by James Axler
The teleportation device was based on ancient plans devised by an alien race, and the scientists of the Cerberus organization had spent many man-hours figuring out how the system worked before it had been put into field operation. The units tapped parallax points in a network that stretched all the way across the globe and even to other planets, parallax points that acted as doors to locations the world over. Dependent on naturally occurring sources of energy, these points were one of the few limitations on the interphaser’s use; only a set point was available for travel to a given location. They had existed for millions of years, and many of them had been treated as sacred places by the ancients, who had sensed the power that coursed through them.
“Cold night,” Kane remarked as he stepped from the interphase window and onto the desert sand. His eyes were already keenly searching the area, spying the distant lights of Cobaltville, standing proudly on the horizon like an ornate chandelier.
“Desert’s always cold at night,” Brigid stated as she bent down to pack the interphaser. The compact unit could be carried in a specially designed case, light enough for one man—or one woman—to travel with. While Brigid had brought the case, which featured a padded and molded interior within which the interphaser sat, she did not intend to carry the unit to Cobaltville. Instead, she would hide it somewhere out here in the desert, buried close to a landmark that she would automatically commit to her eidetic memory. This was standard practice when they were out in the field like this; it saved not only on carrying the bulky attaché case, but also on having to answer any awkward questions about the revolutionary device if they were discovered in hostile territory. And, with their fugitive status within the barony, Cobaltville could certainly be defined as that.
While Brigid packed away the unit, Kane first activated his night-vision goggles, then got out a compact device he had brought with him for the occasion. Flat-packed for ease of transport, the unit required reconstructing at the destination point after the quantum jump.
Initially, it looked something like a narrow strip of metal, four feet in length, a foot across and about six inches deep. Kane flipped up a hinged section at one end of the metal strip—the front—and pulled up an extending bar until it stood approximately four feet in height. The bar ended in a control stick with a handle grip within which the user would place his or her hand, so that the grip sat around it almost like a clamp. Once the grip was locked in place, Kane set the main strip on the ground, stood on one end and kicked at the back. A hinged flap opened, revealing a small propulsion system.
Kane tested it once, standing on the back plate and sending power through the system. He felt the unit shudder beneath him and start to rise, until it hovered a few inches above the ground. The device, something the technicians at Cerberus had whipped up recently, was a prototype, still in the experimental stage. Roughly the size of a scooter, it worked by repelling the earth’s natural magnetic field to hover above the ground. Powered by a small air propulsion system, the device worked a little like a Florida airboat, sucking in air at the front, then spewing it through a fan at the rear to create momentum. The techies had not come up with a name for it yet, but Kane was already calling it a jump-board. He was excited to finally get a chance to field-test it, though he tried his best not to show it—not in the least because both he and Brigid were worrying about their partner, Grant.
“So, whaddaya say?” Kane drawled. “Wanna go for a ride, Baptiste?”
She looked up from where she had been hiding the interphaser among a tiny grove of cacti that had budded around a few small rocks. “Beats walking,” she said.
Kane commanded power to the rear fan. “Don’t get too excited,” he deadpanned as Brigid stepped on the board behind him. “Now, hold on tight.”
She wrapped her arms around his chest and a moment later the pair were gliding across the desert sands toward the distant lights of Cobaltville, traveling along at a respectable fifteen miles per hour just two inches above the ground.
“At this speed, it’ll be over an hour before we reach Cobaltville,” Brigid said in Kane’s ear. There was no need to shout; the engine was silent and the fan powering it made nothing more than a slight shushing sound as it churned up the particles of sand in its passing.
“Couldn’t get any closer,” Kane reminded her as he sent full power to the engine, picking the speed up to about 20 mph. “And it still beats walking.”
“You’re right,” Brigid agreed. “For top field agents, we do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trekking across deserts.”
The jump-board continued, whirring across the sand toward the distant towers of the city.
* * *
KANE AND BRIGID had been traveling twenty minutes when the jump-board caught on something and threw them both without warning. They caromed through the air before crashing to the dirt in a patch of unremarkable desert.
Cursing, Kane rubbed his jaw and rolled onto his back. “Baptiste? You okay?”
She groaned something that sounded like an affirmative, and Kane went about the slow process of gathering his wits and forcing himself to sit up.
They must have hit something. Something low, something he hadn’t seen. Moving his head slowly, Kane looked around. Brigid was sprawled a few feet from him, facedown in the dirt, but stirring slowly. He saw the jump-board, too, idling where it had stopped. The accelerator acted as a dead man’s switch, shutting off the moment that his foot had left the pedal. He noticed something else there, as well—a narrow line of wire pegged three inches above the ground, barely visible in the faint starlight. A tripwire—someone had planned this as a trap, probably for animals.
Even as Kane spotted the wire, a new voice called from behind him, a sneering voice full of bravado:
“Well, well, what have we here?”
Kane turned, silently cursing the giddiness he felt as he moved his head. He had taken quite a fall, he realized absently, as he eyed the strangers standing there.
There were seven of them, garbed in ragged, sandy clothing that perfectly blended with their background, camouflaging them from casual view. Kane knew the type at a glance—bandits, predators, the kind of scum who inhabited the Outlands and preyed on the weak where no one would reach them, ambushing caravans and traders on their way to the ville. Back when he had been a mag, he had covered a few patrols out beyond the walls, dealing with groups like this who had become too bold and were threatening trade routes. Still, he was surprised to see them operating so close to the ville.
One of the other bandits, dressed in a wool jacket with a woollen hat pulled low over his brow, swore in disappointment. “Only two of ’em, Lance? Slim pickings.”
“Slim’s better’n none, Argo,” the man who had spoken first—and whom Kane assumed to be the leader—replied. Then he turned back to Kane with a swagger, pulling down his scarf to reveal as much of his face as his goggles didn’t cover. “Nice piece of machinery you had there.” His cargo pants and the tails of his beige frock coat were crumpled, his hair was a curly mop, and when he removed the scarf, Kane could see he hadn’t shaved for days. One of his top incisors was a silver false tooth that glinted in the starlight as he spoke.
“Thanks for your concern,” Kane said, “but I think it’ll be okay. It’s pretty hardy.” As he spoke, he assessed the group, looking for bulges where weapons were stashed. He judged that they were all armed; most of them had at least one blaster on show.
One of the bandits strode past Kane toward the jump-board. “Damn flimsy, if you ask me,” he spit. “Hardly anything to it. What’s it do?”
The leader stood over Kane, bending his knee to lean forward. “Well? You heard Frith. What’s it do? Quick now, chop chop.”
“It’s a transport,” Kane said, his eyes roving across the others, keeping track as they spread out.
“What’s it powered by? Got fuel?” he asked.
“Hey, eyes here, tough guy,” the bandit leader said, shoving his outstretched palm against Kane’s forehead and pushing him back to the ground. “I said, do you got fuel? Well?”
“Don’t know,” he answered, faking more wooziness than he felt, stalling for time. Bandits stripped down vehicles they trapped for parts, he knew, and they would either use or sell any fuel they found. “Power cell runs it, rechargeable.”
The leader glared at him before turning away, shaking his head. “Power cells,” he grunted. “What’s wrong with old-fashioned burning oil?”
As he muttered to himself, one of his crew spoke up. “Got a live one. Looks healthy,” he said, jabbing his thumb at Brigid. “Good meat there, should fetch a good price.”
Some groups were not above slave trading, and there were some particularly disturbing stories of what happened to those slaves once they were out of reach of the ville mags.
“What about that one?” the speaker asked.
The leader leaned close once again, eyeing Kane the way a man might eye a horse he intended to purchase. “Looks strong, but still got a bit of fire in him, I reckon,” he said. “We’ll get that beat out of you in no time, my friend,” he added, smiling solicitously at Kane.
“You reckon?” Kane asked, pitching his voice low enough that the bandit had to strain to hear it.
The leader laughed. “Woo, doggie,” he cheered, “that’s just the kind of fire I mean. Come on, meathead, get up. We got places to go and your little scooter won’t carry all of us, now will it?”
Kane teetered for a moment, pushing himself from the ground. As he did so, his right arm swung forward and a sudden burst of 9 mm bullets seemed to launch from his hand in the darkness as he commanded the sin eater into it. The shots sounded loud in the bleak desert, their report echoing across the plains in a staccato rhythm.
The lead bandit fell at Kane’s initial burst, clutching his chest as he slumped to the ground.
Kane was moving immediately, tumbling in a crouch-walk as he found his next target and squeezed the trigger. He saw the bandit stumble and drop, even as he spun to locate his next target.
Around Kane, the raised voices of the other bandits were only now exclaiming in surprise. “This one’s got a blaster,” one said.
“Chill him!” another cried, emphasizing his statement with a blast from his own pistol, a Detonics MTX double stack design.
Shots rang out.
Chapter 22
The bandit’s bullet went wild, missing Kane by several feet.
Kane was moving again, using the cover of darkness to generate some distance between himself and his attackers. Gunshots sounded out across the plain, bright flashes of propellant in the darkness.
He moved on silent feet, scampering away from the scene, putting as much distance as he could between himself and these lawless outlanders.
Kane was thirty feet away from the jump-board crash site, thirty feet from Brigid, and all too conscious that he had left her with those rogues. Two were down, but that left five stalking in the darkness.
He knew these people, knew how they thought. First they would hold their position, thinking that they could repel the attack of one man hindered by the darkness. Then, when he didn’t reappear, they would fan out and try to locate him, while the smartest of the group would run for cover with the booty.
It was a fair strategy on their part, except they hadn’t factored in one thing—he wasn’t lost in the darkness. Kane pulled the polymer lenses from his jacket pocket and slipped them over his eyes, waiting the fraction of a second it took for his eyes to adjust. There were the bandits—five of them—sure enough, still congregated at the jump-board crash site, with Brigid still reeling from being thrown to the ground. They were discussing their next move, pacing around in a small area. Two of them had night lenses on, bigger rigs than his, one of them handheld. Kane ducked down, flattening his belly against the sand. Through their lenses he should be mistaken for just another hillock of sand—at least long enough for him to make his move.
As Kane waited, watching the group of outlaws, he activated his commtact. “Baptiste? You awake?”
The response came back almost instantly—a double tap as she clicked her tongue. Which meant she was all right.
* * *
BRIGID WAS KNEELING on the sand, forced to lean precariously forward as one of the bandits held a knife blade to her throat. When she heard Kane’s words tickling her cochlea through the medium of the commtact, she replied by clicking her tongue twice, hoping he would get the message. More than that, even subvocalizing, was too risky.
Come on, Kane, she thought, where’s all that magistrate bravado when I need you?
Around her, the remaining bandits were having a heated discussion about what to do next.
“Lance is dead,” one of them confirmed as he crouched over their leader’s body; his voice cracked, making Brigid suspect he was just an adolescent playing with the big boys. “That flaming roamer shot him.”
“Take his goggles, Joey,” one of the others instructed. “Pass ’em to Dill.”
The adolescent did what he was told, removing the eyewear from atop their dead leader’s head and handing them to another of the group, who had no night goggles of his own.
“So, what?” asked the man who had taken them. “We just going to take this?”
“We’ve got his girl,” said the man standing behind Brigid. “He’ll come back for her, count on it. When he does, we’ll skin the bugger alive.”
Brigid subtly shifted her weight, pulling the man behind her an inch forward, and closed her eyes. She wanted to be ready for Kane, ready to drop this guy with the blade before he could slit her throat.
* * *
KANE SENT THE sin eater back to its hidden holster and waited, belly flat to the dirt. It took less than a minute before the bandits began spreading out, searching the area, just as he had predicted. He watched through the night lenses, keeping his eyes on each of them, assessing their movements. Four of them had split from the site of the initial conflict, spreading out and walking roughly in the direction Kane had taken, coming toward him. The other one was still waiting with a knife to Brigid’s throat, holding her as leverage should Kane return. He smiled at that—the guy didn’t know what his captive was capable of.
There was an art to this, Kane knew.
He coughed, keeping the sound low.
Three heads turned at the noise, not quite sure if they had heard or imagined it.
That’s it, Kane thought, just a little closer. He reached into one of the utility pouches affixed to his belt, pulling something loose. It was a small spherical object with a metallic casing, similar to a ball bearing, roughly an inch-and-a-half in diameter.
“I thought I heard something,” one of the bandits was saying as they moved their search closer to Kane.
“Yeah, me, too,” replied his colleague. “This way.”
Three of them were walking nearer, hunkered down a little as if that would save them from attack. Kane rolled the sphere across his hand, back and forth, waiting for his moment. With his other hand, he was placing earplugs into his ears, dulling the noise around him. Any moment now...
They were fifteen feet away, close enough that the two with night lenses should be able to spot him at any moment.
“Hey!” one of them shouted, raising his blaster as he spotted Kane. “He’s—”
At the same moment, Kane broke the seal on the sphere and tossed it ahead of him, just a few feet. As he threw it, he turned his head, squeezing his eyes shut tight.
“What is th—?” another bandit began.
Then the thing went off, expl
oding in a bright burst of dazzling light. The sphere was called a flash-bang, a standard piece of kit for Cerberus field teams. Small and light, making it easy to carry, the device contained a miniature charge that, when triggered, sent out a lightning-bright burst of light coupled with a sound like thunder. The compact objects were nonlethal and could do little actual damage, but were ideal to startle and confuse opponents by temporarily blinding and deafening them.
Startled screams accompanied the explosion, as the bandits were caught totally unaware. Kane heard them even through the earplugs he wore.
He leaped up as the fearsome light began to fade. In its wake, he saw that it had been bright enough to temporarily blind all three bandits close to it, leaving them staggering in confusion.
One began to fire his pistol, shooting blindly, his targeting based on what little muffled sound he could pick up in the wake of the deafening explosion. His companion went down in a volley of friendly fire, while the other one screamed a second time as a stray bullet clipped his leg, sending a spray of blood across the sand.
The sin eater was back in Kane’s hand now. He shot the bandit with the blaster while still on the hoof, kept moving as the man crashed to the sand, a chunk of his skull erupting in a mess of blood, brains and bone.
* * *
BRIGID HEARD THE pop of the flash-bang, saw the brightness of its explosion even through the closed lids of her eyes. She had guessed Kane’s play, suspected he would use a flash-bang in the situation. Maybe she had known him too long, she lamented, even as she let herself sag backward, using her weight to overbalance her opponent.
The two of them sank to the ground, his knife slipping away from her exposed throat as she shifted her head.
