Shadow Born

“Too many lives are at stake to take the scenic route,” Lyta added. “Though, I have to admit, the idea of going through a half-molten desert sounds pretty interesting.”

“This isn’t a game,” Kane warned.

Thurpa frowned. “Oh. Like three-hundred-pound mutants and the Panthers of Mashona were only coming over for a game of chess? We get it. This is serious as cancer. Worse, because every living human remaining on the surface of the planet will end up infected.”

“The longer we spend debating the point, the closer Durga gets to his goal,” Grant threw in. “Either we plunge through the fire and the flames, or we do nothing.”

Brigid nodded in agreement.

“Then it’s unanimous,” Kane said.

Thurpa and Nathan turned immediately to begin packing. Lyta nodded to the three members of the Cerberus team, then turned to join her friends.

“And this is the one we were worried that could betray us?” Grant asked.

“I hate being suspicious of him,” Brigid answered, looking as if she’d sucked a lemon dry. “But we’d all be best on our toes around him.”

Kane looked grumpier than usual as he removed his hood and faceplate. She could tell that something was digging at him.

“What’s wrong?” Brigid asked.

“I just hope we’re not damning them like we did Garuda,” Kane said.

“We’re making up for that,” Grant told him.

Kane thought about the city of the Nagah. Even Durga’s attempt to usurp the family tree of the new queen and her consort, Hannah and Manticor, had been a misfire.

The three Cerberus warriors set about loading up the pickup truck. They hadn’t done much in terms of unloading for the night, just enough to sleep and to keep comfortable. Within a few minutes, the truck was packed, and the six people returned to their spots in the vehicle.

It was time to dare the volcanic plain.

* * *

GRANT AND BRIGID looked out over the hood at the wasteland before them.

“Still think this was a good idea?” Grant murmured.

“You were all up for it,” Kane responded through the window at the back of the cab. “And it’s not as if we’re seeing anything new.”

Grant nodded. All three of them had been on a virtual “fly through,” but this was an imposing scene before them. The ground heaved and shifted, and whereas the computer-generated imagery was soundless and scentless, here on the smoky plain the stench of sulfur hung thick in the air and the grumble of grinding stone and burbling steam and bubbling lava was a constant companion.

The three adventurers had sent a message back to Cerberus redoubt in the wake of their battle in Neekra’s necropolis. Their shadow suits had been damaged greatly, and Kane and Grant both agreed that leaving their allies, Nathan, Lyta and Thurpa, unprotected by the unique uniforms was an unnecessary risk, unlike the journey across this field of lava, crumbling stone and thick, noxious gases.

Fortunately, the shadow suits were environmentally sealed when all pieces were in place. Usually, they could be hooked to a portable air supply, but they could also filter out environmental toxins for a good amount of time. The suits’ polymers would protect from impacts, intense heat or biting cold. But the truth was, even the non-Newtonian reactions of the suits couldn’t hold off a point-blank rifle shot and would provide only a few seconds of protection from searing lava. There was a difference between heat that could induce heat stroke and the incredible temperatures of rock that flowed as freely as a mudslide. In fact, Grant even doubted that the shadow suit would do anything to lessen the liquefying heat inside. It had taken them two hours out of their way to get to the replacement garments via interphaser rendezvous, but the thickness of the sulfur and steam made them fully aware of how smart it had been.

Also, all six members of this expedition remembered having to navigate through nearly impossible, darkened necropolis with either flashlights or the advanced optics. The team’s equipment was further enhanced by the addition of headset radios for Lyta, Nathan and Thurpa, hands-free communications that put them much more easily in contact with the Commtact-equipped Kane, Grant and Brigid.

Better vision and better “ears” would give the team a distinct advantage in the near future. They had been only limping along in that deadly encounter, and if there was one thing about the Cerberus explorers and those who had proved brave and resourceful enough to side with them, it was that they could all learn from their mistakes.

“We’ll be fine in the back here,” Kane said, knocking on the roof, even though they could easily hear him over their communications network. “The suits should be able to filter out any noxious fumes. Think that will have any effect on the engine, Baptiste?”

Brigid looked back through the rear window. “Will the smoke have any effect on a standard Toyota internal combustion engine?”

Kane nodded. “It won’t, right?”

“No, the smoke won’t harm the engine,” Brigid replied. “I’m more concerned about spraying bits of lava. If one lands in or on the truck, it’s likely to burn through the chassis, or it’ll burn our suits if it lands on us.”

Grant scanned the terrain ahead, matching it up to the map, which was quickly becoming more and more obsolete as he observed it. He threw the truck into a lower gear, revved the engine and pushed forward. There was no warning as he advanced, but none of the rest of his group expressed dismay at the sudden lurch of the vehicle. One way or another, they had to make their first move onto the plain.

The truck rocked as a chunk of the “cooled” obsidian glass crumpled under one of the tires, and Grant put everything into the brake. Kane swiftly leaped from the cab and padded cautiously forward.

“It’s a hollow tube,” Kane announced over their communications network. “It looks about five feet deep, and we cracked through what must have been a thin spot.”

“How thin?” Grant asked.

Kane knelt and looked at the tire. “Looks like it was an inch at the edges of the break.”

“The tire?” Grant pressed.

“No cuts that I can see,” Kane offered.

Grant put the truck in Reverse and backed from the hole he’d inadvertently punched.

“Things aren’t going to be easy, are they?” Grant murmured.

“If they were, we wouldn’t be paid the big money,” Brigid answered.

“You get paid?” Grant remarked.

Brigid elbowed him in the biceps.

Grant tried to remember the “look” of the tunnel on infrared so he could avoid such thin spots in the near future. One thing that the big, cooled flows of obsidian provided was a fairly unbroken, if somewhat slick and uneven, terrain that wasn’t through the middle of lava.

“You’ll want to head forward by five meters, then hang a left to return to our course,” Brigid directed.

Grant nodded, glad to have the woman’s eidetic memory to rely upon. He followed her directions, and Kane popped over the top of the cab, firing a single shot into the ground before them. As soon as the bullet struck the obsidian glass, it burst like a bubble, producing a circular gap, dropping down into another lava tube. This was dark and empty, thankfully, but the shattered surface now had a hole three feet in diameter. The pickup could span it, but Grant looked at what each side of the truck would be rolling through. The last thing he needed was to drop and crash through the hole and break an axle, but he also didn’t need to put the tires on anything less than sure ground. He hit the optic zoom, switching from infrared to see if there was any sand or other particulate that could compromise their traction.

“Okay, that’s going to be bad,” Nathan spoke up over the line.

Grant glanced to the bed of the truck. “What?”

“I’m picking up something flying,” the young man from Harare said. “Bat-like shapes are the best I can make out through the smoke and from this distance. No way to gauge their size.”

“Bat-like,” Grant repeated. He tromped the gas and shot toward the small hole before them, gritting his teeth and hoping that the lava tube around the burst bubble could hold them. If it didn’t, then he hoped that the sheer speed of the pickup could keep them from getting stuck.

The obsidian beneath the truck’s tires held, and the pickup didn’t suddenly lurch as its two tons of weight cracked into the lava tube beneath them.

Good—they were back toward a plateau of solid rock, not solidified and cooled lava, and Grant hit the brakes before he got too close to the edge. He glanced back. “Kane, any updates?”