Outlanders 37 Rim of the World, page 8
The sun slanting through the leaves of the brush around her cast a dappled pattern of contrasting shadow on her bare arms and legs. The complexion of her limbs was as pale as creamed milk. An albino by birth, Domi's bone-white hair was cropped short and spiky, the eyes on either side of her thin-bridged nose the ruby color of fresh blood.
Every inch of five feet tall, Domi barely weighed one hundred pounds and at first glance, she gave the impression of being waif-like. But there was little of the waif about her body, lean and lithe, with small, pert breasts rising to sharp points and flaring hips. Born a feral child of the Outlands, there was a primeval vibrancy, an animal-like intensity about her.
She scanned the brush and the tree line below with the patience born of long experience hunting game. A deep, thickly wooded gully yawned below the crest on which she lay. The forest was a rich, verdant green, decorated here and there with the bright blue petals of alpine forget-me-knots. On her left, beyond the tree-line, rocky ramparts plunged straight down to a tributary of the Clark Fork River a hundred feet below. The tall trees were fir, pine and aspen. The shadows between them looked dark and coolly inviting.
Breathing slowly and regularly, she inched the lenses of the binoculars across the terrain, beginning to wonder if she had glimpsed a rabbit or some other small animal. Even as the doubt registered, she dismissed the possibility. She was far too canny and experienced to mistake an animal that belonged in the wild for something else, something that had triggered a mental alarm.
Since early that morning, Domi had been fixated on alarms. It was her turn to walk the line, running checks on the security network of motion and thermal sensors planted all around the Cerberus installation. Under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed hiking through the forest, rich with the smell of spring growth. Even though she appreciated the comforts provided by Cerberus—like regular meals and soft beds—she was happy to get away from its cold vanadium-walled confines and crowded corridors.
The fortified redoubt was built deep within a peak of the Bitterroot Mountain Range. Construction had begun in the mid-1990s. By the time of its completion in 1998, no expense had been spared to make the redoubt, the seat of Project Cerberus, a masterpiece of concealment and impenetrability.
The tri-level, thirty-acre facility had housed the Cerberus process, a subdivision of Overproject Whisper, which in turn had been a primary component of the Totality Concept. The researches to which Project Cerberus and its personnel had been devoted were locating and traveling hyperdimensional pathways through the quantum stream.
Once that had been accomplished, the redoubt became, from the end of one millennium to the beginning of another, a manufacturing facility. The quantum interphase mat-trans inducers, known colloquially as "gateways," were built in modular form and shipped to other redoubts.
Most of the related overprojects had their own hidden bases. The official designations of the redoubts had been based on the old phonetic alphabet code used in military radio communications. On the few existing records, the Cerberus installation was listed as Redoubt Bravo, but the handful of people had who made the facility their home for the past few years never referred to it as such.
The huge facility had come through the nukecaust with its operating systems and radiation shielding in good condition. When Mohandas Lakesh Singh had reactivated the installation some thirty years before, the repairs he made had been primarily cosmetic in nature. Over a period of time, he had added an elaborate system of heat-sensing warning devices, night-vision video cameras and motion-trigger alarms to the surrounding plateau. He had been forced to work in secret and completely alone, so the upgrades had taken several years to complete. However, the location of the redoubt in Montana's isolated Bitterroot Range had kept his work from being discovered by the baronial authorities.
In the generations since the nukecaust, a sinister mythology had been ascribed to the mountains, with their mysteriously shadowed forests and hell-deep, dangerous ravines. The range had become known as the Darks. The wilderness area was virtually unpopulated. The nearest settlement was located in the flatlands, and it consisted of a small band of Indians, Sioux and Cheyenne, led by a shaman named Sky Dog.
Planted within rocky clefts of the mountain peak and disguised by camouflage netting were the uplinks from an orbiting Vela class reconnaissance satellite, and a Comsat. The road leading down from Cerberus to the foothills was little more than a cracked and twisted asphalt ribbon, skirting yawning chasms and cliffs. Acres of the mountainsides had collapsed during the nuke-triggered earthquakes nearly two centuries ago. It was almost impossible for anyone to reach the plateau by foot or by vehicle, and Lakesh had seen to it that the facility was listed as irretrievably unsalvageable on all ville records.
The line of new alarms had been installed fairly recently, expanding in a six-mile radius from the plateau, following an attack on the redoubt staged by Overlord Enlil.
Although a truce had been struck, a pact of non-interference agreed upon by Cerberus and the nine overlords, no one—least of all Domi—trusted Enlil's word, and so the security network had been upgraded over the past few months.
A fly lit on her leg and she distractedly brushed it away with her right hand. Reaching down, Domi made sure her knife with its nine-inch, wickedly serrated blade was securely sheathed to her right calf. It was her only memento of the six months she'd spent as Guana Teague's sex slave in the Tartarus Pits of Cobaltville.
Years before, Domi had sold herself into slavery in an effort to get a piece of the good life available to ville dwellers, but she had never risen any further than Cobaltville's Tartarus Pits. Since ville society was strictly class-and caste-based, the higher a citizen's standing, the higher he or she might live in one of the residential towers. At the bottom level of the villes was the servant class, who lived in abject squalor in consciously designed ghettos known as the Tartarus Pits, named after the abyss below Hell where Zeus confined the Titans. They swarmed with a heterogeneous population of serfs, cheap labor and slaves like her. She ended her term of slavery by cutting the monstrous Teague's throat with the blade and saved Grant's life in the same impulsive act.
Like so many others, Guana Teague had dismissed her as a semi mindless outlander. The average life expectancy of an outlander was around forty, and the few who reached that age possessed both an animal cunning and vitality. Domi was nowhere near that age—in fact she had no true idea of how old she actually was—but she possessed more than her share of both cunning and vitality.
She didn't miss the short and often brutal life in the Outlands. She had quickly adapted to the comforts offered by the Cerberus redoubt—the soft bed, protection from the often toxic elements and food, which was always available without having to scavenge or kill for it.
Domi had enjoyed similar luxuries during her six months as Guana Teague's sex slave. The man-mountain of flab had been the boss of the Cobaltville Pits and he showered her with gifts. He didn't pamper her, though, since she was forced to satisfy his gross lusts. He was obsessed with her, and that had brought about not only his professional downfall, but his bloody death.
Domi rarely dwelled on the past, but she often replayed how she had cut Guana's throat and how the blood had literally rivered from the deep slash in his triple chins. She always smiled in recollection of kicking his monstrous body as it twitched in post-mortem spasms, just as she smiled at the memory of Grant comforting her and thanking her for saving his life.
Thinking about Grant caused her lips to twitch unconsciously in a half frown, half smile. Whenever she thought about the big man with his lion's growl of a voice, she felt a mingling of love, anger and disappointment.
She loved the man for his courage and compassion, but she experienced anger and disappointment that he never allowed that compassion to turn into passion— at least not toward her. Domi was too practical, too pragmatic to expend much energy on girlish daydreams that had long ago proved to be lost causes, particularly since she had entered into a relationship with Lakesh and Grant had professed his love for Shizuka, the fierce captain of the Tigers of Heaven.
As angry as she had been when she learned about Shizuka, Domi also knew Grant had not become involved with the Japanese warrior-woman to hurt her. He had many character flaws, but being petty was not one of them.
Grant presented a dour, closed and private persona, rarely showing emotion. He was taciturn and slow to genuine anger, but when he was provoked, his destructive ruthlessness could be frightening. With him, slights were never forgotten and she knew he still stung from the whip of angry words she had lashed at him many months ago. "Big man, big chest, big shoulders, legs like trees. Guess they don't tell the story, huh?"
Domi regretted speaking those words almost as soon as they left her lips, but she had never apologized. When Grant rejected her love again on that day, she swore it was for the last time. Then, a month or so later when she came across Grant and Shizuka locked in a fierce embrace, she also swore she would never forgive him. Shaking her head, Domi tried to drive the memories of that night from her mind. There were a lot of memories swimming around within the walls of her skull she would as soon have excised, and that brief glimpse of Grant showering the Japanese woman's face with passionate kisses topped the list.
A sudden movement in the undergrowth at the base of the hill commanded Domi's attention, and she swiveled the binoculars toward it, vectoring in on the disturbance at ground level. She watched intently as the high grasses stirred, shifted, then parted. She half expected to see a snake. What she saw caused her lungs to seize and her breath to freeze in her throat. It took her brain few seconds to properly interpret the image fed to it by her eyes.
A small machine moved smoothly up the hill. Its bulbous metal body was no more than two feet in diameter. Mounted atop it was a round turret head connected to a neck made of a flexible metal conduit. Four glassy lenses that looked very much like convex crystals covered all sides of it.
Separate mechanical appendages resembling hook-tipped tentacles extended from beneath the machine's body, aiding in its climb. Eight jointed rods ending in tri-furcated steel claws propelled it forward in a swift, scuttling motion that put Domi in mind of a cybernetic spider. The machine didn't produce a clatter of moving parts or even the growl of an engine. All she heard was a faint throb overlaid by a series of metallic clicks.
Holding the binoculars in place with her left hand, she slowly drew the Detonics Combat Master .45 from the holster strapped to her right thigh. Fingers securing a tight hold on the checkered walnut grips, her thumb flicked off the safety. The stainless-steel automatic, which weighed only a pound and a half, was perfectly suited for a girl of her petite build.
She continued to watch the cyber-spider's steady progress up the hill. Her skin prickled with a superstitious dread at the sight of the machine. For a moment, her instincts warred with her intellect about the correct course of action to take.
Obviously the cyberspider didn't belong anywhere in Montana and certainly not so close to Cerberus. She was fairly certain the overlords had something to do with its existence, let alone its presence in the Bitter roots. But even by accepting that as a fact, the device exuded a sinister aura of the alien and she felt a surge of irrational xenophobia. She managed to tamp down her first impulse to shoot it. She considered transcomming Cerberus and asking Lakesh for suggestions, but the range was too great for the little radiophone in the backpack.
The cyber-spider crawled closer, the multi-eyed head rotating on its flexible metal neck. The rotation suddenly stopped. The neck extended farther and two of the glass lenses seemed to stare directly at Domi. They glowed red, as if candles burned behind them. She wondered if the machine could sense her by her body heat and transmit the data readings to a distant receiver.
For a moment, she imagined an enormous computer sitting somewhere far away, with Enlil or one of the other overlords scrutinizing and digesting the images the cyberspider sent to it. She shivered at the thought of it, then dropped the binoculars and rose gracefully to her knees. Holding the Combat Master in a double-fisted grip, she swiftly brought the cyberspider into target acquisition, framing the turret head before the pistol's blade sight.
Breathing in, she centered the fore and back sights on her target and exhaled half a breath as Grant had taught her. She squeezed the trigger and the pistol bucked in her hand, the booming report sounding obscenely loud in the wilderness. To her astonishment, the cyberspider sprang straight up and the bullet dug a divot of turf out the ground beneath it.
Instead of dropping back to earth, the machine sailed high into the air, emitting a sharp pop. Twin tongues of flame and smoke spurted from exhaust tubes extending from its underside. As Domi gaped in wide-eyed shock, the cyberspider flew up a score of feet at a thirty- degree angle, rotated, paused and hurtled down, a pair of metal-sheathed tentacles streaking out for her. Tiny but razor-keen hooks glinted at their tips.
Chapter 10
Domi threw herself sideways and back, somersaulting to avoid the striking tentacles. The hooks snicked past her, missing her eyes by inches. They plunged into the ground, anchoring the machine in place. She kept moving, rolling desperately into the underbrush. Thorns scratched her exposed arms and legs, but she bounced to her feet and lunged to the attack.
Her bare left foot struck the cyberspider on its turret head in a fast, vicious kick. Domi almost never wore shoes unless the ground was either icy or exceptionally rocky, since her feet were thickly callused on the soles.
The machine spun wildly around, then righted itself, retracting the tentacles into itself with a clattering rasp. Dropping to the ground, the-eight legs spread wide, the cyberspider set itself and sprang directly at her. She ducked, but another tentacle shot out from its underside, the pointed tip grazing her bare right shoulder.
Domi heard a crackle and pain erupted through every nerve ending. Her heart pounded so violently she thought her ribs would break. She hit the ground gracelessly and rolled, her vision blurred by the severity of the electric shock.
She fought and cursed her way onto her back, blinking back the haze and the amoeba-shaped floaters swimming across her eyes. She glimpsed the cyberspider jumping straight up again and she knew its trajectory would bring it down right on top of her.
Lifting the pistol in her right hand, she tracked the machine, leading it, then she squeezed the trigger, holding it down. She fired six rounds in such rapid succession the shots sounded like a single prolonged report.
The cyberspider's body flew apart in fragments under the .45-caliber barrage. Two of the eight legs spun away, end over end. For a second, the machine was surrounded by an orange halo of flame. Spinning crazily, the automaton listed to the left, then dropped to the ground with a clatter of loose parts. The red glow faded from the glass lenses on the turret head.
Grimacing, Domi rose to her feet, massaging the starburst-shaped scar on her shoulder. Nearly three years before, a bullet had shattered the bone. Reba DeFore had replaced the joint with an artificial ball and socket. After long weeks of painful therapy, Domi had made a complete recovery, but trauma against the joint still caused pain.
Domi ejected the empty magazine, removed another one from her belt and slid it into place, jacking a round into the chamber. Cautiously, she circled the fallen machine, gun barrel trained upon it. During her years in Cerberus, she had learned that the barons enjoyed access to secret technology, most of it created before the nukecaust. She assumed that as overlords, they would have an even greater selection once they reopened the ancient Annunaki vaults. She wasn't mystified by the workings of the cyberspider, but she felt distinctly apprehensive about it.
Suddenly, the glassy lenses in the automaton's round head glowed bright red. She recoiled, biting back a startled cry, her finger tightening around the trigger of the Combat Master.
Without warning, flame and smoke spurted around the base of the turret like an orange collar. The head launched itself from the flexible neck; propelled by wavering streams of fire. Hastily, Domi raised the Combat Master and squeezed off the remaining rounds in the magazine, but she missed.
The head inscribed a high, arcing trajectory, driven swiftly upward by tiny rocket thrusters. Within a handful of seconds, the device was only a miniscule, dully gleaming speck against the limitless expanse of azure.
Gritting her teeth, Domi glared at the inert cyberspider on the ground, noting the tendril of smoke curling from the end of the conduit that had served as the turret's neck.
Domi struggled with the urge to stomp on the machine in a frustrated fury, but decided Lakesh, Bry, Philboyd and the other Cerberus tech-heads wouldn't sympathize with her vindictive impulses. With a profanity-seasoned sigh, she reached for her backpack.
THE ROAD WOUND and twisted, as if its builders had followed the trail made by a giant broken-backed snake, thrashing and whipping in its death throes. The ancient two-lane highway wended its way up toward the chain of mountain peaks that comprised the Continental folded aside accordion-fashion as Domi crossed the tarmac. Lakesh and Brewster Philboyd stepped out of it, both of their faces drawn in masks of concern. They were dressed identically in the form-fitting white body- suits that served as the Cerberus duty uniform.
"Are you sure you're all right, darlingest one?" Lakesh asked anxiously. A lilting East Indian accent underscored his cultured voice. "You said you were shocked by the—what did you call it?—cyberspider."
Mohandas Lakesh Singh was a well-built man of medium height, with thick, glossy black hair, an unlined dark olive complexion and a long, aquiline nose. He looked no older than fifty, despite a few strands of gray streaking through his temples. In reality, he was just a year or so shy of celebrating his 250th birthday.
As a youthful genius, Lakesh had been drafted into the web of conspiracy the overseers of the Totality Concept had spun during the last couple of decades of the twentieth century. Immediately after the nukecaust, Lakesh had volunteered to go into stasis. The plan was for him to be resurrected many years later in order to help facilitate the Program of Unification, an effort designed solely to rule what was left of the world.
