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sharp edge of peril was
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always blunted when standing or in this instance sitting shoulder to shoulder
with a comrade.
Kane also hoped that being in the company of others would help blunt the
inevitable sharp edge of disbelief. When he had first seen the contents of the
disk, all the skepticism Kane had ever known in his life swarmed over him,
like a suffocating blanket of denial, shock and negation. It was like being
struck a physical blow. He had found himself sucking in air in great, painful
gasps. He couldn't recall the last time his heart had beat so violently within
his chest. He had watched it all and believed it, then refused to believe it.
Finally, he had no choice but to accept it as fact.
When Kane mounted the stage at 1900 hours with Brigid Baptiste and Grant
flanking him, he faced the seventy-plus members of the Cerberus staff who had
gathered in the miniauditorium. He experienced a rush of disorientation and a
surge of stage fright. Intellectually, he had accepted the fact that the
redoubt's population had swelled over the past month, but he hadn't seen
everyone assembled in one place until now.
Although the redoubt had been constructed to provide a comfortable home for
well over a hundred people and despite the fact there were less than that now,
there were currently more people in the facility than had been seen there in
the past two centuries.
When he, Grant, Domi and Brigid had arrived at the installation two years
before, there had been only a dozen permanent residents. Like them, they were
all exiles from the villes, but unlike them, the others had
94 JAMES AXLER
been brought there by Lakesh because of their training and abilities.
The redoubt had suffered casualties over the past couple of years: Adrian and
Davis, killed on a mission to Mongolia; Cotta in the Antarctic; and Beth-Li
Rouch, killed right within the walls of the installation itself. For a long
time, the Cerberus personnel were outnumbered by shadowed corridors, empty
rooms and sepulchral silences.
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As the three people stood shoulder to shoulder on the stage, all of them heard
their names whispered in tones that were almost touched with awe, which was
the reaction Kane had hoped for when he asked his friends to join him.
The three of them represented the heroic trinity that had freed the
inhabitants of the Moon base from lives of unending terror and offered them an
alternative to dying unknown and unmourned on Luna.
Kane's status among the Manitius emigres sprang more from the fact he had
faced the fearsome Maccan and imprisoned the crazed Tuatha de Danaan in a
stasis chamber than freeing them from a lunar tomb.
The mad god had been a symbol of terror among the colonists for generations,
and Kane's battle with him was already approaching the level of hero-myth. As
far as the Moon base personnel were concerned, that particular accomplishment
made him a blend of ninja, demon and rabid wolf.
Kane recalled what Brigid had said to him after Tibetan bandits had bestowed
upon him the title of
Tsyanis Khan-po, the King of Fear. She had wryly
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commented, "You're earning quite the reputation in the far corners of the
world."
Less than a month after that incident, when Sky Dog's warriors had bestowed
upon him the name of
Unktomi Shunkaha, or Trickster Wolf, he had realized that he was crossing over
the bridge from flesh-and-blood man and entering the realm of legend. He
wasn't pleased by the prospect, but he wasn't above exploiting it on this
particular occasion.
The sounds of murmuring and shuffling feet faded as Kane stood at the podium
and looked out at the faces he recognized and the many he didn't. He saw
Wegmann, Auerbach and Banks scattered among the Moon base evacuees. They were
all sitting beside women, and Kane repressed a smile.
As more women arrived from the Moon colony, the redoubt's permanent male
population was for the first time in their memory in the minority. Bry, Banks,
Farrell, Auerbach and even the misanthropic
Wegmann had acted at first either like shy schoolboys or Mags in a gaudy house
after a long patrol. He spotted Shizuka, DeFore and Quavell sitting together.
He looked for Domi, but didn't see her, though he sensed she was nearby. He
knew Sindri was lurking in the wings, too.
When silence fell over the room, Kane said without preamble, "I called all of
you here because of information I received a couple of hours ago."
The acoustics in the miniauditorium were such he didn't need to use the
public-address system. "This is information that has to be acted upon one way
or another. It spells out our complete future or complete
96 JAMES AXLER
doom and for most of you here, they're pretty much the same thing."
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Feet shifted uncomfortably, and there were a couple of self-conscious coughs
and mutters. The thought occurred to Kane that there were those in the room
who might scoff at his announcements as contrived melodramatics, but he didn't
care. "See for yourselves."
At a nod from him, Brigid turned a switch on the rear wall to activate the
rear-projection screen and play the CD. The overhead lights dimmed. Kane moved
aside as Grant and Brigid turned to watch the image forming on the screen.
A face swiftly materialized, building pixel by pixel. The face was that of a
man who appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties. His eyes were his
most arresting feature, nearly the same color as the high
Western sky at dusk, blue with just a hint of gray. They blazed in a gaunt,
bearded face.
The man's face was too harsh and hard to be handsome, even without the long,
jagged scar cutting like a lightning bolt from left to right across his
features, from hairline to jawline. His dark, silver-stippled hair hung loose
past his shoulders, stirred by a touch of the wind. He had the look of
fasting, of deep suffering about him.
Kane heard Brigid murmur in horror, "Oh, my God."
"What the hell is this?" Grant blurted in alarm.
The man spoke in a bone-chillingly familiar voice. "If you're seeing and
hearing me, then my plan worked. I don't have any way of knowing who is
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watching this, so I'll give you a quick back story. My year is 2227, the month
is September. I'm recording this outside the good old Cerberus redoubt."
The man paused and showed the edges of his teeth in a grin. They were slightly
discolored. "As you might've guessed by looking at me, a hell of a lot has
happened in the past twenty-seven or so years, not much of it good."
Grant whirled toward Kane, eyes glinting with a combination of suspicion and
fear. "You expect us to believe that's you?"
Kane shushed him by placing a forefinger to his lips, then pointing with it to
the screen. "Don't interrupt me. I have an interesting story to tell."
Chapter 6
From the screen, Kane announced, "I'll start from the be^nning my beginning,
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