James Axler - Reality Echo

“I’m not here to kill you. I don’t even want to seriously hurt you, because my real contention is with the errant young Sam.”

“He likes to call himself Enlil, now,” Kane corrected. He struggled to focus his eyes, but the shove of a warm, human-feeling hand left him swinging. “You want Enlil, so you do what…lure us out here to hang us up like beef?”

“The enemy of my enemy is…”

“Let me see your damn face!” Kane growled.

“Touchy, touchy,” the Thrush-thing replied. He stepped back and, finally, Kane’s vision was clear enough and focused enough for him to see that the metallic-toned voice had come from his own face. Hard, predator-sharp blue eyes glinted to match the cruel smile on the doppelganger Kane’s lips. It was identical to him, right down to the amount of scruffy beard growth on his jaw and the faint remnant of a scar on his cheek.

Outlanders ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!

—Jean Jacques Rousseau

1712–1778

On the Inequality among Mankind

The deadliest weapon I’ve ever seen used is a lie. It can crumble nations and slay hundreds without effort. Only knowledge and truth can dispel a lie’s wrongs, yet it is a battle to spread the facts, and no truth can revive those who have fallen.

—Brigid Baptiste, scholar and warrior

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

Sitting on the rock, his long legs drawn up to his chest, Grant’s hulking frame bore a passing resemblance to a large gargoyle carved from jet-black obsidian. Though Grant was silent, Brigid Baptiste could tell that the ex-Magistrate was on edge. Too often, opponents of the Cerberus warriors had mistaken the phenomenal power of the massive man’s limbs for a lack of intelligence, underestimating him at their own peril.

As a Magistrate in Cobaltville, one of the fortified baronies that rose from the wastelands of postapocalyptic America, Grant and his partner, Kane, developed the resourcefulness to deal with nearly any crisis. Grant also honed a set of observational skills that complemented Brigid’s keen intellect and Kane’s nearly preternatural instincts. That sharp mind had also made the big warrior one of the best pilots that Brigid had ever seen, adept at flying all manner of aircraft and capable of getting a damaged ship up and running with a minimum of tools.

The turmoil presently consuming Grant stemmed from the fact that Kane had been sent off on a solo quest to satisfy the Appalachian witch Epona and her cadre of mountain scouts. Grant had been opposed to such a handicap situation, but Kane conceded for the sake of diplomacy.

“Damn fool,” Grant’s deep voice grumbled, startling Brigid from her reverie.

“He can handle himself,” Brigid argued.

Grant’s dark eyes swiveled. The glare of momentary annoyance faded as he regarded her in his peripheral vision. “We all can. But I can still say this situation sucks.”

Brigid nodded in agreement. She turned back toward where Granny Epona sat with her protective cordon of mountain folk. The term “Granny” was a misnomer, as the water witch had the body of a woman in her twenties, lean and tight corded muscles beneath her protective furs and leathers. Her face, windburned to a deep tan by the cold mountaintop winds of this stretch of the Poconos in what used to be known as Pennsylvania, was relatively unlined, making any determination of her age difficult, though Brigid guessed that the woman was between forty and sixty. A breeze plucked at Epona’s black hair, tugging it aside like a curtain so that Brigid was able to see the water witch in profile.

This was the second time that Brigid had met the woman. Their first meeting was when Brigid, Kane and Grant had arrived via interphaser to negotiate for the release of a small team of Cerberus explorers who had stumbled upon the mountain folk. Initially Epona and her people had been suspicious of outlanders, but their fear of outside interference was tempered by enough reason that the Appalachians didn’t execute them on the spot. It was a reprieve from the usual first contact that the three outlanders encountered, one of cold peace, both sides afraid to trust each other but too smart to make the first hostile move. Something had changed about Epona since then, and the flame-haired former archivist couldn’t quite place it. Given her observational skills and eidetic memory, the incongruence nibbled at her, but there was nothing concrete to quantify her suspicions.