Mariah stopped to listen, still holding the camera up at head height. The sound was distant but it was getting louder, which meant it was coming nearer.
“What the heck is that?” Mariah muttered, peering up at the sky.
For a moment there was nothing, just the clear blue sky peeking through the green canopy of the forest. Then a flock of birds took flight from the trees all around her—and she saw
it
for the first time. It was a golden streak in the sky, like a falling star.
“What is that?” Mariah repeated, tilting the camera up to capture what she had just seen. But now there was nothing; whatever it was had moved past her field of vision.
But the noise was even louder now, like a hundred horses galloping by overhead.
“Domi!” Mariah called, stepping back away from the buried spaceship. “Something’s happening out here.”
“What?” Domi’s voice came back to her, barely audible now over the sound of the rushing hooves.
Overhead, a second golden light streaked high over the trees, scoring a line of fire in its wake. As Mariah watched, the light returned, zipping across the open space between the tree cover like a shooting star.
“I think we may have company up here,” Mariah shouted, raising her voice above the strange drumming.
* * *
W
ITHIN
THE
BURIED
SPACESHIP
,
Domi felt something shift beneath her and she found herself tumbling to the left. Domi was incredibly agile and had a sense of balance that would make a gyroscope blush, but she found herself slamming into the bulkhead with a gasp of surprise, taking the brunt of the blow on her left shoulder.
“Dammit!” Domi snarled as she righted herself.
The spaceship seemed to be moving but there was no sense of power inside, no familiar shudder of an engine starting up. Perhaps it was being dragged then, pulled by something.
Domi used the bobbled walls to pull herself up along the tiny boxlike lobby that led from the cabin to the hatchway through which she had entered. “Mariah?” she called as she moved. “What’s happening out there?”
Before Mariah answered, the spaceship lunged again and Domi found herself stumbling backward and into the cabin once more.
* * *
T
HE
NOISE
OF
thundering hooves had peaked and dropped, becoming more like a gentle simmer that rumbled through the air.
Mariah watched as the twin points of gold seemed to hover in the sky. They were both visible through the gaps in the leaves almost directly overhead. For a moment, Mariah watched them, transfixed. Then she remembered the video camera she was holding and she raised it to her eye, turning the lens on the two golden shapes and adjusting the focus.
They looked like pebbles—sleek ovoids in a rich buttery-yellow that shone like the sun. They were so bright that the camera kept dimming the image, trying to make sense of it without burning out.
“Domi,” Mariah called again without taking her eye from the camera. “You need to see this. Get up here.”
There was a noise from behind Mariah at that moment—the noise of a great weight of earth being moved. Mariah spun around and the image seen through the camera lens turned to a blur of foliage, and then ground, as she tried to keep things in focus.
The earth where the spaceship had been buried was shifting, soil tumbling aside as a great chasm opened up.
“Domi!” Mariah called, not taking her eye from the camera viewfinder.
The soil tumbled from the hull of the buried starship as it ascended to the surface. It waited there, shaped like an elongated letter D, its hull a gleaming blue metal resembling oil on water. It was a little longer and a little taller than a family sedan and, inappropriately given what was happening at that moment, Mariah smiled as she realized how close Domi’s estimate of its size had been.
Mariah filmed as the revealed spaceship shook in place, rising higher until its lowest point was a foot above the ground. Domi was still inside there, she knew. She had to do something.
“Domi, get out now,” Mariah said, pulling the camera from her eye. She stepped closer to the hovering craft, seeing it shake just slightly in place as though caught in a subtle breeze.
And then it shook more definitely, shrugging earth from its back and sending a cloud of dislodged soil up around it. Mariah staggered back, choking on the lungful of earth she had unwittingly breathed in.
“Domi—” She could hardly speak for coughing. “Domi, get out—” she called between gasps “—out of there!”
Before she could say anything else the blue starship rose higher into the air, passing the overhanging trees before nudging up above the highest of their number, shaking in place high above Mariah’s head. Grains of soil tumbled down from the ship like a waterfall, smothering the nearby plants with dirt.
* * *
I
NSIDE
THE
ALIEN
artifact, Domi had made her way back to the hatch only to find it had sealed shut. The cabin was brighter now that the soil no longer obscured the viewport, and she could see a series of hinged panels or small cupboards running the length of the bobbled wall close to the hatch. They reminded her of the wall cupboards in the science labs at the Cerberus redoubt, doors for little glass beakers and Bunsen burners.
Swiftly, Domi’s pale fingers worked at the panels to the side, opening each as she sought some kind of release button. Behind the fourth door she found a lever that seemed to be the equivalent of the bar on a fire door, yanked it once, twice, until it moved. Lights came on in the cabin and the lobby area, casting the interior in a soft blue light, but the door stayed resolutely closed.
“Mariah?” Domi called, engaging her hidden Commtact. “Mariah, can you hear me?”
Mariah didn’t answer and Domi cursed, recalling that the woman relied on the archaic handheld version of the personal radio system. This was one of those times where linked implants would have been ideal.
Try someone else, then.
“Cerberus, come in, Cerberus,” Domi called, shouting to be heard over the screech of metal all around her as the ship took flight. “This is Domi. Come in, Cerberus.”
“Domi?” The comm officer replied. “Where—?”
But before Domi could reply, the spaceship lurched violently and she found herself hurtling toward the decking that had been above her just a moment before. Her skull slammed against the metal-plate flooring with a resounding clang, ensuring that, whatever happened next, Domi would not be conscious to witness it.
* * *
M
ARIAH
WATCHED
AS
two streaks of golden lightning soared across the sky, pulling the blue metal spacecraft with them as they disappeared from view.
“Domi,” she gasped, watching the empty section of sky that was all she could see through the canopy.
The horse drumbeats continued loudly overhead, then dimmed over the next few minutes until finally, they could no longer be heard.
Chapter 3
Bitterroot Mountains, Montana, United States, post-holocaust
By the time Mariah Falk arrived back at Cerberus headquarters in North America, the operations room was already abuzz.
She arrived in the mat-trans chamber that dominated one corner of the ops room, appearing from a multicolored whirlpool that had suddenly materialized inside the protective armaglass walls of the chamber. The whirlpool contained every color of the rainbow, and it seemed to spread upward from the floor in a conical shape and then down into the floor itself in a reflection of that fantastical cone.
Within those cones, streaks of lightning charged across the impossible depths like witch fire as the interphaser unit cut a path through the quantum ether. This was the visual effect of the interphaser, a teleportation device designed by the Cerberus personnel, allowing them to cross great distances in the blink of an eye by tapping into the quantum pathways that were accessed by what were known as parallax points.
The compact interphaser, just one foot in height, appeared at Mariah’s feet as she emerged inside the mat-trans chamber.
“Where exactly was Domi when you last saw her?” Lakesh asked Mariah as she stepped from the mat-trans chamber. Mariah had sent a report ahead of her through the Commtact, outlining exactly what had happened before her eyes up to the point where the two golden lights had retreated, along with the spaceship with Domi still inside.
Once she had finished her report, Mariah had requested advice from Cerberus and it was decided that she wait in place for a half hour in case the mysterious sky craft returned. She had anxiously done so, reporting in every five minutes to confirm there had been no change. In all that time, Domi had failed to respond to any hail from the Cerberus comm desk.
Once the thirty minutes had passed, Mariah had been instructed to return to Cerberus headquarters, and she arrived ten minutes after that, utilizing the nearest parallax point in the Brazilian forest.
Lakesh met her as she exited the mat-trans, and his face was a picture of worry. Lakesh—more properly, Dr. Mohandas Lakesh Singh—was the founder and leader of the Cerberus operation, although the latter title had occasionally been a contentious one.
A dusky-skinned man apparently in his fifties, Lakesh had unusual blue eyes and jet-black hair that was swept back from his forehead with a few streaks of white apparent above the ears. He had an aquiline nose and a refined mouth, and his gaze invariably gave the uncanny impression that he was thinking very deep thoughts. Lakesh wore a white jumpsuit with a blue vertical zipper that was the standard uniform of all Cerberus operations staff. Lakesh looked anxiously at Mariah as she emerged from the chamber, and his words tumbled out in a rush.
“What state was she in? Was she hurt?”
Mariah held up her free hand—the other was weighed down with the interphaser unit—to halt Lakesh’s stream of questions. “Whoa, Doctor,” she said. “Let a girl catch her breath already.”
“I-I-I’m terribly sorry, my dear,” Lakesh stuttered with evident embarrassment. “I quite forgot my manners. How are you? Are you hurt?”
Mariah stepped across to the polished table in the anteroom beyond the mat-trans chamber door and placed the interphaser upon it. The interphaser looked innocuous enough—just a one foot high, one foot wide, square-based pyramid-shaped device made of a gleaming metal that had odd reflections on its surface.
However, its design had been refined by Lakesh himself to access preexisting quantum gateways that provided a reliable means of teleportation. It wasn’t Lakesh’s first experimentation into teleports. He had been one of the designers of the original mat-trans system employed by the United States military toward the end of the twentieth century, before the nuclear exchange had brought civilization to an abrupt halt. Lakesh and his creation had survived that terrible onslaught—he by cryogenic suspended animation, his mat-trans device held safely in one of the protective military redoubts that were scattered across North America and beyond.
“I’m fine,” Mariah confirmed. “A little shook up and a little dusty, but I didn’t sustain any damage.”
“And how about my dear Domi?” Lakesh wanted to know. It was only natural that he would be the first to ask about Domi, Mariah thought. Although physically her senior by at least thirty years—and actually over two centuries older—Lakesh was in a long-term relationship with Domi. The two of them were very different—he a scientist and what they used to call an egghead in Mariah’s day, she an almost-feral, self-sufficient survivor from the barely civilized areas of the postnukecaust landscape. Still, they seemed happy together and their relationship had stood the test of time so far. Perhaps it was true what they said, Mariah reflected—opposites did attract.
Lakesh was still looking at her intensely as he waited for her to answer his barrage of questions.
“She was fine when I last saw her, which was just before she entered the ship,” Mariah confirmed. “That was before the golden shapes appeared in the sky,” she added by way of clarification, “and she certainly gave me no indication that she had become wounded in the meantime. Once the ship took off, I lost whatever contact I had, however.”
“We’ve had no success hailing her at this end,” Lakesh reported sourly. “She’s not responding to attempts to contact her via the Commtact.”
“What about her transponder?” Mariah asked.
Lakesh shook his head. “Negative. Donald traced her movement for approximately two miles before she and the ship disappeared from all tracking devices. It’s as if the transponder simply cut out.”
“Any—” Mariah began to ask, then thought better of how to phrase her question. “Was there any indication that she had suffered in any way at that point?”
“No, thank goodness,” Lakesh said firmly. “Her heart rate had initially increased, naturally enough, but there was no other significant change.”
“What about the craft she was in?” Mariah asked.
Lakesh looked frustrated. “We’ve tracked back via the Vela satellite but there’s simply no sign of it. Wherever it went, we lost it.”
“Same for the two visitors?” Mariah queried.
“I’m afraid so,” Lakesh confirmed. “Which puts us soundly back at square one, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not sure,” Mariah said, slowly shaking her head. “I’ve been thinking about this while I was prepping for the journey back—”
“After you filed your last report?” Lakesh clarified.
“Exactly. There was no engine noise from the vehicle that Domi was abducted in, and she entered it of her own volition,” Mariah said. “If it was meant as a trap, it was a very elaborate trap. I think those other two vehicles I saw—the streaks of gold that hovered briefly in place overhead—came and took the ship with Domi on it.”
“Like some sort of...cosmic tow trucks?” Lakesh asked, trying to get his head around the idea.
“Something like that,” Mariah confirmed, her easy smile showing once more. “I figure if it had been capable of moving under its own steam, it would have.”
Lakesh rubbed at his long nose in thought. “Quite the proposition,” he mused. “You mentioned in your report about a film recording of the event?”
Mariah was impressed; following his initial outburst of emotional concern, Lakesh was already back to professional mode, approaching this logically and methodically.
* * *
D
RESSED
IN
A
one-piece swimsuit that left her back exposed, Brigid Baptiste stood before the swimming pool in the Cerberus compound and took a deep breath, reveling in the sterile smell of chlorine. She was alone, just the way she liked it. The pool was an adjunct of the gymnasium facilities that had been set up here back in the twentieth century when this base had been built for the United States Army.
The Cerberus headquarters had been constructed within a hollowed-out mountain in the Bitterroot range, where it had remained hidden from view for over two hundred years. In the years since the nukecaust, a peculiar mythology had grown up around the mountains with their dark, foreboding forests and seemingly bottomless ravines, and the Cerberus installation itself had remained untouched until Lakesh had repurposed it for his own use some years ago. The wilderness surrounding the redoubt was virtually unpopulated; the nearest settlement could be found in the flatlands some miles away and consisted of a small band of Indians, Sioux and Cheyenne, led by a shaman named Sky Dog.
Though the redoubt was well hidden, it had not escaped the attention of Cerberus’s most relentless foe, the would-be god prince called Ullikummis. With his army of devoted followers, Ullikummis had stormed the redoubt several months ago and left the facility spoiled to such an extent that much of it had been considered unusable. It was only in the past three days that the swimming pool had finally been reopened, considered, as it was, a nonessential part of the facility.
Brigid Baptiste did not consider it nonessential, however. While many of her colleagues might argue that the postnukecaust world provided more than enough workouts, Brigid had always enjoyed the calming effects of the pool.
Brigid was a beautiful woman in her late twenties, with the trim figure of an athlete and a cascade of sunset-red curls falling to midway down her back. Her skin was flawless and naturally pale, and she had vivid emerald eyes that shone with curiosity. Her high forehead suggested intelligence, while her full lips implied a more sensuous side; in reality she was both of these aspects and many more, besides.
Brigid had grown up in Cobaltville, one of nine walled cities that had controlled the postapocalypse United States mainland for almost her whole life. She had worked as an archivist in the Historical Division until she became embroiled in a conspiracy, her knowledge of which had threatened to expose Cobaltville’s leader for the manipulative nonhuman he really was.
Forced into exile, Brigid had found a home in the Cerberus redoubt with her fellow exiles Kane, Grant, Lakesh and Domi. Together, the five of them—along with other recruits who joined over the months that followed—had become a potent force for good in a world full of evil.
The main reason that Brigid was considered such a threat to Cobaltville and the baronies was that her photographic—or, more properly, eidetic—memory enabled her to perfectly recall anything she had seen. Coupled with her competence in combat and her near-superhuman intuition, Brigid was one of the most fearsome members of the Cerberus team.
Brigid paced over to the diving podium and climbed the ladder. Her movements were swift and economical, lithe muscles working effortlessly as she ascended. In a moment she was standing atop the high board, taking in another calming breath and tasting the acid tang of chlorine at the back of her throat. She did not notice the other person who had entered the pool room as she was clambering up the ladder, and she remained oblivious as he stood close to the doors, watching her in silence.
Brigid padded to the edge of the diving board and looked down, judging the height that she perfectly recalled from the last time she had done this, months ago. It was two inches less than ten feet from the water, same as she remembered, same as it had been before Ullikummis had wrecked this place. Then Brigid took one single step back from the edge, thrust her arms out wide and straight, and sprang from the diving board.
She leaped high in the air, using the springboard to throw herself up another six feet before flipping her body in a complicated X-Y axis spin, thrusting her arms out before her to part the water as she began to drop. As she did so, the other figure in the room called out a single word, loud and echoing through the pool room.
“Shark!”
Brigid’s body slipped into the water with perfect precision, casting barely a ripple as she disappeared beneath the surface.
When she emerged the other figure in the room was applauding, a wicked grin on his face.
“Now,” said Kane, “that’s just showing off, Baptiste.”
Brigid scowled at him until he stopped applauding. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, and it was clear from her tone that she thought he had rather enjoyed sneaking up on her.
Kane’s smile remained in place. He was a tall, muscular man in his early thirties with broad shoulders and long, rangy limbs. His tousled hair was cut short in something like a military fashion, dark brown with hints of lightness where he had caught the sun. He stood in a pair of swimming trunks that left most of his muscular body on show, and there could be no escaping the scar tissue that crisscrossed his flesh. Kane was a fighter, once a Magistrate for Cobaltville until his exile in the same conspiracy that had seen Brigid expelled. Since then, he’d enforced a different type of law—the law that assured mankind’s survival against the most lethal of threats.
As well as fighting on the same side, he and Brigid shared a very special link known simply as the
anam chara
bond, which translated as “soul friends.” As they understood it, this meant that, like it or not, Kane and Brigid were tied throughout eternity, to always watch over each other and protect the other from harm.
Brigid was still glaring at Kane as he paced over to the edge of the pool to join her. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself, sneaking up on me like that?” she demanded.
Kane shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were gathering your mojo or whatever it is you do when you’re up there on the board.”
Snarling, Brigid clenched her fists. “I’ll gather
your
mojo in a minute.”
Kane simply laughed. “My mojo’s too big for one person to gather,” he told her. “Way, way too big. I have
mucho mojo
as Rosalia would say.”
Brigid shook her head in despair. “What are you doing following me anyway?”
Kane looked mock offended. “I came for a swim, same thing you did. Great minds think alike, right?”
“So I heard,” Brigid deadpanned.
Kane looked up, judging the length of the pool. It was designed to Olympic specifications, back when that had still had meaning in the world, with plenty of space for them both. “You want a race?” he suggested.