LITMIR.BIZ

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had reached into his long coat and pulled loose the Copperhead assault subgun from its hiding place strapped to the lining of the coat. The barrel of the subgun was almost two feet long. The grip and trigger of the gun were placed in front of the breech in the bullpup design, allowing the gun to be used single-handed. An optical, image-intensified scope coupled with a laser autotargeter were mounted on top of the frame. The Copperhead possessed a 700-round-per- minute rate of fire and was equipped with an extended magazine holding thirty-five 4.85 mm steel-jacketed rounds. Besides the Sin Eater, the Copperhead was Grant’s favored field weapon, thanks to ease of use and the sheer level of destruction it could create in short measure.

       Gun in hand, Grant dodged from cover and unleashed a firestorm of shots at the robed figure at the far end of the alley between the buildings. The hooded figure staggered for a moment under that vicious assault, before finally toppling backward into the silo wall. Grant depressed the trigger again, unleashing a second burst of fire as the robed figure began to pull himself up off the ground.

       “Stay the hell down,” Grant said as the Copperhead drilled another burst of lead into the robed assailant.

       Just a few feet away, Kane was moving among the mob beside the lean-to when Rosalia’s voice rang out.

       “Kane, watch your six!”

       Kane dodged and turned even as something whizzed through the air toward his head. The object glowed white and orange as it cut the air, missing Kane’s head by the narrowest of margins. Heart thudding against his rib cage, Kane glanced behind him where the projectile clanged against the wall of the lean-to—it was a horseshoe, red-hot and launched with a flick of the blacksmith’s tongs. The burning-hot horseshoe left a smoking indentation in the wooden wall even as it tumbled to the ground.

       Overhead, Rosalia leaped from the roof of the lean-to like some graceful bird of prey, knives slashing the air as she dived at the blacksmith. With a vicious sweep of a blade, Rosalia cut through the man’s throat in an explosion of blood as she barreled into him. The blacksmith let out a howl of pain as he toppled backward under the weight of the hurtling woman, but his scream was cut short as the knife sliced through his vocal cords.

       Then the blacksmith slammed against the hard-packed soil of the roadway and Rosalia used her momentum to leap away, bringing her knives up to face their next challenger. Her mongrel hound was already at her side, letting out a savage bark as the townsfolk crowded around them. The townspeople had armed themselves with makeshift weapons, sticks and loose bricks, here a large ax made for chopping logs.

       Rosalia smiled. “Come on, then,” she goaded, “let’s see what you’re made of.”

       The man with the hammer brushed himself down as he regained his footing, snarling back at the dog that had felled him. Then he was rushing at Rosalia, brandishing the long-handled hammer like a club as he swung it at her head. Her dark eyes fixed on the hammer’s arc, Rosalia ducked, allowing the metal head to whisk through the air just inches above her head. Then her left arm snapped up, forearm meeting forearm and using the hammer wielder’s own momentum to knock him away. The bearded man staggered a little in place, surprised that this slender girl had struck him with such precision. As he did so, Rosalia spun on the spot, bringing her left leg up and around, delivering a beautifully executed roundhouse kick that ended when her foot connected with the man’s face. The bearded hammer man was flipped over by the force of Rosalia’s brutal blow, but she was already leaping away to face the next crowd member who dared attack the Cerberus companions. Rosalia’s confrontation with the hammer wielder had lasted all of three seconds, start to finish.

       As Rosalia leaped, Kane rolled forward, Sin Eater raised as he assessed the threat level that the crowd posed. There were perhaps sixteen people here, with more rushing to join them from the buildings all around. These people were in the eerie grip of the false religion, the promised utopia that Ullikummis had drummed into his loyal subjects. It was as if they were brainwashed.

       A broad-shouldered man came at Kane from his left, swinging a two-by-four plank from some nearby construction project. Though renowned for his combat sense, Kane almost didn’t see the man approach, ducking only at the very last second as his attacker lunged at him with the length of wood. The board hurtled overhead as Kane snapped off a quick burst from his blaster, sweeping his attacker’s legs out from under him. The man cried out in agony as he crashed into the soil, a bullet shattering his right kneecap. These outlanders were innocents mixed up in a sinister cult created by a being far more powerful than themselves, and Kane would rather not kill them if he didn’t have to.

       Then Kane was standing, the black muzzle of the Sin Eater stretched out in front of him like a warning. “I’m asking all of you to back off,” he commanded, “so no one else gets hurt.”

       “Enemy of stone,” one of the crowd facing Kane cried in reply. “Enemy Kane!”

       That was the second time in less than three minutes that a stranger had called him by name, Kane realized. Whatever was going on with these cultists, they seemed to recognize him.

       “When the hell did I become public enemy number one?” Kane muttered under his breath as the foremost members of the crowd rushed at him, their mismatched weapons raised. With a sigh of resignation, Kane began selecting targets and squeezing the trigger of the Sin Eater. Four perfectly placed rounds blew out the kneecaps of the nearest of the approaching crowd before they swarmed on Kane.

      TO THE SIDE of the silo, Grant was having his own problems. He hurried along the alleyway between buildings toward the stone marker half buried in the dust. Two feet away, the hooded figure who had attacked them was lying on his back, limbs flailing like a bug where Grant’s shots had taken him down once more. Yet already the man seemed to be recovering. These cultists—“firewalkers” was one term that had been popularized among the Cerberus personnel—could miraculously change the density of their flesh in some way that Grant and his teammates had yet to fully comprehend. The trick required fierce concentration, and all of these firewalkers had to keep their minds still to reach the condition of stonelike flesh. One way to stop them retaining such a degree of meditation had been to use concentrated sound, which irritated the firewalkers so that they could not achieve proper concentration.

       Grant shrugged out of his rucksack as he knelt by the stone block poking up out of the ground. Swiftly he undid the straps on the cloth backpack and reached inside, pulling out a metal pyramidal device of roughly one foot in height, its protective cloth sleeve dropping free and wrapping over itself as the wind dragged it a few feet across the ground. Grant ignored it, his attention fixed on the chrome pyramid itself. The metal was scuffed and marred from where it had been hurriedly stored, and Grant brushed dirt from its surface as he flipped down a control panel close to the base of the interphaser unit. Grant watched as the tiny display came to life, a series of lights flickering on in quick succession.

       Suddenly, Grant saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned his head in time to see the robed man leap off the ground and spiral toward him like some vicious ballerino. Leaving the interphaser in place by the stone marker, Grant rolled aside, and the robed man’s kicking feet slapped against the ground where Grant’s hand had been just a second before.

       From his crouched position on the ground, Grant swung the Copperhead up one-handed, the bullpup design ideal for such a move. But even as he depressed the trigger, his robed assailant shoved the muzzle aside with a violent flick of his wrist. Grant’s shots went wild, slamming against the grain silo and drilling through the brickwork with powdery little orange bursts of dried clay.

       Then the robed man’s fist struck Grant across the jaw with the force of a thrown brick, and the huge ex-Magistrate blinked back hot tears as his vision blurred. Blindly, Grant lashed out with his left palm, slapping the robed figure away with a mighty sweep of his limb. Grant felt more than saw the figure fall from him, heard as he struck against something hard with the sound of breaking wood.

       Wiping a hand across his eyes, Grant pushed himself to his feet, bringing the Copperhead to bear once more as he searched for his target. Before Grant could react, the robed figure came leaping out of the shadows of the lean-to, barreling into the ex-Mag like a cannonball. The pair of combatants crashed back to

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