Outlanders 27 awakenin.., p.1
Outlanders 27 - Awakening, page 1
Prologue
In answer to the summoning, the probe began pushing toward the surface.
There were many such probes awaiting the call; multiple redundancy was built deep into the system at every level. It was, in fact, the third probe to be called but it was the first to respond.
The nukecaust and the subsequent two centuries had not been kind. Thus the multiple probes. Thus myriad precautions.
The sensor array sampled the air. It wasn't long after midnight in the Black Hills. The wind blew steadily from the west, sighing down the coulees and rustling the long spring-dry grass.
A computer beneath the innocuous appearing hillock analyzed the sensor data stream. Radiation was well above background levels for the region, at least by the standards of two hundred years before. However, it was safely within the parameters the computer had been programmed to regard as acceptable. Likewise levels of particulate and gaseous pollutants. Indeed, polynucleic aromatic hydrocarbons were quite low, there being not much going by way of internal combustion to renew them. All told, though, there was enough airborne nastiness abroad to send a standard television-watching twentieth-century American screaming to the EPA to issue the person a gas mask.
Safe enough, the program deemed.
Other sensors began to thrust themselves like cicadas outward through the friable soil: ground radar, thermal sensors, compact low-light television cameras. They began a comprehensive survey of the immediate surroundings.
The only detected life-form of a size to present potential danger was a quadruped, two feet tall by about four feet long inclusive of tail, weight approximately thirty pounds - was identified by an expert subroutine as most likely a two-year-old coyote bitch tending a pair of pups outside a den at the foot of the hill. Formidable enough if her offspring were threatened or if—as the software's operational assumptions projected—she had a low fear of humans. But no true threat.
The software that analyzed the data gathered by the sensors, like that which ran the sensory suite itself and that which had kept the entire contents of the great vanadium-steel jar buried beneath the hill functioning for two hundred years, was very good indeed. It had been written by some of the world's best programmers.
One aerial radar return fell within the software's parameters of concern: an object quite large for a biological, about a mile up and five miles away on a radial, moving southwest at approximately thirty miles per hour. LLTV showed nothing to its pattern-recognition routines at that range. But enough was perceptible on thermal imaging for a tentative analysis, and when the data was collated with radar, the mass was judged to be between fifty and sixty-five pounds with a wingspread in excess of twenty yards. It was bigger than any flying creature that had lived at the time when the software was written.
The anomalous input caused no problem, the possible existence of such fauna having been foreseen by the program's creators. It simply noted that a creature displaying such characteristics fell distinctly within the possible threat profile. However, the creature's flight path was roughly linear, its deviation from a straight line accountable to wind; it wasn't circling, but drawing steadily farther away from the installation. In itself the flyer posed small danger, but did serve notice of the existence of potential aerial threats. The master program wrote its data into a text digest and began searching for more functioning sky-watch sensors to activate.
Conditions seemed right—as right as they were likely to be, as right as the program had been written to expect. The summons had been received. There was no contraindication to proceeding.
The master routine sent an acknowledgment. Then it initiated a certain sequence of events and settled in to wait through the hours for the first portion to complete itself. Waiting was no chore; the software didn't know impatience any more than love or fear.
And besides, waiting was the thing it had the most practice at.
In the fullness of time, a vanadium-steel panel deep in the bowels of the hill slid upward. An oblong box extruded like a tongue from the cavity it had concealed. It thrust outward two yards, then stopped.
Within the metal-and-ceramic box the seal on a modified Dewar's flask released. A hiss sounded as pressures equalized, as ancient and modern air commingled. Then, slowly, as if of its own accord, the hinged top of the long cylindrical cryoflask swung upward.
A man lay within. He was powerfully built, not tall, but broad in shoulders and chest, with a bit of a gut. His hair, shaved almost invisibly close on the sides of his head and a brush on top, was the silver of polished steel. So was his mustache.
He sat up with a groan and looked around, frowning slightly. He was in a chamber about twelve by fifteen feet. The ceiling and the lighting were low. He could make out few details. His eyes weren't yet focusing properly anyway. He groaned again and began to rub them with the heels of his hand.
"Major Michael Hays," a voice said from the empty room. "I trust I find you well."
Hays lowered his hands. His eyes, which looked up from beneath somewhat bushy brows, were a pure and piercing blue, like the blue of an Arctic summer sky that wouldn't see a sunset for another month. They seemed almost to glow as if lit from within.
Hays saw the figure of a man standing by the foot of an examination table with a brushed-chrome-steel top. The man was immensely tall and spectrally thin. He had somewhat bushy hair and a longish but immaculately trimmed beard; both were a deep red that emphasized the extreme pallor of his skin. His eyes, which were nearly maroon in color, seemed sunken in dark pits of flesh. He wore a one-piece jumpsuit in a muted gold shade.
Hays could see the synthetic fiber that covered the metal walls of the chamber through him.
"Mr. Bates," he said. It wasn't quite a question. His voice creaked like a rusted hinge. His throat was scratchy dry.
The hologram held up a hand. The fingers were almost unnaturally long even in relation to his height. He'd make either a great piano player, Hays thought, or a wonderful strangler.
"Before you say anything further, Major, let me inform you that what you see is a recording, made some five years after the Third World War destroyed the world as you—and I—knew it."
Hays felt his stomach do a slow roll. "So the stupid bastards actually went through with it," he said with bitter heat. "I hoped you were waking us up to tell us Armageddon had been called off."
There was a pause. "You have been activated from cold sleep in order to undertake the mission for which you and your associates were recruited and trained. Your country needs your help. However, before your comrades are awakened, it is necessary that I brief you on some vital preliminary information. You must prepare your friends to receive it."
Hays raised a brow. "Oh, so?" he said, as if the figure of his employer—doubtless long dead, even if he had obviously survived the nukecaust—could hear him. "Well, at least give me a chance to put on some pants and I'll give a listen."
"You undoubtedly wish to clothe yourself," the voice of software multi-billionaire Gilgamesh Bates, once the third-richest man in the world, said. "You will find a fresh uniform in the locker directly across from your cryosleep flask. When you are ready, please say so out loud and the briefing will continue."
"First the briefs and then the briefing," Hays muttered. "Roger fucking that."
Chapter 1
The bayou air was as hot and wet and heavy as a wool blanket soaked in water. It wasn't as humid as it would have been a hundred miles or so south, on the Gulf Coast proper, and it was piney bayou, not cypress and broadleaf. Neither Kane nor Grant could tell the difference as they herded their half-captive guide onto ground held together by the roots of dense shin-high grass. Their bulky Kevlar vests only increased their discomfort. "Almost there," Kane said over the scrawny teenage boy's tow head. "Just a few more minutes, and we can shake the dust of Panola County from our boot heels." Grant's greater weight had sunk him to the insteps in the muck of the bank when he stepped out of the perilously narrow rowboat they had paddled through the bayou. "If only it was dust," he rumbled. The sweat stood out on his dark face and freighted down the gunfighter mustache that framed his mouth.
He carried a Mossberg 500 12-gauge pump scattergun with black synthetic furniture and a pistol grip. A venerable Government Model 1911 A 1 Colt .45 pistol with a green Parkerized finish and black rubber grips rode in a synthetic holster at his hip. His partner, young, slimmer and lighter skinned, had opted to travel light. He wasn't toting a longarm, just a holstered 9 mm Glock 17 pistol with a mag extension so that it held twenty rounds.
Both men had been Magistrates of the barony of Cobaltville, literally born and bred. Now they were exiles, outlanders, their names and likenesses at the head of every baron's shit list, civil war among the baronies or no. But right now, with their tan shirts, long-sleeved in the vain hopes of discouraging the skeeters, and blue jeans that felt like hot plates contour-molded to their legs in this wet, sticky hell heat, the whole object was to dress—and pack—as little like Mags as possible. Kane steered the boy up the slope of the pine-topped spit of red-brown ground. "A good two centuries after any such administrative concept as 'Texas' ceased to mean glowing nukeshit, and with all the land hereabouts part of the barony of Samariumville for decades now, the locals can still tell you what county you're in. Just like the ones a few miles east across the Sabine can tell you what parish they're in."
"Caddo Parish north, Sabine Parish south," the boy said. "Y'all triple stupe or somethin'?"
Kane gave him a slight shake
The boy hung back against the iron strength of Kane's right hand. "Ain't no tribe. It's my clan. We're Mangums, and we ain't skeered o' nobody!"
"Easy, now," Kane said soothingly. "Nobody said you were."
"You just wait till Devil Wiley hears you kidnapped me! He'll set Old Zephaniah on you smart quick, and he will eat you for lunch!"
"Settle down!" Kane ordered, giving the squirming youth a rat-with-a-terrier shake. "We didn't kidnap you. You agreed to guide us."
"After you bushwhacked me! You just lemme go now and face me like a man."
Kane held the boy and examined him as if he were something he'd just picked up off the ground. He had a good eighty pounds on the kid. "I think he means it," he said musingly.
"These bayou rats are all fused," Grant said. "Wonder if Old Zephaniah is human, animal or mutie," Kane mused. "With luck we'll never find out." "When are we ever lucky?" Grant asked.
"We're due." Kane looked down at the boy, who was glowering through his bangs at him. "All right, Jimmy Earl. It's almost over. Just be a good boy and keep your voice down, and we can all go our merry ways real soon."
Their objective was a shack on the near side of the tree line on the spit. It was cobbled together of pine and cypress planks, with sheets of corrugated metal long corroded brown. The roof, of equally variegated composition, was held down by tires grown too old and bald to be used on even dregs' wags anymore.
They had chosen an open approach because the man they were after was as wary as an old tomcat and affable as a badger. If he caught anybody sneaking up on his palace through the piney woods, he was just the sort to chill first and ask questions never.
Open or not, Grant walked with his riot gun in both hands, safety off and a finger laid above the trigger guard, slightly behind his partner and about six feet to the left to clear his line of fire. Too friendly an approach would be just as deadly suspicious as creeping through the scrub-oak undergrowth. Nobody but a triple stupe approached a strange dwelling without a finger near the trigger of his blaster.
When they were about twenty yards shy of the shack, Jimmy Earl suddenly shouted, "Run for it, Hebold! Mugs!"
The shack's front door flew open. The darkness within erupted into the bushel-basket-sized yellow muzzle flare of a Sin Eater on full-auto.
It was aimed right at Kane.
"ARE TOO!" Domi stamped her foot. It was bare but for the thigh-length red stand-up stockings she wore.
So was the creamy rest of her.
"Are too like Guana Teague!"
Lakesh's face, once more middle-aged, was a mass of incipient wrinkles and active dismay. "I am no such thing, darling child! How can you say such things?" He was still agile enough to duck the slipper she threw at him. "'Cause true!"
They were in the scientist's quarters deep within Redoubt Bravo, known to its occupants as Cerberus. Lakesh straightened only to have the mostly naked feral girl hurl the digital clock from his nightstand at his round head with unnerving accuracy. Its red face read 08:30 before its power plug was yanked from the socket and it blanked.
Hitting the extent of its cord altered the missile's vector. Instead of smacking the scientist between the eyes it struck right in the palms of his hands, raised in a gesture of denial and defense. He caught it and felt absurdly proud.
"Please, sweet Domi, you must calm down. At least speak to me." He knew better than to try to tackle her and restrain her physically. His enforcers—careful what you call them in your mind, lest such a term escape your lips in their presence!—Kane and Grant were big, hard men, as agile as panthers, trained and accustomed to up close-and-personal mayhem of the roughest sort. They had their hands full trying to restrain the girl physically. She was herself muscled like a cat and, especially when naked, as slippery as an eel. Also, she fought dirty. Not even at the height of his rejuvenation, courtesy of Sam, the imperator, would Lakesh have been so bold as to grapple her against her will.
She had not always proved so unwilling.... He forced his mind away from memories of the way the smooth white hill of her rump felt beneath his hands, the firmness of her taut young breasts. He was naked as she and his body still relatively young; should he show any sign of primary sexual response to her in her present frame of mind she'd likely rip it off. And DeFore would probably reattach it upside down into the bargain, out of sheer passive-aggression.
But Domi, after a last glare from blazing ruby eyes, had crossed her arms under her pert pink-tipped breasts and turned her back. Either she was tired or had run out of handy projectiles. Or just as likely her mood had veered again; sometimes he theorized that there was some kind of random-number generator in her brain that controlled her actions, to the extent they could be called controlled.
It was part of her charm that always left him short of breath.
He rubbed at his long nose, which was beginning to run, as it sometimes did in times of stress. He wished he dared grab a tissue from the dispenser. But any motion might set her off again.
So indeed might anything he said. Or, for that matter, if he said nothing for so long her wafer-thin patience ran out. That random-number factor again. But he had to say something.
"I am not really like Guana Teague, am I?" he asked plaintively, referring to the ruthless boss of the Tartarus Pits beneath Cobaltville, which had been Lakesh's main aboveground base of operations before the barons found out he was working secretly against them and chased him here to Cerberus. The odious Teague had engaged the girl on a six-month sexual-service contract, then kept her by force as a slave after the term ran out. It had been a fatal mistake.
The sort of mistake Lakesh himself was determined not to make, for fear of his life as much as out of his passionate obsession with the albino girl. To be sure, she had enjoyed considerable assistance from Grant in putting an end to Teague. But she was ready, willing and able to commit the most extravagant mayhem at the snap of her dainty yet surprisingly strong fingers.
Lakesh stood there breathing heavily from the unaccustomed exertion, eyeing her lustfully yet warily across the jumbled pile of silks and furs and cushions on his bed. One might have expected that as a man dedicated to science, and a pronounced anal retentive to boot, Mohandas Lakesh Singh would have lived in quarters marked by Spartan sparsity and rigid order. One would have been right up until the time of his apparently miraculous rejuvenation. Since then—during what Grant referred to caustically as Lakesh's "second childhood," although Lakesh suspected the term originated with that stocky witch DeFore—things had changed. He had decided, well, to loosen up and live a little.
"I have to know," he said, still shy on breath. "Why do you say I am like Guana Teague, 0 precious one?" She emitted an angry huff and would have flounced her white hair had it been more than an inch long. Her buttocks jiggled most fetchingly.
"You are, is why!" she said.
"But how? Teague was huge and gross." He was also, in Domi's charming and oft-repeated phrase, "hung like a mouse." Which Lakesh, to his relief, was not. "He was an abusive beast."
"You abusive, too."
The accusation staggered him. "I?"
She whirled and speared an accusing finger toward his sunken chest, which fortunately was out of range. "You! You, yes!"
She was capable of talking more or less like a normal person. She was even acquiring rudiments of education from the Cerberus personnel. But when she got excited, her speech was abbreviated.
"But how?" Lakesh asked.
"Teague all time want control. You want all time control, everybody, everything. Nukeshit, you worse than Teague. Big time! At least he not watch me all time with spy cams!"
"Security measures are taken for your own good," he said weakly. "The base has been penetrated before." Wrong choice of words. He knew it before they'd left his mouth. He was a dedicated man of science; he'd never had time to learn how to deal with women.
"Ha! Penetrated! Only penetrating you care about is poking your little stickle in me, here, there, everywhere!"
"'Little stickle'?" he repeated in shocked outrage. She nodded. She was grinning with malicious pleasure at the response to her barb.
