Oblivion Stone

Oblivion Stone
James Axler

Spread across postapocalyptic North America, the nine great cities ruled by the alien-human hybrid barons have crumbled…ushering in not defeat, but a new epoch of alien rule of Earth. But their assault is threatened by a force of extraordinary humans, the Cerberus rebels, dedicated to freeing humanity from the aeons of slavery that the alien Annunaki race have placed upon it.In Louisiana, a salvaged piece of sentient spaceship signals the beginning of the long-awaited second salvo. In the wilds of Saskatchewan, an Annunaki prince, genetically engineered as a machine of destruction, returns after 4500 years in solitary confinement to seek vengeance against the father who betrayed him. As the self-proclaimed new warlord of the Earth, his personal mission to harness its citizens to build his city and his army appears unstoppable…as does his hate-filled quest to destroy the god-king Enlil, the mighty father who spawned him in hate and fury.

It had been more than four thousand years since Ullikummis had spoken anything other than one word

That word was a name, the name of his hated father.

He instructed them with a look, the apekin farmer and his apekin wife. His eyes, molten pits of lava that glowed fiercely in the darkening evening gloom, held them in his thrall, for the apekin were such simple creatures compared to him, compared to a god.

Alison and Peter Marks rose from the ground, their heads still bowed before their new master. Peter Marks had never so much as visited a ville, and he had never submitted to another man in anything. Yet this strangely beautiful being that stood before him in his own field, the same field his father had plowed fifty years before—here was something that he would bow to without question. Deep down inside him, he knew that here was something supreme.

Oblivion Stone

Outlanders

James Axler

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

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

—Amelia Earhart

1898–1937

A capacity for going overboard is a requisite for a full-grown mind.

—Dawn Powell

1896–1965

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