Exile to Hell

Brigid got to her feet, tapping her palm with the wand. “That won’t hold against an ultrasound assault,” she gasped. “They may even be able to breach the gateway, since it’s not made of armaglass.”

“They’ve got less than one minute to prove it to us,” Kane said.

They got inside the chamber, Grant pulling the heavy steel door closed and spinning the wheel-lock until he heard the click of solenoids catching and holding. The single overhead light came on.

Kane, cradling his broken wrist, sat down with a loud exhalation of air. Brigid eased down beside him. Both breathed heavily. Sweat had cut runnels in her combat cosmetics.

He asked, “Why did you take that chance out there, Baptiste?”

She raised the rod to eye level and sighted down its length. “An artifact, a souvenir. It might tell us something about their technology.”

Grant, hunched over beside the door, hushed them into silence. “I think they got in.”

As soon as he said it, they heard the familiar buzzing whine, somewhat muffled by the heavy metal door and the thick concrete blocks of the gateway unit. The door shuddered as it took the terrible impact of focused infrasound. The paint split and blistered and peeled away in long strips. The cross braces vibrated violently, and rivets and bolts rattled and clattered. Bits of concrete around the door frame flaked, showered down and fell away in chunks.

Kane looked at his chron. Tightly he said, “He’s behind schedule”

The floor and ceiling disks sprang to glowing life. Mist gathered and thickened above and below. Tiny flashing sparks floated through the air.

Brigid sighed with relief. Grant sat down, putting his back against the wall, hands resting on his knees. “A one-percenter to remember,” he said wryly.

As the mist curled down and entwined with the tendrils spiraling upward, Kane closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “Dad,” he whispered. “Goodbye.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was an old road Kane walked, but since it was his first time, it was new to him. He had the impression of following the track of a giant broken-backed snake, whipping to and fro. The asphalt was cracked and deeply rutted.

The last crimson glory of the setting sun cast red shadows on the snow-covered mountain peaks above him. He breathed the fragrance of the wind that rolled up from the forests far, far below. Though craggy cliffs rose gray and gaunt before and around him, the foothills behind were rich with grassy meadows and green groves of trees.

On his right, the road wound and twisted and looped across the sheer face of a cliff, and to his left a deep abyss plummeted straight down a thousand feet or more. At one time, steel guardrails had bordered the lip of the road, but only a few rusted metal stanchions remained. Past the edge of the road, at the bottom of the abyss, were the metal skeletons of several vehicles. More than likely, they had lain there since the time of the nukecaust, weathering all the seasons that came after.

Now, in late Montana summer, they looked like tombstones. He picked up a rock from the roadbed and tossed it over the abyss, trying but knowing he couldn’t bounce it from one of the metal carcasses. There wasn’t the slightest complaint from the area where, just two days before, a burst of ultrasound had shattered his wrist. It was still encased by a lightweight cast halfway to his elbow, but none of the nerves had been damaged and the bones should knit quicklyat least that was the prognosis of DeFore, the resident medic.

He walked carefully, alertly along the curving road, keeping close to the cliff face. Lakesh had told him that when the Cerberus Redoubt was built, the road had been protected by a force field powered by atomic generators. Sometime during the past century, the energy screen had been permanently deactivated, when many survivors were scavenging off the land.

Kane went around a pair of bends in the road, and the split tarmac broadened onto a huge plateau. The scraps of a chain-link fence clinked in the breeze.

Inside the fenced perimeter was the base of a mountain peak, and nestled against the rock face was a high gate, corrugated metal gleaming beneath peeling paint. The gate opened like an accordion, folding to one side, operated by a punched-in code and a hidden lever control. It was open now, and Brigid, Grant, Domi and Lakesh emerged from it. Lakesh was leaning on Domi, as though he had lost his strength, but Kane was pretty certain he simply enjoyed leaning against a shapely young woman.