LITMIR.BIZ

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      The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

      —Amelia Earhart

      1898–1937

      A capacity for going overboard is a requisite for a full-grown mind.

      —Dawn Powell

      1896–1965

      The Road to Outlands—

      From Secret Government Files to the Future

      Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

      Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

      What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

      Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

      In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

      Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

      But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

      Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

      Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

      For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

      After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

      With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      They had thought them dead—the Annunaki, for whom forever is but the blink of an eye.

      It was said that Tiamat, their mother, had committed suicide.

      Ultimately, her graceful form, shaped like a dragon of ancient myth, had been consumed by a fireball so glorious that it had lit the firmament above and shaken the Earth below. Some thought that the fireball had been of Tiamat’s own making, that she had chosen to expire in that dazzling tumult of flame.

      Enlil knew better.

      Enlil was one of Tiamat’s children, the Annunaki. They had called her mother, the spaceship womb. Her offspring were the rightful overlords of the planet Earth and all of her resources, the kings of all of her people and all of her things.

      It was said that Tiamat, the spaceship womb, had taken her own life when she had seen the bitter disputes, the spite and viciousness that her own offspring had exhibited as they squabbled among themselves. For it was true that the Annunaki were never willing to compromise, even when carving the Earth up between themselves.

      But in his heart, Enlil knew better.

      The Annunaki had suffered their most devastating defeat at the hands of the apekin, the humans. Tiamat had been consumed by fire, her essence fragmented across the skies high above the Earth in a final display of brilliance. And some had thought her destroyed, that the final chapter of the Annunaki legend had been written.

      The Annunaki, whose dominion over the Earth had lasted millennia, had controlled the nine fabled baronies that had emerged from the Deathlands to bring security and a future to humankind—a security and a future that man himself had been unable to achieve.

      “Such fools these apekin be,” Enlil muttered to himself as he sat on the banks of the timeless Euphrates, gazing out across the great river as the sun played across its glistering surface. Around

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