Reality Echo (20 page)

Grant grimaced. “Edwards, help me tie this thing up solidly. Brigid, Domi, get to the command center and see what the situation is with the mainframe. Sela, head to the cafeteria and bring back Philboyd and whoever the hell else knows about computer programming. We’re going to need our best brains on this.”

The lights came on throughout the redoubt, but that didn’t stop the Cerberus Away Team members from setting about their tasks with grim, desperate urgency.

Colonel Thrush had just gone from disguised cyborg
juggernaut to a ghost in the machine. And this ghost had a known history of brutal, deadly murder.

T
HRUSH
-K
ANE HAD
to give credit to the feral albino woman and the soldier jocks of Cerberus. They had enough imagination to realize that the still weapon before them was a time bomb waiting to go off. He had shut down his skeleton’s control apparatus in order to conserve the resources of his plasma matrix, realizing that he had to work quickly if he was going to have a chance to launch an assault on Enlil. And he hadn’t completely uploaded his consciousness into the mainframe as they had assumed, but he still was operating within the cyberspace landscape of the powerful system.

He had accessed dozens of hard drives within the base, pulling information off them with skill. Thrush-Kane needed to gather whatever data was relevant to the hunt for Enlil and the surviving Annunaki. It wouldn’t be enough just to kill the wayward Thrush entity. Enlil had usurped the pandimensional android’s identity, using the body and mind for his own purposes while Enlil’s true form remained as a mummified corpse, kept on ghoulish display in the Manitius lunar base. The irony of usurped identity was not lost on the infiltrator as it realized that he had not only taken over Kane’s place, but had also taken command of the redoubt that was his hated pawn’s home.

The mammals who meddled in Thrush’s affairs were only a secondary source of irritation, however. The true
goal of this penetration was to locate Enlil and do his best to unleash vengeance.

Thankfully, Lakesh and Bry had done much to restore the satellite network of surveillance that hung in orbit around the devastated Earth. With those powerful eyes in the sky peering down on a nuke-blasted world, the humans of Cerberus had a means of searching the globe for anomalies that were indicative of threats like the Annunaki and other menaces. Thrush-Kane ran over the records of the base and discovered a few instances of Annunaki drop-ship sightings, faint streaks of light as the high-tech, silvery disks slashed through the atmosphere at high speed. While Bry and other computer operators were working on code to bring such stratospheric, ultrasonic disturbances to the humans’ attention, Thrush-Kane had no such limitations in regards to worldwide surveillance. Now that he had plugged into the mainframe, he was able to see the whole of the Earth’s toposphere all at once.

It was good to have a brain that had exponentially more perceptive ability than even a group of humans. With millions of square miles of the Earth’s surface visible at once, and a reference for what the passage of an Annunaki ship looked like, Thrush-Kane was able to scour the globe with ease. Minutiae that would have been missed by the human eye or a wandering attention span didn’t escape the notice of the powerful plasma matrix brain as it piggybacked the Cerberus mainframe.

The Earth spun beneath his eyes, and in a manner of
minutes, he picked up a streak of silver slash in the blue sky, heading toward the Poconos.

Thrush-Kane would have doubled over with laughter if he was still using his body. All this effort to scour the planet, and Enlil had a scout ship hurtling toward Bres and the Fomorians in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

“Ah, Kane, it looks as if we won’t need to use you as our backup plan for revenge on the Dragon King,” Thrush-Kane said. “The bastard is coming right to you.”

The infiltrator scanned through the Cerberus computer system, looking for weaponry that could be accessed from the mainframe. He found nothing in the redoubt itself. Its armory was meant for equipment utilized by humans, not over the AARPA net. Thrush-Kane grimaced in disgust that Lakesh hadn’t bothered to directly hack into an old Air Force silo to keep a nuclear missile or two in reserve. That kind of firepower would have been sufficient to purge Enlil and his reptilian kin from the Earth.

So what if a little more radiation and fallout was released into the atmosphere? Entire tracts of the world had been wasted by a convulsion of atomic violence, and humanity and other life-forms had returned and recovered from such environmental atrocity.

A couple more nuclear explosions wouldn’t affect the landscape.

“Fair enough,” Thrush-Kane grumbled. He looked for external links to other redoubts across the country. Surely one of them would be connected to a nuclear
weapons stockpile. There were hundreds of sites to go through, and for a normal man to get involved, it would have taken hours. The plasma matrix, in conjunction with the Cerberus mainframe, found what it needed within a minute.

It was a silo complex with six Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, each of them carrying seven submunition warheads. Those warheads each carried a 2.5 megaton yield, and could bring annihilation to multiple cities with one launch or carve a crater out of the Earth’s crust with a focused salvo of detonations. Poring through the system, Thrush-Kane discovered that only three of them were in working order, avoiding fuel leaks over the two centuries of inactivity, or their electronics systems remaining intact.

Twenty-one warheads, capable of unleashing the equivalent of 150,000 tons of TNT, were now at Thrush-Kane’s disposal. He reached out to the ICBMs, already calculating the trajectory that would deposit them right on top of Enlil, Kane and Bres.

“Fifty megatons per irritant is a sufficient bit of scratching, no?” Thrush-Kane asked himself.

The ICBMs didn’t respond to him. Thrush-Kane reached out again, but a wall of black ice slid into place between him and the control module.

“Let me guess…Bry and Lakesh managed to jump-start the mainframe?” Thrush-Kane mused aloud.

“This has gone far enough.” Kane’s voice cut through the void of cyberspace.

If Thrush still had a face, it would have been twisted in confusion. “You’re an impersonation protocol. A tool. A puppet at my command.”

“Kane is never going to be anyone’s puppet,” the memory construct said as it floated in front of the infiltrator. “You want to go after Enlil, wake our body up, snap the chains binding us and steal a Manta to go after him.”

Thrush chuckled. “This is easier.”

“It’s sloppier. It’ll pump thousands of tons of fallout into the atmosphere, and anyone not killed by the initial blast will be poisoned. Pennsylvania will become a dead zone,” Kane warned.

Thrush grabbed at the Kane construct, attempting to seize the artificial intelligence model. Kane, on the other hand, grabbed at the figurative wrists of the Thrush cyber-entity, holding it at bay.

“This is insane. We came here to destroy Enlil at any cost!” Thrush demanded.

Kane shook his head. “You made me too perfectly in his image. I might just be a shadow, but I still know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“Damn you!” Thrush cursed, struggling with the digital counterpart of Kane.

On the edge of cyberspace, just outside of the command console for 150 megatons of nuclear death, two electronic entities battled with all of their power.

The Appalachians

It had taken considerable effort to wrench the AK-47 from the chest of Cilain, the Fomorian stand-in for Granny Epona. Kane made certain that the barrel was unobstructed and checked his supply of ammunition for the weapon. He had three and a half 30-round magazines, which wouldn’t be much of a deterrent with a few dozen Fomorian hunters similarly armed.

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.