Hiding amid the trees with his colleagues, Edwards looked up from where he had been checking the ammo in the M-16 rifle he carried and watched the Titan take another colossal step, covering sixty feet in a heartbeat.
“Cerberus,” he said through the Commtact. “I’m going to need a bigger gun.”
Chapter 31
Cosmic Rift
The concealed door brought them out behind the exit to the dining room, hidden in a quantum pocket, generating even more space in the impossibly large palace.
The court was quieter than Jack had ever known it, almost silent, in fact. Where once had sat the great lines of recorders, now it was empty, the goggle-wearing sub-men departed. Gone, too, were the birds that sang from the rafters, perhaps having sensed the change in the wind and leaving to nest elsewhere.
They entered behind the thrones, whose towering backs were thrust into the darkness like standing stones.
“Watch yourself,” Kane whispered.
Jack led the way, pacing warily toward the raised dais in a wide circle that would bring them around to the thrones from the queen’s side. Jack stifled a gasp as he passed the point where the back had obscured his view. Rosalind was sitting there in her usual place, her blue hair flickering with illumination even in the darkness, her robes as opulent as ever. She seemed unaware of the presence of these newcomers, and Jack continued making his way toward the thrones with Kane and Grant following.
Something glowed sickly between the thrones, colored like a plague sore. It was a God Rod, Jack realized, but markedly unlike the one he used.
Circling farther, Jack saw the figure sitting where his throne was. After everything they had said, he had expected it to be Wertham, and he was surprised to see his trusted aide Ronald sitting there instead, not on the throne but in the motion chair that compensated for his disability.
“Ronald,” King Jack demanded. “What goes on here?”
Ronald looked around with surprise, but there was confidence in his expression. “I heard you were dead,” was the first thing he said.
“Not quite,” Jack replied, “though, heaven knows, those mindless brutes tried.”
Ronald looked confused. “They reported that you had gone,” he muttered to himself.
“Gone, yes, but not dead,” King Jack replied. “Out of sight, out of mind. The way to trick the mindless.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ronald told him. “You’ve been replaced. I’m the king now.”
Roz stood, hurrying over to where Jack approached. “My love, don’t listen to him,” she cried. “He’s been turned mad by...”
“Wertham,” Jack finished, his eyes narrowing in anger. “Yes, all the evidence pointed to it.”
“You’re not the king anymore,” Ronald told him. “I am.”
“You’ve recognized my authority for a thousand years, and you will recognize it now,” Jack blustered, raising the God Rod in warning.
Ronald reached over and drew the Devil Rod from its hub between the thrones. It sparked angrily. “You gave up your authority the day you decided not to help me,” he said. “The day you confined me to life as a cripple, despite all the wonders you have shared with your people.”
“What is that?” Jack asked, indicating the Devil Rod.
“Your doom,” Ronald replied, and he directed the end of the Devil Rod toward King Jack and unleashed a cruel bolt of energy.
Jack raised his own rod just in time, and the dark energies played across its surface as it shielded him and his wife. Jack gritted his teeth as the forces were consumed by the golden baton. “Roz, get back,” he ordered. “Don’t get...”
Before he finished, Ronald unleashed a second bolt from the Devil Rod. It rocketed across the gulf between him and Jack, striking the old man’s baton and racing up his armored sleeves. Jack held his ground, legs widely spaced as the dark energy blistered over him.
“I think that’s our cue,” Kane told Grant, and together the two Cerberus warriors pumped the triggers of their Sin Eaters, trapping Ronald in the crossfire. A flurry of 9 mm bullets whizzed over the red-and-green floor of the court, batting against Ronald where he sat in his chair. The bullets found their target but they failed to strike—instead, they were repelled by a shield of powerful energy that emerged from the Devil Rod, creating an oval plate between its wielder and his attackers.
“Dammit,” Kane growled, adjusting his aim. “We can’t hit him.”
“I’m getting no joy here, either,” Grant chipped in as he adjusted his Sin Eater and tried for a low angle. “Whatever’s powering that God Rod of his is impervious to 9 mms. I’m going to try something bigger.”
With that, Grant sent his Sin Eater back to its wrist holster and pulled free his Copperhead. The subgun blasted, the reports echoing loudly in the vast chamber of the throne room, but it did no good.
Ronald sent another bolt of dark energy at King Jack, knocking the old man off his feet.
“Anyone else got any bright ideas?” Grant shouted, watching his bullets bounce harmlessly off the shield of energy surrounding their target.
* * *
B
RIGID
JOGGED
ALONG
the short, tunnel-like corridor and into the laboratory. She recognized Wertham immediately, waiting there in the gloom, the band of wires cinched to his skull.
“You’re coming with me,” Brigid said, raising her blaster.
Wertham’s eyes seemed to flicker as if he was returning from a dream state, and then a cruel sneer appeared on his sallow features. “And why would I do that?” he asked.
Brigid stroked the TP-9’s trigger and sent a single 9 mm bullet through a ruined file that stood on a shelf behind Wertham’s head. “Because this here means I’m calling the shots,” she informed him as he saw the damage she had caused.
Wertham smiled wider, his eyes fixing on the blaster. “That is an interesting device,” he trilled. “Does it have a name?”
Brigid ignored him. “Get up,” she said, gesturing with the semiautomatic.
Wertham seemed to think about it, his eyes glazing over for a moment. “Can’t do that,” he said. “Too many things still to do here.”
And then he began to move, leaping from his position on the edge of the desk straight toward Brigid.
Surprised, Brigid stroked the trigger of the blaster, but her shot went wide. Wertham was moving like a whirlwind, the fight trance upon him once more, his consciousness split between his physical action, his mental concerns and the operation of the Titan suit.
Brigid was slammed off her feet as Wertham crashed into her, his arms outstretched to ensure he snagged her. She went reeling backward, falling heavily on her rump as she sailed back out into the corridor that led to the entrance.
Wertham stood over Brigid where she lay floundering, drew back his foot and kicked. The kick struck her in the side of the head, making her jaw and cheek sing with pain. Her nose felt suddenly hollow and cavernous, her front teeth sensitive.
Brigid rolled as Wertham went in for a second kick, pulling her body out of his path and taking the blow to the top of her back instead. She shrieked as his foot struck, flopping back down to the floor when she had only just started to get up.
Wertham adjusted his position, fight mathematics working through his mind, figuring out the right angle to cripple his attacker with the minimum of effort. Brigid was faster this time—because she had to be. She whipped her gun around and fired blindly, sending a burst of slugs up into the ceiling and against the wall where they rattled like a woodpecker convention. Wertham staggered back as two of the bullets struck him, one burying itself in his left shoulder while the other passed right through, taking flesh with it like a trophy.
“You hit me,” Wertham stated. He said it in the way a scientist might reveal a finding, dispassionate and clinical. His hand was against the wound where the bullet had passed, pressing at the blood that was forming there like a red flower.
“And I’ll hit you again,” Brigid said, drawing herself up into a crouch, the TP-9 thrust toward Wertham.
Wertham moved with lightning speed, jabbing his hand out over the gun’s muzzle and shoving it away as Brigid fired. Five bullets cut through his hand. And then the weapon was wrenched from Brigid’s grasp by Wertham, his blood flying across the corridor in a spray.
“You’re...inhuman,” Brigid uttered.
Wertham smiled grimly, his face and overalls patterned with his own red blood. “No,” he said, “just better than them.”
Brigid scrambled away as Wertham rushed at her, bounding down the corridor toward the door. He was behind her, running faster as she reached for the door handle. Brigid pulled it and slipped through, out onto a tiny ledge that had once been a walkway.
There was nowhere left to run.
* * *
I
N
THE
ROYAL
COURT
,
King Jack lay sprawled on his back, holding the God Rod out for protection as the blasting energy from Ronald’s Devil Rod surged all around him. The dark energy formed a cone over the fallen monarch, washing through the air, closing him in its grasp.
“Ronald, you will stop this now,” King Jack insisted, his voice firm despite the struggle he found himself in.
Ronald glided closer in his motion chair, his face locked in a cruel mask. “Why?” he asked. “Why would I do that, you old fool?”
“After the kindness we have shown you, Roz and I,” Jack told him. As he said it his eyes flicked to Roz where she cowered behind one of the colossal pillars of the throne room. She was crying, something Jack had never known her to do.
“Kindness?” Ronald chided. “You call this kindness, leaving me locked in this blasted chair, unable to ever walk? You call it kindness when you leave me like this while the rest of your population can fly?”
“No, Ronald,” Roz shouted, emerging from her hiding place. “It wasn’t like that. We tried. Jack tried so hard to make you walk.”
For a moment, Ronald flinched, his eyes flickering between King Jack and the queen. “How—?” he asked, unable to form the question he wanted to ask.
“Ronald,” Jack said sorrowfully. “You were the best assistant we ever grew. You lasted a thousand years, where your Gene-ager brothers live for ten or twelve. You were the perfect aide, everything me or Roz could have asked for, but we couldn’t stop the deterioration once it set it. Gene-agers have a shelf life, you know that.”
“I...” Ronald began, trying to process what he was hearing. “I’m not...”
“Yes, you are,” Jack told him. “The best gosh-darn assistant we ever grew. And if I could have made you walk again I would have. But it was better to have you like this than to lose you entirely...my loyal friend.”
In the motion chair, Ronald’s hand wavered until finally he let go of the Devil Rod sparking in his grip. The silver rod fell to the floor with a clatter, its beam of energy abruptly curtailed. “My king,” he muttered, bowing his head. “What have I done?”
Standing to either side of the throne, Kane and Grant watched, their weapons poised. But they held off firing, merely watching as the scene played out.
King Jack lay on the floor, the God Rod smoldering in his hand.
Queen Rosalind hurried over to him, lines of concern etched on her face. “Husband? Are you hurt?”
“I’m old and tired,” Jack replied with a pained smile. “Nothing the regen pool can’t fix.”
Ronald spoke up then, his head still bowed in shame. “Your Majesty, there’s something else you need to know. Wertham has restarted the Doom Furnace. He plans to launch the World Armor and invade the surface. He’s already there now, leading the charge.”
“Wertham,” the king spat as Roz helped her husband to his feet. “I always said that cat was strange.”
With Roz’s help, Jack made his way over to the throne and sat, while Ronald moved to his side. Kane and Grant followed, ascending the dais and standing before the king like loyal knights. They watched as Jack placed the God Rod—the real God Rod—back in the hub between the thrones and closed his eyes.
“I can divert the power away from the Doom Furnace,” Jack explained. “But I can’t stop what’s already been launched. Kane, Grant—it looks like you boys are on call for some Earth-side action, if you think you’re up for it.”
“Saving the world,” Grant said. “Gotta be a Thursday.”
Chapter 32
Brigid stopped short, standing on the narrow ledge outside of the laboratory as a blood-spattered Wertham came barreling toward her.
“No! Don’t!” Brigid cried. “You’ll kill us bo—”
But it was too late. Absorbed in the fight trance and speckled in his own blood, Wertham had a mind for revenge. He slammed into Brigid as she teetered on the edge of the precipice, and both of them went flying from the ledge that had, just a few minutes earlier, been one end of a stone walkway stretching across the subterranean Doom Furnace.
Air rushed around them as they fell, Wertham atop Brigid, drawing back his fist and punching her in the face. He slammed the fist into her a second time, a third. And then something else hit her, and Brigid felt the cool wetness as she sank beneath the surface of the artificial lake.
For a moment, everything went quiet, the muffling effects of the water dulling all other noise. Brigid opened her eyes, searching the pool for her attacker. She had lost her gun, dropped it during the descent, and the night-vision lenses, too. She hadn’t even noticed until now.
Wertham was recovering from the drop, waving arms and legs as he turned himself to come at her again. They must have been split when they hit the pool. There was still time, then.
Brigid stretched her arms out and began to swim, dragging her aching body forward in powerful strokes.
* * *
M
OVING
FAST
, K
ING
J
ACK
organized everything. “I can be exhausted later,” he told his wife as she urged him to slow down.
Roz smiled at that. Wasn’t that just like her Jack—no wonder they called the man “King.”
Kane and Grant were rapidly shuttled through the palace on the back of two high-speed conveyances called skycles, clinging behind the drivers who piloted the things through the corridors like birds of prey. The skycles traveled fast—faster even than the lightracer that the king had used to transport them back to the palace, and Grant closed his eyes against the rush that blurred past his eyes.
In no time at all, they arrived at the palace’s hangar where two Mantas were being prepped for launch. King Jack had organized all of this; as soon as the God Rod was back in place he could commune with the smart-circuitry than ran through Authentiville and put all the pieces back where they belonged.
Jack’s voice came over the room’s hidden sound system as Kane was thanking the ground crew and pulling himself into the cockpit. This Manta wasn’t much different from his own, maybe a little sleeker around the viewports. “It’s going to be tight,” Jack explained, “but I’m opening a quantum window remotely. You won’t miss it. Soon as you lads pass through you’ll be right where Wertham sent the Titan armor. The rest is down to you.”
“Roger that,” Grant said, drawing the hatch over the cockpit.
“Been good knowing you, Your Highness,” Kane added as he placed a bulbous bronze flight helmet over his head. “In case we don’t make it back, take care of Baptiste for me. She’s...a heck of a girl.”
“I hear ya, Kane,” Jack said. “But you’ll be back. Heroes don’t get bad endings on my watch.”
With those words echoing in their ears, Kane and Grant launched the borrowed Mantas into the air, speeding through the open doors of the palace hangar and up into the rainbow sky overhead.
Serra do Norte, Brazil
W
ERTHAM
WATCHED
THROUGH
the burning eyes of the world armor, taking another of those colossal strides. His mind was fractured across different worlds now, one part of him—the physical—controlled solely by the fight trance. At the same time, the sensor crown granted him a full report from the Titan suit as it strode through the forest of planet Earth. He watched, surprised and amused, as a figure emerged from close to his feet and turned some kind of weapon on him. The man was bald-headed with a bullet-bitten ear and his weapon looked like an elaborate long black stick on a leather strap. The stick spit tiny missiles that pinged hopelessly off the Titan’s armored skin.
Wertham stood, bemused, as the man shouted something incomprehensible—outside of Authentiville, speech was no longer planed down to its component parts, which meant that out here he could not know the language without learning it. As if he would bother. Let them learn language from him. Let them speak only his name, soft or loud, in tribute to his greatness.
Then something came buzzing toward his body, cutting through the air like an angry insect until it struck his leg. It was a projectile of some sort, he realized—some kind of surface-man weapon he was not aware of.
* * *
S
TANDING
IN
THE
PATH
of the metal giant amid the flaming aisles of trees and grass, Edwards tossed a fragmentation grenade at the thing’s legs, aiming for the knee joint. He was hoping it might be a weak spot. More importantly, he was trying to draw the thing’s attention to give his ground crew colleagues a better chance to analyze it.
“Cerberus, do you read?” Edwards called over his Commtact. “I appear to be fighting some kind of...God, robot! Could do with your input here if you’re not too busy.”
Whatever the Cerberus comms desk came back with was lost in the sound of the explosion as the grenade went off. The robot shuddered momentarily, but it seemed to be more from surprise than any effect of the explosive.
Closing one eye, Edwards took careful aim with the M-16-style Colt rifle, targeting the monster’s leg. “Let’s see if I can make a dent, Too-tall-for-school,” he muttered, rattling off a shot.
Cosmic Rift
B
RIGID
SWAM
,
HER
BODY
aching with exhaustion. This bowl of water was used as a cooling agent during the production process, and like everything in Authentiville it was massive. When she had seen it from above she’d mentally tagged it as a lake. Brigid could see the lip of the bowl now, or maybe she should call it the shore, but it was still some distance away.
Behind her, Wertham was moving with power but little grace, driving himself on in the chase across the water’s surface, splashing great waves of spume behind him. The man looked demented, blood staining his soaking clothes, his right hand mangled where it had taken five bullets. Brigid peered over her shoulder again, confirming how near he was. Just a couple of body lengths behind her and gaining fast. She pushed herself on, drawing on reserves of energy she hardly believed she had. Without a gun, without any weapon, she would lose against this man. He was stronger, faster, possessed. The only way she could win was to outthink him.
Her mind tripped back to the conversation she had had with Kane when he came upon her in the Cerberus swimming pool.
“It’s always a competition with you, isn’t it?” she had teased.
“It’s kept me alive so far,” Kane had responded.
Yeah, well, now Wertham was the competition and if she didn’t outpace him she would end up dead, just like Kane said.
Have to keep moving, Brigid told herself, pushing the aches in her body to the back of her mind.
Brigid drew a deep breath and disappeared beneath the surface, carving a path there like a torpedo. She drove herself harder, eyeing the edge of the water as it shimmered closer, reaching harder and kicking out with all her strength.
* * *
A
BOVE
THE
D
OOM
Furnace, Wertham’s war fleet waited for the command to invade, like grim shadows of death hovering statically in the air.
Flying in formation, Kane and Grant powered their Mantas through the leading edge of the fleet. Kane wished their Commtacts would work here in the rift as he yearned to discuss tactics with his partner. But without that contact, all the friends could do was trust each other as they rocketed up past the fleet toward the quantum window that was opening in the sky above the city.
The quantum window was barely large enough to allow one Manta to pass, so Kane urged more power from his engines and sped ahead of Grant, taking the lead. In a moment he was through the window with Grant rushing to follow.