Serpent's Tooth

“You lied when you said there weren’t any other ex-Mags,” Lombard complained.

“And you were dumb enough to not recognize me,” Grant countered. “Your bandits were plain and simple outsmarted. We had the communication, we had the knowledge, and now you’re just a footnote. Twenty marauders with big trucks and big guns, taken down by three people, two of them who you’d disarmed.”

Lombard grimaced, then noted that Kane was disassembling the surrendered Sin Eater, handing magazines and the holster to Grant. They looked distracted by the menial task as they whispered softly to each other, probably discussing plans. Lombard reached down to his boot, coming up with a gleaming little pistol in his hand.

The deposed bandit leader pulled the trigger, but his gunshot jerked into the sky as Brigid pumped a single Copperhead round into Lombard’s chest.

“Fool,” Brigid muttered. “So busy concentrating on you two, he forgot all about me.”

“Well, that solves the problem of what to do with the asshole,” Grant said with a sigh.

Kane smirked. “A self-resolving problem, most likely. Thanks, Baptiste.”

“What thanks?” Brigid asked. “I need one of you two to grab that last wheelbarrow full of meds. I’m not busting my back for it.”

Kane chuckled, kicking the gun out of Lombard’s dead fingers. “I love you, too, Baptiste.”

Brigid returned the smile. There was an uncomfortable pause, but she regained her composure. “Let’s go. We should get back to Cerberus to see if anything new has come up.”

Kane nodded. “No rest for the wicked.”

Chapter 4

Mohandas Lakesh Singh stood just outside the anteroom of the mat trans chamber as Kane, Brigid and Grant returned from their sojourn to Cobaltville. He waited alongside an impatient Domi, who paced like an anxious panther in a cage.

Kane looked the two people over and knew that whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good. “Who showed up? Erica? Sindri?”

“Why would it be them?” Lakesh asked.

“Because Cerberus is still standing, but you’re chomping at the bit to let us know some shit’s up,” Grant answered for Kane.

“Neither Erica or Sindri,” Domi answered, her voice quick and clipped. “Ran into a millennial guy crawling around our back door.”

Kane sneered. “Millennial Consortium? They found us here?”

“I know that they said they have extensive files on us, but I’m surprised that they know the location of Cerberus,” Brigid stated.

“Why not? Erica knows. So do Sindri and the overlords. And the consortium has done business with each of them in the past,” Kane said. “In fact, Erica’s calling them allies now, after that blowout in China.”

Brigid frowned. “And you let him in?”

“He wasn’t in uniform,” Domi replied. “No coverall. No button. No Calico. But he’s consortium. I feel it.”

Brigid glanced at Lakesh. “Any corroboration?”

Lakesh shrugged. “Nothing definitive. However, he’s hale and healthy, with evidence of having received professional medical treatment. A recent scar on his arm confirms to DeFore that a real doctor stitched it up.”

Reba DeFore was the redoubt’s chief medical officer. With the influx of staff from the Manitius Moon Base, the position didn’t weigh on her skills as much as it used to, but in the years preceding it, she’d gained a sharp eye toward medical treatment. The stranger’s apparent access to such treatment left few options open as to his affiliation. The Millennial Consortium was a budding technocracy, seeking to rebuild America in its own image. Those in charge of the consortium paid lip service to the creation of a utopian society, but their ruthlessness in the pursuit of that goal had brought them into savage conflict with the Cerberus warriors on multiple occasions.

The consortium wanted a utopia, and its representatives were willing to kill every person who stood in the path to that objective. Unarmed foes were just as open to murder as the Cerberus personnel.

“I also inspected the stranger’s gear,” Lakesh told the others as he led them toward the briefing room. “His kit includes a leather bullwhip that appears to have bloodstains.”

“He also couldn’t stop buttering all of us up,” Domi added as they entered a room where Sela Sinclair and Edwards, members of the Cerberus away teams, stood guard over a bored man.

“Worse than Lakesh in the beginning?” Kane asked, slipping into a faux Indian accent, trying to dispel his habitual unease with Balam’s old stomping grounds. “‘Friend Kane, beloved Brigid…’”

Lakesh rolled his eyes but chuckled at Kane’s antics. “Not the same, but the man knows how to get his nose browned.”

“What’s his name?” Brigid asked. Looking him over, she seemed to be turning over a memory in her mind, not quite believing it.

“Austin Fargo,” Lakesh answered. Fargo sat, dressed in a white shirt, brown pants and a battered old leather jacket. A wide-brimmed hat sat on the table in front of the man. “And yes…he’s dressed almost note for note like the old movie archaeologist.”

Kane tilted his head. “Has he gotten the earful from Sinclair about that?”

Grant rolled his eyes. “Yeah, she only made me sit through those movies three times.”

Kane glanced toward his partner. “I thought you liked ’em.”

“After the third time, with Sela saying all of Dr. Jones’s dialogue line for line, it got tiring,” Grant responded. He glanced nervously toward Brigid. “Not that memorizing things is annoying, mind you.”

Brigid winked at Grant. “No offense taken.”

Kane examined the heavy revolver, the machete and the curled bullwhip. He picked up the whip, examining its light tan leather bandings. “You think you found blood?”

DeFore knocked on the door, interrupting Kane’s thoughts. The medic, a stocky, buxom woman with bronze skin and ash-blond hair, brightened from a dour mood, seeing that Kane and the others were back from their trip to Cobaltville. Despite this, she remained businesslike. “I brought some chemicals to run a test on the whip.”

“It wouldn’t mean much. He could have used it in self-defense, or the blood could have been from an animal,” Brigid suggested. “Or the chemical could luminesce in the presence of copper, horseradish, even bleach.”

Kane handed the whip to DeFore. “So, how many times have you seen someone flay a horseradish root with a bullwhip?”

“All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best,” Brigid returned.

Kane nodded. “And you say I never learn.”

Brigid managed a smile. In the darkened observation deck, DeFore sprayed the whip, and iron traces left behind by blood illuminated the last four feet of the wicked lash, glowing brightly. She pulled some tweezers, digging into a seam between two strips of leather.

“What did you find?” Lakesh asked.

DeFore turned on a small lamp, and the two scientists inspected the scrap trapped between the tweezer’s points. “Looks like skin. Dried out and desiccated, but skin. And this was just one clump of many that the chemicals exposed.”

Kane glanced through the one-way mirror toward Fargo. “No fur?”

DeFore shook her head. “None on closer examination.”

Kane looked at his friends. “And what does Fargo want with us?”

Lakesh looked at the whip as if it were a coiled cobra. “He said that he had discovered a cache of military technology in the Kashmir province of the subcontinent. A place between what used to be Pakistan and India. Both nations claimed the land before skydark, but it was always hotly contested, with terrorists and minor border skirmishes constantly erupting.”