Cosmic Rift

by James Axler

  For a moment, everything went quiet, the muffling effects of the water dulling all other noise. Brigid opened her eyes, searching the pool for her attacker. She had lost her gun, dropped it during the descent, and the night-vision lenses, too. She hadn’t even noticed until now.

  Wertham was recovering from the drop, waving arms and legs as he turned himself to come at her again. They must have been split when they hit the pool. There was still time, then.

  Brigid stretched her arms out and began to swim, dragging her aching body forward in powerful strokes.

  * * *

  MOVING FAST, KING JACK organized everything. “I can be exhausted later,” he told his wife as she urged him to slow down.

  Roz smiled at that. Wasn’t that just like her Jack—no wonder they called the man “King.”

  Kane and Grant were rapidly shuttled through the palace on the back of two high-speed conveyances called skycles, clinging behind the drivers who piloted the things through the corridors like birds of prey. The skycles traveled fast—faster even than the lightracer that the king had used to transport them back to the palace, and Grant closed his eyes against the rush that blurred past his eyes.

  In no time at all, they arrived at the palace’s hangar where two Mantas were being prepped for launch. King Jack had organized all of this; as soon as the God Rod was back in place he could commune with the smart-circuitry than ran through Authentiville and put all the pieces back where they belonged.

  Jack’s voice came over the room’s hidden sound system as Kane was thanking the ground crew and pulling himself into the cockpit. This Manta wasn’t much different from his own, maybe a little sleeker around the viewports. “It’s going to be tight,” Jack explained, “but I’m opening a quantum window remotely. You won’t miss it. Soon as you lads pass through you’ll be right where Wertham sent the Titan armor. The rest is down to you.”

  “Roger that,” Grant said, drawing the hatch over the cockpit.

  “Been good knowing you, Your Highness,” Kane added as he placed a bulbous bronze flight helmet over his head. “In case we don’t make it back, take care of Baptiste for me. She’s...a heck of a girl.”

  “I hear ya, Kane,” Jack said. “But you’ll be back. Heroes don’t get bad endings on my watch.”

  With those words echoing in their ears, Kane and Grant launched the borrowed Mantas into the air, speeding through the open doors of the palace hangar and up into the rainbow sky overhead.

  Serra do Norte, Brazil

  WERTHAM WATCHED THROUGH the burning eyes of the world armor, taking another of those colossal strides. His mind was fractured across different worlds now, one part of him—the physical—controlled solely by the fight trance. At the same time, the sensor crown granted him a full report from the Titan suit as it strode through the forest of planet Earth. He watched, surprised and amused, as a figure emerged from close to his feet and turned some kind of weapon on him. The man was bald-headed with a bullet-bitten ear and his weapon looked like an elaborate long black stick on a leather strap. The stick spit tiny missiles that pinged hopelessly off the Titan’s armored skin.

  Wertham stood, bemused, as the man shouted something incomprehensible—outside of Authentiville, speech was no longer planed down to its component parts, which meant that out here he could not know the language without learning it. As if he would bother. Let them learn language from him. Let them speak only his name, soft or loud, in tribute to his greatness.

  Then something came buzzing toward his body, cutting through the air like an angry insect until it struck his leg. It was a projectile of some sort, he realized—some kind of surface-man weapon he was not aware of.

  * * *

  STANDING IN THE PATH of the metal giant amid the flaming aisles of trees and grass, Edwards tossed a fragmentation grenade at the thing’s legs, aiming for the knee joint. He was hoping it might be a weak spot. More importantly, he was trying to draw the thing’s attention to give his ground crew colleagues a better chance to analyze it.

  “Cerberus, do you read?” Edwards called over his Commtact. “I appear to be fighting some kind of...God, robot! Could do with your input here if you’re not too busy.”

  Whatever the Cerberus comms desk came back with was lost in the sound of the explosion as the grenade went off. The robot shuddered momentarily, but it seemed to be more from surprise than any effect of the explosive.

  Closing one eye, Edwards took careful aim with the M-16-style Colt rifle, targeting the monster’s leg. “Let’s see if I can make a dent, Too-tall-for-school,” he muttered, rattling off a shot.

  Cosmic Rift

  BRIGID SWAM, HER BODY aching with exhaustion. This bowl of water was used as a cooling agent during the production process, and like everything in Authentiville it was massive. When she had seen it from above she’d mentally tagged it as a lake. Brigid could see the lip of the bowl now, or maybe she should call it the shore, but it was still some distance away.

  Behind her, Wertham was moving with power but little grace, driving himself on in the chase across the water’s surface, splashing great waves of spume behind him. The man looked demented, blood staining his soaking clothes, his right hand mangled where it had taken five bullets. Brigid peered over her shoulder again, confirming how near he was. Just a couple of body lengths behind her and gaining fast. She pushed herself on, drawing on reserves of energy she hardly believed she had. Without a gun, without any weapon, she would lose against this man. He was stronger, faster, possessed. The only way she could win was to outthink him.

  Her mind tripped back to the conversation she had had with Kane when he came upon her in the Cerberus swimming pool.

  “It’s always a competition with you, isn’t it?” she had teased.

  “It’s kept me alive so far,” Kane had responded.

  Yeah, well, now Wertham was the competition and if she didn’t outpace him she would end up dead, just like Kane said.

  Have to keep moving, Brigid told herself, pushing the aches in her body to the back of her mind.

  Brigid drew a deep breath and disappeared beneath the surface, carving a path there like a torpedo. She drove herself harder, eyeing the edge of the water as it shimmered closer, reaching harder and kicking out with all her strength.

  * * *

  ABOVE THE DOOM Furnace, Wertham’s war fleet waited for the command to invade, like grim shadows of death hovering statically in the air.

  Flying in formation, Kane and Grant powered their Mantas through the leading edge of the fleet. Kane wished their Commtacts would work here in the rift as he yearned to discuss tactics with his partner. But without that contact, all the friends could do was trust each other as they rocketed up past the fleet toward the quantum window that was opening in the sky above the city.

  The quantum window was barely large enough to allow one Manta to pass, so Kane urged more power from his engines and sped ahead of Grant, taking the lead. In a moment he was through the window with Grant rushing to follow.

  Chapter 33

  Serra do Norte, Brazil

  It was a second that lasted for eternity.

  Then the lush forest and familiar snaking river materialized in Kane’s windshield like a vision from a dream. Something else had changed, too, Kane realized as he felt the sun beating down on the Manta’s cockpit. He was home, and he hadn’t even realized how much he had missed it.

  For a single perfect instant, Kane luxuriated in the feel of the sun on the craft’s wingtips, the sight of the foliage spread beneath him like a painter’s canvas.

  “—ne buddy? Do you read me?” Grant’s voice was loud in his ear after all this time.

  “I read, over,” Kane replied, engaging his Commtact, unable to hide the joy in his voice.

  “I’m right behind you,” Grant explained. “What do we have?”


  Kane turned back to business as he brought up the heads-up display and began scanning for the Titan suit. From what King Jack had said, Kane guessed it wouldn’t be hard to spot. What the heck does a planet-invasion device look like anyway?

  Up ahead, black smoke was billowing into the air from a portion of the forest. Kane had the sinking feeling that that was where they would find their quarry.

  * * *

  ON THE GROUND, Sinclair called to Edwards as he scrambled away from the Titan, foliage burning all around him. “Edwards, we have more company. Up there.” She pointed.

  Using what cover he could, Edwards halted and peered up into the sky. Beside Sinclair, Mariah Falk and Roy Cataman were doing the same, the latter peering through field glasses as an evergreen burned like a torch behind him. Edwards could see the two shapes swooping through the sky roughly a mile up and a little to the west, but it took him a moment to recognize them.

  “Are those...? They’re Mantas!” Edwards cried. “Dammit! Either we’re in the middle of another Annunaki invasion or Kane and Grant just arrived to pull our fat out of the fire.”

  “Literally,” Mariah added, trees and bushes burning all around her.

  Sinclair looked at Edwards with alarm. “But which is it?” she asked.

  Already, Edwards was engaging the subdermal implant of his Commtact, sending a query out. “Kane? Grant? Is that you up there, buddy?”

  “I hear you, Edwards,” Kane’s voice responded an instant later. “Grant’s behind me. Where are you?”

  “About a half mile from the river below you and heading east,” Edwards told him. “I got a field team out here—just follow the line of fire and you’ll see us. And we have us a huge problem—big fella, armored, fell out of the sky about six minutes ago. Looks kind of like if Satan had mated with a cyborg. You can’t miss him.”

  Bitterroot Mountains

  KANE’S LAUGHTER BURST from the speaker at the comm desk as the conversation was relayed over an open frequency. “Hah! I guess not,” he said.

  Around the operations room, everyone was smiling and cheering. Several people shook hands in congratulations while others hugged, patting one another on the back. Lakesh stood poised over the comm desk, listening to every word of the conversation as he watched the satellite footage being relayed live from Serra do Norte.

  “Kane, this is Lakesh,” he began, adjusting the headset over his ear. “I need to know—are you all right?”

  “I’m fine and Grant’s with me,” Kane said. “And when I last saw them, Baptiste and Domi were both still alive. No time to discuss right now—we’ve got a planet invasion to repel.”

  Lakesh watched the Mantas as they tracked across the satellite image, two bronze darts swooping over the green. “Good luck, my friends,” he muttered. “Good luck.”

  * * *

  IN THE SKIES above Serra do Norte, Kane and Grant angled the unfamiliar Mantas toward the colossal figure they saw looming above the tree line. As they approached, their heads-up displays brought the thing’s head and torso into sharp focus where they poked over the tree cover as twin beams seared from the eyes to set great chunks of the forest alight.

  Edwards’s description was pretty much on the money, Kane thought—with its sunset-colored armor and burning eyes, the Titan suit looked darn satanic, truth be told.

  “Now,” Kane muttered, toggling switches on the dashboard, “let’s see what kind of armaments we have.”

  A targeting reticle appeared over Kane’s heads-up, twin circles adjusting and focusing as he eyed the colossal Titan.

  “Launching Sidewinder missile,” Kane said into the Commtact.

  “Advised,” Grant acknowledged, drawing his Manta away from Kane’s before the missile launched to ensure he didn’t get caught up in its path.

  The missile blasted—a sleek shaft of gold ribbed with green—from a tube beneath the Manta’s sloping right wing. It wasn’t a Sidewinder—those were the missiles that their own Mantas were armed with—but at that moment Kane didn’t have time to split hairs.

  Cosmic Rift

  THE WARSHIPS WAITED in the sky above the Doom Furnace, casting shadows on the vast body of cooling water. Two figures swam across that water, angling toward the side.

  Head down, Brigid almost hit the edge, she was moving so fast. Her head bobbed from the water at the very last instant and she grabbed the side, yanking herself up and out of the water without missing a beat. Wertham was six body lengths behind her now, hurrying toward her, arm over arm, through the clear water of the tank.

  Brigid turned and ran across the adjoining catwalk, eyes flicking left and right as she sought a path back up to the parked steed she had arrived in. She had an idea now— desperate, but it might work. It had to work. Otherwise she was dead. Maybe they all were.

  Brigid ran.

  Serra do Norte, Brazil

  KANE’S MISSILE COVERED the distance between his Manta and the Titan in less than three seconds. Kane pulled up, bracing for impact as the missile detonated. There was a boom, and whatever was inside created a green explosion, like the film negative of a detonation.

  When the blast cleared, Kane saw that the Titan armor looked unhurt, just a few wisps of white smoke trailed up from its chest where the missile had struck. The head turned, eyeing the Mantas with its sizzling orange gaze.

  “Okay,” Kane said. “We may need to rethink this.”

  To his starboard side, Grant was launching his own missile, patching through a warning via the Commtact as he did so. Kane watched Grant’s missile draw a smoking trail in the air as it hurried toward the Titan. But before the missile could impact, the colossal head turned and the heat beam zeroed in, obliterating the missile into a million fragments.

  “We definitely need to rethink this,” Kane said as he pulled the Manta into a corkscrew turn, barreling past the Titan’s shoulder at incredible speed. The Titan reached for him, one mighty hand grasping at the slope-winged aircraft.

  Cosmic Rift

  BRIGID SCRAMBLED UP an enclosed stairwell, her boots barely touching each step as she hurried back to the surface. Up above, Wertham’s war fleet remained poised, darkening the rainbow sky like some insane mechanical construct, waiting for the final command to launch.

  Brigid reached the top of the stairs and kept running, weaving between Gene-agers who stood dumbfounded as if caught in the path of an approaching hurricane. They had lost their impetus, Brigid guessed, though she had no time to fathom why. It seemed that somehow all of the Gene-agers had simply been placed on “pause,” posed as if in a photograph.

  Behind Brigid, Wertham was just reaching the top of the stairwell, his emerald jumpsuit dark with damp where he had been dunked in the lakelike pool. He still wore the sensor rig on his head like a crown, its wire frame glistening with droplets of water.

  There was just one more staircase now, Brigid saw, a short flight of steps and she was at the parking bay where she had left the steed. She leaped up the steps, grabbing the handrail and taking them two at a time. Behind her, Wertham was almost near enough to touch, and Brigid could hear his breathing down below as she reached the topmost stair. She turned, one hand still gripping the handrail, and kicked out behind her, dipping her torso and head low and putting as much force as she could into the blow. It caught Wertham full in the chin as he ascended the staircase, and he went flying back with a satisfying yelp of pain.

  There was no time to follow up. Instead, Brigid ran, leaping ahead like a runner from the starting blocks, arms and legs pumping as she hurried across the parking lot and back to her boxy steed.

  The steed waited there, thankfully unmolested. Brigid willed the door hatch open, passing her hand across the space where she thought a sensor might be. She had never really thought about how the door operated, and now she could only hope that it worked, either feeling her need or res
ponding to the touch of her hand. The door slid noiselessly back on its hidden track.

  Then Brigid was inside, eyes focused on the thing she had come here for. This had better work, she told herself.

  Behind Brigid, Wertham had reached the top of the short staircase and was making his way across the parking compound toward her.

  Serra do Norte, Brazil

  THE GIANT HAND reached for Kane’s Manta, fingers grasping for him as he hopelessly tried to avoid it. The hand blocked the sun for a moment as it grabbed for the Manta’s tail, and in that moment Kane thought it was all over. But then something happened, and the hand seemed to lock, drawing fractionally upward and missing Kane’s Manta by the narrowest of margins.

  Kane rolled the Manta through 360 degrees on its y-axis, slipping the wings out of the reach of the Titan’s grasping hand. The massive fingers seized in position behind him, closing slowly on nothing but empty air.

  “What happened?” Kane asked as he goosed more power from the air pulse engines.

  “We’ve got company,” Grant replied over the Commtact. “Looks like Bingo and Bongo came back to give us a hand.”

  Kane checked the sensors of the heads-up display, scanning the skies. Two familiar sky craft flew high above, close to where the parallax point had opened from Authentiville. They were the golden pebble-like vehicles that the Authentiville pilots had used to kidnap Grant’s Manta during the sting operation. “Yahoo!” Kane cheered as he realized they were using their gravity beams to hold the Titan’s hand in place.

  Grant’s voice relayed over the Commtact from where he was flying a parallel path to Kane. “That was a close one, pal,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Kane agreed. “Don’t be fooled by that thing’s size—it’s faster than you’d think.”

  Even as Kane spoke, twin beams of searing energy blasted from the Titan’s eyes, joining and burning a single path toward one of the pebblelike ships. Kane watched as the beam blasted against the aircraft’s armor, and in an instant the craft had been liquefied.