Infestation Cubed

“Sure, Magistrate Man, hide when I’m checking for my backup, but not when a stone god’s hunting for your ass and mine,” she grumbled. She returned her attention to the cypress swamp ahead. Something was in there, and even her dog could sense the ominous stench of wrongness coming out.

There was a rustle behind her and she whipped around, dagger out of its sheath and lashing toward the figure’s throat.

Only Kane’s lightning reflexes prevented her from opening a deadly gash from ear to ear. His fingers locked around her wrist while the blade was still inches from his neck. “I know you’re mad about me being out of sight, but that’s no reason to take my head off.”

“Not funny, Magistrate Man,” Rosalia said with a sneer. “This stretch of river stinks worse than the rest. And not in the traditional sense. This…has a weirdness to it.”

“I feel it, too,” Kane said. “We’d heard about something going on here, something strange, even amid all the stuff we’ve been doing with alien overlords, extradimensional conquerors, even a tribe of dimension-hopping hackers.”

Rosalia shook her head. “Anyone else said any of that, I’d have called them a fused-out tangle brain.”

“Before or after you met Ullikummis?” Kane asked.

Rosalia nodded. “Before. I have to say, the weirdness really took off after I ran into you, Magistrate Man.”

“Don’t blame me,” Kane answered.

“So, you brought us here, leaving a trail of bread-crumbs for the New Order to follow, even when you knew that there was trouble already waiting for us?” Rosalia asked.

“I’ve been at this long enough to know that when you’re on the menu for two enemies, they’ll end up taking bites out of each other to get to you,” Kane said. “And since I’m still here, having two enemies at each others’ throats seems to be a good strategy.”

“Seems, Magistrate Man,” Rosalia answered, her hazel eyes scanning the shadows amid the cypress trunks and roots, “this won’t be just two opponents. We’ll be an open buffet for anything with teeth, and there’s lots of them in there.”

“This isn’t my first dance in a swamp,” Kane replied. “If anything, the terrain is on our side, in that it’s on its own side. It’ll eat anyone and anything that stumbles in.”

“What was the weirdness you’d heard from this stretch of swamp?” Rosalia asked.

“People disappearing, and reptilian creatures,” Kane said. “Sad thing is, we can’t narrow down what kind of lizard men we’re dealing with. A colony sent by Lord Strongbow, a missing detachment of Nagah, maybe even an overlord and his Nephilim followers.”

“Nagah?” Rosalia repeated, hoping for an answer.

Kane shook his head. “Want nothing to do for you. Or me. Or any human for that matter.”

Rosalia’s full, soft lips pursed in frustration, then she looked back. “Dog doesn’t like this.”

“I know. Neither does Grant,” Kane added.

“So, you promoting the mutt or demoting me to animal sidekick?” Grant rumbled over his Commtact. Kane repeated the comment of his grouchy friend since Rosalia couldn’t hear anything broadcast by the implanted communication device.

Rosalia looked down at her belt, noting the conventional radio that she’d had clipped to it. While small and handy, it was nowhere nearly as convenient as a cybernetic transmitter installed in the mandible, capable of transmitting words even if the speaker was whispering. The vibrations of the voice through bone were translated by the small, solid-state technology residing along the bone, pintles connecting the contact plate to the jawline. Kane and Grant could hear everything the other said or even heard, while she had to fumble with even the slim transceiver unit.

It was part of their link that made Rosalia feel so alienated. Of course, since she hadn’t wanted to get rid of the Ullikummis stone inside her, she couldn’t utilize the Commtact, as had been proved with Edwards when he had been infected. The shard had produced interference with the body’s energy flow and disrupted the miniaturized cybernetics. The point was made moot for her, as the field surgery to implant the stone was not possible in the wake of the New Order’s attack. The redoubt had to be put on total lockdown, now that its location was known. To preserve the store of supplies and technology within the underground facility, Lakesh had engaged blast doors and emergency locks. Nothing short of a bomb could cut through the doors of the compound, and explosives that powerful would also collapse tunnels.

The storehouse of vehicles and weaponry alone had to be secured to prevent bandits from suddenly expanding their capability beyond those of their traditional victims.

“So, lizards to the front, stone men to the back and a hungry swamp all around,” Rosalia said. “Can’t say you don’t know how to impress a girl, Mag Man.”

Kane’s lower lip twitched, as if the smile her quip had inspired had hit the brick wall of reality.

This was not going to be fun and games. Kane and Grant no longer had the backup of Cerberus redoubt, and Rosalia, despite her fighting ability, was not capable of the same kind of brilliance that Brigid Baptiste could provide.

Outnumbered, hunted and cut off from their usual support, the outlanders returned to the boat, each oar splash bringing them closer to the dangerous mysteries within.

Chapter 2

Domi could tell that something was in the air as they got closer to the half-buried city in the sand. Somewhere beyond what was once named Las Vegas lay a sprawling facility, heavily guarded and shielded on all sides by nothing but inhospitable desert. The feral girl had been kept there once as a prisoner, taken along with Kane, who was pressed into stud service for the genetically deteriorated hybrids in the months before the barons’ ascendance to the demonic Annunaki overlords. It was there that Domi had overcome her hatred and bigotry toward hybrids, learning that the actions of a few powerful leaders did not paint the total picture of the whole race.

While they were barons, the nascent overlords were cruel and petty, but their health depended on transplant surgery and blood transfusions from unwilling donors. Now the reptilian giants sneaked through the shadows of the world, their minds and bodies complete but their support system shattered with the destruction of Tiamat, the living space leviathan who had awakened the genetic coding within the barons and their Quad V hybrid minions alike.

Domi remembered rows and banks of young hybrids, babies actually, soft and vulnerable, so fragile that they were placed in lexan boxes in sterile, airtight rooms lest an errant microbe strike their nonexistent immune system and kill them where a normal human would shrug the infection off after a few days of sniffles. Domi herself had known the hardship of a less than optimal physiology, though she didn’t think of it in terms of biochemistry, anatomy or genetics. She was an albino, so her fair skin was prone to burning unless she kept herself wrapped, and her ruby eyes—so keen at seeing in the dark—needed to be hooded by a ball cap and sunglasses lest the brightness burn out her pupils.

While she could have made use of a shadow suit, one of the high-tech field uniforms worn by Cerberus personnel, the skintight, advanced fabrics would stick out. Domi already had enough trouble, being a tiny, slender albino traveling with an enfeebled, aging Lakesh. The shadow suit would attract too much attention, something she couldn’t afford when the elderly scientist was slowly losing his brilliant faculties as well as his physical vigor.

It was little things that Domi noticed. Even the mind that had endured centuries of existence and treachery under the barons was slipping, memories fading after only an hour, and he grew tired far more quickly than before.

They looked like prey out here in the desert, a hunter-plagued landscape of cold-blooded bandits, robbers, psychopaths and other killers. Domi knew that there was little she could do to make herself seem larger and stronger, even though she was one of the deadliest fighters who called the Cerberus redoubt home. Behind her wraparound shades, her ruby eyes swept the desert, looking for signs of trouble. Stuffed in a tied-off belt around her hips was a powerful, small-framed .45 automatic, and on her denim-clad calf was a long, wicked fighting knife. She had a backpack with water, food and extra supplies for the long journey, and cradled in the crook of her right arm was something she’d rarely carried, though she’d trained with it.

Domi, through the redoubt’s supply stores, had access to hundreds of weapons of all manner and make. Domi was more feral than tame, and while she was deadly with the semiautomatic Detonics .45 in her belt, the hand blaster wasn’t something she’d need on a long, dangerous loop through the desert. Crucial was something that could reach out across the sands and take down attackers long before they got too close. Because of that, she had a Winchester Model 70, in 7 mm Mauser. The choice was simple for Domi, who had seen fellow outlanders in roving bands dealing with human problems and meat acquisition with equal ease using this caliber. While she’d have to adjust for rise and fall with a .30 caliber, like the .30-06 or the 7.62 mm NATO, the 7 mm shot flat, making it perfect for long-range work.

At close range, the 7 mm would smash through a human torso like the horn of a rampaging bull, something she’d also been familiar with, having seen raiders dropped with their rib cages crushed to splinters when hit at only a few yards. Domi had a box of one hundred rounds in her backpack, as well as spare rounds stuffed into a collar wrapped around the rifle stock, and a few more stuffed into belt loops. There were five in the rifle’s magazine, and Domi had learned long ago that it wasn’t the number of bullets you threw at a problem as much as it was the shots that stuck to an enemy. She wouldn’t spray as fast as she could shoot, and once things got even closer, then it was time to let her Detonics Combat Master speak in its earthy bellow.

“What’s happening?” Lakesh asked. Like her, he was wrapped head to toe against the desert sun, a loose hood drooped over his evermore gray hair. His blue, transplanted eyes looked across the horizon that Domi was watching.

“Nothing,” Domi answered. “Time to sit and rest. Have a sip.”

Lakesh glanced at her, his full lips turning downward in a frown. “You don’t have to baby me, love.”

The albino girl caressed his cheek, soft and wrinkled, and managed a smile. “In the desert, remember?”

Lakesh managed a snort through his large nose. “My mind isn’t completely addled.”

“Keep your strength up,” Domi urged. “We’re almost to the city, and who knows what’s waiting inside there.”

Lakesh nodded. “How long have we been traveling?”

“Couple days,” Domi answered tersely.

“There’s trouble,” Lakesh muttered. “I know you.”

“Didn’t say you for—” Domi began.

“I mean, I know you drop unnecessary wordage when you’re worried about something,” Lakesh said. “Under stress, especially ready for combat.”

“No fight yet,” Domi promised. “But it’s quiet. Too quiet.”

Lakesh took a deep breath, then glanced down at the rifle she cradled in her delicate-seeming hands. He reached out and rested his fingers over hers. “Why did we come here?”

“Fix your tangle brain,” Domi said. “Might find some one.”