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forewarned."
Kane and Tanvirah moved carefully along the wide passageway beneath great
curving ribs of metal that supported the high rock roof. Traversing the
twenty-foot-wide corridor was slow work due to the tons of stone and twisted
metal that had fallen from the ceiling and turned the passage into an obstacle
course.
Kane could never walk down it without remembering the long-ago dawn when he
was awakened by a series of loud explosions and rolling echoes. He recalled
with unpleasant clarity how he ran out of his quarters wearing only beard
stubble and into a choking cloud of dust and smoke that billowed in from the
entrance.
The entire mountain peak shuddered with violent volcanic convulsions that
shook loose avalanches of granite, concrete and steel support beams. Kane
remembered trying to get to the operations center, when a boiling blizzard of
dust and stone chips came down on him. He had turned and begun to run, but his
lungs became clogged with grit.
Nearly blind, succumbing to a coughing fit, he dived
68 JAMES AXLER
into the first open doorway and barely avoided being buried by the collapse of
the ceiling. Domi had rendered him aid
"Kane?"
Tanvirah's querulous voice brought him back to the present. He turned toward
her. "What?"
"Do you really live here?" Judging by the tone of her voice, she found sad
beyond words the concept that the place truly was his home.
Kane carefully considered his words before answering. Sometimes the sense of
alienation, of isolation, was sleeping within him, and then he was reasonably
content to be separated from the society of those who he barely believed were
bis fellows. But sometimes the ache of loneliness, of futility he saw in his
future, was so acute it possessed him utterly. During those periods, he found
the notion of walking off the edge of the plateau congenial.
Brusquely he said, "The rent is cheap enough."
He continued on. The scattering rubble became less dense the farther they
walked. By the time they reached the entrance to the operations center, the
floor was fairly clean of debris.
Kane fumbled for the light switch just inside the open door and thumbed it
into the on position. Tan-virah wasn't able to bite back a gasp of dismay at
what she saw. Naked light bulbs dangled from a crisscross network of wires and
cords crudely affixed to the high ceiling. The vanadium alloy walls were
smeared with scorch marks and perforated with bullet holes.
TALON AND FANG 69
The two people stood at the open doorway of the central control complex, the
command center, essentially the brain of the Cerberus installation. A long
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room with high, vaulted ceilings, the walls were lined by consoles of dials,
switches and readout screens. A double row of computer stations formed an
aisle, but no circuits clicked, no drive units hummed, nor did any indicator
lights flash.
All the consoles had been blasted into twisted masses of metal, plastic and
broken glass. Every piece of equipment had been shot, smashed and torn. There
didn't appear to be a single intact microprocessor within any of the computer
casings or chassis.
Through an open doorway at the far end of the center, in a separate
antechamber, stood the redoubt's gateway unit. The brown armaglass walls atop
the elevated emitter array housing gleamed dully. As the first fully debugged
matter-transfer inducer built after the prototypes, it served as the basic
template for all the others that followed.
Most of the gateways were located in Totality Concept redoubts, subterranean
military complexes scattered over the face of America. Even during the height
of the Totality Concept researches, only a handful of people knew the redoubts
even existed, and only half a handful knew all their locations. The knowledge
had been lost after the nukecaust, rediscovered a century later, then
jealously, ruthlessly guarded. There were, however, gateway units in other
countries Russia, Mongolia, Tibet, England, South America.
70 JAMES AXLER
But not all installations containing a gateway were connected to the Totality
Concept. The gateways mass-produced as modular units were sent all over the
world. Not even Lakesh knew how many were manufactured or to where they were
shipped.
Kane bowed and made an elaborate "after you" gesture. "Find a seat, if you've
a mind to, Miss Singh."
Not moving, Tanvirah seemed to have trouble speaking. When she did, her voice
was a hoarse whisper, full of pain. "So this is where the Consolidation War,
the final war, began."
Kane regarded her with a slit-eyed glare, but he didn't refute or rebuke her.
In most ways, the important ways, she was right, even though her definition of
"final war" was open to challenge.
It had been almost twenty-nine years since Sam, the so-called imperator, had
first appeared and factional-ized the nine barons and, in the process brought
a new order to the face of the world. The ancient Roman Empire was governed by
a senate, but ruled by an emperor, sometimes known as an imperator. This
person served as the final arbiter in matters pertaining to government. The
baronies acted dependency, unified in name only. The arrival of the imperator
changed all of that.
During a council of the barons in Front Royal, Baron Cobalt put forth the
proposal to establish a central ruling consortium. In effect, the barons would
become viceroys, plenipotentiaries in their own territo-
TALON AND FANG 71
ries. They were accustomed to acting as the viceroys of the Archon
Directorate, so the actual proposal didn't offend them.
Each of the fortress-cities with its individual, allegedly immortal god-king
was supposed to be independent. Cooperation among the barons was grudging
despite their shared goal of a unified world.
They perceived humanity in general as either servants or as living storage
vessels for transplanted organs and fresh genetic material.
The barons were less in favor of the Baron Cobalt's proposal than his intent
to be recognized as the im-perator. However, they really didn't have much of a
choice Cobalt had established a monopoly over the medical treatments the
barons needed to reverse their autoimmune weaknesses and stay alive.
Because of those congenital metabolic deficiencies, the barons lived
insulated, isolated lives. The theatrical trappings many of them adopted not
only added to their semidivine mystique, but protected them from
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contamination, both psychological and physical.
Although all the hybrids were extremely long-lived, cellular and metabolic
deterioration was part and parcel of what they were hybrids of human and
Archon DNA. Just like the caste system in place in the villes, the hybrids
observed a similar one, although it had little to do with parentage. If the
first phase of human evolution produced a package of adaptations for a
particular and distinct way of life, the second phase was an effort to control
that way of life by controlling the
72 JAMES AXLER
environment. The focus switched to cultural rather than physical evolution.
The hybrids, at least by their way of thinking, represented the final phase of
human evolution. They created wholesale, planned alterations in living
organisms and were empowered to control not only their environment, but also
the evolution of other species. At the pinnacle of that evolutionary
achievement were the barons.
When Baron Cobalt dangled the medical treatments before his fellow barons like
a carrot on a stick rather than shared them freely, war was the inevitable
result particularly after Sam hijacked not only
Cobalt's plan, but the title of imperator. A series of battles began, known as
the Imperator Wars. The conflict was short-lived and ended with the siege of
Cobaltville and the ousting of its baron. But peace didn't come with the
imposition of imperial rule. To the contrary, it sparked dozens of smaller
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