Outlanders 37 Rim of the World, page 18
Brigid threw herself backward, somersaulting wildly through the grass, using one foot to kick upward into the man's groin. She felt the impact and heard a fierce grunt and curse exploding from her attacker's lips.
The trooper lunged after her, the tonga poised for a downward stroke to split her skull. A pair of 9 mm rounds fired from shadows hit the man with a 248- grain punch, knocking him backward, the tonga blade flying from his hand into the high grasses.
Brigid Baptiste didn't know who had fired the lifesaving shots, whether it was Grant or Kane or both, but she wasn't inclined to find out at the moment. She bounded for her fallen Copperhead and snatched it up from the ground as if it were a long-lost lover.
A keening Waziri raced directly for her position, swinging a curved sword over his head and working the trigger of the big black revolver hanging from his neck. Brigid felt and heard the thumping passage of bullets all around her, shearing through the grass. Shifting the barrel of her subgun, she let loose a burst. The trooper cried out, doubling over, bleeding from three wounds in his belly. He fell face down, writhing convulsively in shock and agony.
The thunder of the gunfire was deafening, echoing across the savannah, and to add to the confusion, the cacophony was underscored by the angry bawls of the bull elephant, sounding surprisingly close by. A moment later, Brigid saw the reason why.
The high grasses swished and rustled violently, the ground trembling underfoot. A huge gray mass loomed out of the murk, propelled by four massively muscled legs. Everyone heard the animal's lumbering progress through the undergrowth and its panting grunts of exertion.
The old bull elephant named N'gatawana came crashing into the middle of the melee. The long wrinkled trunk swung this way and that, and the huge ears flapped forward like leathery fans. Blood ran down his hide from several raw scrapes, inflicted when he had torn through the wooden stockade fence. Lifting his trunk from between the long, yellow tusks, the gigantic animal gave vent to a prolonged, eardrum-compressing roar.
Several of the troopers yelled in terror and ran in panic-stricken flight.
N'gatawana surged over the ground in a juggernaut-like charge, his tiny eyes reddened with rage. The dull reverberations of the elephant's heavy footfalls against the ground set a repetitive, drumming rhythm that sent a shiver up Brigid's spine, despite the heat and humidity. She dived into a hollow between intertwining grasses and lay there, fisting her Copperhead.
The formation of Laputara's troopers wavered, and then began to break up. They ran across the savannah, retreating from the twin tusks of N'gatawana. A man shouted stridently and though Brigid didn't understand the words, she recognized Laputara's maddened voice. She knew it was an order for the soldiers to stand fast and close up ranks.
One of the troopers ran directly into the elephant's path, raising his AK-47. He squeezed off a single shot before the massively muscled trunk swung out from the ponderous head and slammed into him like weighted pendulum, cartwheeling him off his feet. The man had time for one scream before N'gatawana reared up and stamped down with both front feet. There was a sound like a multitude of branches breaking simultaneously.
Howling in terror, the surviving troopers turned on their heels and ran. Sounding bugle calls of anger and triumph, the bull elephant thundered past Brigid's hiding place, pursuing the fleeing men like a dog chasing rabbits.
The cries of fright and thudding footfalls receded.
Brigid, Kane and Grant crept out of various hiding places. As they gazed after the dim gray shape of N'gatawana, Kane remarked blandly, "I don't believe I've ever been saved by an elephant before."
Grant nodded absently, brushing off his arms. "That was one pissed-off old pachyderm."
Brigid released her pent-up breath in a sigh. "This was all a trap to draw us out into the open and butcher us. It might have worked if N'gatawana hadn't broken loose."
"Or was set free," Kane said.
The sudden glare flashing down from above blinded them. A column of white light illuminated the small area in which they stood with a dazzling halo as bright as the noonday sun.
Chapter 22
None of the three people needed to see the ship hovering overhead to know it was there. They knew it was a circular craft of dully gleaming "smart" metal, appearing to consist of two thick disks each at least twenty feet in diameter placed one above the other.
They looked for an avenue of escape, but their only option lay in the direction of the village. The Cerberus warriors retained very vivid memories of the plasma weapons Enlil's fleet of attack disks had unleashed against the redoubt. They assumed that if they sought shelter under the Mantas, the TAVs would be destroyed from on high. Firing on the disk would have little effect, since the semi fluid composition of the hull absorbed projectiles.
As they took their first running steps toward the village, short pencils of light streaked from the half dome bulging out from the craft's undercarriage. Fist-sized craters opened up in the ground with little spurts of flame, and they felt the concussions of the explosive impacts.
The shaft of light swept around them, blocking them when they turned in the opposite direction. When they began to fan out, separating from one another, the halo of light expanded to capture them all. Kane, Brigid and Grant stopped moving and stood beneath the glare of the enormous eye floating less than fifty feet overhead.
Shielding his eyes, Kane snarled in angry frustration, "The son of a bitch said he wouldn't be back for two more days—"
"For the collar," Brigid broke in bitterly. "Not for us."
Grant growled deep in his chest. "It would've been nice if someone had thought to make that distinction earlier."
The silver disk ship dropped straight down, landing gear sprouting from beneath it. It settled silently and gracefully on the veldt less than thirty feet away from them.
A section of the hull split wide in a triangular shape, as if it were cloth slit open by an invisible blade. Kane resisted the urge to trigger his Sin Eater at the aperture. He had seen the phenomenon before and he knew gunplay wouldn't do him or his friends any good at this point.
A ramp extended outward, the smart metal of the ship forming a long walkway, as if the ship itself were sticking out its tongue. However, the humor of the overlords turned in a far darker direction than childish, impudent gestures.
From within the ship emerged a contingent of magenta-armored Nephilim, jogging down the ramp and enclosing Grant, Kane and Brigid in a crescent formation. All of the eight figures held their right arms straight out from the shoulder. Flanges shaped like the letter S cut in half sprang out from the pods mounted on their gauntlets with flares of sparks and crackling hisses of energy. Red energy pulsed in the gullets of the stylized adder heads that comprised the actual emitters of the accelerated stream of protons.
The deep-set white eyes of the Nephilim didn't blink, nor did their craggy faces register emotion and the outlanders knew why. A half-ovoid shell sprouted from the rear of their armor, sweeping up to enclose the back and upper portions of their hairless skulls. From its underside hair-thin filaments extended down to pierce both sides of their heads, turning the people into mind-controlled drones.
Then Overlord Utu came marching down the ramp, an ankle-length cloak of dark green attached to the shoulder epaulets of his elaborate armor belling out behind him. He looked much the same as when the Cerberus warriors had last seen him, on the bridge of Tiamat in the company of the entire Supreme Council, tall, slender, strong—and awesomely arrogant.
He stopped at the foot of the ramp and swept them all with cold, haughty eyes. Utu's face was human enough in shape—hollow cheeked with angular, arching bones. It was as perfect as if sculpted in marble, with no softness or irregularity anywhere about it. He had no hair, either on his face or head, only a finely wrought pattern of pale red scales and a crest of backward slanting spines running down the center of his cranium. The spines were of a deeper red than his flesh, the same shade as his elaborate body armor.
The eyes in Utu's face weren't even remotely human. They were like little pools of molten brass, bisected by black, vertical-slitted pupils—deep, impenetrable, without heart or soul or warmth.
As when they had first seen an overlord, the Cerberus warriors struggled to reconcile the sight of the tall, regal aristocrat coldly surveying them with memories of the small, fragile creatures who had ruled the baronies from the shadows of their high, isolated eyrie’s.
Utu stared at them unblinkingly, a withering scorn evident in the tilt of his head and the posture of his body. Brigid, Grant and Kane stared back, keeping their expressions neutral.
At length Utu stated, "I cautioned the prince you were far too canny to be caught by such a clumsy trap." His voice was like smooth velvet wrapping hard-edged steel.
"They were caught," said Laputara, striding around the disk. He cast a sullen glance first at Utu then at the three outlanders. "That fucking elephant ruined everything. I'm sure Pakari set him free."
Laputara was garbed in an even more mismatched and bizarre outfit than his soldiers. He wore a field jacket far too small for him and a red beret sat at a jaunty angle on his head. Lion's teeth and the bright feathers of jungle birds formed a fringe around the brim. He carried a long, fur-bedecked assegai lance in his right hand.
Lips peeling back from his teeth in a ferocious grin of pure malice, he spit, "I told you we'd be settling up."
Laputara took a long menacing step toward the Cerberus warriors, lifting the spear for a cast. He rocked to an unsteady halt when three gun bores were suddenly trained on him. Blinking in childlike confusion, he turned toward Utu and cried out petulantly, "My lord, they haven't been disarmed!"
Utu allowed a lazy smile to play over his angular face. "You noticed that, did you? And if they were disarmed, what would you do?"
Laputara jabbed the blade of the lance forward, screeching, "Kill them!"
"And would killing us get you the Collar of Prester John?" Brigid inquired, as if she were only mildly interested in the matter.
Thrusting his head forward belligerently, Laputara snapped, "Why wouldn't it? What do you have to do with—"
His words trailed off and an expression of puzzlement crossed his face.
Grant snorted out a disdainful laugh. "That's a great candidate you're backing for king, Utu."
"He is a puppet, Grant," Utu replied quietly. "One does not choose a puppet because of their mental acuity. They are selected based on how they react to the pull of the strings."
Kane stared levelly at Laputara. "Is that what you are, Prince? The mindless puppet dancing on the end of an inhuman schemer's string?"
Laputara glowered at him from beneath a wrinkled brow, but he didn't answer.
"I am his god," Utu said casually. "He has freely chosen to be the instrument of my will."
Laputara turned toward Utu, bowing his head. "0 mighty one, I beseech you to strike down the intruders before they further corrupt my country. They have already poisoned my half sister—"
"You managed to do that without any help from us," Brigid interpreted contemptuously.
Laputara whirled around as if stung. Shaking the spear at her, he bellowed, "Askut! Silence! Askut!"
"Askut yourself," Brigid countered. "We don't recognize your authority."
Kane favored Utu with a humorless smile. "Or yours, either, in case you were wondering."
Still wildly brandishing his spear, Laputara roared, "Kneel in the presence of the great god Utu!"
Grant rolled his eyes in weary exasperation. "Are you always this hyper, boy? You wear me out just looking at you."
Turning to Utu, Laputara said angrily, "Force them to kneel before you, my lord!"
Utu shook his head. "They would not do so."
"Then strike them dead or permit me the honor!" Spittle flew from Laputara's lips as he worked himself up into a rage.
A taunting smile crossed Kane's face, and he waggled his Sin Eater at Laputara. "Come ahead and try, 0 Prince."
Infuriated, Laputara whirled toward him. Utu reached out and dropped a gauntleted hand on the young man's shoulder. Metal-shod fingers dug in and Laputara's face twisted in surprised pain. His knees bent under the pressure.
"Enough of these childish theatrics, Laputara," he whispered, releasing his grip. "Calm yourself."
Regarding the Cerberus warriors with hooded eyes, Utu intoned, "You three continue to be vexations. Should I assume you destroyed the birthing ward in the Sudan, despite my precautions?"
"We only finished what one of your Nephilim started," Grant retorted. "On your orders, I imagine."
Utu nodded. "It was an old Overproject Excalibur facility dedicated to the development of transgenic cells. I've been aware of the place for quite some time, but only in the last year did I have the wherewithal to tour it personally."
None of the three people responded to Utu's oblique reference to the transformation undergone by the barons into the overlords. It was an event they still had difficulty accepting. Kane easily recalled the Magistrate conditioning that instilled in them the belief the barons were kings, demigods, their personal deities and thus deserving of their unquestioning obedience. Even learning the barons were products of synthetic wombs and recombinant DNA hadn't completely stripped them of their semi divine mystique.
To see one of the nine barons now, transformed and evolved into a creature of myth, an entity who had indeed behaved and long ago been worshipped as a god, still evoked emotions somewhere between awe and repulsion.
"The facility was in remarkably good condition, all things considered," Utu went on smoothly. "And since it lay in my ancient territory, I claimed it as a rightful possession."
"So you decided to jump-start the research," Brigid interjected flatly, "to synthesize your own monster army. You brought out-of-work personnel from Snake- fish and put them to work, using one of your Nephilim as a straw boss. But the experiment got away from you."
Utu's lips stretched in a smirk. "As such experiments often do. My Nephilim was instructed to trigger a reactor overload during such an eventuality, but apparently he was unable to complete it. All things considered, I suppose it was fortunate you three came along before the subjects escaped."
Grant eyed the Nephilim standing on both sides of him and his friends, as motionless as statues with the ASP emitters positioned to catch them in a triangulated crossfire. He didn't like the odds at all, but his voice held no particular emotion when he asked, "Just like it was fortunate we came along to help the princess?"
Utu's smirk vanished and Laputara whirled around to glare at him with enraged eyes. "The three of you are taking a very, very big risk," Utu said in a low tone, heavy with menace. "Enlil could very well interpret this incursion of yours as breaking the truce."
"And like sending one of your mechanical toys to spy on Cerberus isn't?" Brigid shot back. "I don't think Enlil will be happy to hear about how you put his darling Ninlil in jeopardy with your own covert actions."
Utu glared at the outlanders and they glared back.
They knew that the agreement observed by the Supreme Council and the Cerberus personnel had been made under duress and Enlil would use any excuse to consider it void. If not for Balam acting as mediator, a state of open war would have existed between the reborn Annunaki and Cerberus.
As it was, they were still trying to come to terms with the full implications of the maneuvers and counter maneuvers undertaken by Enlil as he had moved his chess pieces over a vast board of power plays that stretched across the world and millennia. Through the years, over the centuries, Enlil assumed many names and adopted many physical vessels in order to manipulate events and governments to best fit his agenda.
As far as Enlil was concerned, the nukecaust was a radical form of remodeling and fumigation. The extreme depopulation, as well as the subsequent atmospheric and geological changes approximated Niburian conditions. The reborn Annunaki set about reclaiming the nations and regions of Earth they had ruled millennia ago.
But with Tiamat in permanent orbit, hanging over the world like a dark angel of doom, the Cerberus warriors knew they had no chance of emerging victorious from a head-on confrontation with the overlords, even if they managed to kill all of them.
The giant ship was capable of dispatching remote probes, essentially smaller versions of herself, to blanket the planet with fusion bombs, biological and chemical weapons, and defoliants of all kinds.
As a result, the seas would be rendered toxic, the atmosphere contaminated, starvation and exposure to radiation would kill anyone who was unlucky enough to survive the initial onslaughts. Humanity as the dominant species on Earth would cease to exist.
Only the fact that Balam held an infant as a hostage prevented such a catastrophe from coming to pass. The baby, carried to term by the hybrid female Quavell, had been bred to carry the memories and personality of Enlil's mate, Ninlil.
In actuality, Quavell had given birth to a blank slate, a tabula rasa, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Although the child carried the Annunaki genetic profile, she was born in an intermediate state of development. Certain segments of her DNA, strands of her genetic material, were inactive and needed to be encoded aboard Tiamat.
Once there, through a biotechnological interface, she would receive the full mental and biological imprint of Ninlil. Then the Supreme Council would be as complete as it had been thousands of years before and Tiamat could set into the motion the rebirth of the entire Annunaki pantheon. Enlil would not be pleased with any overlord who put at risk Ninlil and thus the long-range plan to remake Earth.
Utu forced an unctuous smile to his face. "Perhaps it would be best to leave Enlil out this situation altogether."
Kane nodded. "Sound decision, my lord Doo-doo."
The smile vanished from the overlord's scaled face in reaction to the mockery. "But that does not invalidate the fact you're trespassing and involving yourself in a matter that has no real meaning to you."
