Outlanders 36 refuge, p.1
Outlanders 36 Refuge, page 1
Chapter 1
"My dear friends," said Dr. Mohandas Lakesh Singh, his tone somber, "I have brought you together to hear tidings not of the gravest import—nevertheless, we must always prepare for the worst."
"Tell us something new," Grant grumbled.
"Yeah," Kane added. "I could be catching up on my sleep."
They sat together for the briefing session in the Cerberus redoubt's dining hall. Brigid Baptiste and Domi were present, Domi gnawing on a piece of dried fruit. Sally Wright was likewise on hand, looking mild and owlish behind her big round glasses.
"Sadly," Lakesh continued, "though they have been absent for sometime, we cannot dismiss the threat they pose. I refer to the overlords, who have occupied the bodies of the nine barons."
"With all due respect," Brigid said crisply, "the barons' apotheosis is hardly a recent development, either." She was a tall, strikingly beautiful woman with a flow of hair like molten gold.
Lakesh drew in a deep breath. Brigid, former archivist in Cobaltville, was his most frequent defender and ally among the core Cerberus operatives: the ones who had escaped together from Cobaltville, and who handled the bulk of the dirty, dangerous missions in the campaign to free humanity from inhuman domination. If Brigid was dubious, he might face a tough task. Nonetheless, he reset his ingratiating smile and persevered.
"It is simply that, while we have received ample evidence of the terrible power of the overlords, it is also most painfully clear that we have as yet had but a glimpse of the totality of that power. Indeed, I daresay it likely they themselves do not yet appreciate the full extent of their powers. Therefore the potential threat they constitute to us—to this redoubt—can only be considered extreme. And only likely to mount.
"I have come to feel a strong need for a substantially remote place of refuge.
"Where?" Grant asked. His voice was like a volcano trying to decide whether to get serious about erupting. Given the impressive size of his chest that was not surprising. He was a black man who made Kane seem small, and Kane was neither short nor weakly built. He had close-cropped hair, dusted gray at the temples, and an impressive handlebar mustache. "Madagascar?"
"Interesting that you should suggest that, Grant, my friend," Lakesh said.
Kane raised an eyebrow. He was a dangerous-looking man, dark of hair and beard, light of eye, lean and sinewy as a wolf. If anything, his appearance understated his men ace. "Oh? Is that where you want us to grab you a new vacation hideaway?"
"No. Or at least, not directly."
Finishing off her fruit, Domi licked her fingers and favored Lakesh with a scowl almost worthy of Grant, who was past master of the menacing scowl. She was a small, slender albino woman with hair shorn to a snowy fuzz and startling bloodred eyes. Despite her slimness she seldom ran any risk of being mistaken for a boy.
"Don't walk all around the blaster," she said. "Get to the trigger."
Lakesh nodded. "Cogently if idiomatically said, dearest Domi. The ideal location for an alternate base of operations is not on Earth at all."
"You are not moving us to Manitius," Kane said. It was emphatically not a question. Neither he nor his companions had fond memories of the lunar base—from which many of Cerberus's current personnel had arrived as refugees.
"Oh, no," Lakesh said. "Not at all. Indeed, that is much too close at hand."
"Surely not Mars," Brigid said.
Smiling, Lakesh shook his head. "Again, not far enough to ensure the requisite degree of safety."
"Dr Lakesh," Sally Wright said earnestly. Not that she said anything other than earnestly, except when she was being diffident. "Do you think it's really a good idea to go on tantalizing them like this?"
"She's right," Kane said, showing teeth. Of all the Cerberus operators he seemed to have the closest thing to an easy and natural relationship with the analyst—also an erstwhile archivist in baronial service—whom he and the others had helped escape from Snakefishville on the Cific coast. Although she had been brought in as assistant and complement to Brigid, her relationship with the taller and emphatically feminine redheaded woman was formal at best. She seemed awed and intimidated by Brigid—and Kane suspected she was half in love with her, as well. "It's not safe. So give—or even Baptiste will jump for your throat."
"Ha-ha." Lakesh's laugh came in a nervous titter, shriller even than his usual. "Surely you are mistaken. Our gentle Brigid—"
"Don't count on it, Doctor," Brigid said.
Lakesh blinked his startlingly blue eyes. They were very large behind his own round-rimmed spectacles. "Very well," he said, deflating slightly. "The only suitable sanctuary, so I have decided, would be one not only not of this Earth, but not of this dimension."
"Many worlds again," Grant said.
"That's brilliant thinking," Kane said. "Which casement? Mankind goes for the stars? The Nazis win? Those are some swell places to go for some rest and recreation."
"As long as we're only sending our minds," Grant added.
"Oh, not those places at all, my friends. Nor am I speaking merely of projecting your—our—consciousnesses there. I speak of a new set of worlds entirely. One to which we can move bodily."
"How?" Grant asked.
It was Brigid who answered, "Mat-trans chamber, of
course It stands to reason that, should alternate universes exist—and we know for a fact they do, unless we have experienced shared hallucinations of extraordinary degrees of detail—a gateway might be so tuned as to project humans there. Given the presence of a geomagnetic node or equivalent to act as a receiving station."
Lakesh applauded softly. "Elegantly and eloquently put, my dear. You do me proud."
A flush, not altogether of pleasure, came to Brigid's high cheekbones. As an archivist she had been his protégée when he was an important figure in the Cobaltville hierarchy, as well as among the baronies in general. It had been Lakesh who, impersonating members of a non-existent resistance movement, guided her onto the path that would end in her shivering naked in a cell awaiting execution of a termination warrant—and thence to perpetual exile in Cerberus. She had never forgiven him fully for setting her up.
"And now we get to the black, rotten heart of the matter," Kane said. "You've found a prospective alternate world. And you want us to go explore it for you."
Lakesh beamed and nodded. "Precisely."
Chapter 2
"I hate to admit it," Grant said, turning slowly in place to survey the countryside around them, "but Lakesh seems to be right. Looks like this place won't kill us all right off the bat, after all."
They had materialized on a sort of ledge, overlooking a gentle green valley, midway between the hilltop and a creek gurgling below. They were relatively sheltered from observation from any distance, but enjoyed good all-around visibility. The sun stood about halfway up to the zenith. It seemed to be late summer here, as it was back at Cerberus.
Kane pointed to the top of the rise. "Let's go get a better look at the wider world that awaits us."
"Smells nice," Domi commented, producing an apple from her backpack.
"That's the sweet smell of spring in the Midwest," Kane said, "where they actually get rain occasionally."
"Wait'll it gets hot, as well as humid," Grant said. "Won't smell half so sweet then."
Kane shook his head and clucked mock-reprovingly.
"Always so negative, Grant." The big man glared at him.
They marched up to the hilltop, each bowed beneath the weight of a well-stuffed pack. Lacking a clear idea of what they might expect, they hauled around supplies for days on their backs.
Grant had paced a few yards off. "Lot of dead ground hereabouts," he commented. "I don't like it."
"I thought all that warrior philosophy Shizuka's been teaching you emphasized the need to appreciate beauty, as well as swing a mean katana," Kane said. "It's lovely country. Wildflowers. Creeks. Scattered woods. Green rolling hills."
"What I said," Grant said. "Dead ground. Nothing about Bushido says I have to like terrain that makes it easy for an enemy to sneak up on me."
"What enemy?" Brigid said. "There's no one for miles around."
They were near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers which held a high probability of a population concentration nearby, having attracted major ones at least twice in their world's history: the great pre-European Cahokian civilization and St. Louis/St. Charles west across the Mississippi from the old Indian site with its famous earthen mound. In their home world it was now a hellzone, having been comprehensively nuked during the brief but enthusiastic Third World War.
Lakesh had, he assured them, discovered through his mathematical calculation of chronon flux a world similar to their own, but not too similar. What that meant exactly he couldn't tell them, or anyway didn't. But in all events, they had arrived safely, in an unpopulated spot, with nothing at all to suggest the proximity of a hellzone, or indeed anything remotely unpleasant.
Still....
Grant made a growling noise, deep in the vast cavern of his chest. "You should know better than ever to say a thing like that, Brigid," he said.
"There's always enemies," Domi said.
Facing west, Kane stiffened. "Now, that's odd," he said, staring fixedly into the sky a bit above the world's edge. He raised his microbinocs to his eyes.
Grant was at his shoulder. "What do you got?" the big man asked.
Kane exhaled dissatisfaction. "Something in the air off that way. Still pretty far."
"Sure it's not just clouds?" The overhead blue stretched mostly unbroken, but fluffy white cumulus clouds piled up above the horizons north and west.
"Nope." Kane lowered the binocs. He kept staring into the western sky. "Then again, we're not sure about anything about this world yet."
"Could that be a sign of some kind of settlement to the south of us?" Brigid asked.
The men turned. Brigid stood a bit apart, pointing south. She wore khaki pants with cargo pockets, hiking boots and a light green blouse. All were dressed in what on their world would be unobtrusive fashion, no bright colors to attract the eye, and durable. The two men wore long shirts with the sleeves rolled down to conceal shadow suits, which the women had declined to wear.
Smoke lay like a sky island over distant hills, slightly west of due south from where they stood. It was a dirty white with a smutty yellow core.
"Could be a forest fire," Grant said.
"Mebbe so," Kane said. "It's getting bigger. Mebbe just got started."
"How?" Domi asked.
"What do you mean?" Kane asked.
"What started it?" She shrugged and bit her apple. "See any lightning? Hear any thunder? See any thunderheads anywhere?"
"Lightning can strike at enormous distance from visible clouds," Brigid said didactically. "Even over the horizon. And perhaps it hit too far away to see or hear."
"You can see lightning pretty far off, though," Kane said, the lines around his eyes and mouth tightening.
Domi stiffened.
"What?" Kane said quietly. He didn't turn his head. "Something."
Brigid tossed her head with annoyance, started to speak. Kane held up a hand. The tall redhead looked capable of tossing some lightning bolts herself at being commanded, implicitly or not. But she stifled whatever commentary she had intended on Domi's vagueness.
Faint sounds teased the edge of his awareness: soft impacts. A kind of jingle. The breeze was freshening; they might have been tricks of it, of dried leaves left over from last fall clattering against branches in a nearby wood, a woodpecker excavating for bark-boring grubs.
Then came a whicker. Kane knew damned little about horses, which was just the way he wanted to keep it. But he'd knocked around the Outlands enough, where they were a leading mode of transport, to know that sound.
"Get ready for company," he said quietly but urgently.
Grant raised his right hand. A clench of its muscles would pop his Sin Eater out through a bulky sleeve, secured with a couple token stitches, and into his fist, ready for action.
"No," Brigid said. "We're supposed to be friendly."
"Nothing like a little show of firepower," Grant said, "to make sure things stay on a nice, friendly footing." But the big handblaster stayed in its forearm power holster.
"There," Domi said, pointing. A hill slightly lower than theirs stood about a hundred yards northeast, topped with a brush cut of trees still richly leafed-out and green. From it suddenly broke a dozen riders, more, at the canter.
"What the fuck, over?" Grant said, so softly he might not have realized he spoke the words aloud.
Kane's brain could only echo the sentiment although he said nothing. The riders wore armor, glinting bright in the midmorning sun. Not full body armor but mirror polished breast and backplates worn over tunics of strident red, weird billed caps that widened at the top. Their trousers were pink with powder-blue stripes. Their knee high boots gleamed like obsidian.
Each carried a lance with a pennon fluttering from behind its head, except for what seemed to be the leader. He held a glistening saber in a white-gloved hand.
More riders streamed out to either side of the stand of trees. As the first set trotted straight toward their group, the newcomers loped gently down the slope at diverging angles.
"Flanking us," Grant said. "Damn."
"They're already all around us," Domi said matter-of-factly.
Kane spun. Another party of cavalry swirled at the foot of their hill's southern slope, gaudy as a flock of exotic birds. The lancers rode in contra-rotating groups about the hill on which the four stood—some clockwise, some widdershins—at a contemptuously easy pace.
"They're messing with us," Grant said.
"Tell me something I don't know," Kane said. He was getting dizzy from revolving in place trying to keep track of the riders. "I make it forty, fifty. All this riding in circles makes it hard to tell for sure."
"Might be more of them in the woods or behind the hills," Domi said. Kane nodded.
"See?" Grant muttered. "I told you this was a bad spot."
Kane laughed crisply. "We came here to make contact with the locals," he said. "They've just saved us a wait. If we really strike an ace in the line, we might get to ride instead of humping it."
"How do we know they're friendly?" Brigid asked. "They haven't chilled us yet."
He stepped a bit down the north side of the hill, away from the others, and waved his arms above his head. "Hey!" he shouted "Hello, there! We come in peace! Friends! No trouble."
"Are we sure we want him for group spokesman?" Grant asked.
A fresh quartet of riders appeared from the small copse on the next hill north. Three of them were caparisoned like the rest: bright uniforms, cuirasses, wide-topped caps and, of course, black-shafted lances. The fourth wore what appeared to be the same tunic, trousers and boots as the rest. But he wore no armor—no visible armor, Kane amended mentally, thinking of himself and his partner. His head, sporting heavy, wavy, dark-blond hair, was bare. A long, thin black cigar protruded from a classically handsome face, beneath a luxuriant mustache of a redder hue than the hair on his head.
The four rode straight through the circling lancers, looking neither left nor right and not hesitating, forcing the others to change course to avoid blundering into them. Straight up the near slope they loped, to halt scarcely three yards from Kane.
The blond man let his looped reins hang on the neck of his handsome blood bay horse, slipped his right boot from its stirrup and cocked it over the front of his saddle, tipped up the cheroot between flawless white-gleaming teeth and emitted a jet of bluish smoke.
"Well, well," he said in English. "What have we here?" His accent was largely upper-class English—one Kane was uncomfortably familiar with from some of the most supercilious Manitius refugees—tinged with what Kane took for Scots. His voice was a clear tenor. Like his whole manner, its tone suggested confidence that nothing on Earth might shake.
Great, Kane thought, an arrogant bastard. Still, he was a bastard who talked before he ordered his horsemen to skewer the intruders with their pig-stickers--or before unlimbering the two heavy-looking revolvers riding in flapped leather holsters on either hip.
Kane held up his hands before his shoulders in what he hoped was a peaceful gesture short of abject surrender. "We are strangers from far away," he said. Beside him Brigid covered her eyes with a hand at his gaucherie. "We need to talk to your leaders."
The blond man looked down on Kane a moment with eyebrows raised. Then his eyes flicked restlessly among the others. His eyes were greenish blue, a very intense color, and seemed to glow from some wild, internal light that belied his controlled and casual demeanor.
"Hear that, chaps?" he called to his lancers. They had stopped riding in their show-ground circles. A number had ridden up to stand, entirely surrounding the outlanders at only a little greater distance than the bareheaded man had halted. Others remained in clumps at the hill's foot, evidently pulling security. "They say they've come from far away."
The lancers laughed at this as if it were the greatest joke ever. Kane fought the natural tendency of his own face, which was to settle into an angry frown. What does this clown think is so funny?
"What I say," Blondie said, swinging his laughing bluegreen gaze back to Kane's smoldering gray one, "is that you are trespassers—strangers from another world. Why the surprised looks? Our science, which is most advanced, foretold your coming with some accuracy.
"So, to business. I hereby arrest your persons in the name of Her Benevolent Majesty Queen Fiona I, Hegemon of Canada, Imperatrix of the Americas and Protectress of the Human Race. Take them, boys!"
Several lancers parked their lances in holders like leather tennis-ball cans slung to their saddles, dismounted and advanced on the Cerberus four.
