Dark Goddess, page 8
The people who lived outside the direct influence of the baronies, who worked the farms, toiled in the fields or simply roamed from place to place, were reviled and hated. No one worried about an Outlander or even cared. They were the outcasts of the new feudalism, the cheap, expendable labor forces, even the cannon fodder when circumstances warranted.
Domi had decided at a very young age she would not settle for the short, brutal life of a serf. She 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 baronial 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.
Tartarus swarmed with a heterogeneous population of serfs, cheap labor and slaves like Domi. She ended her period of slavery by cutting the monstrous Guana Teague’s throat with the blade and saved Grant’s life in the same impulsive act.
Like so many others, Teague had dismissed her as semimindless Outlander. The average life expectancy of an Outlander was around forty, and the few who reached that age possessed both an animal’s cunning and vitality. Domi was nowhere near that age, and in fact had no true idea of how old she actually was, but she possessed more than her share of both cunning and vitality.
After another five minutes of flying over great stretches of pastureland broken by random ravines and patches of forest, a long intestine of black smoke, shading to gray at the end, uncoiled from behind a range of hills.
“I think that might be the place,” Kane said.
He and Grant throttled back on the airspeed and dropped the altitude. The LARC—or low-altitude-ride-control—subsystem fed them turbulence data. The controls automatically damped the effects of turbulent air pockets by the deflection of two small fins extending down from beneath the cockpit areas of the Mantas.
The two ships glided over the walls of the former barony of Beausoleil, punching holes in the wavering curtains of smoke.
Silently, the four people looked down at the ruined streets of the ville. All the villes in the nine-barony network were standardized, so the architecture and layout were familiar.
The walls rose fifty feet high and at each intersecting corner, a watchtower protruded, housing Vulcan-Phalanx gun emplacements that supplied a clear field of fire on the road leading up to the main gate. One of the official reasons for fortifying the baronies was a century-old fear—or paranoid delusion—of a foreign invasion from other nuke-scarred nations.
In Beusoleil ville, there were no longer any checkpoints on the road, no “dragon’s-teeth” vehicle obstacles, no armed patrols, but inside the walls still stretched the complex of spired Enclaves. Each of the four towers was joined to the others by pedestrian bridges.
The Enclaves formed a latticework of intersected circles, all connected to the center, from which rose the tower known in baronial days as the Administrative Monolith. But the massive round column of white stone no longer jutted proud and haughty three hundred feet into the sky. The structure looked as if it had been broken in two by titanic blows combining fire and shock.
At the base of the monolith were heaps of rubble that had fallen from the high ramparts. Most of the surrounding buildings were nearly invisible in rolling plumes of dark smoke. The walls themselves showed huge breaches and in places had collapsed altogether. All of the streets were littered with corpses and debris. Vapor curled from black-edged craters.
“Holy God,” Kane said in a whisper.
“Aerial bombardment,” Brigid stated crisply.
“But why?” Grant rasped.
“Set down,” Domi suggested. “Mebbe find out.”
The Mantas circled the city, Kane and Grant searching for signs of life and when they saw none, they looked for relatively clear places on which to land. The best areas were outside of the walls.
Grant and Kane engaged the vectored-thrust ramjets of the Mantas and dropped the TAVs straight down, bringing them gracefully to rest facing the gate. Fine clouds of dust puffed up all around.
The two men switched off the engines, and they cycled down to low-pitched whines. Opening the seals of their helmets, Kane and Grant unlatched the opaque cockpit canopies and slid them back. Everyone disembarked, sliding down the wings to the ground.
Domi unholstered her Combat Master and Brigid checked her TP-9 autopistol. Grant and Kane made sure their Sin Eaters were secure in the rather bulky holsters strapped to their forearms. The Sin Eaters were big-bored automatic handblasters, less than fourteen inches in length at full extension, the magazines carrying twenty 9 mm rounds. When not in use, the stock folded over the top of the pistols, lying perpendicular to the frame, reducing its holstered length to ten inches.
When the weapons were needed, by tensing their wrist tendons, sensitive actuators activated flexible cables within the holsters and snapped the pistols smoothly into their waiting hands, the butts unfolding in the same motion. Since the Sin Eaters had no trigger guards or safeties, the blasters fired immediately upon touching their crooked index fingers.
“Let’s go in slow,” Kane announced. “Standard deployment. Baptiste, you’ve got our six.”
With that, Kane strode purposefully toward the gate, taking the point. In his dozen or so years serving as a Magistrate, he almost always assumed the position of point man. When stealth was required, Kane could be a silent, almost graceful wraith. In a dangerous setting, his senses became uncannily acute, sharply tuned to every nuance of any environment. It was a prerequisite for survival he had learned in a hard school.
When the Cerberus warriors entered the walls of the barony, they had to blink repeatedly, not just because of the drifting planes of eye-stinging smoke, but also in an effort to reconcile the panorama of devastation with their memories of identical cities they had visited.
Smoldering craters pockmarked the narrow lanes, and all of the buildings were shattered heaps of flaming kindling. The sky was hidden by a dense pall of black, choking smoke. The oppressive heat from the multiple fires drew perspiration from all of them. To Kane, the air had felt cooler in Florida.
The smell of roasted pork rose thick and strong from the rubble, and they recognized it as the odor of seared human flesh, known in Magistrate vernacular as “barbecued long pig.” Blackened bodies lay everywhere, outflung limbs lending them a sickening resemblance to charred starfish. They heard no sound other than the crackle of flames. A shared aura of nightmarish unreality numbed them.
“There wasn’t a battle here,” Grant growled. “This was a slaughter. A massacre.”
“But why?” Brigid asked. “It makes no sense. The villes mean nothing to the Supreme Council.”
Domi jerked to such a sudden halt, Grant nearly trod on her heels. She gestured for her companions to do the same. “Hear something,” she whispered.
Kane, Brigid and Grant didn’t question her, placing the utmost faith in the wilderness-honed senses of the Outlander girl. They strained their hearing and a faint, groaning gasp reached their ears: “…mouthy bitch…”
Grant and Kane flexed their wrist tendons. Sin Eaters popped up from their holsters, the butts slapping solidly into the waiting palms of the two men. Brigid and Domi leveled their pistols, peering through the twists of smoke.
“Just some mouthy bitch…”
A figure crept into view through the haze, a filthy, battered, bleeding, burned and blinded man. He crawled on his hands and knees, slowly, painfully, like a half-crushed beetle. The man’s face was a peeling mask of raw, red flesh. The ruins of his nose, lips and eyes were a nauseating testimony to his agony. Charred stubble sprouted from his blistered scalp in patches.
As he crawled forward, he gasped, “…. mouthy bitch…Team Phoenix for America, fuck yeah…”
Stiffening at the man’s barely intelligible words, Domi stepped toward him, followed by Brigid, Grant and Kane.
“Team Phoenix?” Grant murmured. “What the hell would they be doing here?”
The man stopped crawling and swung his ravaged face toward the sound of Grant’s voice. “Who’s there?”
Eyeing him closely, Brigid answered, “We’re from Cerberus.”
The man gaped with empty, sightless eye sockets in her direction and after a few seconds, he croaked, “Is that you, Baptiste? Brigid Baptiste?”
“Yes,” Brigid said, stepping up beside him. “Who are you?”
“Weaver, Joe Weaver. Remember me?”
Domi’s ruby eyes narrowed for an instant, either in relief or disappointment. Her companions knew the girl bore a Team Phoenix member named Sean Reichert a considerable grudge.
“I remember,” Weaver whispered, then he lay down on his right side. “I’m still alive, right?”
Brigid kneeled next to him, giving him a swift visual examination. “Yes, but not for much longer. I’m sorry.”
“Weaver,” Kane said, leaning over him, “can you tell us what happened here?”
The man’s blistered lips writhed. “Mouthy bitch happened here.”
“What does that mean?” Domi demanded.
A gurgling, rattle came from Weaver’s mouth. It took the Cerberus warriors a few seconds to recognize the sound as bitter laughter. “Happened yesterday…came in a flying saucer…landed on that big dildo of a building you folks called an Admin Monolith. Then there was a saucer that walked…”
Lines of confusion appeared on Brigid’s smooth forehead. “What? A flying saucer?”
“It grew three legs, like something out of the War of the Worlds, then a weird-looking bimbo in a kind of silver-and-blue body armor showed up…not bad-looking if you like them with bald and with scales. She had an attitude, tell you that—”
“What happened next?” Kane broke in impatiently.
Weaver shifted position, grunting in pain. “She started giving orders…pissed Major Mike off. I told him to be careful, but he tried to blow her away anyhow.”
He paused, swallowed painfully and gasped out, “Didn’t work. Blew us all away instead with some sort of energy weapon…Major Mike, Reichert, Robison…blew them all away. I ducked, but not fast enough. Guess they thought I was dead.”
He paused, coughed rackingly and added, “Weren’t too far wrong were they, huh?”
Not replying to his question, Brigid asked, “Then what?”
“I couldn’t see, but they started shelling the place from the air…no, not shelling. Some kind of explosive plasma charges…I found a hole and stayed in it.”
Weaver choked, blood welling up in his throat and spilling over his lips. “Don’t know why this happened, but I don’t mind it.”
His body shook in a spasm and he whispered, “Don’t mind it. Time to leave…go back to the past where I came from…”
Joe Weaver laid his head down, smiled and died.
Brigid Baptiste, Domi, Grant and Kane stood for a silent few moments, staring down at the dead man. All of them knew that even an ersatz soldier like Weaver did not expect tears at his passing.
Brigid stood up, automatically brushing off the knees of her jeans. “It’s a shame he had to die like this, but he’s right. He and Team Phoenix definitely didn’t belong in this time and place. I’m surprised they managed to live this long.”
Grant grunted, gazing toward the broken off stump of the Administrative Monolith. “Lilitu did that.”
Kane nodded. “She seems the most likely suspect.”
“Suspect?” Grant snapped. “Hell, she advertised it.”
Domi frowned. “Why? This used to be her ville. Why destroy it? Make no sense.”
Under stress, Domi reverted to the curt, abbreviated mode of outlander speech.
Grimly, Brigid said, “Makes no sense to us, perhaps. I imagine it does to Lilitu. Destroying her own ville must be part of a plan.”
Kane coughed into his fist. “If it is, I don’t get it.”
Chapter 9
Kane looked at the distorted reflection of his face in the orb and said, “Now I get it.”
“Oh, really?” Philboyd inquired, not even trying to warm the cold edge of sarcasm in his voice. “Explain it to the rest of the class, will you?”
“Lilitu dropped this off,” Kane replied, straightening up.
Lakesh, Philboyd, Sela Sinclair and even Brigid Baptiste regarded him doubtfully. The Cerberus warriors had arrived back at the redoubt only a few minutes before, landing the Mantas in a field atop a nearby knoll. They had exchanged stories, but no questions had been conclusively answered on the topics of Coral Cove, the barony of Beausoleil or the mysterious tripod.
“Assuming it was Lilitu who dropped this off,” Philboyd ventured, “why would she give us this bulletproof conversation piece?”
A breeze gusted over the plateau and stirred the spent cartridge cases, rolling them over the tarmac with semimusical tinkles.
“I don’t know,” Kane said frankly. “But this is the first major overlord activity in about five months. It’s something important.”
“I agree Lilitu is behind this,” Brigid stated, stepping forward to inspect the three-legged globe. “Occam’s razor is in full force here if you ask me.”
Domi slitted her eyes. “What’s that mean?”
Lakesh smiled at the girl fondly. “It means, darlingest one, that the simplest solution is most often the correct one.”
Domi’s porcelain lips crooked in a smile. “Buy that.”
Sweeping his disapproving stare over the litter of cartridge cases, he said, “Looks like a lot of ammo was burned through.”
Sinclair, still holding her autorifle, said defensively, “Ammo normally gets burned through before we get an idea of what we’re up against.”
Brigid bent before the sphere, her face only six inches away from it. “I don’t understand this at all. Why drop it off and fly away?”
“I thought it might be a bomb or a monitoring device,” Philboyd said. “But it doesn’t fit the functionality of either. We can’t move it, so we can’t take it inside so it can spy on us or blow us up.”
Pursing her lips, Brigid blew gently, fogging the orb’s surface. “There’s only two other possibilities. It’s either malfunctioning, or it’s supposed to serve an entirely different purpose. Therefore—”
A section of the sphere suddenly swirled and Brigid took a hasty step back, not able to completely suppress a cry of surprise.
Gun barrels snapped up as the forepart of the globe wavered like water in a violently shaken glass container. It seemed to pulse and throb as smoky waves of changing color passed over its smooth surface.
Kane felt his nape hairs tingle, his skin prickling with a shiver. The smart metal of the sphere molded itself into a three-dimensional female face, one of cold, classic beauty. Neither the capacity for mercy or kindness, nor any other human emotion could be found in the high-planed, aristocratic features. The face might have been a sculpted mask of an ancient goddess, but the eyes moved, the lips stirred and a voice spoke.
“All of you are aware of who addresses you.”
The rich, vibrant tone had not asked a question. The voice was fluid, but underscored by a machinelike cadence. Grant uttered a muffled curse and leveled his Sin Eater at the face on the sphere. He growled, “Lilitu.”
The smart-metal visage said, “We may converse in this fashion. It is a more secure method than dealing with you personally, given our history, and it is less likely that the transmission can be intercepted by any other member of the Supreme Council.”
“Do they make a habit of eavesdropping on you?” Lakesh asked.
“We habitually spy on one another,” Lilitu answered diffidently. The voice held a faint harsh echo as if metal struck metal somewhere within the sphere. “Part and parcel of power. When you have it, you must constantly guard against it being taken away.”
“Not to mention,” Kane commented offhandedly, “when you have it, you always want more.”
Shielding his eyes beneath a hand, Philboyd scanned the skies. “Where are you really?”
“Immaterial,” came the curt response.
“I don’t think so,” Sinclair countered. “We’re under no obligation to do more than make sure this installation is secure. I vote for planting a pound or two of C4 around that thing and blowing it off our mountain.”
A hint of a smile ghosted over the metallic mask of Lilitu’s face. “You would not have the chance, woman.”
“Why not?” Grant asked.
With a faint whir of electronics, the three legs uprooted themselves from the asphalt and the tripod rose, the sphere towering twelve feet above the plateau. It took a sideways step toward Sinclair.
“This device is more than just a means of communication,” Lilitu stated. “It has defensive and offensive capabilities.”
“I can vouch for the latter,” Lakesh muttered. In a louder voice, he demanded, “Are you guiding it from a remote location?”
“I have not undertaken this effort to communicate with you in order to answer your questions.”
“Then why did you?” Brigid inquired. “We just returned from the barony of Beausoleil. You apparently weren’t interested in fielding questions there, either.”
“No,” replied the likeness of Lilitu, the three legs sliding into the bottom half of the sphere so it was the same height as Brigid. “This device has been waiting for your physiognomical signature to register on its sensors so we may begin our talks.”
“My signature?” Brigid asked, a note of surprise in her voice. “Why me?”
“You are a woman and you successfully faced me down in the past.” Lilitu’s tone was matter-of-fact. “I can respect your capabilities, if not your arrogance. Therefore, I seek your help.”
