Outlanders 12 wreath of.., p.1
Outlanders 12 Wreath of fire, page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 30
Chapter 31.
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 1
"Hold it right there, outlanders. Come any closer and we're gonna let some daylight through you."
Kane reluctantly stopped, struggling to curb the initial surge of anger. Domi halted beside him and began to raise the Winchester .30-30 lever-action rifle she held.
"No," Kane whispered. "Let them think they've got the upper hand."
"Fuckers do have upper hand," Domi complained in a low voice. "Double stupe walking in like this." An albino, Domi's skin was pale as milk and had pinked from exposure to the sun for the past few days. Despite the genetic defect that so visually marked her, she hadn't developed a weakness to the sun; she just didn't tan.
She was a lot shorter than Kane, looking childlike next to him. A survivor of the Outlands, she was the most dangerous child Kane figured anyone would ever meet. Her bone-white hair was cropped close to her head. She wore boots, khaki trousers and a pink tank top that brought a little femininity to her appearance. A gray-and-green plaid shirt with long sleeves was tied around her waist.
Kane didn't waste time arguing. In a way, Domi was right. There just hadn't been any options given the terrain. His back and shoulders ached from pushing the ancient motorcycle for the past three miles. He'd known his advance into the territory would be spotted, but he hadn't been exactly sure when.
He was sweltering from the blistering heat that was finally abating as the sun dropped in the west. An easterly wind had picked up less than an hour ago, but it made only a halfhearted attempt to drag cooling fingers across the sun-scorched hills of what used to be the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah.
He peered across the pale earth. Not much existed in the way of vegetation. Hardscrabble bushes stubbornly fought the harsh conditions, lack of water and volcanic winds that sometimes overran the area. The landscape before him went steadily upward, and the trail he followed twisted like a spine-broken snake to climb the grade.
"What do you want?" Kane asked in a loud voice. He gazed at the irregular stand of rocks above him, knowing from experience that the prickling sensation brushing the back of his neck meant gun sights were on him He'd walked into the trap, but not blindly. His friend and former Mag partner, Grant, was covering their backs.
"We'll have your business first," the voice called out from behind the rocks.
Kane thought he saw movement behind one of the triangular stones to the trail's left. He filed it away, relying on senses honed by his Mag training. As a Magistrate for Cobaltville, he'd encountered situations like this before.
The speaker was female. Her voice was soured with hard whiskey or jolt, or maybe it was deep and scratchy from an old wound. Though, if she was leading the group of men he believed to be on the other side of the rocks, Kane had no doubts that she'd be trouble.
"Trading," Kane lied. It was an answer he knew they'd be expecting, since trading routes from west and east, and north and south, converged in this part of Utah.
"If you're trading," the woman yelled back, "looks like you done fell on hard times."
"Mebbe," Kane said. "Heard there was a roadhouse at the end of this river. Unless I've been lied to."
"You been lied to before?"
Kane offered a feral grin. "A time or two. Had a woman told me she loved me once."
"Probably told you that you were handsome, too."
In truth, Kane was handsome in a rough-hewn way. He was tall and rangy, carrying most of his weight in his shoulders and arms above a slim waist, like a wolf. His dark hair held sun-kissed highlights, and his skin was bronze from exposure to the sun and the elements. His blue-gray eyes burned from the high planes of his face.
He'd dressed in patched-over denim jeans, the same kind a man living by scavenging would have. The green chambray work shirt he wore had the sleeves hacked off and it sported patches of contrasting colors and materials. He hadn't stinted on the tough steel-toed boots, though, because a true scavenger knew that good footwear often meant the difference between living and dying.
A fourteen-inch combat knife rode in a handmade scabbard in his right boot. He also carried a double-barreled Remington 12-gauge shotgun on a sling across his back. A single bandolier strapped his broad chest, and nearly every loop was filled with ammo.
A military-style flap holster that kept the dust out of the long-barreled Model 1911A .45- caliber pistol inside rode his right hip. He missed the Sin Eater that he normally carried. The 9 mm handblaster was the chief sign of office of the Magistrates, and he'd trained with it since he was sixteen. It was normally secured to his right forearm, where it could be brought into play by tensing his wrist tendons.
"Worst lie of all," Kane went on, "was when she told me I was good enough at it she didn't have to go nowhere else to get it." He kept his hands on the motorcycle's handlebars, using it to partially shield him.
"Fucking around," Domi said irritably. "Gonna get us chilled."
"Shut up," Kane growled low enough that he wouldn't be heard up the hill "We'll do this the way we planned it. You get a count of how many we're facing?"
"Six. Mebbe seven."
Kane had counted four definite shadows flitting around the rocky escarpment. He'd run pointman for Mag forces, since his senses were far and away better than those of his peers. But Domi had an animal cunning. He knew she probably hadn't seen any more of their opponents than he had, but her primitive instincts might have picked up on the way they'd ranged around the rocks above.
Taking another look at how tightly the four he'd seen were grouped, he upped his own estimate by one more man. There would be at least one more adversary to the left to better cover that side.
"What do you want at the roadhouse?" the woman asked.
"It'd make me feel better," Kane said, "knowing who I was talking to."
There was a hesitation before the answer. "Call me Nell."
"Okay, Nell." In the periphery of his vision, Kane noticed a puff of dust to the right. He knew the woman had people surrounding their position now, entrenching their defenses. "First thing I want is some fuel. I was told the roadhouse had some. I'm tired of pushing this piece of shit."
"They got some," Nell replied. "Rotgut puke you gotta filter again yourself to get all the water out of it. Wouldn't advise putting it in your tank till after you've done that. And it don't come cheap."
"I'll keep that in mind," Kane said.
"You don't look like you've got much to trade."
"I've got some jack. I think it'll spend fast enough."
"Might not. Peabody down at the roadhouse, he don't just take any jack, not even baron's notes. And it don't look like you people are from around here."
"We're not," Kane admitted. "We're from up in the Darks." And that was true enough because the Cerberus redoubt was located in what used to be called the Bitterroot Range up in Montana. Before fleeing to Cerberus, he'd spent his life over in Cobaltville, a barony farther east in more civilized territory.
"What're you doing down here?"
Kane gave her a mirthless wolf's grin. "Got invited to leave the Darks."
"Must have been invited pretty fierce to chase you down into this," Nell said.
"It would have taken a lot of chilling to stay there," Kane told her. "We thought mebbe it'd be easier just moving on."
"Mebbe you won't find anybody so sociable here, either."
"These are the Outlands," Kane said. "Nobody's sociable here. At least a man knows where he stands." His pointman's senses were registering a silent warning. "If you're going to claim this trail to the roadhouse so hard, mebbe we'll just find another way around."
The woman laughed, a good-natured sound in spite of the tension of the situation. "You'd go miles out of your way to find another way to the roadhouse."
"You're not leaving a man much room to work in here. Are you planning on letting us through?"
"This here's a tollgate, outlander," Nell said. "Anybody going through here has to pay for passage."
"The ore prospector I talked to a few miles back didn't mention anything about a tollgate," Kane said. "Man told me the roads through here were free to traders and travelers." He spotted a puff of dust to the left now, as well.
"Boxing us in," Domi muttered. "You move or I move. Soon."
"It's kind of a seasonal thing," Nell admitted. "We move around."
"Who're you sanctioned by?" Kane asked. "The closest baron around here is Baron Cobalt over in Colorado."
"Shit," Nell said, "we're sanctioned by Smith & Wesson, outlander, and backed up by Colt and Heckler & Koch. I don't think we need any more bona fides than that." Eviden tly feeling safe, the woman stepped into view less than a hundred paces away.
Nell was in her mid-twenties, Kane guessed, with her white-blond hair pulled back in a flowing mane. She had a good figure, tall and kind of leaned out. Her midriff shirt revealed her narrow waist and a lot of brown skin under her small breasts. Leather pants covered her generous hips. She held a Mini-14 Ranch Rifle in her hands.
A man moved into position beside her. He was a little taller and twice as broad. Scars from burns tracked his ugly face, leaving the skin dead and white. Suppurating sores the size of predark dimes stood out on his cheeks and forehead, but they looked old, disease worn into the flesh that he'd take to the grave with him. He held a bolt-action Winchester .308 hunting rifle with telescopic sights.
"What have you got for trading, outlander?" Nell repeated. Her voice held an edge.
Watching her, Kane knew the time to make the play was now. He readied himself, sliding his thumb over the motorcycle's electronic ignition. It was an old Enduro that had been outfitted by the military back in the twentieth century, before the rain of nukes had descended upon the world on January 20, 2001, and forever changed its landscape. The chassis was set well clear of the ground, with twin pipes curling back on the right side.
He'd found the bike in the transportation stores in the Cerberus redoubt, then repaired and refurbished it. When the recent mission had come up, he'd decided to take it, knowing it would fit the character he would be trying to play, and it would be a potent weapon.
Scavengers in Utah used wags and motorcycles instead of horses in the harsh desert lands. A man had to water and feed a horse, and the scent of a horse sometimes brought predators down out of the mountains. Since skydark, Utah had become a virtual no-man's-land. It was too hard to find good water. No wells could be dug in the alkaline dust, and even the rivers and creeks spilling through the surrounding mountain ranges were often poisoned, carrying the taint of radioactive dust.
Lately, though, the area had slowly become inhabited, as the Utah territory again became an active mining area. Copper and gold were the chief targets of the prospectors, but they also brought in ore with molybdenum, silver, lead, nickel and zinc. The nine baronies of the Program of Unification and other nearby villes with smelting capabilities used much of the ore. Cobaltville had even started shipping some ore to the other eight baronies when there was a surplus.
But it wasn't the threat of a mining empire that had brought Kane and his team to Utah.
They were investigating a series of raids on the ore caravans, and of particular interest was a caravan leader named Chapman. Kane focused on Nell and her companion, knowing the chilling time had come before the trap closed completely. He depressed the electronic ignition. The Enduro's engine caught smoothly, protesting in a short, stuttering cough when the fuel fired through the carburetors. Nell had been right about the quality of the local fuel.
The Enduro's engine blatted strongly, chugging out a throat-burning, noxious cloud of gray-white smoke. Kane twisted the throttle and threw a leg over the motorcycle's seat, his mind whirling with what had to be done.
Domi went to ground to the right, digging in behind a rock large enough to completely hide her. She snaked the Winchester's barrel forward. The albino wasn't the best shot Kane had ever seen, but she'd be cause enough for concern to the coldhearts confronting them.
Nell was already in motion, bringing her Mini-14 to her shoulder.
Kane settled onto the Enduro's seat and jammed his left foot on the gearshift. When he popped the clutch and twisted the throttle, the motorcycle reared into the air for a moment. The back wheel spun out a rooster tail of sand and gravel.
Bullets cut the air where Kane had been as he roared up the incline straight into the gun barrels of the coldhearts that had been lying in ambush along the trail. Everything was on the line now, and he hoped Grant was in place to cover his back the way the man had done for years.
HIGH ATOP A HILL to the east of the trail, Grant gazed through the telescopic sights of the big Barrett sniper rifle he'd brought from Cerberus. He moved his field of vision, keeping both eyes open so he wouldn't lose his frame of reference. He took shallow breaths, concentrating on the action as Kane shoved the coldhearts' trap down their collective throats.
The sheer brass of the situation made Grant grin even though his friend could be speeding to his death. His response derived from the Mag training he and Kane had shared back in Cobaltville, back when they'd believed in the barons. Or, at least, had believed nothing else better existed.
"What the hell is Kane doing?"
Grant didn't glance over at his companion.
Brigid Baptiste was from Cobaltville, too. She'd been an archivist, responsible for filing papers and rewriting history according to the wishes of Baron Cobalt. Though she often accompanied Kane and Grant on field missions proposed by Lakesh, she hadn't developed a warrior's mentality. She had no problem fighting, though.
The Enduro was in motion before the sound of the engine ever reached Grant's ears. Light traveled faster than sound waves, and a bullet was only slightly faster than sound. It was a sobering thought as he placed his forefinger on the Barrett's trigger and hunted for a target. He estimated he'd get at least two shots off before the coldhearts below heard the sounds of the shots and knew he was there. He intended to make both shots count.
"Kane's just getting acquainted," Grant answered. He stood six feet four inches tall, a thick, broad man carrying scars from past battles. Gray sprinkled his short-cropped curly hair. His drooping black mustache stood out in sharp relief against his coffee-brown skin. His faded road leathers were nearly the same sandy-red color as the land around them.
In contrast, Brigid Baptiste's tall frame was dwarfed by Grant's as she lay on the fiat rock they'd chosen nearly a thousand yards from the trail where Kane was. Slender and full breasted, she had her reddish-gold hair pulled back in a ponytail to keep it from her beautiful face. She studied the scene before them through powerful binoculars. She carried a Copperhead close-assault weapon, one of the subguns Grant had carried as a Cobaltville Magistrate.
Grant knew there wasn't time for any more conversation. He shifted the Barrett in front of him, scooting it forward on the built-in bipod. He pulled the buttstock in to his shoulder, preparing to handle the massive recoil the sniper rifle offered. Chambered in .50-caliber ammo, the Barrett had originally been introduced to take down lightly armored targets and materiel, and for shooting through concrete walls.
Grant counted seven men, including the two who'd taken up positions on either side of the trail Kane had followed. Grant was pleased to see that Domi had found shelter, and appeared to be using it He'd never quite figured out what his feelings were for the little albino, though Domi hadn't been reticent about announcing her own intentions about him
Letting out half a breath, Grant centered the telescopic sights over the two-man crew operating the portable .30-caliber Browning machine gun. It shook and stuttered as the triggerman fired a short stream of rounds while the beltman kept the ammo feeding through.
Grant knew the short burst was supposed to make Kane aware of what he was up against. Most men would likely have turned and run or surrendered on the spot. Kane wouldn't, Grant knew, and part of it was because his friend was counting on him
Brigid shifted beside him, careful to avoid disturbing his aim "Grant." She pointed down to the right where the trader caravan they'd targeted was advancing up the trail.
The sounds of the first shots had rolled over the caravan's scouts. The men turned their motorcycles around and waved to the wags in warning. Almost immediately, they put together a skirmish line that roared toward Kane's position little more than a mile away.
"Easy," Grant replied softly, shifting his attention back to the Barrett. Time was running out all the way around. If the trader sec men caught up with Kane in the middle of the firefight, there was no doubt they'd kill them all—including Kane and Domi.
Grant put the crosshairs over the machine gunner. With both eyes open, he saw that Kane had not stopped in his advance despite the carnage wrought by the machine-gun burst.
The woman who led the coldhearts turned to shout at the machine-gun crew as Grant centered the crosshairs on the gunner's head, then raised them an inch to allow for the distance.
Grant didn't try to hurry the shot. Given the distance, if his aim was off even a fraction of an inch, he'd miss by several yards. He slid his finger over the Barrett's trigger, then squeezed. The big sniper rifle slammed against his shoulder with an explosion of movement. The breech snapped back and forward, stripping another bullet from the 10-round clip. He centered and fired again in less than a second.
