Serpent's Tooth

There was an odd, queasy moment of weightlessness as Fargo sailed to the waters. The surface of the river shimmered like ribbons of living, writhing glass. The world had gone silent around him, an envelope of calm providing him with a respite from the frantic race for his life. The snake men had stopped firing, it seemed, and in his peripheral vision, the millennialist trespasser knew why. Just before he knifed into the river, he had caught sight of a helicopter hanging over the tree line like a bloated, mechanical bee.

Fargo plunged under the surface of the roiling river, momentum pushing him nearly to the bottom as the water exerted its braking force on him. The current shoved hard, toppling him into a spin that he kicked out of, arms and legs dragging him toward the silty bottom.

With a twist, he looked up through the surface of the river, seeing the warped image of the sky and ledge hanging over him. Fargo knew that he had barely a minute before his lungs forced him to surface, but cold dread of that helicopter stilled his urge to swim upward.

Seconds ticked on as his lungs burned, wanting to return to their normal schedule of inhalation and exhalation. The helicopter’s black shape poked out of the overhang of the ledge. Its fattened fish profile blotted out the sun while rotor wash created a flat dish in the water, creating a lens that the Nagah could see through.

Fargo had no trouble seeing the huge bulk as it hovered, and given the clarity of the river, he was easily visible to the airborne pursuers. A cobra man leaned out of the door and fired his automatic rifle, bullets knifing toward the millennialist. One plucked at his forearm, but Fargo bit his tongue to resist the urge to cry out, expelling needed air from his lungs in the process. The current dragged him along, a cloud of dark blood smearing behind him in a corkscrew.

Had it not been for the refraction of the crystal-clear water, the Nagah sniper would have riddled Fargo’s chest. The explorer kept his cool, playing dead. His lungs burned as the enemy helicopter ascended and joined two more aircraft. Together they whirled in the sky for a moment before they broke north, back past the forbidden frontier that Fargo had dared to penetrate.

In three strong kicks, he broke the surface, sucking in sweet, life-giving oxygen. His arm ached badly. The bullet had glanced off his ulna, one of the strongest bones in the human body. Fortunately, the imprecise hit didn’t have the power to cause more than a hairline fracture. Fargo knew it wasn’t broken because he could still move his fingers, albeit stiffly.

He dragged himself to shore, crawling between two dense bushes to shield himself from discovery in case the humanoid snake warriors saw fit to return.

With his good hand and his teeth, he tore a scarf from around his neck and fashioned a compress and bandage for his gunshot wound, sealing the puckered injury to control further blood loss and stave off infection. He had a strip left over from the bandages, but it wouldn’t support his arm properly. He slipped his belt out of the loops in his pants and cinched the wounded limb to his torso, immobilizing it above the elbow. He wound the last strip of scarf around his forearm and the belt, multiple loops providing sufficient stability to the injured limb.

It would be dark soon, and he needed to get to a warm shelter. A fire was out of the question, not this close to the enemies who had killed more than a hundred trespassers with quick, ruthless efficiency.

No, Fargo needed something just a little better, perhaps the tall, intertwined roots of a tree or a nice cave, provided there were no native, actual serpents present within. The irony of dying from a real cobra bite after escaping a hybrid of man and snake would shame Fargo to no end.

The Millennial Consortium wouldn’t be pleased at the loss of the expedition, especially now that it had been proved that there were operating aircraft in the stockpiles possessed by the Nagah. When the millennialists were disappointed, they tended to shoot the messenger. Already, though, the redoubt raider had a plan to minimize the blame and to appease the consortium.

For the plan to work, Fargo had to get to the Bitterroot Mountains.

The outlanders Kane, Grant and Brigid Baptiste could succeed where a consortium expeditionary force had failed. If they didn’t, they would still inflict horrendous losses upon the snake men, giving a new millennial strike team sufficient advantage to finish the job. Should Kane and company prevail, then a force meant to crush an army of serpent warriors would be more than enough to deal with the Cerberus interlopers.

It was the kind of win-win scenario that would allow the survivor Fargo a chance to retain his position and support within the consortium.

The journey of a thousand miles, however, needed to start with one step. Leaning on a branch for support, Fargo hauled himself achingly to his feet. With each stride, the explorer put distance between himself and the forbidden frontier. It was a temporary separation, though.

Austin Fargo would return, bringing vengeance to the snakes who had struck at him.

Chapter 2

The return to Cobaltville was meant to be a mission of mercy, but as Kane crouched in the shadows, watching the coldhearts holding Brigid Baptiste and Grant at gunpoint, he was reminded that strength and mercy were two qualities that had to go hand in hand.

“Come on out!” the leader of the bandits snarled. “All we want are the meds, not trouble from you!”

Kane wrenched his fighting knife from the ribs of the raider who’d tried to ambush him. It had taken considerable effort to free the blade from where it was lodged in the breastbone. Still, Kane was not a man to leave a perfectly good weapon behind, especially when he was outnumbered.

He would need information about the coldhearts, which meant that he would have to carefully get in touch with his companions over the built-in Commtact communicator implanted behind his ear and attached to the mastoid bone. “What happened?”

From his vantage point, Kane could see the massive Grant, clad in a tank top and cargo pants, clasping his hands behind his bald mahoghany-colored head as he was surrounded by raiders. Thick, powerful arms glistened like dark bronze in the sun. The big ex-Magistrate’s lips didn’t move, but Kane could see his jaw flexing as he subvocalized, loud enough for only the implanted transceiver to hear. “The fuckers popped out of the woodwork while I was moving crates. With my hands full, they swarmed us.”

“I take the blame,” Brigid’s voice added. Kane’s glance shot to the striking former archivist. Where he had a pang of concern for Grant, his fellow Magistrate for years and the closest thing to a brother that the lone warrior had, the sight of the flame-haired woman held at gunpoint was worth a full wince. “I should have waited until you returned from your errand, Kane.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” Kane replied. He scanned the pair from his vantage point. Four bandits now surrounded Grant. It was always a risky proposition to bring medical supplies into the shantytown known as the Tartarus Pits, a sprawl that had grown in the shadow of the tower that housed the subjects of the hybrid barons. The medicine used by the healers at the Cobaltville clinic was almost as valuable as a cache of firearms in the lawless Outlands. Kane, Brigid and Grant were making the delivery, utilizing wheelbarrows to ferry the supplies to the healers who worked in the area.

Colin Phillips, the leader of the ragtag group of physicians and their assistants, had warned Kane and the others about the presence of the band of raiders. They were led by Lombard, a man familiar to Kane. The head bandit was a former Magistrate who operated almost exclusively in the Tartarus slums. The allure of easy money and quick satisfaction had corrupted Lombard, something the other Magistrates had done their best to ignore. Lombard disappeared after killing a fellow Mag, knowing his life was now worthless if he encountered any of the grim group that he’d betrayed.

With the barons now long gone from Cobaltville, most of the Magistrates had also moved on, working as sec men for caravans or small settlements while the more corrupt went into business for themselves. Lombard saw Cobaltville as easy pickings.

Not that the ex-Mag was alone. Lombard had assembled easily a dozen men, according to Kane’s observations, and he wasn’t certain that there weren’t more.

The bandit leader glared toward Grant and Brigid, alert enough to make out the low guttural subvocalizations as they communicated with Kane over their Commtacts. Lombard reached for the flame-haired archivist’s chin, but Brigid jerked it away.

“Communicators?” Lombard asked as he gave her jaw a squeeze.

Brigid grabbed his wrist and pried the grubby, grasping paw away from her face. Around them, Phillips and his fellow healers remained still. They knew the drill, having endured previous raids, but Kane could see the frustration in their faces. The cold-blooded marauders had taken Brigid’s and Grant’s weapons at gunpoint, enticed by the new meat before them.

“So, where is your friend?” Lombard inquired. His thumb glided over the silvery plate of the Commtact implant behind Brigid’s ear.

“It’s a radio, not a radar unit, dimwit,” Brigid retorted. “Besides, do you think that a Magistrate like Kane would give away his position to you?”

The predatory marauders were bold when it came to unarmed victims, but the presence of a Magistrate, especially the legendary Kane, would make the formerly cocky thugs pause. Kane flexed his forearm muscles, the sensitive actuators in his holster flicking his sleek, folding machine pistol into his hand. The full-auto Sin Eater would be necessary in the eventuality of a furious firefight, but Kane held his fire. The Cerberus warriors didn’t want stray bullets to harm any of the healers whose only crime was endangering themselves for the sake of the huddled masses in the remnants of Cobaltville. Besides, Kane had learned long ago that mind games and intimidation could reduce the need for violence or control the reactions of his quarry.

The coldheart grimaced. “Fucking Mags? Kane nonetheless?”

Lombard glared at the massive Grant, a towering figure in his own right. The olive-green tank top left little doubt about the awesome power contained in his muscular arms and shoulders. It had been years since Lombard had last seen Grant. To assist with his disguise as just another guy the size of a collossal statue, Grant was wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and had traded his forearm-holstered Sin Eater for a belt-holstered Heckler & Koch MP-5 K. In a nearby wheelbarrow Grant had hidden both a Sin Eater and a compact Copperhead assault rifle, ready to be reached through a precut opening.

“Then who the fuck are you?” Lombard asked.

“I’m just a delivery boy,” Grant said. “Does she look like she hauls around crates full of this shit?”

Lombard glanced over to the slender but fit young woman. Brigid didn’t look like a delicate flower thanks to years of adventuring across the globe. Though it was obvious that she was in very good shape, Kane knew that there was a mentality among his fellow Magistrates to dismiss women as incapable because of their softer bodies. At first even he had trouble adapting to Brigid’s competence and capability as a fellow adventurer.

Kane also quietly admitted to himself the stomach-churning anger at Lombard’s sneering familiarity with Brigid Baptiste. Though she could take care of herself, having proved her inner strength across several years and every continent on the planet, Kane still possessed an instinctual protectiveness for the archivist.

Brigid shrunk from the renegade Magistrate, and Lombard chuckled.

“Still, it’s only one Mag bastard,” Lombard said aloud, as if to calm his companions.

“Well, I guess if they measure those guys by you…” Grant said, shrugging.

“Ruben, if this overmuscled cock head talks again, shoot him with his own gun,” Lombard snapped.

Grant looked down at the bandit Lombard had spoken to. Ruben, a young, tattooed punk wearing a leather vest, was a foot shorter than Grant. He gripped the machine pistol with whitened knuckles.

“Don’t shoot yourself with that thing, kid,” the big Cerberus warrior whispered to him.

Even without being close enough to see Grant’s face, Kane could tell that his partner was smiling. The mind games against the coldhearts were now in full effect.

Ruben glared at Grant. “I’m not simple, you damned big freak.”

“You could have fooled me,” Grant replied. “You keep pointing that muzzle at your friends, too, and your finger’s locked on that trigger. If it weren’t for the fact that you haven’t deactivated the safety on the gun, you’d have shot your partners twenty times over.”

Kane could see Ruben’s nearly comical double take as he glanced down at the machine pistol. The Cerberus rebel fought to restrain a snort of amused derision at the reaction. His partner’s mockery had struck another blow against the raider’s confidence.