James Axler - Death Cry

“At face value?” she asked, and Grant and Kane encouraged her to continue. “There’s a redoubt tucked away in Georgia, Russia, that’s the storage facility for a weapon so powerful that it could destroy the Annunaki once and for all.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from all parties around the table at that point, and everyone looked relieved, then increasingly uncomfortable.

“So,” Kane suggested, drawing a route with his finger over the shiny plastic table, “let’s say we mosey on over to Georgia and pick up this Chernobog device—”

Brigid stopped him. “The division is called Chernobog, a kind of statement of intent when they set it up, I guess. The weapon…Well, the best translation I can come up with is ‘the Call of Death. Death Cry.’”

Kane nodded. “So, we get ourselves this Death Cry and then what? The Annunaki have been a thorn in our sides for a long time, using it against them would send a message and potentially…potentially what?” he asked.

“Kill every last one of them,” Lakesh said solemnly.

“Assuming the information is correct and that the weapon was ever actually constructed,” Brigid added. “This is information from the people watchers, remember?”

Kane looked at Grant and, after a moment, both men smiled gravely.

“This is too good an opportunity to pass up,” Kane stated firmly.

“Seconded,” Grant added.

Lakesh and Brigid were nodding, too. “That’s what we thought when we first deciphered the report,” Lakesh admitted. “But there is another question.”

“Yeah,” Kane said, “and we all know what it is. Even if we obtain this Death Cry, do we dare pull the trigger?”

Grant rubbed his jowls thoughtfully, brushing down the edges of his mustache. “The Annunaki have pushed humanity around for at least five millennia,” he told everyone. “If there’s the slightest chance of getting rid of their lizard faces once and for all, we have to take it.”

“Yeah,” Kane agreed, “that’s pretty much the way I see it, too.”

Brigid looked at the notepad that rested before her, its pages full of notations in her tidy, precise hand, before looking back at Kane and Grant. “If only we’d had this thing when they first revealed themselves,” she said quietly.

Kane reached across the table and placed his hand over hers, looking her in the eye. “Yeah,” he said quietly, the single word holding the weight of meaning that all four adventurers felt at that moment, survivors in a seemingly unending battle against an almighty evil.

Grant clapped his hands loudly, breaking the somber mood with his wide smile. “Well, kids,” he announced, “looks like we’re going to Georgia for the holidays!”

T HE FIRST RAYS of sunlight streamed over the horizon, turning the bronze-hued metal hulls of the twin Manta aircraft into twinkling, golden stars as they cut through the skies over the Pacific.

Kane and Grant took piloting duties in their respective vehicles, and once again Brigid took the passenger seat behind Kane. He sat before her, wearing a helmet that enclosed his whole head, forged from the same strange, bronze-hued metal as the Mantas themselves. Within the helmet, a heads-up display fed Kane vast streams of detailed information concerning wind speed, air pressure and a dozen other factors that might affect the pilot’s decisions. But for the purposes of this trip, dusting the clouds as they flew west, the Mantas would pretty much fly themselves. Which suited Kane and Grant just fine, well acquainted as they were with the concept of point and shoot from their previous lives as Magistrates.

The Cerberus field teams had been to Russia before, had encountered their local equivalent known as District Twelve. But for the purposes of this mission, Lakesh had agreed that keeping a low profile was for the best. If this Death Cry superweapon turned out to be a dud, bogus surveillance information or a theoretical project that never got off the drawing board, Kane’s team could potentially look very foolish to their Russian contemporaries. And, by contrast, if this Death Cry really did exist, there was no question that District Twelve would stake a claim on it, despite the actual discovery work being the province of the Cerberus people.

“We’ll take the Mantas in low,” Kane had proposed before they set off, “fly in via China and sweep up toward the location so we don’t spend too much time in Russian airspace. Chances are good they won’t spot us, and they’d expect us to come at them via the Atlantic route anyhow.”

Now, having passed his eyes across the various readouts to make sure that things remained steady, Kane tilted his head back and spoke with Brigid. “Any idea what this place is like?” he asked.

Brigid had been checking through the notes she had made the day before, refamiliarizing herself with everything she had uncovered. She glanced up at Kane, at the strange bronze helmet propped atop his neck, and watched as rain-heavy black clouds zipped past through the exterior view port. “The coordinates place the redoubt in the Caucasus Mountains, about seventy clicks from the Black Sea,” she replied. “A temperate area, the closest big settlement on the old maps would be Pyatigorsk, but satellite pictures show that’s long since gone.”

“Huh,” Kane grunted. “Probably bombed back to the Stone Age like most everything else during the nukecaust.”

“The state of Georgia was about as far west as you could go in the old Soviet Union,” Brigid continued. “It was actually one of the last states to be incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, remaining a semi-independent satellite district for the first twenty years of rule by the Communist Party.”

“That’s pretty strange,” Kane said thoughtfully. “Constructing a doomsday device outside your borders.”

Brigid shook her head, even though she knew that Kane couldn’t turn to see her while he wore the bulky helmet. “Not that unusual really,” she explained. “There are political benefits to keeping the really nasty stuff out of your own country, especially in a climate of worldwide hostility. The U.S.A. and other countries used similar tactics, storing nuclear missiles and the like in territories that were sympathetic to their political ideology rather than inside their own borders. Makes it less easy to get caught, and if you do, your government can simply deny all knowledge.”

“Ah,” Kane responded. “You’re talking that diplomacy speak again, Baptiste.”

Kane scanned the heads-up displays for half a minute before continuing. “It’s funny,” he told his flight companion, “I never gave much thought to the location of the Cerberus redoubt up to now. It’s kind of interesting that the military brass stuck the crucial development arm of their mat-trans system close to the border between the U.S. and Canada. Guess they didn’t want it too close to Washington, just in case something went askew.”

“Yup,” Brigid agreed, “there was certainly a time when the mat-trans was new—and potentially unstable—technology. Lakesh could tell you more about how things were in those days.”

“I’m sure he could.” Kane nodded. “So right now we’ve left one out-of-the-way mountain installation to go visit another.”

“That’s about the size of it,” she confirmed. “You were hoping for something else?”

Kane sighed. “Just once,” he told her, “I’d like to get a nice mission in the sun somewhere. You know, grab a few rays, maybe a spot of surfing, some fishing, build a sand castle.”

“The last time we tried that, I wound up a hostage for pirates in the Florida Keys,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, but at least you got to work on your tan,” Kane grumbled.