Outlanders 15 - Doom Dynasty

  Doom Dynasty

  James Axler

  * * *

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  First edition November 2000 ISBN 0-373-63828-0

  DOOM DYNASTY

  Special thanks to Mark Ellis for his contribution to the Outlanders concept, developed for Gold Eagle Books.

  Copyright © 2000 by Worldwide Library.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries. Printed in U.S.A.

  * * *

  Only thin smoke without flame

  From the cairns of stone and grass,

  Yet this doom will go onward the same

  Though Dynasties pass.

  —Justin Geoffrey

  * * *

  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, D.C. 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 vitles. 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 tews 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 loyally 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 Cobaltvilie. 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, CobaltvJIIe'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.

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  Toward the middle of an overcast autumn afternoon, with the sun finally breaking free from the black mass of thunderheads, the settlement of Port Morninglight was overwhelmed.

  Upright sharpened logs were meant to serve as a protective palisade for the small collection of reed and thatch-roofed huts, but the barrier looked better suited for keeping livestock in than enemies out The area around the stockade fence was open except for clus­ters of scraggly sage and mesquite that offered little cover. The squad of Magistrates couldn't approach without being seen, so they didn't expend any time or effort trying.

  Before the attack commenced, Pollard didn't de­mand surrender, nor did the citizens ask for terms. They simply began shooting from parapets built on the palisade walls, first with bows and arrows, then with home-forged flintlocks. The twenty Magistrates under Pollard's command quickly realized it was eas­ier to keep out of range of the crude .75-caliber mini-balls than it was the four-foot-long arrows. The rifle­men weren't very accurate, but the archers were. If not for their body armor, the Mags would have been pincushioned a dozen times over.

  Only a single mortar launcher was needed to breach Port Morninglight's fortifications. The stripped-down PRB 424, taken from the Cobaltville armory, was as­sembled in a matter of minutes. Launched from only a hundred yards beyond the village's stockade fence, each 60 mm, high-ex round pulverized the logs and threw up great clouds of dust and grit. The echoes of the cannonade rolled across the barren sand dunes like prolonged thunderclaps. Four shells reduced a thirty-foot span of the wall to a heap of splinters and broken timbers.

  Pollard dutifully led his men through the breach, clambering over the smoldering wreckage of the fence. Streamers of acrid black smoke veiled the in­terior of the settlement. Arrows and muskets were fired from behind the crude huts. Only a handful of armed defenders remained and once they loosed then-last shots, they died under the autoblasters wielded by the Magistrates.

  The Mag force suffered only one casualty, a triple-careless stupe named Mitchell who allowed a child to stab him in the throat with a filleting knife. The blade punched through his neck and into his brain stem, and he died without a murmur of surprise or protest.

  Defying the vengeful snarls of the men who wit­nessed Mitchell's swift death, Pollard ordered the child to be bound, not chilled. He commanded two of his Mags to strip Mitchell of his armor and Kevlar undersheathing. Concealing physical evidence of the incursion was the mission's secondary priority.

  After that, Pollard put his men to work rounding up the survivors. It didn't take long. He stood in the humid air, redolent with the coppery tang of blood and brine, watching as scarlet runnels cut crusted channels through the ground. A thousand flies crawled and feasted on them. He could hear the boom of the surf over the rise at the rear of the settlement. He had never seen either the Lantic or Cific oceans, but he kept his curiosity in check. He had never been in
California, either, until dawn the day before, but he wasn't too interested in looking around.

  So far he had seen very little of Baron Snakefish's territory that seemed worth coveting. The terrain around the little seaside ville of Port Morninglight was slashed through with dry streambeds and narrow ravines. Clumps of sagebrush surrounded the area like tufts of hair atop a balding man's pate. In the distance, humping up from the horizon, the gray peaks of the Sierra Nevada range shouldered the sky.

  Although not an educated man by even the most charitable definition of the term, Pollard knew that when the nukes flew and the mushroom clouds scorched their way into the heavens, the San Andreas Fault had given one great final heave and thousands of square miles of California coastline dropped into the sea. For the past two centuries, the Cific had lapped less than thirty miles from the foothills of the Sierras.

  A woman ran out of a hut, screaming as she fled from the black-armored killers. A Mag tripped her, and another pulled the homespun shift off her body. Pollard was about to order them away from the out-lander female since she looked young, healthy and uninjured. Then he saw she was at least six months' pregnant. He turned away, allowing his men to take their pleasure.

  He strode up to where MacMurphy and Swayze were herding the prisoners together. As per baronial edict, the survivors weren't executed. They were ex­amined. The Mags arranged them into two columns, separating the old, the infirm and the seriously wounded from those who were young and suffered only superficial injuries. None of the eighteen survi­vors had come through the assault completely un­scathed. Even children manned the walls, using sling­shots.

  Pollard inspected the youngest and most lightly in­jured of the prisoners, marching from one end of each column to the other, repressing a curse at the low number. There appeared to be only nine that met Baron Cobalt's standards. He had no idea of why the baron had assigned him to lead a Mag squad into California and capture outlanders. All he really knew about his mission was he'd been ordered to get in and out with healthy prisoners before Baron Snakefish learned that Mags from Cobaltville were in his terri­tory.

  Planting his gauntleted fists on his hips, Pollard gazed at the nine people. A mixture of women, men and two teenagers, they averted their eyes. Their clothing consisted of simple tunics and pants, both of brightly colored cloth embroidered with fancy curli­cues along the seams and hems. The tunics of the women bore beautifully crafted images of swans, cranes and fish, all worked in multicolored thread. The quality of the needlework and the fabric itself seemed too rich for a community of fisherpeople.

  Pollard deliberately struck a pose as if he were on display in a museum case. He knew the sunlight glint­ing off the black polycarbonate exoskeleton encasing his stocky body lent him a fearsome aspect.

  Like all hard-contact Magistrates, Pollard's armor was close-fitting, molded to conform to the biceps, triceps, pectorals and abdomen. Even with its Kevlar undersheathing, the armor was lightweight and pro­vided no loose folds to snag against projections. The only spot of color anywhere on it was the small disk-shaped badge of office emblazoned on the left pec­toral. It depicted, in crimson, a stylized, balanced scales of justice, superimposed over a nine-spoked wheel. The badge symbolized the Magistrate's oath to keep the wheels of justice turning in the nine villes.

  Pollard's regulation side arm, the Sin Eater, was holstered on his right forearm. A big-bored automatic handblaster, it was less than fourteen inches in length at full extension with a magazine that carried twenty rounds of 9 mm ammo. When not in use, the stock folded over the top of the blaster, lying along the frame, reducing its holstered length to ten inches.

  When the Sin Eater was needed, Pollard would simply tense his wrist tendons and sensitive actuators activated a flexible cable in the holster to snap the weapon smoothly into his waiting hand, the stock un­folding in the same motion. Since the Sin Eater had no trigger guard or safety, the blaster fired immedi­ately upon touching his crooked index finger.

  The weapon was more than a murderous weapon; it was a badge of office almost as important as the one he wore upon his breastplate. All Mags were ex­pected to know it more intimately than anything else in the world.

  Attached to his belt by a magnetic clip was his close-assault weapon. The Copperhead was a chopped-down autoblaster, gas-operated, with a 700-round-per-minute rate of fire. The magazine held fif­teen rounds of 4.85 mm steel-jacketed bullets. Two feet in length, the CAW featured a grip and trigger unit that were placed in front of the breech to allow for one-handed use. An optical image-intensifier scope was fitted on top, as well as a laser autotargeter. Because of its low recoil, the Copperhead could be fired in a long, devastating full-auto burst.

  Like the armor encasing his body, Pollard's visored helmet wa&made of black polycarbonate. Fitting over the upper half and back of his head, it left only a portion of the mouth and chin exposed. The slightly concave, red-tinted visor served two functions—4t protected the eyes from foreign particles, and the elec­trochemical polymer was connected to a passive night sight that intensified ambient light to permit one-color night vision.

  The tiny image-enhancer sensor mounted on the forehead of the helmet did not emit detectable rays, though its range was only twenty-five feet, even on a fairly clear night with strong moonlight.

  There was another reason behind the helmet and the exoskeleton, which were designed to inspire awe and fear. When a man put on the armor, he was sym­bolically surrendering his identity in order to serve a cause greater than a mere individual life.

  Pollard's father had chosen to smother his identity, as had his father before him. For that matter, all cur­rent Magistrates, the third generation, had exchanged personal hopes, dreams and desires for a life of ser­vice to a baron.

  To the prisoners, Pollard said dispassionately, "We'll be moving out shortly and taking you with us. If you cooperate, you won't be harmed. If you resist, you'll be chilled on the spot Those are your only choices."

  None of mem said anything as MacMurphy and Swayze moved down the column, fastening heavy, yokelike collars of leather and wood around their necks. The pair of Mags threaded a slim length of chain through staples on the collars, fettering the peo­ple together.

  Pollard would have preferred to bind their hands, as well, but the prisoners would make better time with their limbs unencumbered, especially over some of the appallingly rugged terrain they had to cross. Also, the barony of Snakefish lay only forty-odd miles to the northwest, and as far as he knew a patrol or trad­ing convoy was on its way. The reports provided by the Intel section described how the fishing village of Port Morninglight was tolerated by Baron Snakefish because it provided his ville with a source of food other than that grown in the fields. The standing pol­icy shared by most of the baronial oligarchy was to raze Outland settlements to the ground in order to prevent noncitizens from becoming self-sufficient and therefore rebellious.

  Peeling back the cuff of his gauntlet, Pollard stud­ied the LED face of his wrist chron, then glanced at the position of the sun. He swore beneath his breath, then bellowed to the Mags spread out around the vil­lage, "Pick up the pace, you bastards! We've got only five hours of daylight left!"

  The Magistrates policing the killzone sped up their movements, snatching up spent cartridge cases and jamming them into canvas bags. Pollard wasn't too worried about the treaded tracks made by their boots in the soft, sandy soil, since the steady sea breeze would obliterate them in a matter of minutes. Baron Cobalt's order was to leave no clue, no hint of what happened to the residents of Port Morninglight—or at least no clue that could be traced back to him.

  MacMurphy tugged at the length of chain, pulling out most of the slack. Swayze attached a metal cross­bar to the trailing end. "We're ready to go, sir," he announced.

  Pollard nodded brusquely, pretending to ignore the baleful glares directed at him from the prisoners. Most of their faces were smoke streaked and begrimed, but at least they appeared to be in fairly good health. A w
oman stared boldly at him from beneath her hayrick tangle of dark blond hair.

  "Where are you taking us, sec man?" she de­manded.

  An obsolete term, "sec man" was applied to men who served in baronial security forces. Nowadays it was used only in the hinterlands and over the past century had become something of an insult Magis­trates weren't the descendants of ragtag crews of thuggish blastermen who obeyed self-styled barons; rather they were enforcers of law, opponents of an­archy, spiritually sanctioned to act as judge, jury and executioner.

  That was the bare-bones history Pollard had been taught at the academy, but rather than correct the out-lander woman, he cuffed her openhanded across the face. He didn't put much of his strength into the blow, since he mainly wanted to remind her of what she was. Still, she reeled backward, causing the entire line of prisoners to stumble and stagger.

  As they regained their balance, cursing both him and the woman, Pollard opened the comm-link chan­nel and spoke into the transceiver built into the jaw guard of his helmet. "Quantrell, Ranee, Turner. Front and center."

  Three armored men jogged toward him from all points of the perimeter. When they stood at attention in a semicircle around him, Pollard gestured diffi­dently to the column of survivors who were too wounded, too old or otherwise unfit to make the jour­ney to the Sierras.

  "Those are the culls," he said matter-of-factly. "Flash-blast them."

  As one, in almost mechanical unison, the three Magistrates turned toward the men and women, the barrels of their Copperheads snapping up. The people bleated wordlessly in terror, broke formation and scat­tered.

  The chattering, ripping rasps of three subguns on full-auto overwhelmed their screams. The rounds smashed into the running people, slapping them down amid scarlet sprays, their arms and legs flailing. Even after all of them had been hammered to the ground, the Copperheads continued to stutter, spent shell cas­ings spewing from ejector ports like glittering rain.