LITMIR.BIZ

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out. Kane held on with all of his strength and he glanced back to see Thurpa hanging on for dear life, Lyta clutching at him to keep him from tumbling loose.

      “I said steadier!” Kane snapped.

      A cone of sonic illumination blazed around them, and Kane grimaced, realizing that the Kongamato were aware of the sudden distress of the truck. It would be on them in a moment, and the only thing that Kane could do was stiff-arm the rifle, holding it straight out. The truck spun, but he did his best to keep the muzzle pointed toward the end of the noise wedge. He pulled the trigger, spraying bullets out of the rifle. The effort to hold the weapon under control was incredible, his biceps and forearm muscles straining, struggling with the bucking and kicking of the gun.

      He didn’t know if he could hit anything, but he was suddenly rewarded as a thick, powerful form erupted from the cloud, blood spraying from a dozen wounds. The rifle was empty, so Kane twisted it around and tucked it under one leg. He flexed his arm, and the hydraulic holster spit the Sin Eater into his hand.

      Kane could aim and fire the sidearm as certainly as he could point his finger, and the slugs it spit were powerful, the gun specially designed around high-energy charges and heavyweight bullets capable of punching through even a Deathbird’s cockpit glass.

      The machine pistol had proved its worth in blowing big holes in the deadly Kongamato mutants before, and as another of the things swooped down, casting a sonic spotlight ahead of it that easily sliced through the smoke, Kane fired again. Kane hit it in its long snout, the Sin Eater slug shattering a hole in its upper mandible. The impact might not have been damaging, but the equivalent of being struck in the mouth with a sledgehammer sent the Kongamato whirling out of control.

      The truck finally found its traction, and Kane could see that Thurpa was back in the bed, Lyta handing over a small submachine gun from their gathered arsenal. The young man’s rifle must have toppled overboard.

      It didn’t matter because the Panthers of Mashona had provided a huge stash of weaponry for the Cerberus expedition to rely on, as well as spare ammunition, magazines and other sundry supplies. If it hadn’t been for the necessity of the shadow suits, the rendezvous with Domi at a parallax point wouldn’t have happened.

      Kane glanced over his shoulder, seeing Grant’s huge shoulders heaving as he cranked the steering wheel, navigating the treacherous ground.

      “Just how much farther do we have to go?” Kane asked as Thurpa and Nathan cut loose in unison, spraying another of the winged monstrosities.

      “We’ve gone a mile and a half,” Brigid stated, interrupting her updates to Grant on their current location. “We’ve still got three miles to cross.”

      “Miles to go before we burn,” Kane grumbled. He whipped the Sin Eater about and aimed down the throat of another Kongamato swooping through the clouds. Kane pumped a trio of rounds into it, and this one smashed into the rock behind them, wings tangling and ripping as it rolled from momentum. It reached a crack in the stone that Grant had just swerved around, and on striking that bit, immediately burst into flame.

      The lava had incinerated the corpse of the cloned monster, the heat so intense that it ignited the fatty tissues within the creature’s cartwheeling corpse. Any fluids burst into steam, vaporizing and leaving behind a small landslide of glowing embers and bouncing chunks of ash.

      “And that, boys and girls, is why we leave our hands inside the vehicle at all times!” Nathan shouted.

      Kane chuckled as he scanned for anything else in the air about them. Three of their own getting shot up, at least two of them down, had forced the aerial marauders to pull back.

      “They’re retreating,” Kane announced.

      “Just for now,” Brigid returned. “They’ve been weathering gunfire for at least a minute, but the sight and sound of one of their own bursting into flames has given them enough pause and us a reprieve.”

      “How long?” Kane asked.

      “Until we get to the other side, or we crash through a lava tube that isn’t empty,” Brigid returned.

      “I’m gettin’ tired of your endless optimism, Brigid,” Grant grumbled. “Keep an eye out. We damn near died twice while we’ve been in this volcanic playground. I don’t want any...”

      Kane grunted as he was hurled against the back of the pickup’s cab. Luckily the non-Newtonian polymers of his shadow suit prevented anything more injurious than a bruise from forming on his ribs. Even so, the sudden braking action by Grant had knocked everyone in the bed off balance.

      He peered down the hood and saw that there was a quick-flowing river of magma twenty-five feet ahead of them. The heat registered on Kane’s faceplate, both the temperature of the running lava and the ambient temperature of the air. If it hadn’t been for the environmental seals on the suits, they’d be drenched with sweat, rather than the moisture being wicked away to keep their bodies from overheating.

      Kane still felt the tingling as he was perspiring. The shadow suits could keep them from sun and heatstroke under normal conditions, but the air was suddenly blistering this close to such a large flow of lava.

      “Where now?” Grant asked Brigid.

      The woman was turning her head up and down, as if she were looking over a projected map. Kane only wondered if it were a computer projection on the inside of her suit’s faceplate, or if it were simply a construct of her photographic memory. Knowing the efficiency of Brigid’s mind, it was more likely she was doing this from her imagination, which was often more concise than most computer reproductions. She’d been able to navigate to an exact location in a nearly featureless desert using the most low-key of landmarks and star positioning.

      “Hang right and go 400 yards, and fast. The ground’s going to be cracking under the pressure of this lava flow,” she ordered Grant.

      Like the well-oiled machine that the two people had made themselves into, Grant swerved and hit the gas, changing into a higher gear to get more speed.

      Once more, sonic beacon bursts flashed in the sky above them. The Kongamato were still about, but they were keeping their distance. Something was up, and Kane swept the terrain about them. The tremors that shook the ground had their own sound signatures, and the substrate beneath the pickup was pulsing and throbbing.

      Seismic activity was visible in the same manner that the sonar bursts showed up on their faceplate displays.

      “That’s why they gained altitude!” Kane spoke up. “They heard the beginnings of a quake or something.”

      Brigid looked through the windshield and frowned. “Bry, what can you see?”

      “Things aren’t looking good,” Donald Bry answered from the Cerberus redoubt, where he had access to satellite imagery.

      “Earthquake?” Kane heard Brigid ask. He kept his eyes flitting between the Kongamato above the clouds and the heaving ground beneath them.

      “Something is acting on the stretch you’re crossing,” Bry explained. “That’s not a natural seismic plain.”

      “I believe I’ve noticed,” Brigid said. “What had been a simple barrier between us and the final destination of Durga is expanding, turning into a moat.”

      “Moat?” Kane asked.

      “Something’s working on the already cracked substrata here and is isolating the tomb,” Brigid said. “The pattern is too regular to be random. The bedrock must already have been scored for such a contingency.”

      “How big a ring?” Grant asked.

      “We’re looking at a ten-mile inner perimeter,” Brigid said. “The caldera itself is twenty miles at its widest.”

      “We’re atop a volcano now?” Kane inquired, an edge of nervousness seeping into the question.

      “An artificial one. Yes,” Bry answered. “My God, the Annunaki have some incredible

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