outcasts of the new feudalism, the cheap, expendable labor forces, even the cannon fodder when circumstances warranted. Generations of Americans were born into serfdom, slavery in everything but name. Whatever their parents or grandparents had been before skydark, they were now only commodities and they cursed the suicidal foolishness of their forebears who had brought on the nightmare.
Recently, the numbers of the SOB had grown large enough to be noticed by other groups, like renegade Magistrates who had turned to the mercenary trade or the Millennial Consortium. Neither possibility was comforting, so Domi, Grant, Kane and Brigid traveled to Newyork through the mat-trans gateway network. They set out to scout the area and ascertain if the reports about Shuma’s Survivalist Outland Brigade had any foundation.
Posing as Farers, the team hadn’t experienced much difficulty in blending in at first, and the easy acceptance made them careless, although Domi was alert from the start. As an Outlands child born and bred, Domi had learned how to hunt and had been taught the way of the hunted.
Still, the ambush had caught her almost completely unaware. She and Grant had scouted out the area around Shuma’s headquarters, in the tangled fastness of Central Park. Domi suspected that something they had done or not done had given them away, but whatever the case, she and Grant had been set upon by shadowy figures wielding ropes and clubs.
Although her first impulse was to remain and fight by the big man’s side, she realized they were severely outnumbered and couldn’t hope to shoot, slug or slash their way clear. When Grant ordered her to run, she had done so—reluctantly and shamefully, but she had obeyed him, melting into the gloom and the overgrowth.
Domi had never considered herself a soldier, as someone dedicated to fighting for a cause, but over the past few years she had accepted the need to prevent an unstable world from being overrun by human and inhuman tyrants alike.
Now, as she squirmed between the shouting people toward the curb, Domi closed her right hand over the checkered walnut grip of her Detonics Combat Master, holstered at the small of her back.
Kane’s voice suddenly whispered in her head, “Status reports every two minutes now, people.”
“Gotcha,” Domi stated.
She inched her way to the edge of the sidewalk, pushing in front of a short, flat-faced man wearing a ragged mackinaw and beat-up bottle-green derby. Judging by his clothes, he was a Farer. Roamers tended to prefer clothes made of animal hide, which reflected their more barbaric mind-sets.
“Watch it, you li’l bitch,” he growled in a voice slurred by liquor.
Domi ignored him. Her belly slipped sideways as she sighted the yellow Cadillac and the big man spread-eagled across the hood like a hunting trophy. Word had traveled fast through Shuma’s followers that he had captured Grant, one of the renegade baron blasters.
The term “baron blaster” was old, deriving from the rebels who had staged a violent resistance against the institution of the unification program a century before. Domi knew that neither Kane nor Grant enjoyed having the appellation applied to them. Their ville upbringing still lurked close to the surface, and they had been taught that the so-called baron blasters were worse than outlaws, but were instead terrorists incarnate.
Regardless, the reputations of the core Cerberus warriors had grown too awesome, too great over the past five years for even the most isolated outlander to be ignorant of their accomplishments, even if it was an open question of just how many of the stories were based in truth and how many were overblown fable.
With a conscious effort, Domi tore her gaze away from Grant, at once relieved that he did not appear to be seriously hurt but enraged that he was injured at all. Beneath the overhang of her hood, she watched Shuma intently, only vaguely aware that there was something not right about him beyond his obvious physical deformity.
She had seen and even killed scalies before, but her belly still roiled with nausea and her hand automatically went to the hilt of her long knife, fingering the pommel. For six months she had been enslaved by Guana Teague, the Pit Boss of Cobaltville, and she had never forgotten the greenish tint of his skin and its odd, faintly scaled pattern. A number of people had suspected that Guana had a scalie in the family—hence his nickname. The loathing for her former master still ran deep within Domi, even years after slitting his throat with the very knife sheathed at her hip.
Shuma’s reptilian appearance didn’t trigger a mental alarm, since he looked pretty much like the other scalies she had seen. Her eyes focused on the figure slouched in the seat beside him. He was a very small man, probably no more than four feet five. However, a massive, almost rectangular head rose from between a pair of down-sloping shoulders.
The pale flesh of his freakishly high forehead showed a blue-and-red network of broken blood vessels spreading up to his hairline. His mouth was a short, lipless gash. His ash-gray hair was thin, almost downy, stirred slightly by the breeze atop his flat skull. A great shelf of bone jutted above his eyes.
They were unusual in shape and color—disproportionately large, completely round with tiny irises and pupils totally surrounded by the whites. They seemed to glow, like two pinpoints of fire.
His eyes swept the crowd disinterestedly, and they rested momentarily on Domi. In that instant she felt a faint touch on the surface of her mind, as if it had been brushed by a cobweb. His eyes moved on, but she instantly realized what the little man was.
She reached up for her Commtact. “Kane?”
“Here.”
“The car is about twenty yards from me….” She hesitated when the little man’s round eyes flicked back toward her as the Cadillac rolled past. A thick, ropy vein pulsed along his the right temple.
“What is it?” Kane asked impatiently.
“Not sure…. I see something that—”
Domi caught only the most fragmented impression of an arm whipping toward her from behind. She ducked, but still a hard object struck the side of her head, just under her ear. She staggered and would have fallen into the street if not for the press of bodies all around her.
Senses reeling from the impact of the blow, fighting off unconsciousness, Domi moved on pure animal instinct. She drew her knife and lashed out blindly. A vague figure jerked away from the nine-inch serrated blade.
Blinking through the amoeba-shaped floaters swimming across her vision, Domi saw the flat-faced man in the derby flail at her with a metal truncheon. She sidestepped and slashed again, feeling the point of the knife catch and drag through cloth and flesh.
She heard the profanity-seasoned howl of pain and as her eyes cleared she saw the man stumble backward, clutching at his right arm. Blood seeped between his fingers.
When a hand closed in a painful grip on the back of her neck, Domi leaned forward, her left leg flashing up in a back kick. She felt a solid, satisfying impact against the toe of her combat boot. A heavyset man uttered a muted squeal and doubled over, clutching at his groin.
More people shuffled toward her, arms spread wide to prevent her from bolting into the crowd. Domi backed away, weaving and swaying, reaching under her coat for her autopistol. Then she pivoted on her heel and ran full-out up the boulevard, in the opposite direction from which Shuma and his entourage had come.
Coattails flying, Domi ran as fast as she could, hearing shouts and the sound of pounding feet behind her. She knew she wouldn’t get far, but she didn’t intend
