James Axler - Shadow Born

Fortunately, the shadow suits were environmentally sealed when all pieces were in place. Usually, they could be hooked to a portable air supply, but they could also filter out environmental toxins for a good amount of time. The suits’ polymers would protect from impacts, intense heat or biting cold. But the truth was, even the non-Newtonian reactions of the suits couldn’t hold off a point-blank rifle shot and would provide only a few seconds of protection from searing lava. There was a difference between heat that could induce heat stroke and the incredible temperatures of rock that flowed as freely as a mudslide. In fact, Grant even doubted that the shadow suit would do anything to lessen the liquefying heat inside. It had taken them two hours out of their way to get to the replacement garments via interphaser rendezvous, but the thickness of the sulfur and steam made them fully aware of how smart it had been.

Also, all six members of this expedition remembered having to navigate through nearly impossible, darkened necropolis with either flashlights or the advanced optics. The team’s equipment was further enhanced by the addition of headset radios for Lyta, Nathan and Thurpa, hands-free communications that put them much more easily in contact with the Commtact-equipped Kane, Grant and Brigid.

Better vision and better “ears” would give the team a distinct advantage in the near future. They had been only limping along in that deadly encounter, and if there was one thing about the Cerberus explorers and those who had proved brave and resourceful enough to side with them, it was that they could all learn from their mistakes.

“We’ll be fine in the back here,” Kane said, knocking on the roof, even though they could easily hear him over their communications network. “The suits should be able to filter out any noxious fumes. Think that will have any effect on the engine, Baptiste?”

Brigid looked back through the rear window. “Will the smoke have any effect on a standard Toyota internal combustion engine?”

Kane nodded. “It won’t, right?”

“No, the smoke won’t harm the engine,” Brigid replied. “I’m more concerned about spraying bits of lava. If one lands in or on the truck, it’s likely to burn through the chassis, or it’ll burn our suits if it lands on us.”

Grant scanned the terrain ahead, matching it up to the map, which was quickly becoming more and more obsolete as he observed it. He threw the truck into a lower gear, revved the engine and pushed forward. There was no warning as he advanced, but none of the rest of his group expressed dismay at the sudden lurch of the vehicle. One way or another, they had to make their first move onto the plain.

The truck rocked as a chunk of the “cooled” obsidian glass crumpled under one of the tires, and Grant put everything into the brake. Kane swiftly leaped from the cab and padded cautiously forward.

“It’s a hollow tube,” Kane announced over their communications network. “It looks about five feet deep, and we cracked through what must have been a thin spot.”

“How thin?” Grant asked.

Kane knelt and looked at the tire. “Looks like it was an inch at the edges of the break.”

“The tire?” Grant pressed.

“No cuts that I can see,” Kane offered.

Grant put the truck in Reverse and backed from the hole he’d inadvertently punched.

“Things aren’t going to be easy, are they?” Grant murmured.

“If they were, we wouldn’t be paid the big money,” Brigid answered.

“You get paid?” Grant remarked.

Brigid elbowed him in the biceps.

Grant tried to remember the “look” of the tunnel on infrared so he could avoid such thin spots in the near future. One thing that the big, cooled flows of obsidian provided was a fairly unbroken, if somewhat slick and uneven, terrain that wasn’t through the middle of lava.

“You’ll want to head forward by five meters, then hang a left to return to our course,” Brigid directed.

Grant nodded, glad to have the woman’s eidetic memory to rely upon. He followed her directions, and Kane popped over the top of the cab, firing a single shot into the ground before them. As soon as the bullet struck the obsidian glass, it burst like a bubble, producing a circular gap, dropping down into another lava tube. This was dark and empty, thankfully, but the shattered surface now had a hole three feet in diameter. The pickup could span it, but Grant looked at what each side of the truck would be rolling through. The last thing he needed was to drop and crash through the hole and break an axle, but he also didn’t need to put the tires on anything less than sure ground. He hit the optic zoom, switching from infrared to see if there was any sand or other particulate that could compromise their traction.

“Okay, that’s going to be bad,” Nathan spoke up over the line.

Grant glanced to the bed of the truck. “What?”

“I’m picking up something flying,” the young man from Harare said. “Bat-like shapes are the best I can make out through the smoke and from this distance. No way to gauge their size.”

“Bat-like,” Grant repeated. He tromped the gas and shot toward the small hole before them, gritting his teeth and hoping that the lava tube around the burst bubble could hold them. If it didn’t, then he hoped that the sheer speed of the pickup could keep them from getting stuck.

The obsidian beneath the truck’s tires held, and the pickup didn’t suddenly lurch as its two tons of weight cracked into the lava tube beneath them.

Good—they were back toward a plateau of solid rock, not solidified and cooled lava, and Grant hit the brakes before he got too close to the edge. He glanced back. “Kane, any updates?”

“Kane?” Grant repeated, his concern evident in his tone.

“They’re Kongs!” Thurpa shouted. “Kane’s gone bye-bye!”

Grant looked back into the bed, seeing his friend sitting ramrod still and staring straight ahead.

“Bad enough we’ve got those goddamn terror-dactyls, but Neekra’s attacking him now,” Grant growled.

Brigid whirled and saw Thurpa lunge back toward Kane, who lifted his gun, aiming it toward them at the pickup’s cab.

Chaos erupted, just as gouts of steam burst through sections of lava tubes weakened by the truck’s passage.

Chapter 5

Thurpa’s statement that Kane had gone “bye-bye” was hardly a complete diagnosis of the current mental and physical state of the former Cobaltville Magistrate. However, even as Kane watched his right arm rising, the Sin Eater snapped to extension into his palm, a hydraulically launched weapon that turned a simple pointing motion into a death sentence in most cases, he had to agree someone outside of his skull would get the same impression.

He even could hear Grant’s grumbling over the Commtact as Thurpa lunged, pushing Kane’s hand up and away from his two friends, the youth pitting his personal strength against the possessed Magistrate.

Kane could feel the struggle but only through a numb, dense filter. His psyche had been partially dislodged from his body, allowing his telepathic opponents to move into his limbs.

Kane had to assume that it was multiple opponents because he could “feel” and “see” two entities, though it could have been just his mind trying to make sense of what was going on. Tendrils wound around him, snakelike tentacles of darkness seizing his limbs, squeezing his chest. Even as he was grasped by the alien thoughts, he was reminded of the quicksilver monstrosity that had been the living navigation chair that he, Brigid and Grant hunted down in the swamps of Louisiana. The horror took that form, and now he could understand the horror that Brigid had been subjected to as he twisted, pulled, fought to escape the sticky, clutching tendrils.