored affection for the loyal Manticor, she couldn’t allow harm to come to one of her people, especially when she had a say in the matter. It was her duty as ruler to sacrifice for her people, she told herself.

Not completely, she corrected. Self-service did play a role in her decision. As long as Manticor lived, there was a chance that they would have an opportunity to become lovers, to grow old together.

She stepped to Durga, knelt, closed her eyes and thought of Manticor.

WHENEVER HANNAH WAS CALLED to bed with the trueblood prince, Manticor always found it easier to be elsewhere in the ancient caverns of the Nagah. He wasn’t blind to the affection that she showed him, but also knew that such love was a leash that Durga wielded to control his chosen bride. Hannah only alluded to her dealings with Durga, but the hints formed an ugly picture, that made Manticor regret the strength of his fealty to the royal family.

Durga’s father, Garuda, had died defending their underworld realm, fallen as he battled against armored invaders from across the Pacific Ocean. The humans had called themselves Magistrates, and they sought the technology of the Nagah, most especially the ancient genetic-manipulation devices left behind by their creator, one of the dragon gods of the stars. The capacity for cloning and human alteration was too important to the hybrid barons who ruled America. Though they had their own genetics program and production facility, the thought of others possessing such advancements was anathema to them. Garuda, the fallen king, had offered to share with the barons, but greed had proved too much to allow such compromise.

The shooting war was brief and savage. Garuda led the Nagah warriors in a conflict against the baronial expeditionary force. The Magistrates had been exterminated, but at enormous cost, with Garuda dying as he destroyed the last of the Deathbird helicopters. Mortally wounded by the gunship’s machine gun, Garuda struck the craft from the sky with a shoulder-fired rocket. The destruction of the human marauders became known as the Battle of Sky Spear, one of the greatest victories, and tragedies, in the history of the cobra people.

That was where Durga’s spite for the mammals had been born. Durga was only in his teen years, a young warrior who fought alongside his father as a gunner on a jeep. He watched as the humans’ bullets tore into his father’s flesh, and his vengeful thirst had not been slaked in thirty years of bloodshed.

That was decades ago, and since then, Durga had spread the influence of the Nagah dynasty throughout the region. Raids against human settlements produced results that impressed the queen, Matron Yun. Converts among the imprisoned slaves were passed through the cobra baths, solutions of nanomachines in saline that stripped the majority of their mammalian nature, all save a warm-blooded metabolism, and replaced it with the serpentine perfection that had been a gift from the dragon god Enki. Human cultists were readily accepted into the ranks, provided they survived the harrowing trek to the Kashmir across the radioactive wastelands, bandit-controlled territories and the ferocious predators of the wilderness. Unfortunately, few of these believers, now called pilgrims, even knew of the hidden Nagah empire. Even fewer had the endurance to survive such a murderous journey.

Manticor’s father had been one such man. His mother was a convert from the enslaved humans captured by the grim Prince Durga, in the time before the prince’s rage consumed every waking moment. Technically, Manticor’s birth by two newbloods, or converts to Nagah form, and the fact that he was born a serpent, not needing the cobra baths, made him a trueblood. Unfortunately, Durga had long ago decreed that only the royal family could call themselves truebloods, as they could trace their lineage back to the age of the dragon kings. Manticor didn’t have the right to that title. The best that he could hope for was the mantle of pilgrim’s son.

A cordon of guards entered the cavernous hall that Manticor had wandered into. A dozen pistol-equipped cobra men moved in unison, like a single entity. Manticor immediately recognized them as the ring of living armor that surrounded the queen matron as she moved among her citizens. The snake man dropped to one knee, lowering his head in deference to the grand matriarch. The phalanx of bodyguards halted in front of Manticor.

“Manny, child, rise and gaze upon your queen,” Yun said.

Had she been human, her age might have proved more readily apparent. Still, six decades had done little to dull the copper-and-black leopard pattern of her scales, and her golden eyes were as bright and fiery as freshly lit bonfires. The only sign of her advanced years was a looseness of her skin and a softening of the firmness of her once tight, perfect musculature. Her lips turned up in a smile matched by the warmth in her gaze as she extended a delicate hand to Manticor.

“Matron,” Manticor announced, nodding as he bent and kissed the scaled wrist offered.

“Manny, it’s good to see you in health. How does my daughter-to-be fare?” Yun asked.

“She fares well,” Manticor replied, kicking himself for not being looser, more genial with the Nagah queen. The response stuck uncomfortably in his throat.

“Ah, I take it my son is sampling the wine before he pays for the vinyard,” Matron Yun suggested. Sarcasm dripped from her lips.

Manticor couldn’t suppress a flash of a grin at the queen’s crack. While Prince Durga’s decades of warfare had expanded the safe zone around the Nagah’s subterranean homelands, and had been responsible for tripling the population of the cobra folk, Yun had little patience for her son’s recent, violent activities. She was troubled by the wanton murder of travelers, as well as the growth of Durga’s increasingly militaristic personal guard. The rumors of his disrespectful relations with Hannah were particularly distressing. Hannah had survived far longer than her preceding suitors, young women who had died in accidents or quietly withdrew themselves from public life after a few meetings with the prince.

It had become an increasing concern that the matron would never have a grandchild to carry on her bloodline.

“I apologize, Matron Yun,” Manticor said, catching himself. He knew the queen’s feelings in the matter of her sole surviving child, but he didn’t want word passing through the ranks that he had been amused at Yun’s sharp criticism of Durga’s behavior.

“My fault entirely,” Matron Yun replied, releasing Manticor from his guilt. She winked at him, indicating that her cadre of defenders would not betray any indiscretion between the two of them. “My son has just returned from an expedition along the old Pakistani border and he claimed that he has found several items of interest. Since you seem weighted by your thoughts, I wonder if you would enjoy a distraction with an old, wrinkled serpent hag.”

“If there were a wrinkled hag present, I’d do so,” Manticor answered. “But for now, I am overjoyed to accompany a resplendent goddess of the blood.”

Matron Yun laughed, resting her hand on Manticor’s shoulder. “If I were a few decades younger, Manticor, I’d believe you.”

She offered her hand and the cobra warrior crooked his arm for her. Yun smiled appreciatively. “It might even be that you carry some of the spark of Garuda in you. You resemble my husband, and his genetic code runs through every pilgrim.”

“I’m flattered, my queen,” Manticor replied. “But your son has likened the process to adding two drops of wine to sewage. It still remains vile waste, while adding two drops of sewage to a gallon of wine turns the whole to sewage.”

“The Nagah, however, are neither waste runoff nor beverage,” Matron Yun responded. “My son, in his advancing years, seeks to overturn the teachings of both great Nagah and humans, including the lessons of those who despised the institutional bigotry of caste systems.”

“And yet, we are still a monarchy,” Manticor countered.

“With safeguards and the ability to impeach those of royal blood. A human said once that the tree of liberty, at times, must be watered with the blood of tyrants and free men alike.”

“Thomas Jefferson,” Manticor said. “Words from nearly five hundred years ago.”

“Truth does not cease to become truth because of age, my boy,” Yun chided him.

The pair and the silent cordon of cobra escorts entered the alcove where Durga had deposited his discoveries. Off to one side of the underground hangar, the Nagah fleet of twentieth-century Black Hawk and Deathbird helicopters rested, a hundred aircraft only minutes from life should the children of Enki need them.

The airfleet had been recovered thanks to raids on Indian government installations. The Battle of Sky Spear taught the Nagah the need for air power as they had suffered terrible losses, aside from Garuda himself, to the Magistrates’ assault helicopters. The Deathbirds and their utility transport counterparts were the backbone of a secure homeland, now.

Quarantined and protected by Durga’s expeditionary troopers sat a strange and impressive object. It was sleek and silver, the size of the Black Hawk, and covered in burns and scars, as if it had been engulfed in lava.

Matron Yun gasped in horrified recognition.

“What is it?” Manticor asked.

The queen’s lips drew into a tight line of concern. “The dragon kings. That is one of their craft, and if they have returned…”

“Returned?” Manticor asked. “But Tiamat was struck from the skies.”

Yun’s golden eyes flashed as she looked at the skimmer. “Death is no impediment to a god.”

Chapter 6

Austin Fargo was glad to be in a set of clean clothes, and after the luxury of a hot shower, he felt like a new man. He cast a cursory glance toward the doorway of the locker room, noticing Lakesh brooding there. The Indian scientist looked far younger than the consortium’s initial intelligence had described him. Fargo didn’t think that nanotechnology existed at such a level to create that drastic a change of physiology, but the scientist was living proof. With such a display, it wasn’t hard for the consortium explorer to agree with the theory of nanorobotic augmentation creating a posthuman species such as the Nagah.

“You had something to ask me?” Fargo spoke up.

“No, I came here to thank you,” Lakesh grumbled in a tone belying his words. “It’s not every day that the woman I love volunteers for such a dangerous journey just to babysit me.”

“This is my fault?” Fargo asked, strapping on his gun belt.

“Absolutely,” Lakesh challenged with a grimace. “You are the one who literally stirred up a nest of snakes. And don’t think that we’re not aware that you just might be setting us up.”

“I’ve been threatened and bullied ever since your pale little bitch pointed her crossbow at me, Lakesh,” Fargo snarled. “This shit has positively grown ancient fast. Do you honestly think I’m so smug that I don’t realize your crew can kill me like a mouse in a trap?”

Lakesh’s cheek twitched at Fargo’s insult of Domi. His words came out in a controlled tone. “No one from the consortium has ever proved to be anything close to reliable or trustworthy, unless you specifically want a knife in the back. You cost them a lot in terms of your murdered expedition, so even if you’re not offering us to the consortium on a silver platter, they’ll be watching you.”

“And I’m not going to lie that I don’t expect them to make another go at the Nagah and their stockpiles,” Fargo told Lakesh. “But you checked me over. No transmitters, no hidden comms, no locator devices.”

“If Domi gets hurt, I will hold you personally responsible,” Lakesh warned.

“Understood,” Fargo answered.

Lakesh stepped forward and handed Fargo his confiscated revolver. “You’ll need something more if you expect to pull your weight.”

“I escaped the last time only because I carried a minimum of gear,” Fargo answered. “I don’t know about guys like Grant, but I don’t carry the kitchen sink with me.”

“I’m not a pack mule, either,” Lakesh noted. He looked conscientiously toward the Detonics .45 on his hip. Domi insisted that Lakesh carry the pistol, and she had spent hours familiarizing him with the powerful sidearm. As neither Domi nor Lakesh had large hands, the .45 was ideal, being slim despite its power.

“I just can’t see slogging all the way back to the Kashmir with bags of guns and grenades.” Fargo sighed.

“Who said that we were walking?” Lakesh inquired.

“Yes. The mat-trans system,” Fargo noted. “But would the facilities in the subcontinent be sufficient to get us close to the Nagah?”

“We have the means to travel…” Lakesh paused, debating whether to continue. He realized that he would not be able to disguise the interphaser’s improvements on mat-trans technology.

“Your new invention? The one that lets you pop in on ancient temples?” Fargo asked.

Lakesh winced. The millennialists had representatives present at the tomb of Huan Di, intermediaries between the ancient Chinese warlord and the Annunaki to recover his rejuvenating armor. Obviously, they had reported back about the interphaser. Fargo cut into Lakesh’s recollections with a new question. “How does it work? Magnetic fields?”

Lakesh maintained his silence.

“Come on, Lakesh. Who am I going to tell? And how could I even decipher the necessary mathematical formulae?” Fargo asked. “I’m a tomb digger, not a theoretical physicist.”

“No, but that won’t keep gun-toting thugs from trying to abscond with it,” Lakesh stated. “It’s been sought after before, and lives have been lost in the process.”

“Do I look like I can let them in on your secrets? Do I have some magic, invisible phone to call them with?” Fargo pressed. He pointed to the Commtact behind Lakesh’s ear. “Or a bionic transceiver, like you guys have?”

“No,” Lakesh returned. “We searched you carefully. Nothing popped up.”

“But you’re still worried about me,” Fargo said. “What kind of a trap could I put you all in?”

“I can think of twenty or thirty,” Lakesh noted. “And with all of those, I doubt any redundancy with the suspicions of my cohorts. Even without your friends in the consortium…”

“They are not my friends anymore,” Fargo interrupted through gritted teeth. “Not after I blew it in India.”

“Well, without them, you have the Nagah and whatever they have. Not to mention other interested parties who have access to technology that we can’t detect,” Lakesh said. “The Annunaki and other parties have demonstrated access to extrasensory means of communication.”

“Others?” Fargo inquired.

“There are records of dozens of species of hybrid beings represented in mythology. The Nagah are only one such breed,” Lakesh stated. “My compatriots and I have encountered others in our travels.”

“The creations of the Annunaki?” Fargo pressed.

“Precisely,” Lakesh answered.

“But what about Tiamat? That fireworks display must have taken care of them and whatever freak armies they had,” Fargo said.

“Marduk is alive,” Lakesh countered. “And he’s looking for the means to regain his old status as a god. We stopped him once, but we may not be lucky the next time. There are also his surviving brethren, time travelers, colonies of malcontents in suspended animation…”

“So why are you rushing off to India?” Fargo asked. “If you’re so certain that there are all these deadly threats out there…”

“I’d rather die trying than let those monsters go unopposed,” Lakesh answered.

“Oh, so you lot are suicidal. Then why worry about me?” Fargo asked.

“Shut your fool mouth,” Lakesh growled. “Suicide is the furthest thing from my mind. I hate risking the lives of my friends.”

“But you are definitely damned if you sit on your hands,” Fargo mused. “At least this way, you’ve got a snowball’s chance in a lava flow.”

Lakesh glared at the archaeologist for a long silent moment. Fargo squirmed under the harsh gaze, realizing that he’d pushed too hard.

“You say another word about failure, and I will personally strangle you to death.”

Lakesh left Fargo alone in the locker room.

THERE WAS A GRIM SILENCE when Fargo finally joined Kane, Lakesh and the others in the mat-trans chamber. Obviously, Lakesh had spoken of their conversation. Domi’s eyes had a particularly demonic aspect to them, the blood-colored jewels glaring at Fargo as if lit from behind by the fires of hell. The archaeologist winced, looking to the others, whose quiet demeanors held more than just impatience. He looked down to the floor of the chamber, spotting a small pyramid-shaped device.

“That’s the interphaser?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

“Yeah,” Grant spoke up. “Go ahead and pick it up.”

Fargo heard the unstated threat in the giant Magistrate’s words, and wisely kept his distance from the pyramid.

“Dumb enough to talk shit about me,” Domi spoke up. “Smart enough not to commit suicide…more or less.”

“Enough,” Kane interrupted. “We’ve got work to do. Brigid, fire her up.”

Brigid input the coordinates, and the mistlike appearance of plasma waves surrounded the six travelers and the interphaser.

Fargo winced as the mat-trans chamber blurred from view. As reality opened around them, Fargo felt a momentary jarring, as if he were unplugged from the Earth. The reality of the situation wasn’t much different from his initial perception. His body, and those of the others, were shunted through a wormhole and hurled across the planet at the speed of thought. The transit felt as if it lasted minutes for the millennialist, and when his senses returned to normal, he was in a darkened, cavernous temple.

He recognized the markings on the floor, despite the cracks and wear of antiquity. They were in northern India, and he didn’t doubt that they were near the countryside where he’d encountered the murderous Nagah squadron. He remained still and glanced at the others, who were obviously accustomed to the disorientation of matter transfer.

“A temple?” Fargo asked.

“Many of the ancient peoples knew that there were places of power favorable to communicating with their gods,” Brigid said. “Those areas were actually parallax points, convergences of magnetic lines of force that allowed access to other dimensions.”

“Like Ley lines?” Fargo asked. “So where they cross, the fabric of reality is thin enough to open a wormhole?”

“Right,” Lakesh confirmed. “The interphaser is programmed with remote access points.”

“The little pyramid is useless otherwise?” Fargo asked.

Lakesh shrugged. “A good magician never gives away his secrets. You’ll have to pry the secrets out of my skull.”

“Don’t tempt him, Moe,” Domi cut him off. “Who knows who this bastard’s shacked up with.”

Lakesh nodded at Domi’s warning, causing Fargo to exhale an exhausted sigh. “What do I have to do to get you assholes to trust me?”

“Die taking a bullet for one of us,” Grant suggested.

“Or how about you quit calling us assholes?” Brigid added.

Kane returned from a perimeter sweep of the temple, and Fargo glanced at him for support. “They never let anything go, do they?”

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