Reality Echo (16 page)

“The trans-comm’s out,” Wynan said, coming back. “Daryl…”

“I’ll be right there,” Morganstern answered. “Kane, can you hold the napkin in place and stay still?”

“I’ll try,” Thrush-Kane responded numbly. His plasma matrix was shutting down everything it could inside its own system in order to lower the stresses against the body wrapped around it. As such, physically the infiltrator seemed drunk or impaired by blood loss
and concussion. While that had fit in with the results of DeFore’s prior testing, thanks to wireless projection producing those results especially for her equipment, Thrush-Kane felt intensely ill. He looked at Morganstern out of the corner of his eye and noticed that whatever sympathy he felt for the young man had evaporated.

Kane impersonation subroutine disengaged. That part of his brain was rendered silent, so the emotions of the hero he was attempting to duplicate disappeared. Unfortunately, the core personality, no longer hindered by the spark of compassion built into that subroutine, now felt something completely different. It was lucky for Morganstern that Thrush-Kane felt physically weak and didn’t want to jeopardize his impersonation; otherwise he would have sat up and begun throttling the mathematician right then and there.

Right now, Cerberus was in a state of turmoil because of the altered command parameters of the environmental systems. The nonlethal set of changes mostly dealt with lighting and room access. There was pounding at the mess hall doors as trapped Cerberus personnel tried to enter.

Thrush-Kane sat up, having recovered much of his strength after a near breakdown of his inorganic computer. If he was alone in the dining room, he would have been able to open the doors with a whim. However, if he demonstrated such capability now, it would become clear that he was the architect of the emergency power-down.

His Commtact remained silent, which was another of the results of his invasion of the central core. With doors locked down and the communications systems knocked out, he had thrown the redoubt into complete disarray.

Thrush-Kane grimaced in regret that he hadn’t been able to directly force a confrontation between the forces of Cerberus and Enlil. Had he been the kind to lay curses against those whom he despised, he would have called down a pox upon Bres for the way he had altered the playing field. The Fomorians could have enjoyed themselves with Kane, testing their worth against that particular champion of humanity. Instead, with the wild hunt called down onto the android impersonator, Thrush-Kane was stuck waiting for the Cerberus heroes to finish their conflict with the Fomorian raiders who tormented the Appalachians.

Of course, that would allow Grant and his allies to discover the real Kane, who had been left behind. The Thrush Continuum had specifically wanted a means by which to back up its efforts against the renegade Enlil, and so he had been left alive, if hampered by the presence of the Fomorians. Thrush-Kane was now left with a base with a disabled mat-trans unit. If the jump chamber was functional, he risked exposing his ruse. He doubted that the avalanche had done as much to the immortal Bres, a being who claimed to have been alive millennia ago. Why Bres would have engaged in such sabotage of his assault was hard to decipher, unless…

Thrush-Kane went to check on Brigid Baptiste’s
report regarding the entities they’d encountered. The archivist was always good for a thorough chronicle of the events of their jumps, no matter which reality she was from. The infiltrator fought off a wave of desire rising through him.

Just because the real Kane is too stupid to think of her as his perfect mate doesn’t mean I have to indulge in such idiocy, the impostor thought.

“Kane?” Morganstern spoke up, interrupting his internal debate. “Kane, you should lie down.”

“The bleeding’s stopped,” the impostor growled. “I feel better. Besides…”

Morganstern dared to put a hand on his arm. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, a voice called out. It was the nobility of the original Kane templates they had used, the impersonation personality that was the cover against discovery.

Don’t hurt him, even if it’s only to maintain our cover, the Kane impersonation pleaded.

Thrush-Kane’s right fist flexed, tendons popping, but he fought off the urge to put his fist through the mathematician’s face. “I’m fine. My balance is good. I’m not dizzy.”

Morganstern stepped back, noticing the clenched fist. “No offense intended, Kane.”

The impostor nodded, looking down at his white knuckles. “Sorry. Stressed over the sudden blackout. Have you tried calling anyone over the trans-comm? My Commtact isn’t working.”

“We’re in the dark, lights and communication,” Morganstern replied. “Wynan already has the access panel off, but the wiring itself is in pristine working order.”

Thrush-Kane frowned. “You think this could be Enlil making a move against us?”

Thrush-Kane’s brain suddenly resonated with the voice of Brigid Baptiste as she recorded her log of the Appalachian mission, and had tagged a section regarding her speculations about the Fomorians. Bres is traditionally known as the son of Balor, and the gods, as well as the Fomorians, are their descendants, in a parallel of the mythology of Greece. Whereas Zeus was the son of the Titan Chronus, Lugh, powerful king among the Tuatha de Danaan pantheon, was the grandson of Balor, through Balor’s daughter Ethniu, who from my studies bears a remarkable resemblance to Fand. After comparative studies among mythology and known history as related by Balam, it is quite possible that the Annunaki were the creators of the Fomorians in their battle with the Tuatha de Danaan, and Lugh himself may have been a crossbreed, such as Enlil’s daughter Fand, combining the genetic—

Lugh was the grandson of Balor. And Bres boasted that he himself was the son of Balor. Bres’s resemblance to the Tuatha’s remarkable physiological superiority and his considerable strength could have made him one of many of Enlil’s children. Fand was a daughter of the same Dragon King.

Thrush-Kane reeled. Why would Bres help, then
sabotage, an effort to infiltrate Cerberus and lead an assault on the most powerful of the Annunaki? Because Bres wanted to return to his ancestor’s favor. The betrayal of the Fomorians was a calculated, cold plan set in motion to protect the king of the overlords, made up on the spot when Thrush-Kane had been overheard bragging to the captive Kane.

“Kane! Wake the hell up!” Wynan shouted. “You’re zoning out!”

“Bres and Enlil were linked. Bres is the grandson of Enlil,” Thrush-Kane said out loud.

Morganstern tilted his head. “Kane, we need you to focus on the problems we have right now.”

Thrush-Kane’s lips tightened into a bloodless line. He had to sell this next bit of information hard and fast. “You don’t get it, do you? Something else got into Cerberus along with us. That’s why I was really captured. I’m some form of Trojan horse.”

Morganstern and Wynan looked at each other. Thrush-Kane could see the thought processes going between the pair.

“We’d have noticed a biological entity,” Wynan declared.

“But we’d also have noticed if there were microscopic constructs, akin to nanotechnology, that were brought in via the transporter,” Morganstern mused. He looked at Thrush-Kane, then reached out toward the false man’s face. “What if it was something that we wouldn’t expect?”

Thrush-Kane pushed aside Morganstern’s hand. “What are you talking about?”

“You were unconscious, correct?” Morganstern asked. “Given what we know about the kind of technology the Annunaki have, they have specific signals that can alter DNA radically in a manner that defies the conservation of energy.”

“Right, mass doesn’t just spring out of nowhere,” Thrush-Kane said.

“So what if we’re dealing with some form of mathematical theorem, but one that could be housed in the most innocent of devices, such as your Commtact insert. Not the plate, but the implant on your jawbone,” Morganstern replied. “Once we’d gone over you with a fine-tooth comb and found absolutely everything we expected to find, especially the Commtact implants—”

“They stored a computer virus in my Commtact implant, and once I was hooked back up with the full plate system, I became a carrier who infected the Cerberus mainframe,” Thrush-Kane answered.

Morganstern nodded. “Insidious. But highly likely.”

“So how do we jump-start the mainframe again?” Thrush-Kane asked. “Especially if we can’t communicate.”

Wynan had something pulled apart on the table next to the intercom. Thrush-Kane recognized it as some manner of keyboard-faced watch. “Daryl, get a fork, some diet soda and unscrew a nut from under the table. We’ll
need some kind of battery power to get the door mechanism unlocked enough for Kane to pry the doors open.”

“Will that be enough power?” Morganstern asked.

“Only if you use a thirty-two-ounce cup,” Wynan replied snottily. “Move it, math boy!”

Thrush-Kane had dodged a bullet so far. Cerberus was in a state where Grant couldn’t possibly be sent to find the real Kane, and with the help of the two lunar scientists, he’d constructed a plausible alibi for how the redoubt had been crippled.

Maybe he’d get a chance at Enlil after all.

If Thrush-Kane hadn’t been so relieved at the excuse that could clear him to continue his hunt for Enlil, perhaps he would have noticed Daryl Morganstern talking with cafeteria worker Clem Bryant, or the grim worry etched into the mathematician’s face as he spoke with one of the most capable minds in Cerberus.

The Appalachians

Kane had approached to within earshot of a Fomorian guard who had a radio unit on hand. The mutant was paying attention to the progress of the hunting party that had been sent after Kane, and right now, they were backtracking and searching thoroughly for whatever path Kane might have taken to elude them. Little did the hideous pursuers realize that Kane was a mile away from them, crouched in shadows and foliage, effectively invisible.

“No sign of the human’s return to the compound,” the guard said. “Perimeter patrols are still on alert now that we’ve got the manpower.”

“This monkey is a tricky bastard. He’s a legend among men for a reason,” came the crackling anger over the radio. “Balor’s keeping his Eye out, too, right?”

“No, we just assumed that the Eye of Balor is too useful, and we should challenge ourselves,” the guard grumbled, sarcasm dripping like venom off his words. “Big as he is, and cool as his damn eye is, Balor’s just
one man. Mutant. There’s just one Balor. And he can’t see everywhere at once!”

“Bres’s balls!” the hunting party on the other end exclaimed. “We’re sorry we hurt your feelings. Tell you what—next time you’re getting your vagina cleaned, we’ll spring for a badger to be thrown up it.”

Kane could see the anger screwing up on the guard’s face. “You’re all bastards.”

The guard pivoted angrily, resisting the urge to grind the field radio into splinters in his massive fist. This creature was one of the single-armed monstrosities, and his sharp eyes searched for any movement. Only by avoiding the Fomorian’s peripheral vision was Kane able to move more than a few inches, even in the darkness and foliage camouflaging his presence.

Kane made a short dash and knelt in loose soil that had been thrown up in the digging efforts to rescue other Fomorians trapped in caves under the avalanche. One of the benefits of his canvas parka on top of the body wraps he’d fashioned for himself was that the rough tarp was relatively moisture resistant, but it still picked up wet mud as he slid through it. The mud not only gave Kane another layer of lifesaving insulation, but it provided him with further visual camouflage, both to regular eyesight and any enhanced optics he’d encounter. That Balor—the largest of the Fomorians—hadn’t called out an alert meant that Kane’s visual signature was minimal.

Oblivious to the ghostly passage of Kane, the Fomorian guard pivoted again and looked for more signs
of intrusion. It wasn’t the fastest Kane had ever gone, but he left no footprints, made no sound and, most importantly, hadn’t made any sudden movements that would be visible as a shadow in the corner of some mutant’s eye. While he was armed and well rested now, he was still outnumbered, and each of Bres’s mutant horde was more than a physical match for him. Caution was the order of the day, and true stealth was required.

The flurry of activity that would be required to knife an unsuspecting sentry would betray him immediately. The sight of his motion, the sound of the attack and the scent of fresh blood spilled would point the Fomorians toward the intruder within their ranks. Once it had gotten to that, there was no way that Kane could endure their attention.

How he’d survive if he saw an opportunity to snatch Epona and flee was something he hadn’t quite worked out yet, but advance strategy wasn’t Kane’s forte. Adaptability and resourcefulness were more his game.

“Father,” a young, almost feminine-sounding voice spoke up.

Kane slithered closer to the sound and spotted Balor and Bres, seated around a fire. Over the glow of the flames, he could see a frightened face. Epona was seated with them, her arms clutched to her shoulders as she gathered her cloak around her as a shield more from fear than from cold.

“Balor?” Bres asked. The voice issued again, incongruously from the huge, apelike being seated at the fire.

“If Kane does not return for the woman, how will we be able to get after Thrush?” Balor inquired.

“We will have visitors soon,” Bres answered. “You do not know the stories of the outlanders, do you?”

“I have heard them, but why would those humans risk their lives just to help a group of obstinate hermits scattered across a mountain range?” Balor asked.

“Because these humans are not as the rest. They are survivors, like the outcasts who refused to bow to the barons in their villes, but they are not self-centered. They are warriors, but they have deluded themselves that they possess a cause,” Bres explained.

Balor shook his cyclopean head. “They must be afraid of Enlil taking roost. That’s how the witch explained it. It’s the only thing that really makes sense.”

“You have to learn, my son, that there were once great herds of these humans who strode across the land. Many of them were either sheep or disgruntled loners who hid out from the world. But there were many who were not ruled by base design,” Bres said. The beautiful godling stood up, scanning into the night sky. “They dreamed of a better world.”

“What could be better than our life?” Balor asked.

“They would see us as low beasts, living hedonistically off the pain and suffering of our prey,” Bres said.

Balor shrugged. “So? Even in their literature, their vanity and greed is apparent. What they call love is simply animalistic rutting dressed up with pretty language. There is an inherent dishonesty in their way
of life, a denial that to live, you simply must kill. Crops were grown to be cut down. Animals raised to be slaughtered for meat. Lower classes forced to breed to provide labor and cannon fodder for their wars. We take no slaves. We fit in with the cycle of life, and don’t imprison our food in a no-win lifestyle that ultimately ends in death on a dinner plate, or as refuse to be ground up and fed to their kin.”

Bres smiled at the beast’s statement. Kane’s stomach turned at the fact that the monsters before him had a philosophy that had its own powerful logic. It was why Kane often felt best when he was living among Sky Dog’s tribe. There was a freedom of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that allowed for an almost placid worldview.

The trouble was, Kane couldn’t afford to live that way all the time. He was a man who was driven by duty to fight against oppression and cruelty. There were cultures around the world that had risen further than the perfect equilibrium of the Native Americans around the Cerberus redoubt. They sought civilization, not the false iterations that had sprung up between the time of skydark and the reunification programs of the hybrid barons. It was why Kane so readily had fallen into his duties as a Magistrate, before he realized the corruption in the system.

Another pang of nausea hit Kane as he realized that Balor, despite his size and brutish appearance, was far more than a mindless slab of muscle with superhuman strength. The unholy glow of Balor’s single eye hinted
at technological advances that at the very least would make it impossible to hide from the monstrosity. Couple that with agility, speed and intelligence necessary for the barbaric hunting the Fomorians had mastered, and Kane was facing a truly formidable opponent.

Kane slithered silently, remaining low to the ground, his ears peeled.

“We do have a life without lies and without pretense,” Bres answered. “We take what we need, and we do not take more than we have to.”

The body-racking spite Kane felt for Bres tingled all through his skin. Though he resembled his kinsman, the Mad Maccan, Kane’s familiarity with the being was on a more instinctual level. The beautiful shimmer of the godling’s skin, the perfection of his limbs and features, were a blatant lie, hiding the rot and fury within a moldering soul. Bres’s first armies had lain siege to the Tuatha de Danaan at Enlil’s beck and call, and the bloodshed of that conflict went beyond mere soldiers slaying one another. Towns of innocents had been sacked, noncombatants tortured and cannibalized in wild orgies of violence and cruelty that made strong men vomit when they came upon the aftermath.

Bres, for some purpose, had remained silent and out of the way for a while. Perhaps the reunification program had been an inspiration to grow the might of the Fomorians back to the days when the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Danaan still warred incessantly.

Kane refocused his attention on his immediate situa
tion. He had to ensure Epona’s safety and survival. The terrified witch was withdrawn and looked as if she’d need to be carried out of the Fomorian compound. Kane knew that logically, he should leave her behind and come back when he had more assistance from his allies back at Cerberus. However, the woman’s ashen, catatonic state was not something to which he could abandon her. Not with cruel predators like Bres and Balor responsible for her care. Rescue was not going to be easy, but turning his back on someone in need was something that Kane refused to do.

As he closed with her, he felt the familiar rustle of a transmitting mind. He had to have been five feet behind her, slithering on the ground soundlessly when he was close enough to “hear” her thoughts. Since no animals were coming close to the compound to speak to him, and her concentration was so deep, he wondered if she was scouring the mountain slope in order to locate him.

Kane closed his eyes and sent himself into a state of centered calm. It was a way that he had been able to put aside the conscious fears and subconscious instincts of horror and revulsion he’d felt toward the alien-like Balam. That semimeditative state was how he’d become more comfortable with Balam’s telepathic communication, and Kane wondered if that state of mind would make it easier for Epona to reach him.

Epona, I’m right behind you, Kane thought.

A jolt of surprise crawled back along the mental projection, and Kane braced himself against a reflexive
wince. Moments later, the unbridled joy of a telempathic embrace engulfed him, waves of relief and joy flooding.

Easy, Kane thought. What are you trying to do?

He wondered exactly how Epona was reading what he communicated telepathically. However, she made herself perfectly clear in terms of emotional imagery and stimulation. She understood him, especially his questions, and now she was transmitting the sight of Grant arriving, bringing all the Tigers of Heaven, the citizen soldiers of Aten and the robots and footmen of New Olympus.

Cavalry, Kane interpreted. But is it the one I envisioned?

There was a tinge of disappointment, and Kane had his answer. Epona was in concentration, disguised as fearful torment, utilizing her granny witch powers in order to bring in enough of a distraction to allow her to escape. Kane’s return to retrieve her was merely icing on the cake, and Kane was given the distinct impression that she was ready to run as long and as fast as she possibly could.

Give me a countdown—I’ll add to the distraction, Kane projected. Bres had drifted into reciting poetry for his brute-bodied son. Balor was in rapt attention, following his father as he paced and performed.

A sentry in the compound gave a cry. “The hunting party has reported a contact!”

Bres paused, looking toward the sentry. Neither of the
two mutant leaders seemed disappointed at the interruption. “Watch her, son. This could merely be a feint.”

Balor turned his baleful eye toward Epona. Even now, Kane could tell that there was some manner of weaponry within the fist-sized cybernetic orb in his face. Its sickly green glow bespoke lethal doses of radiation. Again, Kane remembered his prior life, how Lugh had utilized a mirrored shield to repel the deadly gaze of Bres’s father in order to get close enough to slay him. Kane didn’t have a shield, and he doubted the canvas and mud of his camouflage would do much more than add a tenth of a second to his resistance to whichever death ray spewed from the glowing green eye.

But it was an eye, and it blinked, a massive lid flopping down over the iris and cornea like a bouncing window shade. Balor blinked, so he still retained the basic mental instinct put into humanity across its millennia of existence. Kane’s fingers clawed up a ball of mud, forming it and packing it. He’d need perfect timing in order to pull this off.

Kane kept watch in his peripheral vision, alert for the sounds of the Fomorians as they gathered by Bres at the base of the mountain, keeping watch on the hunting party. They couldn’t see, but Kane heard the distant, tinny rattle of a radio.

Epona sent Kane the image of a deer leading the hunters on a game of cat and mouse, letting them get close just enough so that they still thought that there was something still worth hunting, but staying just beyond
their range of vision. Kane smiled at Epona’s resourcefulness. He also envisioned thousands of eyes peering down upon them from the remaining trees on the mountainside. There was a horde, waiting on the witch’s summoning. Whatever the creatures were, they were invisible in the night, and yet had enough numbers to be considered a distraction. Thousands of eyes, the mental image repeated.

Not a horde. A great flock.

Epona straightened. “Kane…”

Balor turned his eye toward her. “Where?”

“Here!” Kane shouted.

The green, glowing eye swiveled toward the Cerberus warrior, who rose and hurled his ball of mud with all of his strength. His throw was on target, smacking Balor in the face over his eye. Reflex forced the great brute to throw up both of his hands to claw away at whatever had smacked him and left a mushy smear all over his vision. Kane charged in that moment of distraction. On the mountainside, the explosive fluttering of thousands of bird wings went off at once, sounding for all the world like a thunderstorm of gunfire.

At the base of the hill, Bres and his minions would be scrambling for cover as the clear, starlit sky suddenly turned black and the screeches of owls, nightingales and ravens split the air. Birds of all manner had taken wing, their throats belting forth the war cries of their species. The night shook with the combined cacophony of wing strokes and birdsong, and the great flock
dropped out of the sky, zooming and dive-bombing the Fomorians in a wild aerial dance that kept the mutants off balance. Those with flesh-tearing beaks and meat-rending talons struck when they could, causing further distraction with their scratchings.