Outlanders - Ghost Walk, page 6
Winter came early to the mountaintop concealing the Cerberus redoubt. Domi didn’t turn at the sound of his approach or when he said quietly, “Darlingest one, you’re liable to catch a chill out here.” Domi chuckled briefly. “You know me better than that, Moe.” An albino by birth, the complexion of her limbs was as pale as creamed milk. Domi’s spiky, bone-white hair was cropped short. The eyes on either side of her thin-bridged nose were the ruby color of fresh blood. Every inch of five feet tall, Domi barely weighed one hundred pounds and at first glance, she gave the impression of being waiflike. But there was little of the waif about her compact body, lean and lithe, with small, pert breasts and flaring hips. Born a feral child of the Outlands, there was a primeval vibrancy, an animal- like intensity about her. Lakesh grimaced at her use of the endearment “Moe.” Recently she had fallen into the habit of addressing him by his first name of “Mohandas” rather than the more familiar “Lakesh.” Then, because Outlanders tended to think and speak in shorthand, she had abbreviated even that to simply “Moe.” He had chided her about it, claiming only Jewish gangsters, surly bartenders and stooges with bowl-cut hairstyles went by such a name, but he suspected his objections only encouraged her. “Why are you out here?” Lakesh asked. Domi shrugged. “Just thinking about Quavell. Her baby is over two years old now and we haven’t seen her since Balam took her away to Agartha. I wish we hadn’t cut that deal with him. No need for it now.”
“True,” Lakesh said, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “The threat of the overlords seems to have passed, but Balam may not be aware of that.” He doubted the veracity of his own words. Balam had forged the truce between the overlords and the Cerberus exiles. Without him, the full wrath of Overlord Enlil would have been unleashed upon the redoubt. Only the fact that Balam held an infant as a hostage prevented such a catastrophe from coming to pass. The baby, carried to term by the hybrid female Quavell, had been bred to carry the memories and personality of Enlil’s mate, Ninlil. In actuality, Quavell had given birth to a blank slate, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Although the child carried the Annunaki genetic profile, she was born in an intermediate state of development. Certain segments of her DNA, strands of her genetic material, were inactive and needed to be encoded aboard Tiamat, the ancient starship of the Annunaki named after the Sumerian goddess. Once there, through a biotechnological interface, the child would have received the full mental and biological imprint of Ninlil. Then the Supreme Council would be as complete as it had been thousands of years before, and Tiamat could set into motion the rebirth of the entire Annunaki pantheon. However, Tiamat and all of the Supreme Council had apparently perished a few months before. “We ought to contact Balam and tell him about the overlords,” Domi said. Lakesh nodded but said, “Balam made it quite clear that this was a case of ‘don’t call me, I’ll you.’” Domi glanced up at him, her ruby eyes flashing with anger. “We can take the Mantas to Tibet, find him and bring the baby back here to be raised like a human instead of a damn alien.” “Balam is not an alien,” Lakesh pointed out. “He was born here on Earth.” “Mebbe,” Domi conceded, stepping out from beneath the weight of Lakesh’s arm. “Still not human, is he?” After a thoughtful few seconds, Lakesh sighed, his breath pluming before his eyes. “No, I suppose he isn’t. Not completely.” As Lakesh discovered in the waning years of the twentieth century, humankind’s interaction with a nonhuman species had begun at the dawn of Earth’s history. That relationship and communication had continued unbroken for thousands of years, cloaked by ritual, religion and mystical traditions. The latest tradition dealt with a mysterious race known as the Archon Directorate, who allegedly influenced human affairs for many thousands of years. The nuclear apocalypse of 2001 was all part of the Archon Directorate’s strategy. With the destruction of social structures and severe depopulation, the Archons established the nine barons and distributed predark technology among them to consolidate their power over Earth and its disenfranchised, spiritually beaten human inhabitants. But over the past few years, the Cerberus exiles had learned that the elaborate back story was all a ruse, bits of truth mixed in with outrageous fiction. The Archon Directorate existed only as a vast cover story, created in the twentieth century and embellished with each succeeding generation. The only so-called Archon on Earth was Balam, the last of an extinct race that had once shared the planet with humankind. After three years of imprisonment in the Cerberus redoubt, Balam finally revealed the truth behind the Archon Directorate and the hybridization program initiated centuries before. Balam himself may have even coined the term “archon” to describe his people. In ancient Gnostic texts, “archon” was applied to a para-human world-governing force that imprisoned the divine spark in human souls. Lakesh had often wondered over the past few months if Balam had indeed selected that appellation as a cryptic code to warn future generations. Most shocking was Balam’s assertion that he and his ancient folk were of human stock, not alien but alienated. The Cerberus personnel still didn’t know how much to believe. But if nothing else, they no longer subscribed to the fatalistic belief that the human race had had its day and only extinction lay ahead. Balam had indicated that belief was but another control mechanism. Beyond all of that, Domi’s concern for Quavell’s child sprang from a desire to be a mother. She and Lakesh had tried to conceive, but so far they had been unsuccessful. Lakesh didn’t know whether to be relieved or saddened. He reached for Domi, saying, “I agree with you, darlingest one. There’s no need for Balam to keep Quavell’s child any longer.” He paused and added, “Apparently no need.” Domi canted her head at a challenging angle. “What do you mean?” “I mean that we’re not certain of the ultimate fates of the overlords. Yes, they could have all died aboard Tiamat, but they could have just as likely escaped.
Some of them, anyway. Possibly even Enlil himself.” Domi snorted. “It’s been months. If the snake-faces were still alive, we’d know about it by now.” Lakesh tacitly but silently agreed with her assessment. However, he knew that the Annunaki had laid plans a thousand years before to one day be resurrected and reign on Earth again. There was no reason to assume the Supreme Council could not have concocted another contingency plan. The possibility chilled Lakesh far more than the mountain air. He shivered. “Let’s go inside…I’m getting very cold.” “And shrunk up?” Domi inquired with a devilish half grin. “Yes, I believe there has been significant shrinkage,” Lakesh replied dryly. She linked an arm through his. “Let’s see if we can’t do something about that.” The two people walked arm in arm across the plateau to the sec door. They had just stepped over the threshold when they heard the alarm Klaxons blaring discordantly, echoing all over the redoubt. Bry’s strident voice shouted over the PA system,
“Internal incursion! CAT Beta to ops! Internal incursion!”
Domi’s and Lakesh’s relaxed stroll instantly became a flat-out sprint down the main corridor.
Chapter 9
The alarm Klaxon warbled, echoing throughout the redoubt like a choir of the damned. Personnel ran through the corridors to their assigned emergency red-alert stations. Bry’s voice continued to shout over the PA, “Internal incursion! Sealing ops in twenty seconds—mark! Internal incursion! CAT Beta to ops!” Domi’s legs pumped and she pulled ahead of Lakesh, darting among the people as she sprinted single-mindedly to the operations center. As she dodged, ducked and elbowed, Lakesh heard more than one person cry out in pain and anger. He forced more speed into his legs, silently enduring the spasms of pain in his knee joints. He glimpsed a pair of armed men forcing their way toward the entrance of the control complex and even over the blare of the alarm, he heard Domi shouting orders to her Beta team. Lakesh had initially opposed the formation of the specialized Cerberus teams because he felt uncomfortable with the very concept of the redoubt’s own version of the Magistrate Divisions—ironically composed of former Magistrates. But he knew that as the canvas of their operations broadened, the personnel situation at the installation also changed. No longer could Kane, Grant, Brigid Baptiste and Domi undertake the majority of the missions and therefore shoulder the lion’s share of the risks. Over the past year or so, Kane and Grant had set up Cerberus Away Teams Alpha, Beta and Delta. CAT Delta was semi-permanently stationed at Redoubt Yankee on Thunder Isle, rotating duty shifts with the Tigers of Heaven. CAT Beta was charged with the responsibility of the redoubt and surrounding territory, and Domi served as Beta team’s commander. Lakesh ran into the central complex only a few seconds behind Domi and her two team members. The Klaxon continued howling, but the sound was underscored by the hissing of compressed air, the squeak of gears and a sequence of heavy, booming thuds resounding from the corridor. Four-inch-thick vanadium-alloy bulkheads dropped from the ceiling to seal off the living quarters, engineering level and main sec door from the operations center, completely isolating it from the rest of the redoubt. A set of double doors slid shut behind Lakesh. He was a fraction of a second too slow, and one of the panels painfully clipped his left heel. He staggered, grabbing the back of a chair to keep from falling. The central command complex served as the brains of the installation. Two aisles of computer stations divided the long, high-ceilinged room. A half-dozen people sat before the terminals. Monitor screens flashed images and streams of code. The operations center had five dedicated and eight shared subprocessors, all linked to the mainframe computer concealed behind a shielded far wall. A huge Mercator-relief map of the world spanned the entire wall above the door. Pinpoints of light shone steadily in almost every country, connected by a thin, glowing pattern of lines. They represented the Cerberus network, the locations of all functioning gateway units across the planet.
Lakesh pushed himself away from the chair and demanded loudly, “Report!”
Donald Bry glanced over his shoulder. He acted as Lakesh’s lieutenant and apprentice in matters technological. A round-shouldered man with curly, copper-colored hair, his expression was always one of consternation, no matter his true mood. His face appeared strangely composed.
“Problems in the jump room,” he said.
“An incursion of some sort.” Lakesh frowned. “An incursion? By whom?”
“CAT Alpha brought something back. Don’t know what, but—”
“Turn off that damn noise!” Domi shouted as she jogged down the aisle.
Farrell, a shaved-headed man who affected a goatee and a gold hoop earring, slapped a button and the Klaxon fell silent. “We don’t know what’s going on,” he said querulously. “It’s bad, whatever it is.” Farrell’s words sent a prickle of icy dread up Lakesh’s spine. He retained vivid and horrifying memories of the mad Maccan’s assault on Cerberus, gating in through the mat-trans unit. On the opposite side of the operations center, an anteroom held the eight-foot-tall gateway unit, rising from an elevated platform. Six upright slabs of brown- hued armaglass formed a translucent wall around it. Manufactured in the last decade of the twentieth century, armaglass was formed of a special compound that plasticized and combined the properties of steel and glass. It was used as walls in the jump chambers to confine quantum-energy over- spills. The redoubt’s particular unit was the first fully debugged matter-transfer inducer built after the prototypes. It served as the template for all the others that followed, and Lakesh still felt a strong degree of fondness for it. Now a cacophony of voices rose from the jump room in an nearly incomprehensible babble, but Lakesh heard Brigid Baptiste shouting in an uncharacteristically agitated tone, “Are we locked down yet? Somebody answer me!”
“Yes!” called Domi, pausing in the doorway and gesturing to the two Beta team members to assume cross-fire positions on either side of her. “We’re secure. Now, what’s going on?”
“Don’t come in here!” Brigid ordered, gesturing with one arm. Breathing hard and limping slightly, Lakesh joined Domi in the doorway. He glimpsed CAT Alpha arranged around the metal platform that supported the gateway unit. Their weapons were out and trained toward the ceiling. The confusion and fear filling him became a sharp pang of panic when he saw Brigid and Grant kneeling over the motionless body of Kane, lying sprawled on the floor. He also saw a man clad in a dun-colored coverall sitting nearby, a bloody bandage wrapping his left ankle. His eyes bulged in terror.
Domi shouted, “Grant! What the hell is happening?”
Grant didn’t look at her but he bellowed, “Duck!”
Without hesitation, Domi bent double. A green-glowing bead shot over her head, missing the tip of Lakesh’s nose by the thickness of a sheet of paper. He felt a brief sear of heat before he threw himself to one side, crying out.
Philboyd’s voice rose in a yell. “Everybody take cover! Nobody touch it!” He appeared in the doorway, pushing past Domi. “And don’t let it touch you!”
Straightening up, Domi latched on to his arm and spun him around to face her. “Don’t let what touch us?”
The little orb flew around the big room, pirouetting, twirling and circling. It dived down toward people sitting at the computer stations, and with cries of fright, they slid from their chairs and took refuge beneath the desks. As the green ball arrowed past the monitor screens, the images on them flickered and broke up into patterns of jagged pixels.
Panting, Brigid joined Lakesh, Domi and Bry at the doorway. Her expression was stark and drawn, her complexion very pale. “We were attacked by a swarm of those things. They killed Higson. One of them stung Kane right as we were phasing back here. It must have been caught in the transit field and came along with us. The thing seemed attracted to the interphaser’s energy.” “Stung?” Lakesh echoed, gazing toward the fallen Kane. “Stung him how?”
“Or shocked him,” Brigid said tersely. “All we know is, he’s unconscious.”
“Why didn’t you keep the whatever it is locked up in the mat-trans chamber?” Domi demanded. Philboyd’s eyes flitted back and forth as he tried to follow the darting orb as it flew through the ops center. “We didn’t know it came back with us until we opened the door. Then it bolted.” “Besides,” Brigid interjected grimly, “our priority was getting Kane medical attention.”
“That’s not going to happen until we contain whatever it is,” Domi declared. She turned toward Cohen, one of the Beta team. “Give me your weapon.” The man handed her his Copperhead, and she settled the stock of the subgun in the hollow of her right shoulder. All of the Cerberus personnel were required to become reasonably proficient with small arms, and the lightweight point-and-shoot subguns were the easiest for the novice to handle.
Grant rose and came to the doorway, fisting his Sin Eater. “You don’t mean to shoot it down, do you?”
“Why not?” she countered, sighting down the weapon’s short length.
“Firstly,” Lakesh said, his voice hitting a high note of fear, “there is a lot of valuable and irreplaceable equipment in here, including the mainframe. If the hardware is damaged, our work at Cerberus comes to an end.”
Two centuries before, the computer had been one of the most advanced models ever built, carrying experimental, error-correcting microchips of such a tiny size that they even reacted to quantum fluctuations. Biochip technology had been employed when it was built, protein molecules sandwiched between microscopic glass-and-metal circuits. The information contained in the main database may not have been the sum total of all humankind’s knowledge, but not for lack of trying. Any bit, byte or shred of intelligence that had ever been digitized was only a few keystrokes and mouse clicks away.
“I’ll be careful,” Domi retorted, following the movements of the orb with the barrel of the Copperhead.
“Also,” Philboyd said, “that thing is made of energy, probably along the lines of a plasmoid. It would be like trying to shoot down ball lightning.”
“What’s a plasmoid?” Domi asked, her eyes flickering in momentary uncertainty.
“A ball of plasma…a quantity of gas that has been heated to a point where the atomic particles ionize into a median state.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything,” Domi snapped irritably.
“It’s a moving electrical charge that generates a self-sustaining magnetic field by spinning clockwise,” Lakesh explained. “The field maintains its cohesion until something stops its motion.”
“Couldn’t bullets do that?” Grant inquired. The orb swooped down from the ceiling and struck the double sec doors, bouncing away with a flash of energy. The green bee spiraled upward, giving the distinct impression of frustration, if not anger. “If vanadium alloy couldn’t stop its motion,” Brigid declared, “I don’t think lead will, either.”
“It acts almost intelligent,” Lakesh commented, “as if it’s being guided by remote control.”
“Unlikely,” Philboyd said.
“Don’t be so sure,” said a voice from the anteroom. Lakesh cast a glance over his shoulder at the man in the coveralls. “Who is that, pray tell?” “He calls himself Mr. Gray,” Grant said dourly. “He’s a millennialist.” “Yes, I deduced that by his identifying button. What is he doing here?” “Information,” Brigid said brusquely. “His crew deserted him.” Domi gestured with the barrel of the Copperhead toward the green bee. “Does he have useful information about that goddamn thing?” “No,” Gray answered. “I wish I did. All I know is that when they show up, men die—” “Shut up,” Domi broke in. The albino girl took a deep breath, held it, squinted through the autotargeter and squeezed the trigger, firing off a stuttering triburst. The bullets struck chimes and flares of sparks from the vanadium-sheathed ceiling. The orb danced and curved away from the brief barrage. The ricocheting bullets hit desks and chairs, drawing outraged cries from the people cowering beneath them.
“You’ll never hit the fucking thing that way,” Grant growled.
