Serpent's Tooth

The man paused, wiping his brow with his brawny forearm. He laid his machete on a rock, then reached for his canteen. As soon as he was committed to pulling a swallow of water from the canister, Domi stepped out, crossbow leveled at his chest.

“Hold still,” she challenged.

The man’s eyes went wide with surprise. He managed a swallow, then tilted the canteen so he wouldn’t waste his water by drenching himself. “Can I recap my canteen?”

“No sudden movements,” Domi said. “Who are you?”

“My name is Austin Fargo. I am on my way to the Cerberus redoubt to meet with Lakesh and Kane, the men who rule there, to ask for their assistance.”

“Anything you can say to them, you can say to me,” Domi told him. “What do you need?”

“As I said, I am Austin Fargo,” he began. “I am an explorer and scientist.” He nodded to Domi in deference. “Can I move now?”

Domi flicked the crossbow’s safety back on. “Any sudden movements and the crows will feast on your eyes.”

Fargo chuckled nervously. “I don’t doubt that. You must be Domi. Your name is almost as well-known as that of your companions.”

“Flattery,” Domi said, wrinkling her nose. “In my experience, that usually leads a lie.”

“I’m just attempting diplomacy,” Fargo returned.

“Yeah? Well, you’re being diplomatic with the guard dog,” Domi replied. “Follow me, and I’ll confirm with the owner of my house that I was right for not chewing your face off.”

“Don’t denigrate yourself, Domi. You’re far more than a mere guard animal,” Fargo said as he followed the albino woman. They backtracked the two hundred yards necessary for Domi to retrieve her satchel of scrounged books. He paid special notice to the fact that her small but sinewy hand never strayed more than an inch from the handle of her fighting knife. From the stories that the Millennial Consortium had cataloged about her, the wiry little albino had the speed and skill to pull that blade and separate a man’s head from his torso in the space of a heartbeat. It was an unspoken threat, a warning that Fargo had to keep on his best behavior.

“You’re on the right path to meet up with my people,” Domi said.

“Not the easiest, but for me, the safest,” Fargo admitted. “Then again, my trek has been one of great effort.”

“You can hold the sympathy dirge for someone who actually gives a shit. I caught you sneaking in my back door as a trespasser. Until you get approved by those who I actually do trust, keep your mouth closed,” Domi growled.

Fargo took a deep breath. She could see that he was restraining an insult. Domi didn’t mind; she didn’t care if strangers saw her as a snarling bitch just one flinch away from gnawing out someone’s entrails. When it came to defending the redoubt and her loved ones, that image was exactly what she wanted to project. A harmless, cuddly defender rarely caused an intruder to shy away from hostile activity.

“I understand,” Fargo spoke up. “You’re only protecting your family.”

“Damned straight,” Domi replied curtly. Her tone was meant to shut the stranger up so they could concentrate on scaling the back trail.

Cloaked in stern silence, they made their way to the redoubt.

THE SNARL OF DISTANT DIESEL engines reached Kane’s ears as Grant scrounged the dead raiders’ fallen rifles. The powerful Cerberus exile smiled as he picked up a gun that actually looked normal sized in his massive hands.

“What in the hell is that thing?” Kane asked.

Grant partially opened the lever action, finding a round seated under the hammer. “A Marlin .45-70. Just the thing for when you absolutely, positively have to kill a wag in three shots or less.”

Kane sighed. “Should have figured these coldhearts would have wheels.”

A gun in the distance thundered, corrugated tin roofs rattling as the walls beneath them shuddered under powerful impacts. The Tartarus residents screamed in terror as the distant heavy machine gun raked their shacks.

Kane grit his teeth. “They’ve got a Fifty…” He scooped up the walkie-talkie, transmitting his bellow. “Lombard! Cease fire!”

“Cease fire?” the bandit leader asked. “You kill my men in cold blood, and when I look for payback, suddenly it’s off-limits? Fuck you, Kane.”

“Damn it, Lombard! These people aren’t involved in our fight!” Kane growled. “Stop shooting. You want me or the meds, we can make a deal.”

“Deal?” Lombard broke out, his laughter rattling as if captured in a tin can. “Where’s the cold bastard who executed ten simple businessmen?”

“There’s no profit in killing these refugees. How much is that ammunition costing you?” Kane asked. “You want business? Fine. Even killing three people per bullet, there’s no way your temper tantrum is worth the trigger pull!”

There was silence on the other end, and thankfully, the Fifty mounted on one of Lombard’s war wags remained silent, as well. The only sound left was a chorus of frightened sobs. Thankfully, there were no cries of agony anywhere, but the Cerberus champions realized that the gunfight only moments earlier had sent the Tartarus inhabitants to cover. Kane glanced at Grant, then nodded. The two men knew that Kane was going to have to put himself in the line of fire to prevent an all-out slaughter. Of course, that meant Kane would have to rely on his partner’s marksmanship. Grant took his borrowed monster rifle and a belt stuffed with spare ammunition, then disappeared into the maze of houses.

Phillips rose from where he put the finishing touches on securing a bandit prisoner’s bandage, wrapping his slashed-open face. “We have to check for dead or wounded from that blast.”

“No,” Brigid said, placing a calming hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “From the general tone, there are no cries of mourning indicating a death, nor calls for help. However, if you stray from this area, the next time Lombard’s men do fire that cannon, there’s a chance that some of you could be harmed.”

Phillips grimaced, protest already flashing in his eyes. “But—”

“You and your people are too valuable,” Kane added. “If Cobaltville is to have any hope of maintaining and improving on what little shred of civilization remains, then it needs smart healers. Stay put until I clear everything.”

Phillips looked between Kane and Brigid. Given the penchant for bickering that they displayed, to see them in such solid agreement pounded the message through to the healer. “Be careful…”

Kane handed Grant’s Copperhead to Brigid. “If things go rotten…”

“I’ll escort the medical staff to safety,” she replied, accepting the rifle. “Watch yourself, okay?”

Kane nodded, then jogged to the road. Over the Commtact implant, he heard Grant give a solemn whisper. “They’re in my sights.”

“What have they got?” Kane asked.

“Thankfully, just old military-style transport trucks. Nothing like the armored Sandcats,” Grant said. “I wouldn’t be able to punch a hole in one of those. These aren’t quite as hard skinned.”

“But they can still mount a heavy machine gun,” Kane said.

“Only one,” Grant replied. “The other truck has to make do with riflemen in the back.”

“How many?” Kane asked.

“Five split between the two vehicles,” Grant told him. “And there’s literally someone riding shotgun with each driver.”

Kane figured the odds. From the drone of the diesel engines of both trucks, he was getting close enough to eyeball the bandits and their transportation. “We’re going to have to make these bandits very afraid.”

“The old ‘one Magistrate, one riot’ strategy?” Grant asked. “I feed you intel and back you up with sniper shots, making you look like the baddest ass on the planet.”

“That’s the one,” Kane answered. “Where’s Lombard now?”

“Standing next to his machine gunner. He’s got an automatic rifle of some form,” Grant said. “He just reached for his radio.”

“Kane! Come out and play!” Lombard shouted over the airwaves.

“I have been,” Kane answered. “You’re the one hiding behind the trucks. Now I’m thinking that it’s time for me to quit being so kind and gentle.”

“Kind and gentle?” Lombard asked. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about it’s time to stop playing with you and just put you down like the rotten little turd you are,” Kane replied. “You’re just some goon with some fancy guns. You don’t even rank in the ten biggest gangs of bandits I’ve ever fought.”

“He’s telling his man to shoot,” Grant warned.

Kane dived into a shoulder roll, zooming into the open just as a roar of autofire shredded the tin-and-wood hut he’d been hiding behind. Kane and Grant fired their weapons, both drowned out by the roar of the mighty Browning Fifty. Anyone watching, though, wouldn’t have seen Grant’s hidden muzzle-flash, while the Sin Eater’s barrel blazed angrily.

The machine gunner jerked violently, his right forearm disintegrating under the impact of the monster hunting rifle in Grant’s hands. The Fifty stopped its bellow, the gunner’s screams piercing the air as blood sprayed in Lombard’s face.

The men mounted in the trucks looked at the man who’d been at the controls of their crowd-killing device, then at the lone ex-Magistrate getting to his feet, out in the open. A tendril of smoke curled from the muzzle of the Sin Eater. Lombard scrubbed at his eyes, grimacing as the injured bandit wound a cord tightly around his arm to tourniquet the injury.

“You gentlemen think that because Lombard’s with you, you know how to deal with a real Magistrate,” Kane said, walking toward the trucks.

From the grumbles of discomfort among the marauders, he knew that his ploy had worked.

“That’s bullshit!” Lombard shouted. “He’s got to have a partner somewhere!”

Kane ignored Lombard, addressing the rest of the bandits. “Your partners are all dead. I killed them, because Lombard was just too stubborn to realize that he’s second class. Now I’m going to appeal to you, because I hate wasting good ammunition.”

“He didn’t kill the others by himself,” Lombard snarled.

“No, he didn’t,” a woman’s voice called out. Brigid Baptiste strode into the open, Copperhead SMG held against her curvaceous hip. “He had the help of women and doctors. People with no combat training.”

Kane repressed the urge to smile, remembering the steep learning curve of Brigid’s early years at Cerberus, when the young woman had grown from an archivist to an adventurer who was a deadly shot and a tough fighter.

The bandits looked at Lombard.

“So you have a choice,” Kane offered. “Ditch your boss and find somewhere else to hunt, or you can all die where you stand.”

“How do you want him?” one of the bandits asked. “Dead or alive?”

“You fuckers!” Lombard spit. He lunged at the Browning, but Kane and Grant fired at the renegade Mag.

Kane’s bullet plucked at Lombard’s bicep, while Grant’s cannon round smashed the belt of ammunition feeding into the machine gun. The mounted weapon and Lombard spun almost in unison under their respective impacts.

Marauders lunged at Lombard, seizing him tightly.

“Whatever is easier for you,” Kane said, pushing his Sin Eater back into its holster on his forearm.

“God damn you!” Lombard shrieked as his men hurled him over the cab of the truck. He crashed into the dirt road, then clawed swiftly to his feet. Angry eyes glared at Kane, and he tensed. “This piece of shit isn’t so hot!”

“Then prove it!” another bandit shouted. “You got a Sin Eater. Show us you’re worth following.”

Lombard looked around, confused. He eventually rested his eyes on Kane, who stood, arms folded, shaking his head.

“Not a good idea, man,” Kane warned.

Lombard glanced toward Brigid.

“Don’t look at her. She’d just as soon shoot you, but she’s not paying for the bullets,” Kane snapped.

Lombard’s eyes flicked to the Sin Eater on his forearm. One flex, and the autoweapon would rocket into his hand. Kane knew, though, that a fast draw with the hydraulic holster was a perishable skill. The movement would be fast, but getting the first shot on target required regular practice. Lombard was a thief who attacked unarmed doctors, not a master gunslinger who constantly honed his skills.

In the meantime, Kane had just proved his lethality against younger, hardier men. Lombard reached slowly for the straps on his Sin Eater, unfastening them. The machine pistol landed in the dirt at his feet, and Lombard dropped to his knees, lacing his fingers behind his head.

Kane turned to glare at the truckloads of remaining bandits. “Go.”

The new leader of the robber gang looked at the rest of his men. The diesels roared as the wags ground into Reverse, backing away from the edge of the town.

“They’re not slowing down,” Grant confirmed. “They’ve taken the hint.”

Kane walked toward Lombard, pausing only to scoop up the renegade’s fallen weapon. “What to do with you…”

“Grant…” Lombard snarled. “That big ape—”

Kane took a swift step forward and kicked him in the face. The impact split a seam of skin from eyebrow to the corner of Lombard’s mouth. Blood flowed from the fresh gash.

“Talking about my partner like that is always a bad idea,” Kane said.

“You’re crazy!” Lombard snapped. His hands covered his battered, bloody face. “What are you going to do with me?”

“We’ll see if Dr. Phillips needs someone to do grunt work,” Grant said, rejoining his partners. “Though nothing too complicated.”

“You lied when you said there weren’t any other ex-Mags,” Lombard complained.

“And you were dumb enough to not recognize me,” Grant countered. “Your bandits were plain and simple outsmarted. We had the communication, we had the knowledge, and now you’re just a footnote. Twenty marauders with big trucks and big guns, taken down by three people, two of them who you’d disarmed.”

Lombard grimaced, then noted that Kane was disassembling the surrendered Sin Eater, handing magazines and the holster to Grant. They looked distracted by the menial task as they whispered softly to each other, probably discussing plans. Lombard reached down to his boot, coming up with a gleaming little pistol in his hand.

The deposed bandit leader pulled the trigger, but his gunshot jerked into the sky as Brigid pumped a single Copperhead round into Lombard’s chest.

“Fool,” Brigid muttered. “So busy concentrating on you two, he forgot all about me.”

“Well, that solves the problem of what to do with the asshole,” Grant said with a sigh.

Kane smirked. “A self-resolving problem, most likely. Thanks, Baptiste.”

“What thanks?” Brigid asked. “I need one of you two to grab that last wheelbarrow full of meds. I’m not busting my back for it.”

Kane chuckled, kicking the gun out of Lombard’s dead fingers. “I love you, too, Baptiste.”

Brigid returned the smile. There was an uncomfortable pause, but she regained her composure. “Let’s go. We should get back to Cerberus to see if anything new has come up.”

Kane nodded. “No rest for the wicked.”

Chapter 4

Mohandas Lakesh Singh stood just outside the anteroom of the mat trans chamber as Kane, Brigid and Grant returned from their sojourn to Cobaltville. He waited alongside an impatient Domi, who paced like an anxious panther in a cage.

Kane looked the two people over and knew that whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good. “Who showed up? Erica? Sindri?”

“Why would it be them?” Lakesh asked.

“Because Cerberus is still standing, but you’re chomping at the bit to let us know some shit’s up,” Grant answered for Kane.

“Neither Erica or Sindri,” Domi answered, her voice quick and clipped. “Ran into a millennial guy crawling around our back door.”

Kane sneered. “Millennial Consortium? They found us here?”

“I know that they said they have extensive files on us, but I’m surprised that they know the location of Cerberus,” Brigid stated.

“Why not? Erica knows. So do Sindri and the overlords. And the consortium has done business with each of them in the past,” Kane said. “In fact, Erica’s calling them allies now, after that blowout in China.”

Brigid frowned. “And you let him in?”

“He wasn’t in uniform,” Domi replied. “No coverall. No button. No Calico. But he’s consortium. I feel it.”

Brigid glanced at Lakesh. “Any corroboration?”

Lakesh shrugged. “Nothing definitive. However, he’s hale and healthy, with evidence of having received professional medical treatment. A recent scar on his arm confirms to DeFore that a real doctor stitched it up.”

Reba DeFore was the redoubt’s chief medical officer. With the influx of staff from the Manitius Moon Base, the position didn’t weigh on her skills as much as it used to, but in the years preceding it, she’d gained a sharp eye toward medical treatment. The stranger’s apparent access to such treatment left few options open as to his affiliation. The Millennial Consortium was a budding technocracy, seeking to rebuild America in its own image. Those in charge of the consortium paid lip service to the creation of a utopian society, but their ruthlessness in the pursuit of that goal had brought them into savage conflict with the Cerberus warriors on multiple occasions.

The consortium wanted a utopia, and its representatives were willing to kill every person who stood in the path to that objective. Unarmed foes were just as open to murder as the Cerberus personnel.

“I also inspected the stranger’s gear,” Lakesh told the others as he led them toward the briefing room. “His kit includes a leather bullwhip that appears to have bloodstains.”

“He also couldn’t stop buttering all of us up,” Domi added as they entered a room where Sela Sinclair and Edwards, members of the Cerberus away teams, stood guard over a bored man.

“Worse than Lakesh in the beginning?” Kane asked, slipping into a faux Indian accent, trying to dispel his habitual unease with Balam’s old stomping grounds. “‘Friend Kane, beloved Brigid…’”

Lakesh rolled his eyes but chuckled at Kane’s antics. “Not the same, but the man knows how to get his nose browned.”

“What’s his name?” Brigid asked. Looking him over, she seemed to be turning over a memory in her mind, not quite believing it.

“Austin Fargo,” Lakesh answered. Fargo sat, dressed in a white shirt, brown pants and a battered old leather jacket. A wide-brimmed hat sat on the table in front of the man. “And yes…he’s dressed almost note for note like the old movie archaeologist.”

Kane tilted his head. “Has he gotten the earful from Sinclair about that?”

Grant rolled his eyes. “Yeah, she only made me sit through those movies three times.”

Kane glanced toward his partner. “I thought you liked ’em.”

“After the third time, with Sela saying all of Dr. Jones’s dialogue line for line, it got tiring,” Grant responded. He glanced nervously toward Brigid. “Not that memorizing things is annoying, mind you.”

Brigid winked at Grant. “No offense taken.”

Kane examined the heavy revolver, the machete and the curled bullwhip. He picked up the whip, examining its light tan leather bandings. “You think you found blood?”

DeFore knocked on the door, interrupting Kane’s thoughts. The medic, a stocky, buxom woman with bronze skin and ash-blond hair, brightened from a dour mood, seeing that Kane and the others were back from their trip to Cobaltville. Despite this, she remained businesslike. “I brought some chemicals to run a test on the whip.”

“It wouldn’t mean much. He could have used it in self-defense, or the blood could have been from an animal,” Brigid suggested. “Or the chemical could luminesce in the presence of copper, horseradish, even bleach.”

Kane handed the whip to DeFore. “So, how many times have you seen someone flay a horseradish root with a bullwhip?”

“All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best,” Brigid returned.

Kane nodded. “And you say I never learn.”

Brigid managed a smile. In the darkened observation deck, DeFore sprayed the whip, and iron traces left behind by blood illuminated the last four feet of the wicked lash, glowing brightly. She pulled some tweezers, digging into a seam between two strips of leather.

“What did you find?” Lakesh asked.

DeFore turned on a small lamp, and the two scientists inspected the scrap trapped between the tweezer’s points. “Looks like skin. Dried out and desiccated, but skin. And this was just one clump of many that the chemicals exposed.”

Kane glanced through the one-way mirror toward Fargo. “No fur?”

DeFore shook her head. “None on closer examination.”

Kane looked at his friends. “And what does Fargo want with us?”

Lakesh looked at the whip as if it were a coiled cobra. “He said that he had discovered a cache of military technology in the Kashmir province of the subcontinent. A place between what used to be Pakistan and India. Both nations claimed the land before skydark, but it was always hotly contested, with terrorists and minor border skirmishes constantly erupting.”

“So he came to us? We’ve got all the gear we could ever need here at Cerberus,” Grant interjected. “And if not just here, there’s also stuff at Cobaltville. Even the most dedicated army of looters couldn’t take all of the equipment stored in a ville.”

“There’s got to be something more. Especially if he came to us, instead of returning to the Millennial Consortium,” Brigid said.

“You think he’s consortium now?” Kane asked.

Brigid nodded. “Your instincts are rarely wrong.”

“What do you think?” Kane asked her.

Brigid regarded Fargo through the glass. “We’ve had troubles in India before.”

“Scorpia Prime and her doomsday cultists,” Kane noted. “Nagas, right?”

Brigid confirmed Kane’s guess. “We might have solved the problem of Scorpia Prime, but the cult we dealt with may only have been a splinter of a much larger group.”

“He claims to have encountered a much more dangerous group than just a few snake worshipers,” Lakesh stated.

“They were savage enough,” Grant said, remembering his horrific stay and the suffering he endured at the hands of torturers.

“No doubt, Grant,” Lakesh returned. “My apologies.”

“It wasn’t you,” Grant said, ending that branch of the conversation.

“He claims to have encountered a new party?” Kane asked.

“Different from the overlords. He even referenced the genetically augmented soldiers of England. I wanted you to get a look at him, figure out what he actually was before we all talked with him,” Lakesh explained. “And if necessary…”

“Loosen his tongue,” Kane concluded.

“Shall we?” Lakesh asked.

Kane picked up Fargo’s gear, hefting the bullwhip thoughtfully. “We shall.”

SELA SINCLAIR HEARD Kane’s voice over her Commtact as she sat in the interrogation room with self-proclaimed archaeologist Austin Fargo.

“Talk to him,” Kane said. “Make it seem like you give a shit what he’s all about.”

Sela grunted an affirmative. “So, are you a freezie, or did someone show you the movies?”

“Excuse me?” Fargo asked.

“The hat. The jacket. The bullwhip we relieved you of,” Sela said. “Fairly iconic figure you copied your style from.”

“Only her favorite vid hero,” Edwards added. Obviously he’d received the same message from Kane on the Commtact. “If she wasn’t going to ask, I would’ve.”

Fargo sighed. “A traveling show passed through my town when I was little. It was a wag with its own generator and a wide-screen monitor. When I saw him, I knew what I wanted to be.”

Sela nodded. “This doesn’t mean we’ll be holding hands in the shower and taking midnight walks on the beach, so don’t get too friendly.”

“I’m not,” Fargo answered. “I’m just an archaeologist, looking for what’s still useful from the past.”

“With skydark’s destruction and the Program of Unification, I wouldn’t think there would be much left to archaeolog,” Edwards noted.

Fargo and Sela both raised an eyebrow at Edwards’s newly invented verb. Fargo finally chuckled. “There is still presky-dark tech not assembled by the unification program or various other parties. Besides, when the barons abandoned their villes, they didn’t leave behind many of the keys to their kingdoms.”