Cradle Of Destiny

Grant heard the door behind him—they hadn’t come that far down the corridor—and the smell of the jungle beyond the sonic fence rushed him. The pack leader’s nostrils flared at the familiar scent of home. The predator’s sensitive ears, or rather the feathers around their ear holes that funneled sound akin to mammalian ears, turned to the doorway, and they recoiled momentarily. He spoke in low, calm tones. “Don’t forget…”

“I haven’t. Just locating the speaker,” Shizuka replied just as softly.

Grant didn’t need any verification that his love had disconnected the infrasound generator. The sudden decrease in uncomfortable sonics was flagged by the reaction of the deinonychus pack leader and its kin.

The pack leader’s yellow eyes flicked from Grant to the jungle behind him. The human stepped aside, allowing the confused, uprooted predators a way back to where they were comfortable. Slowly, cautiously, the dinosaurs walked out into the open, the pack leader padding up to Grant. Their eyes were still locked, the raptor’s signal was clear.

To harm my family, you must go through me.

The deinonychus, five of them, zipped past their pack leader, darting through the doorway and beyond, disappearing into the jungle. Once its family was safely away from this place of humans, the leader backed away from Grant, showing its strength while giving itself distance from a potential opponent and the freedom of the forest. Grant hoped that Shizuka hadn’t reset the infrasound projector, but once the lead raptor’s feet felt soil, not tile, it whirled and exploded away into the wilds of Thunder Isle.

Though he had not incurred the wrath of the dinosaur’s claws and fangs, Grant had to lean against the wall. He’d flexed his muscles, making himself appear larger and more menacing. That and the concentration needed to keep the animals at bay had taken its toll. Shizuka appeared in the doorway, closing it behind her before tending to him.

“You all right?” she asked.

Grant nodded, taking a few deep breaths. “Staring down a killer dinosaur is hard damned work.”

Shizuka brushed her hand across his broad chest, sparing a slight, tight-lipped smile. “So taking on some hired guns should be a snap, right?”

Grant chuckled and kissed Shizuka’s forehead, or rather the helmet chevron over her eyes. “Yeah. Can’t go taking a nap now.”

The two warriors headed down the hallway.

BRIGID BAPTISTE WAS impressed with the precision of Edwards’s breaching charge. The reshaped plastic explosives had cut a perfect hole large enough for Brigid, Domi and Maria Falk to slither through. Edwards had no intention of climbing into an ancient underground temple, and a hole large enough to fit his muscular, massive form would risk a weakness in the wall that might cause the improvised entrance to collapse.

Domi took point, putting her head and shoulders through the opening. Though not much sunlight got past even her slender frame, the albino’s ruby-red eyes were attuned to even the deepest of shadows, and could pick up details as necessary. She came out of the hole and reached into a gear bag, pulling a length of rope adorned with knots every two feet.

“Anchor,” she ordered.

Edwards nodded and secured the end of the cord and the grapnel hook to which it was attached in some rocks. When the steel tines of the grapnel were anchored, Edwards gave the hook a tug with all of his strength. If the former Magistrate couldn’t unseat the grapnel, then the combined weight of Falk and Brigid wouldn’t be too much for it.

“Shall we?”

“Maria last. You second,” Domi said to Brigid, slithering through the hole. A slender arm snaked out, snatched up her gear bag and yanked it into the shadows. Brigid waited a moment, wondering what would be the feral girl’s signal to follow her. The hiss of a flare, followed by a reddish glow in the darkened hole was a good preamble.

“Come on,” Domi called.

Brigid slipped through the hole, holding on to the rope. The drop to the ground was only twenty-five feet, but it was certainly nothing that she’d have wanted to attempt in the dark. Chunks of broken stone on the floor provided an uneven surface to simply hop on to, promising a broken ankle if she’d made the attempt. The knotted rope also provided an easy, low-profile ladder with which they could leave the temple. Thanks to Falk’s ground sonar, the hole itself was braced by sufficient struts to be fairly stable, if too small for Edwards to want to go through.

Even if he wasn’t wary of crawling into a claustrophobic space, Brigid, Domi and Edwards all agreed that someone standing guard at their entrance would be vital. There was no telling who was here on the Euphrates. The explorers had arrived in via parallax point, so knowledge of local bandits, pirates or tyrants was slim. If it weren’t for a heretofore unknown threat from the time of the Annunakis’ rule, and now new hints of another monstrosity from past millennia, Brigid wouldn’t have come here, making a wild stab for historical data that could be an edge in their next conflict with the Annunaki overlords.

Blindsided by Marduk’s horde alongside New Olympus, then the blade of Ullikummis and later Ullikummis himself, Brigid was getting tired of being caught behind the curve.

The vaulted underground chamber was large enough to be an aircraft hangar. Knowing the ships of the Annunaki, Brigid wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that this been a parking garage for ancient astronauts. She didn’t see any form of doors through which skimmers could flit in and out, but she wasn’t able to perceive the wall opposite the one they’d entered through, thanks to the gloomy shadows and the interruption of support studs. She remembered Falk’s original measurements as the geologist finally made her way down the rope.

Two football fields in area.

“Anything, Domi?” Brigid asked.

“Stale air,” she answered. “Scurrying vermin. Not much.”

Outside of Kane, Domi had some of the sharpest senses of any human that Brigid had ever known. Part of it was due to the sensitivity inherent in an albino’s eyes, the rest coming from growing up in the wilderness. Though her skin was alabaster in color, and her closely shorn hair was the hue of aged bone, the feral woman was hardly the fragile creature that albinos of previous centuries had been. She was strong and tough, having survived trauma that would have killed a less resilient human.

Brigid couldn’t have asked for a better companion to slink through the darkness of a temple that might also be an Annunaki tomb. She glanced over to Falk, who checked the Glock in her belt holster. Brigid saw a mirror of herself in the older woman, a scientist who was willing to journey into the unknown but who hadn’t been tested or tried in conflict. There was a difference between the two scientists, though. Falk was beginning her adventuring in her later years, while Brigid was still young and fit. The former archivist was also tall and heavy enough to make her gender less important should she ever get into conflict with a man. Falk was more petite, larger than Domi was but with none of the animalistic fury and wilderness instincts of the albino warrior.

The Glock was the simplest and easiest firearm to operate in the Cerberus armory, so Falk wouldn’t be completely inept if it came to gunplay. Without spending time on learning the operation of the mechanism, Falk and the other Manitius Base scientists could be grilled on marksmanship. The archivist knew the scores from their training, and Falk was above the median in skill, able to tear the heart out of a paper target. Still, Brigid knew that she’d have to watch out for the geologist, because a printed silhouette was very different from a menacing opponent.

Domi had stopped, looking at the other part of Grant’s trench coat. It hung like a flag, and from this side, there was no doubt that it had been crafted for a giant of a man. Below the empty coat was a pile of rodent-chewed bones. Brigid swallowed hard, but the feral girl knelt and picked up one of the bones.

“Too big,” she announced.

“How do you know?” Brigid asked.

Domi stood up the bone she was examining. It was a femur that was nearly as long as Domi’s entire leg. “Grant’s tall, but his thigh don’t reach to my waist. Someone else was wearing his coat.”

Brigid looked at the sunken, buckled ceiling, wondering how the skeleton had gotten nearly through the roof of the temple. She could only hope that it was a victorious situation for Grant.

She didn’t want to think of how someone else had gained possession of her friend’s coat.

Chapter 4

Merkel’s head shot up as two simultaneous events were announced by the consortium mercenaries under his command. One of the mercenaries was not so much a hired gun but a computer technician named Milo Donaldson, the key tapper who was given charge of the mat-trans and the time trawl. He was, to Merkel’s mind, the perfect example of a computer nerd, slender and full of himself because he had abilities that were as vital to the scientists as those of a dozen gunslingers. He got on Merkel’s nerves simply because of his perceived sense of power, which was only as good as his fingertips dancing across a keyboard.

The other was Kovak, who was a former Magistrate like Merkel. However, Kovak was not a war leader like Merkel was. Kovak was just another minion, someone who cleaned up. Merkel would be the one through the door first, while Kovak would hang back, fire a few shots into a twitching corpse and scoop up any dropped magazines. He was simply a cleaner, someone who took care of any messes that Merkel made while he was actively doing.

Not that Merkel himself was in any good mood. Ever since the fall of the baronies, he’d been in business for himself, a walking trigger finger for hire, living hand to mouth in the basest of mercenary lifestyles. He’d long ago sold off any pretense of ethics when he’d learned that he didn’t have a retirement plan. He had felt that his work as a drone under another baron was ignored and degrading. His desire for recognition and glory, despite only excelling at the lowest of achievements, was what finally got him to go from picking up profit in the baronial system to going all out to become his own man.

Of course, that manhood was predicated on being a brute, stripping his office of lawman down to its lowest common denominator. He was a thug, alone in the wilderness. He’d momentarily thought of throwing in his lot with Kane and the people of Cerberus, like a few other Magistrates had done, but Merkel knew he could do better than Kane. Kane had thrown away his life of power and prestige for a half-assed idea of freedom and equality.

Merkel saw a world that he could take on, provided he could scrounge the right people. He’d regarded Donaldson and Kovak as necessary pains, and maybe at some time in the future, he could pick someone better or use them as faceless drones of his own.

Merkel knew that if he told the right lies, he could get his followers. He knew that the consortium had lied about Kane, but most of the soldiers hired by them didn’t care, or had their own vendettas, just like Merkel did.

Men like Allen, another Magistrate who’d been through the same disillusionment. Allen had served under the barons’ whims. He’d upheld baronial law, and when the barons said to kill without mercy, Allen had no compunction about putting a bullet into the head of every single person he was told to. It was his job; it was his life. When the barons abandoned the Magistrates, there were all manner of options that the lawmen could have gone with. They could have gone to Cerberus or continued their career of upholding law and protecting the citizens of the few bastions of civilization in postapocalyptic America, but Allen and Merkel knew that they could do so much better.

The two former law keepers knew better. Serving the unwashed masses without profit didn’t fit their mercenary feelings. The Magistrates had been raised in law, but as Kane and Grant had proved, such rearing was not infallible. Dozens had strayed from the course. Merkel and Allen figured they could convert their strength and training into sustenance of a life they preferred, one where they were in control, and to hell with anyone else’s concepts of what mattered and what was important. Having that power was everything to Merkel, so anything that got in his way was more than an annoyance: it was a declaration of war.

Kovak and Donaldson were simply the messengers of bad news, but Merkel was willing to shoot them.

“Sir! Movement in corridor Alpha!” Kovak announced. “The dinosaurs are leaving.”

“We’ve got an incoming matter transmission,” Donaldson said.

“Shut the door! Lock down the chamber!” Merkel shouted, responding immediately. “Allen! Don’t let the hostages be recovered alive!”

“You’ve got it,” Allen said. “If those Goody Two-shoes bastards want to save something, they’ll be returning corpses to be buried.”

Merkel sneered. “If we can’t have Thunder Isle, they’ll have a tomb. No one takes what I own,” Merkel growled. “Not without great price. Not even Kane and Grant, damn their very existence!”

AS SHE MATERIALIZED the mat-trans chamber, Sela Sinclair felt as if her stomach was a few hundred feet behind her, in the void they’d just crossed. Bry and Morganstern had cracked the lockout codes put in by the millennialist raiders, but since it was a standard jump, there was residual jump sickness. It was nothing that she hadn’t hardened herself against, but it was still disorienting. Her knees went rubbery for a moment, but Sinclair was a strong woman. She hadn’t fought her way into the traditionally male-dominated world of the United States Air Force without having guts.

“Sinclair,” Kane called out, getting her thoughts refocused.

As if it were a code word, a post-hypnotic suggestion trigger, Sinclair reached down to her security torch and swept it out of its spot on her utility belt. Kane saw consortium mercenaries rush down the corridor to hem them in, Calico machine guns held in firing position for the moment that the chamber door hissed aside.

Sinclair focused the lens of her flashlight on the hallway, then thumbed the panic button on the side. Kane ducked his face behind his shoulder, and the normally nonreflective shadowsuit was painted with a brilliant blue-white glow.

The trio of consortium gunmen in the hall let out grunts of pain as their eyeballs were seared by the brilliant burst of light pulsing from the torch. Sinclair had been on the other end of the lens, so she knew that the only thing residing in their optic nerves was an orange halo around a void of nothingness. The effect would last for as long as ten seconds, an eternity when it came to close-quarters combat, but they wouldn’t feel long-term effects, depending on how mercifully Kane and Sinclair treated them.

She turned off the light and was hot on Kane’s heels as the two Cerberus warriors charged the gun-wielding blinded men. The former Magistrate skipped the first of the millennialists, leaving him for Sinclair to deal with as he fell upon the two at the rear. It wasn’t a case of macho posturing on Kane’s part; it was simply the fact that he had the arm reach to engage the gunmen quickly, simultaneously if he moved correctly.

Sinclair drew her collapsible ASP baton, snapping it open with a flick of the wrist. The harsh snap of the telescoping steel tubing caused her target to “look” in the direction of the sound, despite the fact that all he could see was an all-consuming fireball. She whipped the tip of the baton around like a scythe, lashing it across the millennialist’s knees. The sudden impact knocked his feet from beneath him, and Sinclair pivoted the top section up and chopped it hard on his neck, just over his jugular.

That particular shot was a stunner. The blood vessel transmitted hydrostatic force back into his brain, not enough to rupture anything vital, but the sudden rush of fluid was overwhelming enough to interrupt the raider’s consciousness.

Sinclair looked up in time to see Kane using the toppling form of one of the consortium mercenaries as a brace to swing both feet up, one boot cracking the man’s jaw, the other spearing his breastbone. The millennial gunman’s head rebounded off the wall, and then he crashed face-first into the floor, a numb, groaning sack of insensate thug. Kane landed on the balls of his feet as his “support” folded to the ground, landing on his knees and vomiting. Kane turned and jammed a knife-hard hand into the stunned gunman’s neck, ending his suffering for the time being.

“Sinclair, make sure he doesn’t choke,” Kane ordered, gathering up the unconscious men’s firearms.

Sinclair knelt next to the man, dragging his head from the puddle he’d made after Kane struck him hard in the sternum and groin. She left him lying on his side, then took a rag from one of his pockets to clear the remaining bile from his mouth. He wouldn’t choke. It might be a waste of time, especially since these three hired guns may have been responsible for the deaths of a Tiger of Heaven sentry on the island. If they were murderers, their heads would roll.

Still, the Tigers of Heaven had a stringent code of justice, and the samurai were loath to kill incapacitated opponents, just like the Cerberus warriors. There was time for ruthless slaying ability, but cold-blooded murder didn’t live in the hearts of the two societies.

“He’ll live,” Sinclair announced.

“If he deserves to,” Kane replied, voice low and grim. The Sin Eater hissed into his hand, lightning swift. “These three are our last free lunch for a while.”

“I didn’t sign on for an easy time,” Sinclair answered, drawing the Beretta from her hip holster. She took a moment to affix a suppressor to the extended barrel. Kane latched a stealth module, a squared, vented device as opposed to the round pipe on her Beretta, onto the nose of his Sin Eater, as well. Neither gun would be whisper quiet—the enemy would definitely know that firearms went off—but they wouldn’t give away their positions so easily due to the alteration of the weapons’ acoustics.

“Bry, tell me you’ve cracked the security cameras,” Kane said into his Commtact.

“I have, but the millennialists are staying out of sight,” Bry answered. “These guys aren’t stupid…oh, my God… Grant!”

Sinclair could see Kane stiffen at the alarm in Bry’s voice. Then the Cerberus warrior exploded into motion, and she had to push herself to keep up with Kane.

GRANT AND SHIZUKA MOVED like shadowy wraiths among the corridors of the Operation Chronos laboratories. They had barely ducked out of sight when a group of millennialist gunmen hurried to the hall where they’d entered the base. They avoided notice, and as soon as they were out of earshot, Shizuka got on the radio to her Tigers of Heaven allies. The samurai would deal with the millennialists, bringing them down swiftly and silently.

The two people had the option of going right at the commander who had taken control of the installation, but the fear for the safety of the hostages, if there were any, kept them moving with silence and speed. They had to verify any captives the millennialists had taken and insure their safety. Grant thought of the difference between the consortium and Cerberus. The consortium would sacrifice their hired guns, cutting and running or blasting the facility to oblivion in a scorched-earth campaign. Grant, however, couldn’t write off an ally. These were friends, and if there was one thing that the ex-Magistrate had developed, it was loyalty to the people of New Edo, enough that he’d risk his life for them as readily as he did for his family at the Cerberus redoubt.

Grant frowned, deepening the angle of his gunslinger’s mustache as he mentally reviewed the map of the Operation Chronos labs. When he spoke to Shizuka, it was softer than a whisper. “Two places where they could be holding people.”

Shizuka nodded. “Specimen storage and the temporal dilator itself.”

“They save ammo by tossing the hostages…where?”

“When,” Shizuka corrected. “Prehuman times. The nuclear winter after skydark. Lots of eras would be fatal to modern humans.”

Grant sneered. “It’s scary that we can imagine the actions of sociopaths.”

“We’ve encountered enough to expect the worst,” Shizuka answered.

“I’ll scout specimen storage,” Grant said. “Call me and wait if you see anyone.”

Shizuka nodded and disappeared. Grant didn’t worry about her. If the Japanese woman didn’t want to be noticed, she wouldn’t be. And he had stressed that they were only doing a reconnaissance, not taking action. That didn’t mean either of them would sit still if a hostage was threatened with death, but the two of them were in contact with each other. One call for help, and the other would be with them in a heartbeat.

Grant slunk down the hall to specimen storage, where the scientists who ran Operation Chronos had deposited time-trawled people and animals, like the raptors that they had just encountered, and even larger creatures like the carnotaurus they had met on one of their first visits to Thunder Isle. The trawl could easily accommodate the one-ton, fifteen-foot-long predator with the unusual, almost demonic horns adorning its broad, powerful skull. Temporal disorientation made it easier for the Chronos whitecoats to control even the strongest of beasts.

The population of prehistoric animals on the island indicated that the scientists were prolific in their efforts. The breadth of specimen containment’s cells was another clue, a dozen cages of various sizes. On quiet feet, Grant looked into the darkened prison, listening for signs of habitation.

The hostage takers might have cast the area into shadows, but there was no way that they could muffle the nervous shifting and breathing of captives. Grant tossed a pocketed pebble into the hallway to make certain, but no reaction left him with the impression that this place had been cordoned off and abandoned. He turned away to rendezvous with Shizuka and spotted a half-dozen consortium soldiers moving with purpose toward the Chronos trawl.

“Shizuka, you’ve got company on your six,” Grant warned over the radio.

“Busy,” came the hissed reply.

From the grunts transmitted over her hands-free microphone, Grant knew that he was going to have to hustle. From stealth to explosive acceleration, the big man charged down the hall, his long strides ending in loud thumps on the tile floor of the laboratory, each footfall loud enough to be a gunshot. If things were going to hell, Grant wanted to draw attention away from Shizuka.

“Hey!” shouted one of the group of soldiers who’d passed only moments before, hearing the ex-Magistrate run.

As Grant rounded the corner, he saw that three of the millennialists were in midturn, the front half of the group continuing on its path. Three Calico submachine guns would still have the potential of causing Grant injury through his armored coat, so there was no pause on the brawny titan’s part. Leg muscles surged, and he sprinted forward like a human bull, his arms swept out like the horns of a steer. Instead of making himself a smaller target, Grant gambled on causing as much disruption as possible. His wide, sweeping limbs struck each of the three gunmen, bowling them over.

Grant could feel the jaw of one mercenary dislocate as his melon-sized shoulder slammed up against it. His fingers disappeared into the wet mushy holes in an other’s face as he sunk them into eye sockets. The last of the trio’s throat thudded hard against his right forearm, wrapped in the hydraulic forearm holster, and there was a dull pop as the gunman’s larynx collapsed and his neck bones separated. It was a brutal assault, and there was at least one fatality in the attack. It was necessary; if any of the three had managed to get their fingers on the triggers of their machine pistols, the resultant gunfire would have alerted all of the hostaged Chronos facility.

Things were already going downhill, and there were three more hired soldiers to deal with. The crash of Grant against their compatriots was now enough to draw the lead group’s attention. Two stunned men and a corpse fell to the tile floor as they turned. Grant snapped off a hard punch with his left fist, the blow crushing the cheekbones of a millennialist, the impact enough to toss the man insensate to the ground. The second of the gunmen swung his Calico up, but Grant launched the Sin Eater into his grasp by flexing his wrist tendons. A heavyweight 9 mm slug exploded through the stealth module on the machine pistol’s muzzle, making a throaty pop that was matched by the bursting of ribs and lung tissue. The mercenary jerked violently backward as 240 grains of high-density bullet turned his internal organs to froth and shattered his spine.