James Axler - Shadow Born

Kane clapped him on the shoulder, shook his head.

“We’re moving too fast. You’ll waste ammunition!” he shouted over the roar of engines and crunching dirt kicked up by the pickup’s tires.

Thurpa glanced back and heard the crackle of enemy weapons, but there was no sign of near impact. He was trained well enough to keep his finger far from the trigger, making certain he didn’t inadvertently send a bullet out of his rifle. Considering the amount of jostling and physics at work in the bed of the pickup, he realized the wisdom of Kane’s admonition. One bad bounce or rut in the ground, and a shot intended for one of the enemy militia could go into an ally.

They needed to rely on Grant’s driving skills to make it out of this alive.

“When we slow down, then we shoot,” Kane added.

Thurpa looked to Nathan and Lyta. He tried not to spend too long looking at the young Zambian woman, though she was pretty. Again, he was thrown back to when he discovered that he was a clone of the Nagah prince Durga. He’d learned from Kane, Grant and Brigid that his “father” had played upon racial purity differences among the Nagah to assemble for himself a die-hard crew, an army who would give him the strength behind his uprising.

Of course, that race-baiting, those who had been “born cobra” or had been false Nagah having been converted by the Cobra baths, was simply a means of pecking and splintering the society of the underground city of Garuda. The underground city was home to humans, “natives” and pilgrims who undertook the change in a nanotech machine bath, and as in any society with a great deal of immigrant influx, there had been the disenfranchised who felt as if they were owed something, either by their “birthright” or simply because they had toiled hard to cross dangerous borders and frontiers. As such, Durga had a means of destabilizing an otherwise rock-solid representative republic monarchy.

Blaming “the other” was one of the oldest means of gaining personal power, even with a government in which the will of the people was able to overrule and defy royal decree. Hatred was at once a means of consolidating groups and eroding the fabric of a society. Thurpa heard about the rifts within Nagah society still existing as open wounds since Durga’s expulsion from the city.

The thought of Durga’s nurturance of bigotry reminded Thurpa of how much he wasn’t a product of his father’s mind. He was attracted to a young human, one who didn’t resemble an Indian. The African Lyta was as exotic as he could imagine. She had stated that her heart was off limits because of the loss of her fiancé, but he wanted nothing more than to protect her.

Thankfully, the pickup truck was staying far ahead of their enemies, bullets zipping far and wide, missing the Cerberus exiles and their allies. Thurpa’s patience started to grow short at being a “sitting target,” unable to do something to stop their pursuit. He could see that bit of warrior pride in his father, the willingness to dive head-to-head with an enemy, no matter the odds.

Kane’s hand clapped his shoulder again. “Get ready!”

A jolt of excitement rushed through Thurpa. That surge of excitement told him just how true his “superiority to mammals” was. Adrenaline was a human trait, and he recalled the origin mythology of the Nagah, how Enki crafted their race from humans, adding to them the traits of the cobra and some from the Annunaki themselves. Along the way, the alien might had faded into recessive genes, but not the cobra aspects, though according to Kane and the others, maybe it was well enough that he didn’t share the same genetics as the Igigi or, as they had been known to the Cerberus heroes, the mindless drones called Nephilim.

Thurpa liked his brain, liked independent thought, loved his freedom. That was what frightened him so much about being a mere clone of Durga. But that thought quickly tumbled aside. The brakes locked the tires of the pickup truck, and dust kicked up as the vehicle came to a halt at the top of a ridge. They had been looking down a slope at their pursuit, meaning that the militia had to fire uphill. It’d give them a small edge, and the barked order from Kane spurred Thurpa into action.

He took aim at the windshield of one of the approaching trucks and, from the stable platform of the tailgate, pumped every round in his magazine into the militia vehicle. After the fifth impact, a white spatter of cracked glass was visible, but he kept shooting. He fired on single shot, leaning into the recoil and allowing the barrel not to kick and rise as he poured round after round into the glass. It took him several seconds to empty out half of the magazine when Grant shifted gears.

Lyta lunged out, grabbing Thurpa by the arm to keep him from jolting out of the bed of the pickup. She had the forethought to have her knees pressed against the tailgate.

So far, things seemed to be going well. Thurpa might not have been the best shot, but he peppered the cab of one of the enemy “technicals,” even as the machine gunner on the back was distracted by rifle slugs slicing through the windshield and back window into his legs. The heavy machine guns that the technicals sported might have had steel plates around the back of their frames, to protect the face and upper chest of their users, but the cabs had no such bullet protection. With their legs being torn at, any hope of accurate fire was thrown out the window.

Even so, those bullets whipped and popped through the air over their heads in the pickup’s bed.

Kane surged beside Thurpa, rising to a half-standing position and snapping his arm forward. Thurpa could see a small object leave the ex-Magistrate’s fingertips and knew that he was closing down pursuit behind them. The rear tires kicked up dust and dirt, creating a smoke screen, the engines throbbing just in time as the tread caught traction and the pickup truck moved over the small ridge, racing away from the militia.

Behind, Thurpa could see the concussion wave and smoke from the thrown grenade, a vomitous column that was quickly followed by the sharp crack of the gren’s detonation.

“Reload,” Kane ordered the other three.

Thurpa did so, depositing his mostly empty magazine and keeping it to reload later. He put in another curved stick, rocking it until it was secure in the magazine well of the rifle. Another thirty rounds ready to fly, giving their enemy a reason to slow down. He looked around, seeing that they had made a turn and watching the bend in their smoky trail, and the pickup zoomed along in the rut between two ridges.

Kane kept watch for sign of the militia bursting over the hill they’d topped, all the while keeping another hand grenade ready to throw. The small explosive might not have destroyed an enemy vehicle and its shrapnel might not have caused harm to the men in the backs of those gun jeeps, but the blast would be sufficient to slow pursuit, giving the Cerberus crew and their allies the room they needed to fall back and outmaneuver the marauders.

Kane gave the roof of the pickup a hard slap, and at that moment Grant swerved hard to the right. Nathan, Lyta and Thurpa clutched at what handholds they could find as the force of the turn threatened to send them tumbling against each other like sacks of cement. Thurpa was glad to return the favor to Lyta by cushioning her, and he also managed to lash out his hand, blocking Nathan from barking his temple against the sidewall of the truck bed.

“Thanks,” Nathan muttered as Lyta was sprawled into Thurpa’s lap.

“You’ve done far more...”

Gravity seemed to cut out from beneath them before Thurpa could finish his sentence, the pickup topping the ridge and going airborne for a few feet. Right now they were in free fall, moving at the same speed as the falling truck they rode in, so the illusion of zero gravity was strong.