first instant he saw the man—he was wearing a white bandage across the top of his head, and the bandage came down to the level of his nostrils, entirely covering his eyes.
“What th—?” Grant asked even as the stranger turned his AK-47 on him.
Before he could fire, however, the bandaged soldier dropped to the ground, the distinctive recoil of a Sin Eater being discharged echoing amid the chaos of battle, a bloom of ghastly red materializing on the man’s fatigues where they covered his chest.
Kane!
Grant kept running. He would thank his partner later; right now he needed to get himself behind that wall and up those stairs to knock out the cannon that had already recommenced its incessant song of destruction from above him.
An instant later Grant was past the stone arch of the doorway and scrambling, blaster in hand, up the steep steps that led to the fort’s second level.
The archway was made from sand-colored stone, as were the steps. As Grant stepped into the shadows, he felt the heat of the burning sun on his face drop away, a relief of sudden coolness from the shade. In that instant, however, he was momentarily blind, his vision flickering in extremes of green as it tried to adjust after the brilliance of the direct sunlight. He took a moment, just a moment, to blink back his sun blindness, taking a pace forward onto the first stone step. The staircase curved around, winding up on itself as it ascended to the second story.
Two more steps and his vision was still restricted by the aftereffects of the sun...and Grant was in the sights of an attacker. He felt the movement of the breeze as the man stepped forward, lunging downward with the long blade of the knife he held, driving it toward Grant’s face.
Grant reared back, sweeping his left arm up to knock the blade aside by instinct alone. He still couldn’t see, not fully, his eyes rendering the figure attacking him from the shadows as a kind of dark blur of limbs and torso.
The man—and it was a man—spit something in a tongue Grant didn’t recognize. His Commtact tried to translate, came up with a phrase that was doubtless a curse, but sounded somehow ludicrous to his ears.
“Goat of a mother!”
But with the insult came something else—a gunshot, loud in the confines of the stone stairwell, the blast accompanied by the acrid smell of cordite. Something raced past Grant in that instant, and he heard the wall behind him give up a chunk of rock with a sound like walking on gravel.
Grant did not hesitate. Even through the retreating green mire of his eyesight, he brought his Sin Eater to bear, blasting his opponent in the left kneecap, hobbling the guy in an instant.
Grant’s attacker cried out in sudden shock and pain, stumbling forward, losing his balance on the steps above Grant. His blaster—a handheld pistol of unknown manufacture—spit again, sending a 9 mm slug at Grant in a roar of explosive propellant. The bullet struck Grant in the same instant, slamming high on his left biceps before reeling away with the impact. Grant grunted, stumbling against the wall to his right. It had been a glancing blow, clipping him below the shoulder with a lot of force but no penetration—his double layer of Kevlar and shadow suit had ensured that. But it still stung like something out of a blacksmith’s forge.
Grant raised his pistol and blasted again, sending a second shot into his opponent—now visible as the green wash across his vision retreated to a handful of spots when he blinked. The man was unshaved with an unruly mop of dark, curly hair held in place with a olive-green cap. His uniform—if you could call it that—was too tight across the chest and too large in the pants, and it looked as if it had been sewn together from scraps, albeit in a way that made for effective camouflage.
Grant stepped aside as his attacker sunk down the steps, blood seeping from his open mouth. Dead.
* * *
KANE MEANWHILE HAD his own problems. Two ragtag-looking soldiers came hurrying into the partially hidden area where he was hiding out with Mariah and Brigid, their backs to the Cerberus team. The two looked like brothers. Both were young men with dark hair and beards and scuffed uniforms that had seen better days. They each carried an AK-47 automatic rifle smeared with the pale dust of the whipped-up sand.
Kane subvocalized a warning to Brigid where she knelt working on the broken interphaser. Thanks to its remarkable mechanics, the Commtact could pick up such a gesture and amplify it for Brigid’s ear canal, turning Kane’s subvocalized “company” into a whisper.
By the time Brigid looked up, Kane had stepped silently forward, bringing the nose of his Sin Eater up until it was pressed against the side of the head of the closest soldier.
“One wrong move and I blow your brain all over your companion—capisce?”
Whether the foreign soldier did or did not “capisce”—and chances were he hadn’t comprehended a word Kane had just said—he certainly understood what a blaster pressed against his face meant. Kane smiled as the man lowered his own gun, saying something in his own tongue that the Commtact automatically translated as “No, no, not shoot.”
But even as the soldier spoke, his companion spun, alerted by his partner, raising his automatic rifle and squeezing the trigger in a heartbeat.
Kane saw the move coming, that fabled point-man sense of his kicking in like clairvoyance, leaping aside as the trigger clicked and a stream of 9 mm slugs spit in his direction, cutting down the other hapless soldier before the man could even acknowledge what was happening.
Kane dived to one side. This was not the first time his point-man sense had saved his life. He had been renowned for it, all the way back to his days as a Cobaltville Magistrate many years before. It seemed to be an almost uncanny ability to sense danger before it happened, alerting Kane to the threat with just enough time to avoid it. There was nothing uncanny about it, however; it was merely the combination of his standard five senses, honed to an incredible degree, making him utterly aware of his surroundings. A change in wind, the noise of a scuffing boot—a hundred telltale clues gave Kane the advantage in combat, an advantage that could be the difference between life and death.
Kane hit the ground with a whuff of expelled breath, rolling his body even as a stream of 9 mm slugs chased after him across the dirt, always just a handful of inches behind him. As he rolled, Kane brought up the Sin Eater, nudging the trigger and sending his own triple burst of bullets at his attacker.
The first soldier had sunk to his knees as Kane’s bullets struck his companion, a choking noise coming from his throat. His trigger-happy companion dropped in a swirl of unguided limbs, the AK-47 swiveling up into the sky and sending off another half dozen shots before it finally quieted. Then the man lay on his back in the dirt, absolutely still, blood blooming on his chest, the automatic pointed upward like a grave marker.
“Poor sap,” Kane growled as he picked himself up and brushed dirt from his clothes. “Shouldn’t mess with an ex-Mag.”
Across from the dead soldiers, Mariah Falk was cowering beside the pillar, her face pale with exhaustion. “You—you killed them,” she said.
“Yeah,” Kane acknowledged with a solemn nod. But experience nagged at the back of his mind, telling him that something wasn’t right here. The excitable soldier who had shot at him and his partner didn’t seem to have much in the way of aim. Kane had leaped aside and stayed out of the path of his bullets as much by the man’s inability as his own improbable luck. Furthermore, he had shot his own colleague, which could be put down to inexperience or panic, but it still reeked of
