ringer, his brawny arms and shoulders glistening with sweat as he swung the hammer to alert the city. As the gong was centrally placed, everyone could quickly get their bearings by the row of lanterns mounted on the support beam that the great bronzed dish hung from. Grant could see that the lantern indicating trouble on Thunder Isle had been ignited.
“Shit,” Grant muttered.
“We’ll get to the boats,” Shizuka said. She pulled her radio from its place on her sash. Now that the Tigers of Heaven had been alerted, they would be waiting for indications of who should respond and where they should go. “Nagumi, harden the perimeter in case this is a diversion. Ichira, Honda, bring your squads with me to the island. Full force.”
Grant knew that “full force” was not inconsiderable. Twelve samurai warriors with composite armor, high-tech bows and arrows and thousand-folded pure steel blades with nearly monomolecular edges were easily a match for Magistrates with submachine guns, grenades and bulletproof armor.
Grant and Shizuka took their places aboard the Gamera-maru, the same vessel that the two of them and their samurai allies had been on when they’d prevented an assault by the barons on New Edo when the island colony was first discovered by the Cerberus explorers. It was unofficially the flagship of the New Edo fleet, and as such, it had been upgraded with new motors on the aft. While the engines had been designed for twentieth-century inflatable rafts called Zodiacs, they had easily been adapted to the rattan-hulled craft. The increase in speed from traditional outboard motors had been dramatic, enabling a quicker response to a crisis on Thunder Isle.
Grant perched on the bow of the Gamera-maru as the twin Mercedes engines pumped out hundreds of horsepower, producing rooster tails of white, frothy spray, writing the massive energy impulse in twelve-foot-high jets as the craft accelerated from its berth. Two other craft, each laden with a quartet of Samurai, as well as their crews, had started only moments apart, but that was sufficient for Grant and Shizuka to achieve a twenty-foot lead on the other boats.
The two archers assigned to the Gamera-maru strung their bows, the composite nature of their laminated-wood-and-carbon-fiber cores building enormous potential energy. The mist of seawater coming over the rail of the speeding sea craft wouldn’t affect either the resin-lacquered bows or the inelastic cord, which couldn’t be warped by absorption. A bowstring that stretched under any conditions lost efficiency in transferring the potential energy of the bow to the arrow. Pig tendons and horsehair were two of the materials that the Tigers of Heaven had used, and even late twentieth-century polymers provided by Cerberus hadn’t improved on the archers’ capabilities.
The boat archers used larger bows than Shizuka wore, as they were not expected to wade in close. The Japanese warriors had called them “two-man bows,” as they were the height of one man riding on the shoulders of his friend—about eight feet tall, given the average diminutive stature of the Asians.
“Grant,” Kane’s voice crackled over his Commtact from a thousand miles away. “Bry told me you were on the way to Thunder Isle. Don’t go ashore.”
“Too late. We’re on our way to a four-gong emergency,” Grant answered. “Why?”
“Baptiste just called me to say she found one of our off-duty Mag coats buried under around five thousand years of sand in some sort of tomb,” Kane told him. “Thunder Isle’s one place we know of that has an operating time-travel machine….”
“Mag coats?” Grant asked. He looked at the armor-laced duster, its tails flapping from his hips. “I’m wearing mine right now.”
“Damn it, Grant,” Kane growled. “Baptiste thinks one of us—”
“Well, if she found the damn duster buried for a few thousand years, then we’ve already fallen down the rabbit hole,” Grant answered, cutting him off. “Nothing’s going to change that. Did she find any bones sticking out of the sleeves?”
“No, but she only found a piece of it sticking out,” Kane replied. “That doesn’t mean our carcass isn’t nearby.”
“Let me know if she finds any bones. Otherwise, what’s happened has happened,” Grant said. “We’ll be jumping at shadows every time we get called here.”
“Grant…” Kane’s voice was laced with frustration, but Grant knew that there were people in danger; otherwise the alert wouldn’t have sounded on New Edo.
“Kane, we can discuss this all you want later, right now, people who are our friends may be dying,” Grant grumbled. “Or am I worth more than them?”
Grant knew that Kane’s answer would be a hard choice. The two former Magistrates were closer than brothers, bound by blood, sweat and tears, but Kane was driven by the same selfless urge to protect innocents that had made them the finest enforcement team in Cobaltville.
“You don’t have permission to die,” Kane said. “If you do, I’ll drag you back to life and beat you to death again.”
“It’ll take a lot to get me out of your life. If I don’t see you for five thousand years, you’d better behave. Remember, the more you complain, the longer you live, and five millennia ain’t going to be shit off the bitching I’ve done,” Grant answered.
There was a soft chuckle on the other end of the Commtact. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Grant managed a smirk, seeing the shore of Thunder Isle. “Grant out.”
THOUGH HER HEADBAND was meant to keep the sweat and her flowing red-gold hair out of Brigid Baptiste’s eyes, she still needed to mop her eyes as she paused. Her hands had been callused from her years of adventure, but the effort of prying apart the sunbaked sandstone with a foot-long utility knife was raising new blisters on her fingers. The pebbling on the Micarta Fiberglas handle had worn a red patch between the base and knuckle of her index finger.
So far, she’d gotten the sleeve out to the shoulder, and from the tailored length of what she’d freed, there was no doubt as to the owner of the duster. She sat back, a wave of nausea rumbling in her stomach.
Brigid raised Kane on her Commtact. “Did you warn Grant?”
“Yes,” Kane answered. “His response was that you’ve found the coat, so he’s already destined to go on a trip to the ancient past. You’re sure it’s his coat?”
“By now, absolutely,” Brigid answered. “No one else in Cerberus has arms as long as he does.”
Brigid glanced to one side, and saw Domi’s ruby-red eyes locked on the armored leather spilling out of the crack in the temple remnant.
“You heard what Kane said?” Brigid asked.
“Was on party line,” Domi answered, her diction returning to the abbreviated Outland form of speech. It was a sign of nervousness or heightened stress, and Brigid could feel sympathy for the young albino. Usually, when her words became terse and tense, she at least could engage in combat to deal with what had gotten under her skin. When Domi couldn’t utilize the energy pumped into her bloodstream by the fight-or-flight reflex, Brigid could see her grow morose and withdrawn.
Domi was walking an emotional edge, especially considering how close she had grown to Grant since he had first saved her life back in the Tartarus slums under Cobaltville. Grant had been the first person in a long time to show the wild woman kindness. Domi had gone from fighting, literally tooth and claw, for survival to being one of pit-boss
