Janus Trap

Janus Trap
James Axler

The quest for Earth's domination remains the primary directive of an ancient, inhuman enemy. Challenging this alien bid for iron rule, an elite force led by former magistrates wages war against Earth's enslavers. These rebel commandos are resourceful, dedicated and possess the immutable human willpower to survive–by any means necessary….The Original Tribe, technological shamans with their own agenda of domination, challenged Cerberus once before and lost. Now their greatest assassin, the Broken Ghost, manipulates the rebel stronghold's technology after a secret attack, trapping the original Cerberus warriors in a matrix of unreality and altering protocols so that their doppelganger counterparts invade the redoubt unnoticed. As the Broken Ghost destabilizes Earth's greatest defense force from within, the true warriors struggle to regain a foothold back to the only reality that offers survival….

Brigid didn’t let her finish the sentence

Her booted foot kicked high, thumping Skylar hard in the chest, knocking her backward once more until she slammed into the side of the desk. “The curious cat was killed, Skylar,” she said.

“What’s got into you?” Skylar wailed fearfully, struggling to keep her balance as she was forced against the desk.

“Never liked you,” Brigid said again, leaping forward, her hands closing around Skylar’s throat. “Nosy and arrogant because you know how to operate computers. That’s not a talent, Skylar. That’s barely even an ability.”

“P-please,” Skylar croaked as Brigid’s grip tightened around her neck, “Miss Baptiste. I think something is very wrong with you…please try to…”

She could tell that Brigid wasn’t listening, and she struggled vainly to loosen the grip of the taller woman. There was a dark, determined look in Brigid’s narrowed eyes, a horrible joy in the set of her smiling jaw. Skylar thought that she knew what it was—bloodlust.

Janus Trap

Outlanders

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

Special thanks to Rik Hoskin for his contribution to this work.

I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn’t know where to die.

—Antonio Gramsci, 1891–1937.

The Road to Outlands—From Secret Government Files to the Future

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20