“What is it?” Lakesh breathed, his words just about audible. “What have they found?”
“Do you see it?” Kane asked over the speakers, ignoring or not hearing Lakesh’s query.
“Yes,” Lakesh replied instantly, “but what is it?”
“Ullikummis’s home,” Kane stated matter-of-factly, his words somehow lacking the impossible gravity with which Lakesh expected they would be expressed.
Lakesh stared at the image from the satellite feed for a long moment, unaware that he was holding his breath. “Are you there now?” he asked finally.
* * *
SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES away, just off the coast of what had once been New England, two figures skulked through the throne room of Ullikummis. Crouching together in the shadows of the stone castle, the two figures could not have been more different.
The first was Kane, a powerfully built man in his early thirties, battle hardened with a tension in his body that came from years of combat readiness. A dark beard shaded his chin and jowls, while his dark hair had grown long, reaching past his collar in trailing curlicues like snakes’ tails. Kane was an ex-Magistrate turned warrior for the rebellious operation known as Cerberus. His clothes looked worn and dirty, and his denim jacket was frayed at the edges where the cuffs and hem had begun to unravel. There was something else about him, too, a bony protrusion that stabbed out from his left eye like a half-buried seashell on the beach, arcing down his cheek and marring his otherwise handsome features.
“Yeah, we’re here,” Kane said quietly, his voice picked up by the hidden Commtact implant he wore. He checked the open window as he spoke, peering out into the dark, uninviting waves that crashed through the narrow channels that cut their labyrinthine way through the island from the sea. Those would be hell to navigate, he realized.
Crouching beside Kane was the shorter figure of Balam, humanoid but not human, with a bulbous head and black eyes like limpid pools of water. Hairless, Balam’s skin was a pallid gray-white, the color a human might associate with seasickness. In contrast to Kane’s tattered combat clothes, Balam wore a long, shapeless robe that reached almost to his ankles. The robe was woven of a soft material and dyed the indigo color of a summer night’s sky. It had no pattern beyond the weave itself, but close to the collar, a darker patch showed around a frayed section where the robe had been torn during a scuffle. The dark stain was blood; Balam had been shot in the chest six days before when his charge, the foster girl known as Little Quav, had been taken from his protection by Brigid Haight.
Now Balam had joined Kane in his quest to find Quav and Brigid. The two of them had discovered this place utilizing an alien artifact in Balam’s possession, a chair that could navigate through space.
Balam watched Kane as the taller man walked warily through the empty throne room, discussing with his colleagues over the Commtact.
“We’re going to do a recon,” Kane explained to Lakesh. “I’ll have to get back to you.”
With that, he cut off the communication link, and Balam was suddenly aware that Kane was staring at him, blue-gray eyes piercing into his.
“How is your sight, friend Kane?” Balam asked, his voice reedy and eerily alien in pitch and delivery.
The thing that lay in Kane’s flesh seemed to have disrupted his vision, throwing him into bouts of temporary blindness, often accompanied by vivid hallucinations of another life—the life of his foe, Ullikummis. These problems were exacerbated by teleportation travel, be it through interphaser or the more traditional mat-trans, and Balam had speculated it was linked to the breakdown and re-forming of Kane’s molecules at a quantum level, that shock event somehow triggering the stone fleck that had become embedded in Kane’s face. The problem was so serious that, when they had met up earlier that day, Balam had proposed a mind-link that would grant Kane a clarity of vision, albeit one that was alien to his normal perception. The mind-link operated by proximity, which meant it would fail if Kane and Balam became too far separated. Even now, Kane was utilizing Balam’s link to see more clearly, to overcome the effects that the shard of rock was generating in his own vision. However, how well that was working was anyone’s guess—Kane tended to play these things close to his chest.
“I’m okay for now,” Kane replied noncommittally. “Let’s just keep moving.”
Without waiting for Balam to answer, Kane led the way through the chilly throne room, commanding the Sin Eater automatic pistol he had hidden in a wrist holster into his hand. The Sin Eater had once been the official side arm of the Magistrate Division, an automatic handblaster that folded in on itself so that it could be stored in a bulky holster strapped just above the user’s wrist. Unfolding to its full extension, the automatic pistol was a little under fourteen inches in length and equipped with 9 mm rounds. Kane’s holster reacted to a specific flinch movement of his wrist tendons, powering the pistol automatically into his hand. The trigger had no guard; the necessity had never been foreseen that any kind of safety features would ever be required since the Magistrates were considered infallible. Thus, if the user’s index finger was crooked at the time it reached his hand, the pistol would begin firing automatically. Though no longer a Magistrate himself, Kane had retained his weapon from his days in Cobaltville, and he still felt at his most comfortable with the weapon in his hand. It was an extension to his body that seemed second nature now, like the comforting weight of a wristwatch. By contrast, Balam was unarmed, his brief use of a blaster indirectly causing him to get shot.
The cold throne room was empty, and despite the sounds of the crashing waves and the caws of gulls from its open window, it seemed somehow abandoned to Kane. He had taken the lead because of his experience in the field—Kane was a soldier while Balam was, if push came to shove, nothing more than a glorified negotiator. Furthermore, going back to his days as a hard-contact Magistrate, Kane had been infamous for his so-called point-man sense, a near-psychic ability to detect danger before it happened. While that perhaps seemed superhuman to many casual observers, it was in fact a combination of Kane’s finely tuned five senses, creating an awareness of his surroundings that was almost Zenlike in its comprehension.
Right now, Kane didn’t detect anything much in the room, and he swiftly made his way out through the open doorway and into the corridor that lay beyond. Like the throne room, the corridor was empty, the stone walls cold and echoing the nearby waves as they crashed against the rough sides of the fortress island.
It was a strange feeling, walking through that corridor. On the one hand it was recognizably a corridor to Kane’s eyes. And yet, on the other hand, it also had the properties of something eroded through the ages, weathered rock ripped through by shearing winds or surging water, cutting pathways through it over the aeons. It felt cold, lifeless, charmless. Whatever had crafted this, it lacked any sense of artistry, any desire for anything beyond function. The floor was hard and rough and
unstable, the coolness of the stone so cold that it penetrated the soles of Kane’s scuffed leather boots. Window slits were hacked into the walls here and there, haphazard and open to the elements, green moss growing along their sills where the seawater had pooled.
Kane continued down the corridor on silent tread, efficiently peering left and right into open doorways that led off the tunnellike passageway. Balam kept ten paces behind him, trotting along as lightly as possible to keep his own steps quiet. Kane peered over his shoulder, checking that the diminutive alien was keeping pace.
“Don’t get too far behind,” Kane instructed in a whisper. “If I have to shoot something, I’m going to want you close by. Or something bad will happen.”
Balam looked at Kane apologetically. “I’m sorry, Kane,” he whispered. “I’m unused to the application of stealth in this manner.”
Kane nodded. “Just don’t get shot if it kicks off,” he warned, and then he continued on his way, hurrying down the corridor at a jog.
Following the ex-Magistrate, Balam was searching the vast fortress in his own way. A telepath, Balam had nurtured an especially close bond with his foster child, the missing Quav. He had sensed