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“Because there’s a parallax point at that location,” Mariah explained, “or at least very close to it.”
Still holding the printed-out sheet of data, Lakesh stroked his chin sagely. “That is certainly a worry.” Although Cerberus had originally been dedicated to the use of the man-made mat-trans network, in recent years Lakesh had helped construct the interphaser, which tapped into the ancient parallax-points system to enable instantaneous travel across the globe. Changes at the location points were not unheard of, but changes on a geological level could mean something more significant was occurring there. “Could you explain to me what a sinkhole is?” he asked.
Mariah smiled her sweet smile, comfortable at last to be able to discuss something within her specific realm of expertise. “Sinkholes are depressions in the ground caused by a collapse of the surface layer,” she explained. “This can be through human activity—such as mining. Or it may occur through natural changes to the environment, as with suffusion where a buried cave may be revealed due to problems relating to water drainage, for example—the water weakens the rocks over the cave until they collapse, revealing the cave beneath.”
“And how large might such a sinkhole be?” Lakesh asked.
“They have occurred at sizes from a couple of feet to over two thousand feet wide,” Mariah told him, “and with the same depth variables.”
“So this thing in Libya,” Lakesh mused, raising his eyebrows in surprise, “might be two thousand feet deep?”
“The data shows it’s significant,” Mariah said, “which is to say it’s deep, but we’d need to put someone on the ground to measure that with any level of accuracy.”
Lakesh nodded thoughtfully. “The parallax points frequently occur at sites of specific religious significance,” he said, “but they have become so because of their earlier purpose as sites used in alien transportation. If a sinkhole has opened a path into one of those sites, then...” He trailed off, but his meaning was clear enough.
“Precisely,” Mariah agreed.
Lakesh turned to a man stationed at a nearby desk who was currently poring through screen after screen of computer language, checking each line for a bug in the program. The man had ginger hair that was wild and tangled in front, where he kept unconsciously running his fingers through it, and he wore a permanent expression of worry on his face. This was Donald Bry, computer expert and Lakesh’s right-hand man.
“Donald,” Lakesh began, “how soon can we scramble CAT Alpha for a recon mission?”
“CAT Alpha,” Bry repeated, looking away in recollection. “They’re all on-site right now, Dr. Singh. Brigid’s fully recovered from her ankle injury, so they should be able to depart inside of ninety minutes.”
“Call them,” Lakesh said. “I’m going to plot out alternative parallax points in case our preferred destination has—” He stopped, unsure what to say.
“Sunk?” Mariah offered.
“Yes, sunk,” Lakesh agreed with a smile. “That’s very good, Mariah. A sense of humor; I like that. Sunk.”
Mariah followed Lakesh to the mat-trans chamber located in one corner of the room, from which he could activate the interphaser and do a run-through of the parallax points.
* * *
KANE HAD BEEN PRACTICING in the Cerberus firing range when the call came through. The range was located in a subbasement, close to the armory, which stocked multiple units of almost every firearm available, from single-shot .22-caliber Derringer pistols to surface-to-air Dragon Launchers capable of taking an aircraft out of the sky. He had a Colt Officer’s ACP in his right hand, a compact and lightweight automatic pistol with an aluminum frame, which still handled large-caliber bullets granting it respectable capability for its size. It was a good weapon to use for practice, even though it was not one that Kane would choose for the field.
Before him, three drop-down targets came into view, paper sheets, each showing a life-size, faceless silhouette like a shadow, each silhouette containing a diagram of circles showing particular vulnerable points, head, heart and so on. The targets appeared at random, between sixty and one hundred feet from where Kane was standing at one end of the firing range, and they cycled toward him on an automated track located on a rig above the firing field. Music was playing from large speakers rigged high against the walls, the booming bass and heavy guitars muffling the loud reports of the Colt as it spit bullets from its muzzle.
Kane stroked the trigger as the next set of targets appeared, moving his perfectly straight arm in a swift arc to deliver two bullets to each target as they were winched along their tracks toward him. As the targets trundled closer, wounds now showing in their heads and hearts, Kane worked the ammunition release on the Colt. In an instant he had loaded a fresh clip and switched the Colt into his left hand, before bringing that arm up and sending another rapid arc of bullets into the looming targets, the closest of which was now thirty feet from him.
Kane relaxed as the second clip clicked on empty, watching as the paper targets completed their wobbling path toward the near end of the range. He smiled as he saw the results of his efforts—he had hit all twelve times, scoring the center ring of the target with ten of the twelve shots. His right hand was dominant and so he had little doubt that he could hit the targets with that—he had been trained as a Magistrate since birth, combination law enforcer and soldier whose sole purpose was to efficiently operate the weapons he was assigned—and to be a weapon himself. But his left was also strong, not quite as fast, nor as accurate, but enough that he could take out a target at forty feet without going wide.
Kane removed the target sheets from their fastenings and tossed them behind him, adding them to the piled-high trash can that was located beneath one of the roaring speakers. Then he flipped a switch located at the side of his booth which sent the command to restart the session, providing clean new targets with which to hone his prowess. When it came to using guns, there was no such thing as too accurate, Kane knew.
As the first of the new targets dropped down, a device called a Commtact came to life inside Kane’s skull, sending a radio communication message directly into his inner ear. “Kane, this is Donald,” the voice in Kane’s head said, drowning out the prerecorded wail of guitars. “Do you think you can prep for a recon mission setting off in the next ninety minutes?”
“Roger that,” Kane acknowledged, squeezing the Colt’s trigger and sending bullet after bullet into the silhouetted skull of his would-be opponent. The Commtact was a remarkable communications device that Kane and his fellow Cerberus field operatives relied upon for global communications. The Commtact was a small, radio communications device that was hidden beneath the skin. The subdermal devices were top-of-the-line communications units, the designs for which had been discovered among the artifacts in Redoubt Yankee several years before by the Cerberus rebels. Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was subcutaneously embedded in a subject’s mastoid bone. As well as offering radio communications, the Commtacts could function as translation devices, operating in real time. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were funneled directly to the user’s auditory canals through the skull casing, vibrating the ear canal to create sound. This functionality also meant that the Commtacts could pick up and enhance any subvocalization made by the user, which meant that it was unnecessary to speak aloud to utilize the communication function. Broadcasts from the unit were relayed through the Keyhole communications satellite to anywhere in the world.
Thanks to the nature of the vibration system used by the Commtact, if a user went completely deaf they would still, in theory, be able to hear normally, in a fashion, courtesy of the Commtact device.
“Where to?” Kane asked as he finished the clip.
“Mat-trans chamber for departure to Libya,” Donald confirmed before signing off.
“Great,” Kane said, delivering the last bullet of his clip into the silhouetted head of one of the targets.
* * *
CAT ALPHA ASSEMBLED fifty minutes later in the Cerberus operations room. Kane was joined by his two partners, Grant and Brigid. All three were being outfitted for the operation while Lakesh and Mariah outlined her discovery and what they would be looking for.
“Big hole in the ground,” Kane said, nodding. “I think we’re capable of spotting that. Y’know, if we look real hard.”
Lakesh ignored the man’s sarcasm. “If this sinkhole has disrupted the parallax point, then your arrival may not be possible,” he said. “I suggest you travel prepared.”
Grant shrugged, broad shoulders shifting like an avalanche. “We always travel prepared, Lakesh,” he said. “Just part o’ the job.”
“It may be that the floor has dropped out from under the parallax point itself,” Mariah outlined, “or that the materialization point is surrounded by damaged terrain such that we are unable to investigate further.”
Kane raised an eyebrow. “We, Mariah?”
“Ms. Falk will be joining you, friend Kane,” Lakesh confirmed. “I want an expert on-site in case we only get one chance to look at what’s happened.”
Kane considered bemoaning having to chaperone a civilian, but he said nothing out loud. He liked Mariah; she was trustworthy and dependable, the kind of operative who formed the backbone of the Cerberus team. Instead he said, “We might be better looking on our own for a first visit.”
“As I say, Kane, I want Mariah with you in case this is your only visit,” Lakesh said. “If there’s any sign of danger, I am certain that you will handle it and get her, and your team, out of there.”
Kane nodded. “Yeah.” It was all part of the mission.
Grant checked his Copperhead assault rifle, securing the ammo clip before slipping it into the holster rig under his jacket. “Are you bringing a gun, Mariah?” he asked, his voice a deep rumble like distant thunder.
Falk shook her head.
“Then stay behind us.”
Together, Kane, Grant, Brigid and Mariah entered the mat-trans chamber, outfitted in camo suits to better blend with the terrain they were about to leap into. The interphaser was waiting in the center of the chamber, already powered up and ready to start the jump. Lakesh spoke from the doorway as the field team made their way into the chamber.
“I’ve taken the liberty of tapping several nearby parallax points in case your destination proves disagreeable,” he explained. “They are highlighted on the screen—you just need to select one of these alternates as required and the interphaser will begin its jump cycle.”
“Thanks, Lakesh,” Brigid said, running her eyes across the narrow horizontal strip of screen that was located at the base of the pyramidal unit. “Do you know what we’re jumping into?” she asked.
“The area’s called the Bir Hakeim Oasis,” Lakesh said. “It’s in a desert and was once the site of a strategic stronghold for the Turkish military, and it was the location of a bloody battle during World War II.”
“And what’s there now?” Kane asked.
Lakesh smiled. “You can tell me that, friend Kane, in about two minutes.”
With that, Lakesh left the chamber and Brigid activated the interphaser. A swirling tempest of color blossomed from the interphaser, forming two cones of light with the mat-trans chamber, one above the deck and the other, somehow, beneath it. A moment later, Kane led the way into those impossible depths, stepping into the quantum window and onward to a ruined fort in the Libyan desert.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_df76978f-22a4-596b-aa14-aa6b3ffc5974)
Kane ducked back behind the pillar, pressing himself and Mariah against it as another jarring scatter of bullets rattled against its edge.
“You okay?” he asked, watching the scene playing out all around them.
“Fine,” Mariah said, her voice high and breathless. “What about you? That bullet—”
“Shadow suit,” Kane said by way of explanation.
Although she didn’t consider herself a field agent, Mariah knew what Kane meant. While Kane might be sporting a bruise for the next few days where the bullet had struck against his arm in a hammer blow, it was a preferable alternative to what would have happened had he not been wearing the miraculous armor weave.
Kane remained tense, watching as the two armies—if indeed it was only two, it was hard to tell—exchanged fire, striking down unfortunate soldiers in sudden spills of red blood. It looked a lot like chaos, but then, in Kane’s experience, when it came down to it most ground wars did. “They’re not moving in unison,” he muttered, making a conscious effort to focus on a specific group—platoon or squadron, maybe?—who were all dressed in similar dirty white robes.
“What?” Mariah asked, confused and feeling woefully out of her depth.
Kane ignored her query, instead engaging his Commtact and hailing his partners, who had taken cover less than twenty feet away. “They’re not moving in unison, have you noticed?” he asked.
Brigid’s voice came back first, the confusion evident. She was crouched on her haunches beside a mangled column of stonework whose top had been sheared through as if bitten away by some gigantic monster, trying to piece the broken interphaser unit back together. “They’re not what?” she asked.
“Moving,” Kane said, “in unison. They’re shooting and they’re kind of moving forward in one direction, but there’s no strategy between the players.”
“Inexperienced, maybe?” Grant asked, chipping in on their shared frequency. He was standing close to Brigid’s hiding place, his shoulder pressed to another of the mangled stone columns, using a scope to watch the turret gun that had been set up on the upper level of the aged fort.
“Inexperienced could be it,” Kane agreed doubtfully, “but usually that brings out two styles of fighting—the gung ho who gets shot the moment he breaks cover and—”
Boom!
A shell struck near the cluster of ruined pillars, kicking up dirt and curtailing Kane’s speech for a moment.
“And?” Brigid prompted, glancing up from her work on the busted interphaser to make sure Kane was okay.
“And the coward,” Kane averred, “who hangs back and lets the others get shot. But I’m not really seeing those patterns, are you?”
“Uh-uh,” Grant confirmed after a few seconds’ observation of the running battle. “You might be onto something.” He brought the scope away from his eye, glancing across at Kane. “I don’t think the tripod cannon’s choosing targets. Its operators are firing wild.”
Kane nodded, considering what Grant had said. It wasn’t unusual for rookies to get behind a big cannon like that and shoot wild, figuring that something with such destructive power would just seek out and obliterate any target. But it was a fool’s game operating it like that—you went through ammo much quicker than you went through targets, and could often be caught with your metaphorical pants down when an armed enemy came close. Which wasn’t to underestimate the sheer destructive power of the cannon itself—CAT Alpha would do well to take it out of action if they wanted to survive the mess they had walked into.
“Think you can take out the cannon?” Kane asked Grant over the Commtact.
Grant smiled. “It would be my pleasure,” he said, edging out from behind the protective pillar.
“I’ll cover you,” Kane promised, stroking the Sin Eater pistol already clutched in his hand, “and keep an eye on the girls here.”
Sharing the Commtact frequency, Brigid glared at Kane with an annoyed “Hey!” before turning her attention back to her work.
* * *
GRANT WOVE OUT INTO the melee, ducking his head and scrambling as bullets zipped through the air less than a dozen feet away. His shadow suit and Kevlar coat would give him some protection, but it didn’t pay to get slack in a battle zone like this.
Grant ran, muscles moving with the fluidity of a jungle cat, hurrying across the sand-covered ground in short, fast bursts, using every hunk of broken stone and every fallen body as cover while he constantly updated his best route to the tripod cannon. The cannon was located on a second-story balustrade, its two young operators feeding a belt of bullets into its side as they swung the nose back and forth on its counterweights. Grant estimated that the cannon spit its 24 mm slugs at a rate of three or four per second, kicking up dirt and striking down the occasional solider too dumb or rattled to get out of its path in time. The army was moving away from the fort, so targets were becoming more spread out.
Grant crouched behind a truncated pillar resting on its side in pieces, searching the second story for a way up. The level was broken haphazardly, great chunks of the walkway missing. Can’t have made it easy to get that beast up there, Grant thought dourly.
A flight of steps caught his attention, winding up behind a masking wall and leading to the upper level of the ancient fort. It was open ground between Grant and the steps, just twenty feet but more than enough to take a bullet and end it all.
Grant glanced around, scouring the combat zone as a group of bloodstained soldiers came rushing past in a flurry of bullets. As Grant watched, one of the soldiers—little more than a kid, skinny and narrow shouldered, wearing camos stained with sweat and dirt—took a bullet to the back from the tripod cannon and went down on his knees, his face slamming into the dirt a moment later. His colleagues shouted something incomprehensible, shooting back at the cannon and all around them in a wild assault before vacating the area.
Suddenly, the cannon stopped firing, and the whole scene was beset with an eerie moment of calm amid the carnage. Grant took that moment to run, ducking low and keeping his head down, closing the twenty-foot gap between his hiding place and the stairwell that led to the second story.
* * *
FROM HIS OWN hiding place, Kane watched Grant make a run for it in the momentary quiet between cannon blasts. Come on, Grant, he mouthed, his eyes scouring the terrain all around his partner for any signs of a hidden ambush.
For a moment it looked as though Grant’s path would remain clear. Then, with no warning, a figure emerged from the shadows of a toppled pillar, holding an AK-47 rifle with a wide bandage wrapped low over his forehead. He had Grant in his sights, Kane could tell. Kane gently let out the breath he was holding, squeezing the trigger of his Sin Eater on the exhale.
* * *
GRANT WAS ALMOST at the stairwell entry when the soldier came bungling out from the shadow of a pillar. The man looked unsteady on his feet, and he was dressed in dirty fatigues with the brutal tool of an AK-47 clutched in his hands. There was something else, too, that Grant registered in the first instant he saw the man—he was wearing a white bandage across the top of his head, and the bandage came down to the level of his nostrils, entirely covering his eyes.
“What th—?” Grant asked even as the stranger turned his AK-47 on him.
Before he could fire, however, the bandaged soldier dropped to the ground, the distinctive recoil of a Sin Eater being discharged echoing amid the chaos of battle, a bloom of ghastly red materializing on the man’s fatigues where they covered his chest.
Kane!
Grant kept running. He would thank his partner later; right now he needed to get himself behind that wall and up those stairs to knock out the cannon that had already recommenced its incessant song of destruction from above him.
An instant later Grant was past the stone arch of the doorway and scrambling, blaster in hand, up the steep steps that led to the fort’s second level.
The archway was made from sand-colored stone, as were the steps. As Grant stepped into the shadows, he felt the heat of the burning sun on his face drop away, a relief of sudden coolness from the shade. In that instant, however, he was momentarily blind, his vision flickering in extremes of green as it tried to adjust after the brilliance of the direct sunlight. He took a moment, just a moment, to blink back his sun blindness, taking a pace forward onto the first stone step. The staircase curved around, winding up on itself as it ascended to the second story.
Two more steps and his vision was still restricted by the aftereffects of the sun...and Grant was in the sights of an attacker. He felt the movement of the breeze as the man stepped forward, lunging downward with the long blade of the knife he held, driving it toward Grant’s face.
Grant reared back, sweeping his left arm up to knock the blade aside by instinct alone. He still couldn’t see, not fully, his eyes rendering the figure attacking him from the shadows as a kind of dark blur of limbs and torso.
The man—and it was a man—spit something in a tongue Grant didn’t recognize. His Commtact tried to translate, came up with a phrase that was doubtless a curse, but sounded somehow ludicrous to his ears.
“Goat of a mother!”
But with the insult came something else—a gunshot, loud in the confines of the stone stairwell, the blast accompanied by the acrid smell of cordite. Something raced past Grant in that instant, and he heard the wall behind him give up a chunk of rock with a sound like walking on gravel.
Grant did not hesitate. Even through the retreating green mire of his eyesight, he brought his Sin Eater to bear, blasting his opponent in the left kneecap, hobbling the guy in an instant.
Grant’s attacker cried out in sudden shock and pain, stumbling forward, losing his balance on the steps above Grant. His blaster—a handheld pistol of unknown manufacture—spit again, sending a 9 mm slug at Grant in a roar of explosive propellant. The bullet struck Grant in the same instant, slamming high on his left biceps before reeling away with the impact. Grant grunted, stumbling against the wall to his right. It had been a glancing blow, clipping him below the shoulder with a lot of force but no penetration—his double layer of Kevlar and shadow suit had ensured that. But it still stung like something out of a blacksmith’s forge.
Grant raised his pistol and blasted again, sending a second shot into his opponent—now visible as the green wash across his vision retreated to a handful of spots when he blinked. The man was unshaved with an unruly mop of dark, curly hair held in place with a olive-green cap. His uniform—if you could call it that—was too tight across the chest and too large in the pants, and it looked as if it had been sewn together from scraps, albeit in a way that made for effective camouflage.
Grant stepped aside as his attacker sunk down the steps, blood seeping from his open mouth. Dead.
* * *
