James Axler - Death Cry

The assassin, the ghost lady, scared and fascinated Cloud Singer, but the woman kept herself to herself, letting none of the tribe get close. Finally, crouching on his haunches beside the glowing laptop screen, Rock Streaming gazed at the others, waiting for everyone’s reactions. “Well?” he asked.

“A weapon that exists on a higher plane of consciousness is one that can be activated on a higher plane of consciousness, as well.” The assassin spoke from the shadows of the cave, her soft voice carrying eerily through the enclosed space.

“The assassin is right,” Bad Father said in his rumbling-thunder voice. “With this and the Dreamslicer, we could establish the new baronies and carve the world up for the original tribe.”

“But how would we take it?” Rabbit in the Moon asked.

“By force,” Neverwalk chirped, slapping a fist into his open palm.

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks to Rik Hoskin for his contribution to this work.

Even when still, your mind is not still; even when hurried, your mind is not hurried. The mind is not dragged by the body, the body is not dragged by the mind. Pay attention to the mind, not the body. Let there be neither insufficiency nor excess in your mind. Even if superficially weakhearted, be inwardly stronghearted, and do not let others see into your mind.

—Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645), The Book of Five Rings

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends. But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

It was snowing in North Dakota, though it wasn’t particularly cold. Wrapped in a light jacket over his shadow suit, Kane hunkered down beneath the snow-laden branches of a fir tree, watching two guards patrol outside the mine entrance. Kane was a tall man, built like a wolf, all muscle piled at the upper half of his body while his arms and legs were long and rangy.

He took shallow breaths, ignoring the fog that formed as he expelled them, trusting the tree cover to hide his breath as well as it hid him. He wasn’t cold. In fact, the jacket was worn more for camouflage and the convenience of extra pockets while on mission. The tight-fitting one-piece shadow suit he wore beneath served as an artificially controlled environment, regulating his body temperature. It also possessed other useful properties, most crucially acting as armor in the event of an attack. Despite this, the suit allowed for remarkable freedom of movement.

Kane turned to look behind him, sensing as much as hearing the approach of his partner. Grant, an ex-Magistrate like Kane, held his massive body low against the fluttering snow as he jogged toward Kane’s hiding place. He was a huge man, all of his bulk muscle without an inch of fat. His skin was like polished ebony, and a drooping gunslinger’s mustache brushed his top lip. Like Kane, Grant wore a white jacket over his shadow suit, camouflaged for the snow-covered landscape, with a white beanie hat pulled low over his head.

They hadn’t expected to need camouflage. When Lakesh had outlined the mission back at the Cerberus redoubt, he had made no mention of other parties being interested in the acquisition. Straight in and out, don’t let the delicate structure collapse on you as you pass through.

The delicate structure in question was a long-buried Air Force base, predating the nukecaust, in a town that had once been called Grand Forks. Close to the old Canadian border, from a time when country borders meant something, rumor had it that the base had been used as a backup data-storage facility. Now all that remained was a pile of rubble that served as firewood for the local roamers. But Mohandas Lakesh Singh, the nominal head of the Cerberus exiles, had recently stumbled upon evidence that suggested some useful data may have been stored at the Grand Forks base, data that might not have survived in other forms. A quick look-see and they’d be out, or so Lakesh had said to Kane’s three-strong survey crew.