ection id="u32c85c0c-8a4e-5e5a-ae69-40c78e08e02b">
MYTHIC PROPORTIONS
Insidious alien forces conspiring to enslave humanity grow increasingly dangerous and defiant. Willing to do whatever it takes to defeat these ancient invaders, the Cerberus rebels carry on the fight for freedom.
DAMNATION THRALL
The Cerberus fighters embark on an urgent quest to discover what happened to expeditions lost in Italy, on land that once belonged to the Etruscan empire. On site they encounter the monstrous Charun, armed with the hammer of the gods, and Vanth, the angelic winged huntress with a heart of evil. These alien gods are intent on opening a portal to bring their kind to earth, harnessing the power of victims’ minds while using their bodies as shock troops. As the river Styx is poised to flow again, the Cerberus team must prevail or an invasion from a barbaric dimension will lay siege to Europe…and beyond.
A second brilliant sun had appeared, blazing white and hot
Edwards scrambled to his feet, standing on the front of the Manta. The machine pistol snapped down into his fist, ready to go into action, but the strange glowing disc wasn’t moving. He put on his shadow suit’s faceplate and hoped for the visor to screen and filter out the blinding light, as well as analyze the object in the sky.
The range was ten miles, and it was advancing quickly.
He activated his Commtact microphone. “Guys, wherever you are…”
Nothing. No response, not even static. He turned his gaze back to the sky. For all the polarization of the lenses, he couldn’t make out a detail of the blazing comet looming ever closer. But in the space of fifteen seconds, it had closed to nine miles. He couldn’t get details about the shape of the object, only its range, and there was no guarantee that was right.
Edwards turned to open the cockpit, but the command signal to remotely open the canopy was also jammed.
He was in a complete blackout.
Angel of Doom
James Axler
A dreadful ferryman looks after the river crossing, Charon, appalling filthy he is, with a bush of unkempt white beard upon his chin, with eyes like jets of fire.
—Virgil, Aeneid
The Road to Outlands—From Secret Government Files to the Future
Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, DC. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.
What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.
Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.
In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.
Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.
But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?
Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.
Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.
For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.
After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.
With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.
Contents
