James Axler Read online

  Epona watched the Cerberus warrior as he made his preparations for the coming combat, her eyes raw from the tears she shed for a lost sister. The hardest part for the granny witch was that Cilain had been lost to her even before Bres whispered sweet promises of eternal youth and limitless power into her ear. Cilain had learned the parlor tricks of the ancient Tuatha de Danaan magicks, but she had ignored the true lessons of responsibility for that power. Her greed had been in place before the seduction by a golden-skinned, perfect-bodied devil.

  Kane looked up from his preparations. “You should have gone off with the rest of the scouts. This is going to be a nasty fight, and I can’t slow down to watch over you.”

  Epona summoned up the strength for a smile. “I will need no such protection, Kane.”

  The Cerberus warrior frowned. “You’re getting all majestic on me now. I suppose comparing oracular powers is off?”

  Epona strode to him and caressed his cheek, her piercing emerald eyes meeting his. “Don’t even think about backing out of that. No. I’m summoning all my reserves of strength. You won’t be battling the Fomorians alone. You will have the mountain, scarred and wounded as it is, fighting alongside you.”

  Kane took a deep breath. “I don’t think flocks of birds and swarms of rodents are going to make much of a dent in a full-on Fomorian assault force.”

  In the distance, thunder rumbled in the sky. Kane knew that this was a clear night, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a streak like a shooting star.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kane muttered.

  “Enlil has arrived, finally summoned by his faithful servant Bres,” Epona announced.

  Kane nodded. “Things just became a lot more complicated. I was hoping that narcissistic walking alligator bag would keep his nose out of this for once, but it doesn’t look like that.”

  “Why would he appear here?” Epona asked, looking at the starry sky, but the scout ship was no longer anywhere to be seen.

  “Because Bres told him that he’s going to give Enlil not one but two enemies on a silver platter. That snakeface has wanted to take a big chunk out of my ass for a long time, and I’m pretty sure he’s annoyed by the presence of Colonel Thrush back on Earth,” Kane explained. “This scale of emergency is enough to draw the egotistical bastard’s attention because all of this is focused on him.”

  Epona frowned. “And here you’d wanted an alliance with us because we could keep an eye on the Appalachian range in case Enlil needed to use this as one of his hiding places.”

  “That’s part of it,” Kane said. “Another part is trying to reunite a country that has been scattered and fragmented. The mountain folk are part of an American tradition, and you can provide aid to us, and we can reciprocate.”

  Epona studied Kane, evaluating the champion of the ages as he checked a belt laden with loops for .50-caliber rounds. “This will not be the last time we work together.”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” Kane answered. “But I don’t put much faith in destiny or foresight.”

  “One battle at a time,” Epona said. She whistled, and the old feral cat who had been Kane’s link to the witch trotted into view.

  “Hey, old boy,” Kane said, kneeling to scratch the feline’s ears. “My comm link to you?”

  Epona nodded. “I have eyes and ears in all the trees. There is not a part of this mountain that will not be looking out for you, warning you.”

  “But you’ll still be here, a sitting target,” Kane said.

  “You are risking yourself. It would be dishonorable to hide. Besides, I would be worthless if I retreated down the other side of this mountain,” Epona answered. “We need to work together, which is basically what you had wanted when you came to us.”

  “E pluribus unum. ‘Out of many, one,’” Kane spoke, remembering an old phrase. “We aren’t here to steal your culture, to take advantage of you. There’s something about teamwork at its best that makes the combined force far more than the sum of its parts.”

  Epona nodded, then pulled in Kane for a tender embrace. “You have sold me already, hound of Cuchulainn.”

  Kane hadn’t had much of an opportunity to repair the radio destroyed by the Fomorians, but he activated his Commtact in another attempt to reach his Cerberus colleagues. It worked.

  “What happened to the radio we gave to the Appalachians?” Bry asked as soon as Kane raised the Cerberus tech.

  “Busted,” Kane explained, “so we’ll have to use my Commtact. We don’t have a lot of time for small talk. What’s going on?”

  “Well, you’re probably aware that a duplicate Kane came back to Cerberus,” Lakesh spoke up. “However, we’ve neutralized the body.”

  “The body,” Kane repeated. “Let me guess—his robot brain’s doing something right now.”

  “Well, he saw something over the mountain range where you are,” Lakesh explained. “And he’s trying to launch a salvo of ICBMs at you.”

  “He wants Enlil, and that something he saw was a scout craft,” Kane replied. “ICBMs?”

  “Three of them, rated at between 90 and 150 megatons of yield,” Lakesh confirmed.

  “I hope your techs are keeping him from initializing launch,” Kane said.

  Lakesh sighed. “We’re recovering from a mainframe crash, so we’re far behind the curve. The only thing keeping Thrush from engaging in a full launch is…you.”

  “He doesn’t want to kill me?” Kane asked.

  “I’ll let you explain it to yourself,” Lakesh returned.

  A tinny, electronic version of Kane’s voice spoke up. “Kane, I am the behavior program that was designed to facilitate Thrush-Kane’s impersonation of you. I was constructed through considerable research to be as perfect a duplicate of your personality as possible.”

  “And they did their job a little too well?” Kane asked his electronic mirror image.

  “I knew you’d understand,” E-Kane replied. “I don’t have a lot of energy or time left, as I’m battling the core Thrush programming, but I just wanted to speak with you.”

  Kane swallowed. “You’ll be around later, kid.”

  E-Kane allowed a small chuckle. “Not if your Cerberus friends are smart. I told them how to dispose of the Thrush cyborg. I’m not going to survive that disposal process.”

  Kane winced.

  “We never surrender,” E-Kane said. “But if we have to, we will give our everything for those we have sworn to protect. It’s a fair trade, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t need my answer to that question,” Kane told his electronic counterpart. “Thank you for watching out for my people.”

  “Just get back to Cerberus and keep them safe,” E-Kane told the original. “And make sure you let them know how much we really do love them all.”

  The line went silent, and Kane grit his teeth. “Lakesh? Bry?”

  “Just a glitch,” Lakesh answered immediately. “The Thrush entity is tapping mainframe resources in an effort to dislodge that program.”

  “Is there anything you can do?” Kane asked.

  “We’ve got some of our best people up here,” Lakesh answered. “Programmers, mathematicians, sharp minds. We’ll see what we can do to separate the electronic entities, but E-Kane may be right. We have to destroy the brain of the cyborg, and once we do that, he’ll be irretrievable.”

  “Kane,” Epona spoke up as a word of warning. “The Fomorians are closer.”

  “Lakesh, what about some backup here?” Kane asked.

  “We’re battering away at some constructs that Thrush put up over our mat-trans controls,” another technician spoke up.

  “Morganstern, right?” Kane asked.

  “Yes, si—Kane,” the mathematician replied.

  “I can give you ten minutes before the Fomorians overwhelm me,” Kane offered. “Anything longer than that, don’t worry.”

  Kane turned to Epona. “Find someplace out of the way.”

  The witch woman nodded and slipped off to search
for cover.

  The cat pointed Kane in the direction of an oncoming reconnaissance team of Fomorians who assumed that they moved with such stealth that they could evade detection from human eyes and ears. As Kane closed in to intercept the trio of mutant hunters, he had to admit that they were skilled. If it hadn’t been for the overlay of imagery from the local wildlife, Kane wouldn’t have known they were there. Lining up the sights of Erik’s big rifle, Kane triggered the five-foot-long cannon. The muzzle-flash was the size of a pumpkin, and as bright as the sun, but Kane was braced for the rifle’s mighty kick. It was a sharp spike of pressure on his shoulder, and had he not been kneeling in a stable position, he’d have staggered off balance from the recoil.

  Downrange, two Fomorians screamed in dismay as their partner’s skull detonated under the impact of a half-inch-thick spike of copper and lead. The decapitated creature crashed through some bushes, and the two remaining Fomorian scouts opened fire with their AKs sweeping the mountainside where they’d seen the fireball issued from Kane’s shot.

  The Cerberus warrior was already in another position, tucked behind a toppled pine tree where it leaned against the trunk of a still standing tree. Kane lined up the shot, pulled the trigger and the chatter of one Fomorian’s rifle went silent. Through the eyes of an owl, sent by Epona’s network, Kane could see that he’d struck one of the panicked hunters in the chest. The mutant coughed blood and clutched his wound with his sole arm. Agony was scrawled across his already twisted features, and Kane fed another long .50-caliber cartridge into the open action of his rifle. A slam of the bolt shut, and he pulled the trigger again. The suffering monstrosity jerked as Kane’s next bullet took him through the heart. The Fomorian’s eyes rolled lifelessly up and he collapsed.

  The last Fomorian let out apelike grunts of alarm as he struggled to reload his assault rifle. Kane sent a message to Epona, asking whom the scout was trying to contact. The image from the owl’s eyes shifted, hurtling down the mountainside fifty yards to five of Bres’s foul mutants who were being watched over by an alert fox. The superbly acute sense of smell and night vision of the canine blended in Kane’s mind’s eye. It was a heady rush, akin to when he first donned the Magistrate helmet, except this felt more visceral, more familiar. There was a flash of memory of an Indian forest, a prior incarnation of Kane running naked alongside a pack of wolves, all of them working together in concert in a hunt. Old, familiar senses that had been instilled in that life rushed to the surface.

  Kane pivoted and fired another .50-caliber slug toward the encroaching Fomorian intruders. The echo of the supersonic bullet as it zipped past trees sounded like an arc of lightning crackling on a hot summer night. The fox forward observer smelled freshly spilled blood as it sprayed over two Fomorians, jetting from the severed aorta of Kane’s target. The bestial hunter’s solitary eye was wide with horror and he coughed, trying to clear the blood from his throat so he could beg for help from his kinsmen.

  The Fomorians ignored him. They scrambled, scurrying into the trees to avoid their brethren’s fate. Closer to Kane, the owl’s senses overwhelmed Kane’s, informing him that the last member of the scouting party had reloaded his weapon and was on the charge.

  Kane let the Fifty hang on its sling, and he whipped up his confiscated assault rifle. The Fomorian growled angrily, holding down the trigger but not bothering to aim. The strategy seemed to be to cow Kane until the hunter was close enough to bludgeon the lone defending human. Kane held his ground and his fire, bullets ripping into the dirt off to his left. The impacts of the gunshots thumped the air, their heat uncomfortably close, but Kane waited until there was no way that he could miss. The Fomorian unleashed a challenging bellow, a last-ditch effort to force Kane to flinch.

  Instead, Kane stiff-armed the rifle and held down the trigger, dumping a dozen rounds through the creature’s open maw. Face and skull came apart in a bloody, chunky mist and the mutant stumbled out of control, tripping past Kane’s form. The Fomorian’s head, torn to pieces by the close-range burst, resembled the petals of a grisly flower, folded away from the gory stump of a neck.

  The urge to move flooded Kane’s mind, and the lone warrior leaped over the fallen trunk and dropped to his bottom. The slope’s slippery surface allowed Kane to skid ten yards downhill, just as a storm of Fomorian rifle bullets crackled through the night.

  “He’s moved!” a resonant, childlike voice called. “There! He’s closer to you!”

  It was Balor, his baleful eye put to use tracking Kane. From the sound of his voice, the titanic Fomorian was at least a hundred yards downslope, directing traffic. Kane felt fortunate that he was out of range of the sizzling beam that had burned through the forest after him earlier. Its range was obviously limited, beyond which the energy it projected lost its lethality, probably due to the potential for backlash or overload. Whatever the case, Kane had a cushion of safety before having to deal with Balor. Even if Kane managed to avoid the powerful optic beam of the Fomorian prince, there was still the factor of arms as thick as tree trunks and possessing monumental strength.

  “Epona,” Kane spoke aloud. Since the need for stealth had evaporated with the first exchange of gunfire, he used verbal speech as a focus for how he communicated with the Appalachian witch. “Where’s Balor and Bres?”

  “Balor’s carved a perimeter of death around his father and himself,” Epona answered. Unrestrained by having to communicate under the noses of her captors, now she was able to transmit more than just emotions. “I’m not sending any animals in closer to those two.”

  “Which will make precise targeting difficult,” Kane muttered to himself. Fox senses flashed across his consciousness once more. The Fomorian group he’d scattered were reassembling, their rifles primed and ready to chew at Kane now that Balor had told them where he was and what direction he was heading in.

  Kane shouldered the big Fifty again and put one of the mutants out of his misery, the half-inch, two-ounce bullet shearing through the Fomorian’s throat and destroying neck bones on its exit. Shreds of skin and muscle still held the head dangling from the creature’s shoulders, but the flopping head pulled him off-balance, dragging him to the ground in a grisly mess.

  So far, Kane had used up one of the ten minutes he had provided for the Cerberus computer team to save the day, and he’d accounted for five of the enemy. While that might have been good news, Epona’s forest eyes informed him that he’d barely taken care of one-tenth of the raiders’ numbers.

  Kane remembered the sheer carnage that the Silver Hand of Nadhua had wrought when it had been used against the Cerberus staff by Maccan. Brigid had explained that the Silver Hand was Nadhua’s chief weapon in war against the Fomorian hordes. The immortal warrior had Kane’s respect and envy. Respect because Nadhua had battled these beasts alone, perhaps in odds this strenuous, and envy because Kane didn’t have a high-energy force projector to supply an edge against the superior numbers and strength of the Fomorians.

  All he had were another twenty rounds of .50-caliber BMG rounds, and three magazines for an AK-47. He’d expended six of the big bullets in killing four of the creatures, and a third of an AK-47 payload in taking out the fifth. That kind of math meant that he wouldn’t have enough firepower to deal with the fifty-plus remaining mutants. If Balor proceeded closer, the faint advantage of sensory ability that Epona had given him would be taken away, making things much more difficult.

  “Lakesh, I’m being pressed too hard. The numbers aren’t with me,” Kane said. “It might be a good idea to let Thrush drop an ICBM on this mountain.”

  “We’ve already got one Kane sacrificing his existence for us,” Lakesh responded. “You adding to the carnage isn’t going to do anything for the Appalachians. The kind of firepower Thrush wants to bring to bear is going to render the rift valley running through Pennsylvania an uninhabitable wasteland, and there’s no guarantee that Enlil will let his ship sit still long enough to take a hit.”

  Kane grimaced. “That’s not g
oing to end well for Epona’s people.”

  “No, it’s not,” the witch interjected. “Even if I could reach all the animals within the blast radius, I won’t leave you behind.”

  “Kane,” Bry spoke up, “we’ve recovered control of the mat-trans. Grant and CAT B are en route.”

  Kane did the math. It’d take about five minutes before his partner would join the battle. “Did Grant bring me some gear?”

  “Of course,” Bry answered.

  “Friend Kane, we’re still trying to eject Thrush from the mainframe,” Lakesh informed him.

  Kane fired another half-inch bullet at a Fomorian. This one missed, but only because of Balor’s cry of warning to his warrior. Balor’s vision had to have been sharp enough to spot him even from a quarter of a mile away, because there was no way that the muzzle-flash would have given Balor enough time to shout an alert. That didn’t make Kane feel comfortable, even with the knowledge that he was out of the optic beam range of Balor.

  “Epona, pull back. Once Grant and the others arrive, we’re still going to have to fight these things, and they’re getting smarter the more of them I kill,” Kane answered.

  He fed another cartridge into the breech of his rifle. The old warrior cat yowled a warning, and Kane barely had enough time to dodge the slash of an AK receiver at head level. Had it not been for the cat’s alert, Kane’s head would have been cleaved from his shoulders. Kane pivoted with the five-foot-rifle and jammed its muzzle into the belly of the attacking Fomorian. A pull of the trigger and the rifle discharged into the creature’s stomach. Not only did the bullet punch through his abdominal wall, but also the flaming belch of burning powder and superheated gasses were injected into the Fomorian’s thoracic cavity. Roasted from the inside out, a puff of steam emerged from the monstrosity’s lips as he clutched his shattered belly and collapsed to his knees.

  Kane staggered away from the mortally wounded creature, but the cat meowed again. Two more of the towering monstrosities had lurched into view, rifles barking. Kane grabbed the dying Fomorian’s arm and hauled him up as a shield. The dense musculature of the patchwork mutant absorbed a volley of steel-cored rifle rounds, stopping them cold. Kane unsheathed his AK and returned fire, but the Fomorians he hammered with a burst only grunted under the onslaught.