Outlanders 14 Hell Rising, page 16
KANE'S MATTER-OF-FACT pronouncement stopped conversation for a handful of seconds. Finally, almost idly, Grant remarked, "None of us go on solo jump missions."
"Where is that written?" Kane inquired, as casually as if he were only feigning interest to be polite.
The big black man shook his head. "It doesn't need to be. Sure, we've gone off on our own before, but always it was part of the overall op. This is a personal path you're going down."
"I don't believe it is. Something nasty is brewing that could affect all of us." Kane added, as an afterthought, "This is my pointman's instinct talking."
Grant's lips compressed, but he didn't speak. He had always had the utmost faith in Kane's instincts, what he referred to as his pointman's sense. During their Mag days, because of his uncanny ability to sniff danger in the offing, he was always chosen to act as the advance scout. Kane had never led a contact team into an ambush and, in fact, had prevented an entire squad from being ambushed during a Pit sweep two years before.
"Everything you said comes from a very untrustworthy source," Grant said. "A fused-out hybrid who thinks you're the reincarnation of a dead Celtic warrior."
"I felt what Fand felt," explained Kane, striving to sound logical. "She communicated her fears."
"Her fears," Grant repeated harshly. "Just because she's scared doesn't mean there's anything for us to be scared of."
He leaned back in his chair, face a grim teak mask. "No way, Kane. A big neg on this."
Kane's jaw muscles knotted. "I," he said in a very measured tone, "am going. I thought I made that clear. You can either come with me or stay out of my way."
"Third option," Grant growled menacingly. "Your ass is thrown into a detention cell until you come to your senses."
Kane scoffed, a sneer twisting his lips and turning his features into something ugly.
Domi and Lakesh watched and listened to the threatening exchange apprehensively. Both of them had witnessed Grant and Kane's disagreements before, but never with such a cutting edge. The two men glared at each other, eyes locked and unblinking, tension crackling between them like static electricity before a thunderstorm.
Lakesh rapped sharply on the tabletop with his knuckles, like a teacher trying to get the attention of unruly students. He raised his reedy voice. "Enough! I want to drink my coffee with cream, not testosterone. You two gentlemen will come to order."
Kane and Grant swung their heads toward him. Anger still glinted in their eyes, but a bit of the dangerous energy in the room ebbed. Lakesh's choice of the word gentlemen hadn't been arbitrary. It struck a responsive chord with them, reminding both men of Magistrate Division briefing sessions. Years of conditioning died hard. Though neither man replied, Lakesh knew the kind of thoughts spinning through their minds.
Magistrates were a highly conservative, duty-bound group. The customs of enforcing the law and obeying orders were ingrained almost from birth. The Magistrates submitted themselves to a grim and unyielding discipline because they believed it was necessary to reverse the floodtide of chaos and restore order to post- holocaust America.
Magistrates were proud that each of them accepted the discipline voluntarily, so by nature their rigid self-control won out over raw emotions, at least temporarily.
"Now then, friend Kane," said Lakesh, his tone reasonable, soothing. "Perhaps there is another motive at work here, one that you're not consciously aware of."
"Which is?"
"I submit—with all due respect—you're looking for an avenue of escape."
"Escape from what?" demanded Kane.
"Guilt over what happened to Brigid and to Cotta. It's possible you're in so much emotional pain, particularly due to Brigid's present condition, you're unconsciously looking for any reason to get away from it. Concocting a life-or-death mission is just the sort of ploy a man of action like you would take."
In a low, dangerous tone Kane asked, "Are you implying I manufactured everything I told you?"
"Not at all. I accept on your word that you experienced the visions you told us about. Subjectively, you are utterly convinced of their veracity. However, your subjective faith doesn't necessarily translate to the objective."
Grant gusted out a heavy, prolonged sigh. "Well, as we've said before, there's only one way to find out."
Lakesh's head swiftly swiveled around on his wattled pipe stem of a neck. "You're in favor of this?"
"Absolutely not. But I'm less in favor of trying to lock Kane up. He'd just escape and go anyway."
Kane grinned, but Lakesh continued to gape at Grant incredulously. "You said it was a personal path Kane was walking!"
"Yeah," Grant grunted. "And not too long ago you insisted on walking one yourself. Remember that little trip you took to South Dakota to visit an old girlfriend?"
Spots of red appeared on Lakesh's cheeks. For a moment his lips worked as if he were thinking about spitting at Grant. Then, in an unsteady voice he said, "That is a terribly hurtful thing to say to me."
Grant inclined his head in a nod. "I didn't say- it to hurt you, Lakesh. If I did, I apologize. I was making a point. A blunt one, but I think you get my drift."
He focused his dark, shadowed eyes on Kane. "Against my better judgment, I'll go with you. But only for a recce. At the first sign of a dragoon, we haul ass out of there. I don't think they'll be as cordial this time around. Understand?"
Kane presented the image of somberly pondering Grant's words. "Understood."
"I'll go, too," Domi put in.
Both Grant and Kane snapped in unison, "No."
Her ruby eyes flared in sudden anger, and Grant said firmly, "You need to oversee the retrieval of Cotta's body. With us gone, you're the only one in the redoubt with combat training."
A little sullenly, the albino woman said, "You said the place was pacified."
"We're fairly sure it is," replied Kane. "But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go in there expecting the worst. If I had, Cotta might still be alive and Baptiste might be up and around."
"What about Brigid?" Lakesh asked, barely able to control the tremor at the back of his throat. "What if she regains consciousness while you're gone?"
"If what Fand imparted to me is true," snapped Kane, "it might not matter if she wakes up or not."
Kane ground his teeth together, tamping down on his frustration-fueled rage. "I can't do a goddamn thing for her. The decision of whether she lives or dies or sleeps or wakes up is out of my hands. Like it or not, it's up to her, not to me."
He stood up swiftly, the legs of his chair screeching loudly on the linoleum floor. Peeling back the cuff of his sleeve, he consulted his wrist chron. To Grant, he said, "Let's make the jump time to arrive over there around daybreak. We can ask Bry to pull up the destination codes for the English gateway."
Grant arose. "Do you want to go in hard?"
Kane's brow wrinkled in momentary concentration. "I don't think so. We managed the last time without our armor. But we need to pick up some odds and ends from the armory to make up for it."
"Not to mention new side arms."
The two men strode purposefully out of the cafeteria. Lakesh and Domi remained at the table, sharing an uncomfortable silence. Domi broke it by saying lowly, "Got a bad feeling about this."
Lakesh didn't know how he felt so he opted to stay quiet and finish his cup of coffee.
Propping her chin up on a hand, Domi said musingly, "Thought for a minute there they'd go at it big- time." She sounded almost disappointed.
"Stress has deleterious effects on the strongest men," Lakesh commented inanely.
She shook her head in disagreement. "Seen the same thing before, out in the wild. Two male wolves fight to be king of the pack, to give the orders, to fuck all the females."
Lakesh frowned at her crudity but he didn't rebuke her. Domi's rough, outspoken manner was due to her upbringing in the Outlands. He said, "Friends Grant and Kane are men, not animals. Even the best of friends have serious disagreements from time to time."
She smiled at him condescendingly. "If you say so."
A flush of irritation prickled the back of his neck. "Assuming for the sake of argument that what you say has some validity, would you want to be part of either man's harem?"
Domi pursed her lips thoughtfully for a long moment, then grinned broadly. "At this point, I could live with it."
Chapter 16
Grant slapped the flat toggle switch on the door frame, and the overhead fluorescent fixtures blazed on, flooding the armory with a white, sterile light.
The big square room was stacked nearly to the ceiling with wooden crates and boxes. Many of the crates were stenciled with the legend Property U.S. Army, and others bore words in Russian Cyrillic script.
He and Kane moved along the aisles, past glass- fronted cases holding M-16 A-1 assault rifles, SA-80 subguns, and Heckler & Koch VP-70 semiautomatic pistols complete with holsters and belts. Lining the walls were bazookas, tripod-mounted M-249 machine guns, and several crates of grenades. Mounted on frameworks in a corner were two full suits of Magistrate body armor, standing there like black, silent sentinels. Every piece of ordnance and hardware, from the smallest-caliber handblaster to the biggest-bore M-79 grenade launcher, was in perfect condition.
All of the ordnance was of predark manufacture and had been laid down in hermetically sealed Continuity of Government installations before the nukecaust. Protected from the ravages of the environment, nearly every piece of munitions and hardware was as pristine as the day it rolled off the assembly line. Over a period of years, Lakesh had smuggled out all of the weaponry from the largest COG facility, the Anthill.
Most of the exiles had never so much as touched a blaster until they arrived at Cerberus. All of them were expected to become reasonably proficient with guns, and they had spent some time on the indoor and outdoor firing ranges under Grant's tutelage. The lessons were restricted to the use of the SA-80 subguns, lightweight "point and shoot" autoblasters even the most firearm-challenged person could learn to handle.
Kane and Grant stopped at an open gun case where nearly a dozen Sin Eaters in their forearm holsters hung from pegs. They had appropriated the spares a short time before from a squad of hard-contact Mags dispatched from Cobaltville.
After choosing a pair of Sin Eaters, they took them over to a table, testing the tension actuators and the spring cables inside the holsters. Swiftly, expertly, the two men field-stripped the blasters with practiced hands. The Sin Eater was a Mag's assigned weapon, almost a badge of office. They knew it more intimately than anything else in the world.
As they took apart the weapons, Kane said quietly, "I appreciate it, you know."
Grant didn't look at him, laying the blaster's parts neatly on the tabletop. "Appreciate what?" "Believing me."
Grant snorted. "I believe in you, Kane, not what you claimed Fand said to you. That's not quite the same thing."
Kane opened the cleaning kit. "I appreciate the vote of confidence, then."
Grant laughed, but it had little mirth in it. "Has it occurred to you if I had real confidence in you, I'd let you go on this sortie on your own?"
Kane angled an eyebrow at him. "I don't get you."
"I'm going with you on this jump because it so happens we're partners. It's a matter of policy, not a matter of my utmost faith in everything that comes out of your mouth."
"I'd do the same for you," Kane said, an edge in his tone.
"Yeah, I know. That's why I'm doing it."
"I think I'd do it with a little more grace than you're showing."
Grant vigorously oiled his Sin Eater's barrel with a square of cloth. His terse, gruff, "How the hell do you know?" ended the conversation.
Kane devoted his attention to cleaning the parts of the weapon in earnest. The Sin Eater didn't make the jump with him to the other casements, but it occupied his attention now.
After a thorough oiling and cleaning, the two men put the Sin Eaters back together, working in silence. They strapped the holsters to their right forearms, adjusting the straps and buckles.
When they were satisfied the Sin Eaters worked properly, they went through the crates and the cases, picking and choosing from their lethal contents. Both of them took four grens apiece—two high-explosive, and two ovoid concussion grens of the Alsatex series, developed by the military two centuries ago for crowd control.
They attached the grenades to the combat harnesses they would wear beneath their Kevlar-weave coats, then clipped three 20-round magazines for their Sin Eaters to the harnesses, as well.
Kane went to a gun case, sliding back the glass door. From it, he selected their close-assault weapons. Chopped down subguns, the Copperheads were barely two feet in length. The magazines held fifteen rounds of 4.85 mm steel-jacketed rounds, which could be fired at a rate of 700 per minute. Even with their optical-image intensifiers and laser auto-target scopes, the Copperheads weighed less than eight pounds.
From a notched wooden rack at the rear of the case, Grant took a pair of black, six-inch-long cylinders. He handed one to Kane and screwed the other carefully into the Copperhead's bore. The two-stage sound and muzzle-flash arrester suppressed even full-auto reports to no more than rustling whispers.
Slinging the subgun over a shoulder by its strap and holding his combat harness in his right hand, Grant faced Kane. "We primed?"
"Appears so."
"Then I'll meet you at midnight at the jump chamber." With that, he turned on his heel and strode from the armory.
Kane followed him out, walking down the corridor in the opposite direction, not able to repress a shiver when he passed the electronically locked door that had once opened into Balam's prison habitat. Despite the fact he had learned Balam was less an inhuman, conniving monster than the tragic sole survivor of a lost race, he still didn't miss his presence in the redoubt.
Entering the dispensary, he walked to Brigid's bedside. DeFore was there, checking her patient's pulse rate. Her dark eyes flicked toward him, then looked him up and down in mild curiosity. "Where are you going?"
"England."
"Lucky you," she replied dryly. "I hear it's nice this time of year."
Kane ignored the observation. He moved around to the opposite side of the bed and studied Brigid's blank, pale face. Her hair, spread out over the pillow, resembled a captured stream of sunset.
"No change," DeFore told him. "If her condition persists for another twelve hours, I'll hook her up to the EEG and see what kind of brain-wave activity I can monitor."
"Why haven't you done that before?" Kane asked. "I don't want to irritate the sutures. I've got to be sure there's no latent infection."
Kane nodded. "Do you think she's dreaming?" DeFore lifted an eyebrow. "She very well could be."
"Don't people usually wake up from dreams?"
She chuckled. "Eventually. But maybe she's in such a pleasant dream world she doesn't want to wake up. Maybe where she is there's no violence, no barons, no killing. A world where she's found her heart's desire."
"Wouldn't that be nice," Kane murmured wistfully.
"So nice she doesn't want to leave it." DeFore turned and walked away.
Kane continued to gaze down into Brigid's face, noting the angry red line on her right temple, extending and disappearing into her hair. He thought he detected the barest hint, the merest ghost of a smile at the corners of Brigid's lips.
"What's so pleasant, Baptiste?" he whispered in a voice so faint he barely heard it himself. "Wherever you are, I hope you're without pain and happy. Nobody deserves it more than you."
He glanced around, making sure neither DeFore nor Auerbach was in sight as he bent down. Gently, he kissed her cold, dry lips and breathed into her ear, "Come back to us, Brigid. Come back to me, anam-chara."
WEARING ONLY his undershorts, Grant sat down cross-legged and stared at the white wall in his room. He focused his gaze on an ink print of his thumb that he had impressed there some time back. He relaxed his neck and shoulders first, then worked all the way down to his toes. He concentrated on regulating his respiration, putting himself into a quasi-hypnotic state.
He was trying to achieve the "Mag mind," a technique that emptied his consciousness of all nonessentials and allowed his instincts to rise to the fore. He'd been trained to do it while a Cobaltville Magistrate and used it for handling pain when he'd been wounded or dealing with physical exhaustion.
After memorizing the thumbprint on the wall, he closed his eyes, visualizing it in his mind. He struggled to superimpose a mental image that matched the actual print, but he couldn't do it. His concentration was scattered.
