Wings of Death Page 5

  “So?” he asked as she finally rose from her bench. She went to a small coffee machine she kept in the kitchenette in her quarters and poured two mugs, one for herself, one for the other.

  “One question. Have you read the poem The Return of Sir Richard Grenville?” she asked him.

  “Can’t say that I have. I’m not much for poetry,” Kane replied.

  Brigid nodded. “It is a tale of the ghost of a friend and fellow warrior awakening his brother in arms. The events took place in Africa, as you guessed in your dreamlike wanderings. I would have to say from the thorns that harried you, you were dealing with acacia trees and bushes.”

  “Who was Sir Richard Grenville?” Kane asked.

  Brigid regarded him. “He was a sea captain who, on behalf of England, battled the Spanish Armada. He died in the effort in 1591.”

  “Off of Africa?” Kane asked.

  “No,” Brigid responded. “He was in the New World.”

  Kane drew his lips tight, trying to suppress a wave of annoyance. “So what does he have to do with Africa?”

  “Because of the man who owned the strange staff you described from your dream,” Brigid responded.

  “The staff,” Kane repeated. “What the hell was that about?”

  “That was an ancient artifact once owned, presumably, by a man named Solomon Kane,” Brigid responded. “Indeed, the events of your encounter with Thurmond closely echo the encounter between Solomon Kane and his fellow fighter against the Spanish—”

  “Grenville.” Kane cut her off. “Who the hell was Solomon Kane? And was there any relationship between him and me?”

  “According to the fictionalized accounts of his life, he never had any sons, nor nephews or nieces that I could recall. He was a strictly religious man, lived a life of celibacy and self-denial to a level adhered to by few other Puritans.”

  Kane chuckled. “Celibacy. So, not a great-grandfather, and we don’t have that in common.”

  Brigid smiled. “No. And I’m still waiting for a blue-eyed little papoose to show up in that village.”

  Kane cleared his throat. “Other than the surname, we don’t seem to have much at all in common.” He smirked as he caught a look of irritation on Brigid’s face. “And he owned that staff.”

  “Kane’s adventures in Africa were heavily detailed by author Robert E. Howard,” Baptiste added. “Whether they were true or not...”

  “So far, we’ve encountered myths aplenty,” Kane mused. “Remember, Remus claimed to have been a close friend of Edgar Rice Burroughs....”

  Brigid nodded.

  “The thing that gets me is that stick looked like it had an ASP unit attached to it,” Kane added. “So we’re looking at a man who wandered around with the equivalent of an energy rocket launcher, and yet never fired it.”

  “It would be worth investigation,” Brigid responded. “The staff, and the name similarity between you and Solomon Kane, the Puritan, definitely piques my interest.”

  “What is so special about the stick?” Kane asked.

  “I’ve been doing some research, and allegedly, it was the staff of wonders that Moses used to perform miracles in Egypt,” Brigid told him. “Its proper name is Nehushtan.”

  “Gesundheit,” Kane returned.

  She rolled her eyes. “It also was the Scepter of Israel, wielded by King Solomon. He used it to combat magicians and to dispel demons.”

  She pulled out a photo. Certainly enough, it was a staff with crisscrossed serpents, except made of brass, not coated in dull black. And the serpent heads faced each other, instead of looking up and forward, as in his dream. Then again, Kane remembered how the serpentine aspects of the ASPs wound around the forearms of the Nephilim as they donned their armor.

  “Dispel demons,” Kane repeated. “Like Archons?”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of work to correlate demonic and godly mythology into what we know about the Annunaki and others, such as the Tuatha de Danann or Kakusa,” Brigid told him.

  “So, a staff owned by Solomon ends up in the hands of a man named Solomon Kane, and now the damned stick ends up in my dreams,” he mused. “Think we’re off to Africa soon?”

  Brigid was about to speak when the comm-link on her desk beeped to life. “This is Bry. You and Kane better get here.”

  She motioned for Kane to put his plate on. Bry repeated his message.

  “What’s up?” Kane asked.

  “A new mat-trans station opened up on our grid,” Bry told them. “And get this....”

  “It’s in Africa?” Kane interjected.

  “Spoilsport,” Bry replied. “Get down here.”

  Kane smirked. “Time to suit up, Baptiste. We’re going traveling.”

  Chapter 4

  Lomon had managed to reroute the video feed from the security cameras to the teleporter chamber so that he and Nathan Longa wouldn’t need to worry about being surprised by a sudden breakthrough. As strong as the horrific olitiau seemed to be, they were barely doing any damage to the thick double doors that sealed off the underground quarters of the base. They were frustrated, and had been joined by at least four new creatures, who showed no signs of having incurred small-arms fire.

  While Lomon did this, Nathan perused the various electronics on the consoles, discovering an intercom in the process. He examined it, not certain whether getting on the horn would actually bring help or expose them to new problems and horrors. As it was, he didn’t touch a dial. If he opened communication, especially without conferring with Lomon, chances were he’d catch a headful of bullets.

  “I’ve found a communication link,” Nathan said. “Not radio based...”

  “Probably through the central computer system on this,” Lomon replied. “The GUI front page hints that this is on a much larger network.”

  Nathan nodded. Communications were limited. Hard land lines were vulnerable to sabotage, and the earthquakes of the megacull in 2001 had shaken the whole planet, isolating large regions. Zambia and Harare were relatively well off because the border they shared was uninterrupted. The rest of the continent of Africa might have been scoured from the surface of the Earth for all they knew. Indeed, except for waves of broken mountains and barren wilderness, there was little to see in the territories held by roving bands of maniacs.

  “It hints at a larger network, but are we still connected?” Nathan asked. “Otherwise, we turn on the radio, we’ll just end up talking to nothing.”

  Lomon frowned. “Then coming down here was a waste of time, and I don’t think that your stick is a time waster.”

  Nathan looked at the staff. “You’ve got a point.”

  The controls on the intercom blinked, catching their attention.

  “Incoming signal,” Lomon murmured. “Did you turn anything on?”

  “Nope. But they could know that we’re here simply because you’ve tried to access the interface for the transporter,” Nathan suggested.

  “Fair enough,” Lomon said. “You want to take this?”

  “You’re in charge here,” he conceded.

  Lomon picked up the microphone. “This is Captain Aaron Lomon, Zambian militia. Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Donald Bry of Cerberus redoubt,” a voice answered. “We detected your station coming online”

  “How long have you been debating talking to us?” Lomon asked.

  There was a chuckle. “Long enough to make first contact.”

  “Who is ‘we,’ pardon my grammar,” Lomon pressed.

  “Cerberus redoubt is a fairly good sized facility with a large staff,” Bry responded. “What inspired you to start the computers?”

  “We’re pretty desperate,” Lomon told him. “The upper levels of this facility are under siege by...an unusual enemy. I was hoping for a back
door, and my friend here stumbled on this chamber.”

  “How many people are there with you?” Bry asked.

  “Myself and three others,” Lomon said. “And there’s about seven to twelve outside.”

  “What exactly are outside?” Bry inquired.

  “Can you take a look at the video feed?” Nathan asked, leaning in toward the microphone. “Because if we described it, you’d think we were nuts.”

  “Give me a minute,” Bry answered.

  Lomon nodded to the newcomer from Harare. “Good idea, Nathan.”

  A moment later, they heard the hiss of Bry’s reaction to the olitiau at the door.

  “Okay, you don’t see that every day,” he said aloud.

  “Got any help for us?” Nathan pleaded.

  “All right, give me one minute,” he responded. “I’m synchronizing your mat trans to ours, since you don’t appear to have a working pass code into the system.”

  “You pulling us out?” Lomon asked. “If so, I’m going to call the rest of my men in here.”

  “We’re sending a support team to you,” Bry replied. He leaned away for a moment, then returned. “Three people will be coming through.”

  “There used to be over a dozen of us,” Lomon stressed. “You won’t even be doubling our forces.”

  A new voice broke over the line. “Trust me, we’ll be ready for whatever those things are.”

  With those words, Nathan went stiff, eyes wide.

  Lomon leaned back and looked to the younger man. “What?”

  “That voice. I know it,” Nathan said numbly. “Or maybe the staff knows it.”

  Within moments, the hexagonal plates on the floor of the chamber, the mat trans as Bry had called it, began to power up. A mist began building up in the chamber, a plasmalike spill of energy that represented the power of a nuclear reactor splitting open a channel through time and space.

  “That stick better have picked a goddamned superhero,” Lomon muttered. Even so, he edged closer to the big wood-and-steel rifle leaning against the control console. “Otherwise, we’re opening the doors to a nightmare.”

  As the energy wave built up, three figures appeared within the mist. All were tall, the shortest of them eye to eye with the nearly six foot Lomon, the other two even larger. Nathan’s vision cleared, or the trio sharpened more into reality, and he saw that the largest of the three was a black man, lighter in skin tone than Lomon and his fellow Zambians, well over six feet tall, with his brawny frame squeezed into a body-hugging black top and matching cargo pants.

  The second man was a couple inches taller than Lomon, approximately six-one, and while strong looking, was composed of lean, packed muscle denoting grace, as well as strength. Steely blue-gray eyes immediately sized up Lomon and Nathan, then locked on to the blackened staff. Whereas Nathan had felt stricken when’d he heard that voice, this man shared the same horrified recognition of the odd object.

  The last of the three, in terms of height, was a beautiful woman with hair the colors of a blazing sunset, and sharp emerald eyes that scanned the room as if she were memorizing the world about her, seeking out every nuance, drinking in her environment. Both the second man and the woman were whites, not rare on the African continent, but given the relative lightness of the largest man’s skin, none of them hailed from this side of an ocean.

  All three were dressed alike. The skintight tops seemed to move and flex like second skins, and disappeared down into the waistbands of battle dress uniform pants festooned with pockets. The two men had strange devices on their right forearms, slender and relatively low profile, but carrying an edge of deadly menace. Lomon could make out the blunt noses of barely exposed firearms barrels, as opposed to the woman with her more traditionally holstered pistol. The three all carried futuristic-looking but compact submachine guns, but these were slung and out of the way.

  When they arrived, they had all made certain to show up with empty hands, palms raised politely and shown to the defenders of the Victoria Falls facility. They went to the door of the chamber and opened it. It hissed with the sound of its seal breaking, and the three people were soon among them. Lomon had joked about summoning a superhero. The three of them in their second-skin tops and gloves and belts of equipment reminded the Zambian national guardsman of an old vid of a well-equipped hero in black armor.

  “Did someone have an infestation problem?” The black man spoke up, his voice deep, rumbling, with a hint of humor to allay any fears.

  “Yes,” Lomon replied. “I’m Aaron Lomon. This is Nathan Longa.”

  Grant nodded as he stepped forward, offering his hand. “I’m Grant. This is Kane. That is Brigid Baptiste.”

  Kane stared at Nathan and the staff, his attention rapt. Nathan returned the scrutiny. Both of them looked incredulous, as if they wondered if they had stumbled back into a dream despite being awake.

  “Just the three of you for the monsters outside?” Lomon asked, turning his attention to the more loquacious arrivals, Grant and Brigid.

  The red-haired woman walked to the monitor displaying the creatures gathered about the doors. She leaned in close, unfurling a pair of wire-framed glasses to peer more clearly at them. “Given the firepower that Kane and Grant bring along, we’ve been able to hold our own against most menaces.”

  “Most menaces,” Lomon repeated. “Like six-foot winged gorillas?”

  Grant peered over Brigid’s shoulder. The droop of his gunslinger’s mustache increased the pensive quality of his frown as he studied the creatures. “Sure as hell ain’t no pterodactyl or pteranodon.”

  Brigid shook her head. “They definitely have a more mammalian vibe to them. Any idea what provoked them?”

  Nathan Longa finally broke his silence, his voice soft and shy at first. “This probably did.”

  Lomon, Grant and Brigid turned toward him, and noted the staff he held in his hand.

  “Is that Nehushtan?” Kane finally asked. “It doesn’t look as if it’s made of brass.”

  “Brass was also the alleged color of orichalcum, the wonder metal of Atlantis,” Brigid replied. She took a step toward it. “This could be like the secondary alloys derived from it.”

  “The stable stuff that doesn’t blow up when sunlight hits it,” Kane mused. “But this is all black.”

  “So...you’re the rightful owner of this stick,” Nathan said. He didn’t look as if he was ready to surrender the staff, and Kane didn’t seem in a hurry to take it up.

  “Except for a dream or vision, I never even knew this existed,” Kane returned. “Why...don’t you just hang on to it for a bit?”

  Nathan looked from him to the pair of snake heads. “Sounds fair.”

  “Really?” Brigid asked. “You’re not curious?”

  “I’ve had an ancient artifact or two entrusted to me before, remember,” Kane replied. “Not really that keen on them. Almost more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “What’s going on? Holy...” said a voice from the doorway.

  Lomon had to respect the calm with which Grant and Kane reacted to the arrival of Jonas and Shuka. His two fellow guards had shown up, and while the newcomers from Cerberus had appeared to notice them even in the hall, neither showed surprise at their arrival. The nonchalance they displayed was almost welcoming, though they kept wary eyes on them.

  “We found a back door,” Lomon told the pair. “Meet Shuka and Jonas, he said to the others.”

  The two guards nodded a greeting. Kane and Grant shook their hands, while Brigid seemed torn between observing the creatures on the video feed and the staff itself. She touched it, and Nathan allowed her to hold it.

  “Lightweight alloy,” she mused. “The coating is dark. Some sort of carbon that’s scratch resistant. Like an insulation around the staff itself.”

  “What is oric
halcum?” Nathan asked.

  “It’s either a true element on its own, or an alloy of some type. You know about the heavier metals, the radioactive ores?” Brigid asked.

  He nodded.

  “Orichalcum itself, according to legend, is a mystical metal forged by the gods,” Brigid continued. “One can assume the magic involved is actually the technology of either the Annunaki or the Tuatha de Danann, or they both discovered it.”

  “The gods are real?” Shuka asked in surprise, his attention drawn from the introductions just completed. “Oh, you said Annunaki. I thought you meant Anansi.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Nancy were real, either,” Grant interjected.

  “Anansi,” Shuka repeated. “He is son of Nyame, the god of the sky, and he owns all stories.”

  “Are those doors holding?” Jonas asked. He gripped his rifle a little tighter, his knuckles whitening with his tension. “I’d hate to interrupt mythology 101 for actually solving our problems.”

  “He’s right,” Kane agreed. “Grant, Baptiste—”

  “Take a look here,” Brigid interrupted.

  The three from Cerberus huddled over the monitors, speaking in low tones to each other, three close allies who were used to each other’s counsel and conversation as they examined the demeanor of their foes.

  “What are these things called?” Brigid stopped to ask.

  Shuka spoke up. “Those things are new as hell to us, but they resemble mythic creatures known as the olitiau, great man-eating bats.”

  “Olitiau,” Brigid mused. Her emerald eyes sparkled with recognition of the obscure term. “Wouldn’t those...”

  “Yes. Allegedly from Cameroon, much farther north,” Shuka answered. “But who is to say that these things never migrated?”

  “I’d have thought that Zambians would identify those creatures as kongamato,” Brigid replied.

  He shrugged. “The past couple hundred years have given us time to do some exploration of the swamps it was supposed to inhabit. People who investigated sightings determined that they were saddle-billed storks.”