Shadow Born

They needed to rely on Grant’s driving skills to make it out of this alive.

“When we slow down, then we shoot,” Kane added.

Thurpa looked to Nathan and Lyta. He tried not to spend too long looking at the young Zambian woman, though she was pretty. Again, he was thrown back to when he discovered that he was a clone of the Nagah prince Durga. He’d learned from Kane, Grant and Brigid that his “father” had played upon racial purity differences among the Nagah to assemble for himself a die-hard crew, an army who would give him the strength behind his uprising.

Of course, that race-baiting, those who had been “born cobra” or had been false Nagah having been converted by the Cobra baths, was simply a means of pecking and splintering the society of the underground city of Garuda. The underground city was home to humans, “natives” and pilgrims who undertook the change in a nanotech machine bath, and as in any society with a great deal of immigrant influx, there had been the disenfranchised who felt as if they were owed something, either by their “birthright” or simply because they had toiled hard to cross dangerous borders and frontiers. As such, Durga had a means of destabilizing an otherwise rock-solid representative republic monarchy.

Blaming “the other” was one of the oldest means of gaining personal power, even with a government in which the will of the people was able to overrule and defy royal decree. Hatred was at once a means of consolidating groups and eroding the fabric of a society. Thurpa heard about the rifts within Nagah society still existing as open wounds since Durga’s expulsion from the city.

The thought of Durga’s nurturance of bigotry reminded Thurpa of how much he wasn’t a product of his father’s mind. He was attracted to a young human, one who didn’t resemble an Indian. The African Lyta was as exotic as he could imagine. She had stated that her heart was off limits because of the loss of her fiancé, but he wanted nothing more than to protect her.

Thankfully, the pickup truck was staying far ahead of their enemies, bullets zipping far and wide, missing the Cerberus exiles and their allies. Thurpa’s patience started to grow short at being a “sitting target,” unable to do something to stop their pursuit. He could see that bit of warrior pride in his father, the willingness to dive head-to-head with an enemy, no matter the odds.

Kane’s hand clapped his shoulder again. “Get ready!”

A jolt of excitement rushed through Thurpa. That surge of excitement told him just how true his “superiority to mammals” was. Adrenaline was a human trait, and he recalled the origin mythology of the Nagah, how Enki crafted their race from humans, adding to them the traits of the cobra and some from the Annunaki themselves. Along the way, the alien might had faded into recessive genes, but not the cobra aspects, though according to Kane and the others, maybe it was well enough that he didn’t share the same genetics as the Igigi or, as they had been known to the Cerberus heroes, the mindless drones called Nephilim.

Thurpa liked his brain, liked independent thought, loved his freedom. That was what frightened him so much about being a mere clone of Durga. But that thought quickly tumbled aside. The brakes locked the tires of the pickup truck, and dust kicked up as the vehicle came to a halt at the top of a ridge. They had been looking down a slope at their pursuit, meaning that the militia had to fire uphill. It’d give them a small edge, and the barked order from Kane spurred Thurpa into action.

He took aim at the windshield of one of the approaching trucks and, from the stable platform of the tailgate, pumped every round in his magazine into the militia vehicle. After the fifth impact, a white spatter of cracked glass was visible, but he kept shooting. He fired on single shot, leaning into the recoil and allowing the barrel not to kick and rise as he poured round after round into the glass. It took him several seconds to empty out half of the magazine when Grant shifted gears.

Lyta lunged out, grabbing Thurpa by the arm to keep him from jolting out of the bed of the pickup. She had the forethought to have her knees pressed against the tailgate.

So far, things seemed to be going well. Thurpa might not have been the best shot, but he peppered the cab of one of the enemy “technicals,” even as the machine gunner on the back was distracted by rifle slugs slicing through the windshield and back window into his legs. The heavy machine guns that the technicals sported might have had steel plates around the back of their frames, to protect the face and upper chest of their users, but the cabs had no such bullet protection. With their legs being torn at, any hope of accurate fire was thrown out the window.

Even so, those bullets whipped and popped through the air over their heads in the pickup’s bed.

Kane surged beside Thurpa, rising to a half-standing position and snapping his arm forward. Thurpa could see a small object leave the ex-Magistrate’s fingertips and knew that he was closing down pursuit behind them. The rear tires kicked up dust and dirt, creating a smoke screen, the engines throbbing just in time as the tread caught traction and the pickup truck moved over the small ridge, racing away from the militia.

Behind, Thurpa could see the concussion wave and smoke from the thrown grenade, a vomitous column that was quickly followed by the sharp crack of the gren’s detonation.

“Reload,” Kane ordered the other three.

Thurpa did so, depositing his mostly empty magazine and keeping it to reload later. He put in another curved stick, rocking it until it was secure in the magazine well of the rifle. Another thirty rounds ready to fly, giving their enemy a reason to slow down. He looked around, seeing that they had made a turn and watching the bend in their smoky trail, and the pickup zoomed along in the rut between two ridges.

Kane kept watch for sign of the militia bursting over the hill they’d topped, all the while keeping another hand grenade ready to throw. The small explosive might not have destroyed an enemy vehicle and its shrapnel might not have caused harm to the men in the backs of those gun jeeps, but the blast would be sufficient to slow pursuit, giving the Cerberus crew and their allies the room they needed to fall back and outmaneuver the marauders.

Kane gave the roof of the pickup a hard slap, and at that moment Grant swerved hard to the right. Nathan, Lyta and Thurpa clutched at what handholds they could find as the force of the turn threatened to send them tumbling against each other like sacks of cement. Thurpa was glad to return the favor to Lyta by cushioning her, and he also managed to lash out his hand, blocking Nathan from barking his temple against the sidewall of the truck bed.

“Thanks,” Nathan muttered as Lyta was sprawled into Thurpa’s lap.

“You’ve done far more...”

Gravity seemed to cut out from beneath them before Thurpa could finish his sentence, the pickup topping the ridge and going airborne for a few feet. Right now they were in free fall, moving at the same speed as the falling truck they rode in, so the illusion of zero gravity was strong.

In that moment of eerie physical calm, Kane threw his grenade. His little hand bomb seemed to careen wildly away from the truck, almost as if it had been flying at a right angle to where the man hurled it, but that also was an illusion. The wheels hit the dirt, and Thurpa grunted as Lyta mashed him deeper onto the floor of the truck bed, knocking the breath from him. Nathan grimaced as his shoulder struck the same bit of rail that his head nearly had been dashed against.

“Sorry!” Grant bellowed over the racket, obviously in apology for the landing after their short flight.

On the heels of Grant’s shout, Kane’s second grenade went off. This time, the explosion sounded louder, and the rising jet of smoke and debris from the blast was accompanied by a flaming object that tumbled end over end through the sky. Thurpa hung on, watching the trail of the burning thing through the air until he realized that it was a human arm, or what used to be one.

“Direct hit!” Thurpa shouted.

“No time to celebrate,” Kane answered. “We’re slowing in three.”

Thurpa counted down in his mind, scrambling to his knees and bringing his rifle back to bear. The pickup’s brakes squealed and dirt flew. The desert wilderness might have made things harder for Thurpa to see targets, but that worked both ways. Instead of going full speed forward, they backed at a slower speed deeper into the ever expanding clouds of kicked-up dust.

Kane had pulled his hood up and put on the faceplate of his shadow suit. The skin-tight, advanced polymer uniform had undergone several upgrades, one of the most useful being a set of high-tech optics built into the cowl’s faceplate. Thurpa might not have been able to see a foot past the back of the pickup truck, but that didn’t stop Kane, and he could see where the man pointed.

Backing farther into their dust trail also bought the Cerberus expedition more time. The militia opened fire at the far end of the cloud of debris, missing the pickup by yards.

“Now!” Kane ordered.

Thurpa fired in the direction that Kane pointed, pulling the trigger as fast as he could. He surely couldn’t put out the amount of lead that a machine gun could in this manner, but he would make sure that his bullets were on target and not wasted. Kane himself used a borrowed battle rifle, and his training with full-automatic meant that he could control the kick of powerful recoil. Kane’s rifle was louder, and from the cab, Thurpa could make out a sidelong muzzle-flash.

Brigid was using her own shadow suit’s optical technologies, shooting out the window of the cab with a weapon. Thurpa didn’t care what she was firing, just that what lead they threw at the Panthers of Mashona had an effect. Thurpa had seen what this militia was like when he was still beside Durga and the Millennium Consortium expedition. They had soured him on people, and the marauders only continued to make bad impressions when they discovered Lyta and the other survivors of her frontier village held as slaves.

Lyta was half starved, dehydrated, and left bloody and scarred by heavy chains. That kind of abuse turned Thurpa’s stomach, especially in the light of meeting good people, like the Zambian military at Victoria Falls and of course Kane and his allies from Cerberus. When he saw the creatures who were to feed upon the Panthers’ captives, his patience for them was totally discarded.

He didn’t raise a finger to help them when Neekra’s horrifying spawn attacked another of their units, only moving or shooting to protect Nathan and Lyta. Thankfully, in the presence of the ancient staff, they became invisible to Neekra’s vampiric horde.

Thurpa wanted every bullet fired through his rifle to strike one of the Panthers and cause irreparable harm and pain to them. The militia had been the reason two city-states had come together as allies, because the Panthers of Mashona sought out technology and slaves. The marauders had been thieves, scavengers, parasites. They gave nothing to the world.

The pickup truck roared to life, jolting forward, but this time Thurpa was prepared. He’d braced himself, as had Nathan and Lyta.

“How’d we do?” Thurpa asked, seeing Kane throw one last hand grenade before they got to full speed. Kane remained quiet, but he looked toward Thurpa to acknowledge the question. Moments later, Thurpa heard the detonation of Kane’s good-bye bomb. Once more, screams filled the air, and the militia continued shooting wildly.

Finally, the man in the black high-tech suit spoke. “We’re doing okay.”

The pickup swerved, swinging around into the tracks of the enemy vehicles. As they cut across their pursuit’s trail, Thurpa glanced into the distance. No more vehicles were on the horizon, but the look he got was fleeting, and he was certain that he’d miss something. He only had his human eyes, not built-in telescopic or infrared receptors on a moon-built faceplate.

As it was, Kane didn’t sound too glum, despite his conservative estimate of their success. He just kept perched in the truck bed, eyes peeled for their foes.

This explosion didn’t sound as vigorous as the one that sent a flaming limb soaring through the sky. Gunfire still rattled from whichever vehicles were still in the chase. They were not safe, not by a long shot. The battle was still to be won.

Grant shouted through the small window between the cab and the bed. “Found some tree line! Going for it!”

Kane gave his partner a thumbs-up, and once again, those in the back of the pickup truck held on for balance. Grant shifted the gears expertly, this time going for maximum traction and performance from the tires, not kicking up dust clouds to cover their tracks. As such, Thurpa was surprised to see how little a rooster tail of dirt was kicked up as he changed course. This was not to say that the transit over the lumpy ground was any smoother, but it was faster than he’d seen Grant take the truck in this car chase.

Kane patted Thurpa and Nathan on the shoulders, motioning toward his belt. Instinctively, both young men reached up and gripped the webbing tightly for support.

Once again, the Cerberus leader’s big rifle erupted, staccato bursts of gunfire sizzling out the muzzle as the weight and leverage of Nathan and Thurpa anchored him enough so that he could devote both hands to controlling the weapon. Thurpa looked toward racing vehicles on their trail, watching one of them swerve off course. It teetered on two wheels, then struck a rut and went nose first into the ground. Men flew, cartwheeling through the sky and screaming as their technical flipped end over end. When the militiamen hit the ground, they didn’t bounce. They burst like ripe fruit, splattering their blood in huge splashes of crimson.

Thurpa couldn’t hear over the sound of Kane’s rifle, but his mind filled in the ugly, crunchy and wet noises made by men striking the earth hard enough to pop them like balloons.

Kane dropped an empty magazine and fed another into his weapon before continuing to hammer away at the opposition. Because Grant was going for speed, there was a lot less variable in terms of how the truck would bounce, and Kane’s short bursts compensated for recoil and amount of time on target. One of the closer enemy jeeps had smoke pouring from its hood where high-velocity, heavyweight rounds punched through its radiator and engine block. As the driver swerved, attempting to maintain control of his vehicle, a dead militiaman bounced from the side door, strapped in place by a seat belt, his head and left arm bashed to bloody pulps.

A few more short bursts, and the smoldering jeep jerked violently, brakes squealing, before it skidded into a sideways roll, bouncing away from the mechanized patrol.