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don't. blame you."
I
Chapter 7
The mountain plateau concealing the Cerberus redoubt was an organized
masterpiece of impenetrability.
Two centuries before, trained labor and the most advanced technology available
had worked hand in glove to ensure that no one Russian, Red Chinese or
ignorant American citizen might even suspect it existed.
For a handful of years, from the end of one millennium to the beginning of
another, it had housed the primary subdivision of the Totality Concept's
Over-project Whisper, Project Cerberus.
The Totality Concept was the umbrella designation for American military
supersecret researches into many different arcane sciences, from
hyperdimensional matter transfer to temporal phasing to a new form of
genetics. Most of the separate but related projects had their own hidden
installations, like
Overprpject Excalibur, in a subterranean complex in New Mexico.
The trilevel, thirty-acre Cerberus facility had come through the nukecaust in
fairly good shape. As with most of the other redoubts, it had been built
according to specifications for maximum impenetrability, short of a direct
hit. Its radiation shielding was still intact, and it was powered by nuclear
generators, and
probably would continue to be for at least another five hundred years.
Lakesh had said that when the redoubt was built, the
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plateau had been protected by a force field powered by atomic generators.
Sometime over the previous century, the energy screen had been permanently
deactivated, so new defenses had to be created.
Although they couldn't be noticed from the road, an elaborate system of
heat-sensing warning devices, night-vision vid cameras and motion-trigger
alarms surrounded the mountain peak. It could be safely assumed that no one or
nothing could approach the redoubt undetected. Additionally, on all ville
records, the installation was listed as being abandoned nearly two hundred
years ago.
The only evidence that it had ever been occupied before Lakesh and his staff
of exiles had come to roost was the illustration near the main sec door.
Emblazoned on one wall was a large, garishly colored image of a froth-mouthed
black hound. Three stylized heads grew out of a single, exaggeratedly muscled
neck, their jaws spewing flame and blood between great fangs. Below the image,
rendered in an absurdly ornate Gothic script was the word Cerberus.
The ferocious guardian of the gateway to Hades seemed an appropriate totem and
code name for the project devoted to ripping open gates in the quantum field.
The vanadium-alloy sec door folded aside accordion fashion. As it opened, a
red light flashed and a hooting Klaxon sounded. A half-dozen men and women in
white bodysuits flanked the Sandcat as it rumbled over the threshold, past the
depiction of the hellhound. They trained spidery SA-80 submachine guns on the
vehicle. It braked to a halt, the engine idling, and Grant popped the hatch.
He, Kane, Brigid and Domi stiffly disembarked. All of them looked haggard and
exhausted, particularly Domi.
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Grant glared at the blaster bores. "It's us. And turn off that goddamn noise."
Auerbach, a big redheaded man stared at him with his good eye. He wore a gauze
patch over the left one. It had been injured in a scuffle the month before and
was still healing. Crisply he responded, "If it's you, you know the sec
protocols."
DeFore stepped forward, a small rad counter in hand. A buxom, stocky woman
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with dark bronze skin and ash blond hair intricately braided at the back of
her head, she served as the redoubt's resident medic.
Consulting the counter, she announced, "Midrange yellow. Not immediately
dangerous, but decam is mandatory."
As the sec door rumbled closed, Kane demanded, "Is the old man here?"
DeFore looked him over with a critical eye. He was not a pretty
sight dark-rimmed eyes netted with red, an unshaved face and unwashed body.
"He's here," she answered, "in the center. You need to rest and clean up
before you see him."
Without a word, Kane spun on his heel and marched down the twenty-foot-wide
corridor made of softly gleaming vanadium alloy.
"Kane!" DeFore's voice carried like the cracking of a whip. "Decam first"
Kane ignored her.
She gestured to Cotta and Farrell, who rushed forward, slinging their subguns
over their shoulders by leather straps. They reached out to grasp Kane's arms.
Despite the lack of sleep, Kane's training kicked in automatically,
instinctively. He wasn't armed or armored, but he didn't need to be. Gripping
Farrell by wrist and shoulder strap, he pivoted and bent at the
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waist at the same time. The tai-otoshi throw smashed him into Cotta, who
flanked his left side. The man stumbled, but didn't fall.
Kane let momentum carry him all the way around and, with a kick combining
karate with the in-close and unartistic aspects of Pit fighting, disabled
Cotta. He fell to the slick floor, clutching at his groin, a cry of agony
keening from suddenly gray lips.
Farrell made a motion as if to lift the SA-80, but subsided when Kane cast
furious eyes in his direction.
Kane stepped over him and continued his measured, deliberate tread down the
corridor.
DeFore, watching him go, plucked agitatedly at Grant's arm. "Stop him."
Her anxious gaze met an ironic smile.
"You stop him, Doc. Of course, if you try, you'll be a living example of
Physician, Heal Thyself."
Brigid uttered a murmur of irritation and started down the corridor.
KANE FELT A TWINGE of regret over laying out the two men. Cotta and Farrell
had never been anything but cordial to him. Like all the personnel of
Cerberus, they were exiles except for one, and
Kane wasn't sure if that particular one qualified as a person.
He strode past the electronically locked door to Balam's cell without looking
at it. He had never visited the entity's confinement facility a second time.
His initial reaction to the creature had been a xenophobic, mindless urge to
kill it.
The door to the control center was up, and Kane stalked beneath it, not even
glancing at the consoles of dials, switches, buttons and flickering lights
running the length of the walls. Lakesh was seated before a corn-
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puter station. A dizzying swirl of mathematical formulas and symbols scrolled
over the monitor.
Mohandas Lakesh Singh was a lean, wrinkled apparition of a man, with fine hair
the color of ash.
Thick-lensed spectacles masked his watery blue eyes. A hearing aid was
attached to the right earpiece.
He looked very old, like a man from a past age which he was. As the former
overseer of Project
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