LITMIR.BIZ

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was already tapping at the computer terminal that dominated his desk. The screen still had tendrils of stone across it like a cracked windshield, but he could see enough to get what he needed. “Whereabouts, exactly?”

      “The place has gone by many names,” Rosalia said, “and it never once appeared on any map. I was told it was set up by a bandit who made himself its uncrowned king way back before the nukecaust. He meant it as a place where other outlaws could retreat and maybe retire. These days it’s a place of tranquillity and learning, high in the mountains, away from the villes.”

      “Do you have coordinates?” Lakesh asked.

      Rosalia nodded, tapping on the illuminated map on his computer screen. “Get me close enough, I’ll hoof it from there.”

      “I’ll have to track down the nearest entry point,” Lakesh said, “which may take a while with the—”

      “Everything?” Rosalia said brightly, gesturing around the ruined room.

      Lakesh nodded. “Yes, with the ‘everything’ right now. Leave it with me—you’ll ship out before the day’s over.”

      Rosalia nodded, pushing herself up from the swivel chair and making her way to the doors of the ops room. Rough stone ran along the edges of the doors, and they still wouldn’t close properly. A worker called Farrell, with goatee beard and hoop earring, was using a hammer and chisel to slowly chip away the offending rock, piece by piece.

      Looking up from his computer, Lakesh eyed Rosalia wonderingly. “What’s there?” he asked, unable to contain himself.

      “My old school,” Rosalia said in response before leaving the room.

      * * *

      BLACK JOHN JEFFERSON drifted back to swirling consciousness, a burning pain urgent in his gut. His eyes flickered open, gazing straight up and into the glare of the sun overhead. He saw it but could not feel it; instead his skin felt cold.

      All around he could hear the sounds of rushing water, as if someone had opened a plug and let the whole damn ocean in.

      Beneath him the deck of the ship lurched, and Black John was sent sliding across it. He had to dig his heels in to stop himself going any farther. He felt as if he would be sick, and he tilted his aching head to one side, spitting out the warm mouthful of blood that threatened to fill it.

      Suddenly the deck of La Segunda Montaña rocked violently to one side once again, and Black John struggled to pull himself up to a sitting position. The deck was wet beneath him, water mixing with his own blood and the blood of others as he tried to make sense of it. He stared at it, trying to remember what had happened, the blood swilling and churning in the clear water, eddying in little whirls of red.

      He had shot him. That was what had happened, wasn’t it? He had shot Fern Salt, turning on him after he had snuffed the straw-haired harlot before her screaming gave him any more of a headache. Hadn’t worked. He had one hell of a headache now, so much so he reached up to his forehead with a curse. When he did so, he found the slick wound there, cried out in surprise and at the furious twinge of pain.

      “Fuck!”

      The boat lurched again, its prow disappearing beneath the waves once more, bobbing up for a moment before disappearing one final time. He was on a sinking ship, scuttled by his own men—shot and left for dead.

      “Those mutinous bastards,” he muttered, pulling himself up until he was standing, feeling queasy.

      The wound in his skull was making him light-headed, so much so he couldn’t tell if it was the boat that was lurching or himself. Then another wave hit the sinking scow, and Black John stumbled as he tried to retain his balance.

      The sound of rushing water was becoming more restrained, and Black John realized what that meant. The ship had all but sunk; there wasn’t much left for the ocean to fill before she took her.

      Beside him, a body floated past, a tanned man with a gaping wound across his belly, guts spewing forth like the writhing tentacles of an octopus.

      “Better you than me,” Black John muttered as the body floated away, even as the deck disappeared beneath his feet, covered by a carpet of ocean.

      Beneath his feet, La Segunda Montaña finally sank from view, leaving Black John floating alongside six dead bodies on the ocean waves.

      Black John was a pirate and sadist, but most of all he was a survivor. He would survive this. Somehow he would survive and bring bloody revenge on the crew that had betrayed him.

      Chapter 3

      The God War was over.

      The mop-up, however—now, that would take a little longer.

      Kane, Grant and Edwards stepped out of the rain and made their way past the open double doors of the old aircraft hangar and into the grumbling crowd that waited beyond. Within, close to forty or fifty people were waiting, the muttering sounds of their voices echoing from the high ceiling.

      “Just like old times, isn’t it?” Kane said under his breath as the three men entered the huge room.

      Edwards nodded. “Yeah, it’s a regular triple-P, all right.”

      “Triple-P” was slang for a Pedestrian Pit Patrol, a task all three men had had to perform in their past lives as Magistrates for ville authorities, lives all three had put behind them.

      At some point in time, the building they entered had been used to store aircraft and automobiles, playthings of the very rich. That was before the nukecaust had changed the rules of the world, and civilization had been dealt such a blow that it had seemed for a while as if it might never recover. Even now, two hundred years later, these places still existed, abandoned and almost forgotten, relics of a bygone age just waiting to be put to use once more.

      The ceiling dripped rainwater through gaping holes, and what glass remained in the windows was white with birds’ droppings. Right now, even as the orderly crowd gathered, the sound of pigeons cooing trilled through the building, a sonic bed that was almost subliminal in its constancy.

      Kane glanced up at the ceiling, watching for a moment as two pigeons took flight one after the other, a third joining them a moment later, weaving through the high girders that held the roof in place in a fluttering of gray feathers. The crowd ignored them.

      In his early thirties, Kane was a tall man with a strong build that even his loose denim jacket could not disguise. With wide shoulders and rangy limbs, his physique resembled that of a wolf. He had the nature of a wolf, too, both a loner and pack leader depending on what the fates threw at him. His dark hair was cropped short and he was clean shaved for the first time in more than a month. As an ex-Magistrate, Kane was one of the enforcers of the now-fallen baronies that had dominated the former United States. He had been exiled from the barony of Cobaltville after stumbling upon a conspiracy that had threatened the very integrity of the system he was pledged to protect. Exiled along with his Magistrate partner Grant and archivist Brigid Baptiste, Kane had been recruited into the Cerberus operation in its infancy. Ever since, he had been battling against the Annunaki threat to Earth in all its myriad forms, and most recently he had taken down Ullikummis in a battle that raged not simply across Earth but through multiple planes of reality. Standing in a decrepit aircraft hangar amid a gaggle of other humans, Kane was glad to get back to something approaching normality once more.

      The two men walking at Kane’s side were similarly intimidating men. The first of these was Grant, Kane’s longtime brother-in-arms whose relationship with Kane dated from way back to his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate. Tall and broad-shouldered, Grant was an imposing figure with ebony skin and not so much as an ounce of fat on his body. His hair was shaved close to his skull, and he had sported his trademark gunslinger’s mustache. In his mid-thirties, Grant wore a long black duster made from Kevlar weave. The coat skimmed the tops of his boots, giving him a funereal look.

      The other man was called Edwards, who was similarly well built. He had chosen to

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