Immortal Twilight (21 page)

“Mr. Philboyd, what is it?” Lakesh asked, scrambling over to the taller man’s desk. “Do we have success?”

Brewster Philboyd self-consciously adjusted his glasses to cover his embarrassment before he spoke. “We do. I’ve located the airship just to the east of the Mojave. It’s well hidden—they’re using some kind of motion camouflage with a phase interrupter, which, in layman’s terms, means it appears to flicker in and out of existence. Cameras checked over this area three times without spotting a thing.”

Lakesh leaned a little closer to Philboyd’s computer screen, where the satellite image had been paused, identifying the cigar shape of the airship they were searching for. Kane, Grant and Brigid joined the two men at the terminal, examining the satellite image for themselves.

“How did you spot it this time?” Kane asked.

Philboyd shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.” As if to prove his point, he toggled the image back to the live feed. It appeared exactly the same but the airship was no longer visible. However, there were some telltale signs if one knew where to look—a hint of the great craft’s shadow could be seen on a grassy area visible at the edge of a small cluster of buildings.

“What’s the delay on this?” Brigid asked.

“Live feed,” Philboyd confirmed. “So, no more than four seconds, max. It’s as live as it’s going to be with satellite bounce.”

“And we think it’s still there?” Kane queried.

“The ghost shadow indicates that something is still there and backtracking shows it’s been static a few hours,” Philboyd confirmed. “The only way to be one hundred percent certain is to put a man on the ground.”

“Exactly what I had in mind,” Kane assured him.

Seconds later, Kane, Grant and Brigid were running out the door and making their way to the docking bay where the Mantas were stored. Brigid had memorized the location coordinates where the airship had been spied, committing it to her incredible eidetic memory in a single glance. Lakesh sent a message ahead of them to get the Mantas prepped and ready for takeoff, as well as sending a full team to provide the weaponry and other materiel they would require for the mission. They were on their way.

Chapter 23

The passage of the Mantas was marked by the explosive gasp of the air-spike engines as they tore across the Mojave Desert toward the tiny settlement that Brewster Philboyd had located on the satellite image. Both Mantas had been fitted with one additional feature—a corded harpoon of the type used by ancient whaling vessels, located in a fixed unit on the undercarriage. The harpoon could be launched from the cockpit control panel, utilizing a canister of compressed air to give sufficient thrust to outrace the Mantas for a few seconds. They were limited by their targeting features, which was to say there were none—Kane or Grant could launch their harpoon only once each and, in essence, direct it using the nose of the Manta itself, firing the weapon in the exact same direction as they were flying at the time. The idea was that these harpoons could be used to pierce and tow the airship from any volatile area, but neither man held out much hope for the tactic, partly because there had simply been no time to test the harpoons.

The outlander settlement was made up of a dozen or so properties located close to the ghost town of Oatman.

Piloting the lead craft, Kane spit out a curse as he spotted the town. He may not have Brigid’s photographic memory but he could recognize a place he had seen a photo of. This was the spot—the white-painted houses with their sandy pathways, the single-track road dusted with sand, the strip of green at the easternmost edge where the airship had been flickering on Brewster’s screen. Oh, this was the place, all right. Just one problem—the airship was nowhere to be seen.

Occupying the seat behind Kane in the tight cockpit, Brigid Baptiste peered out the window. “Are we there yet?” she asked as she heard Kane cuss.

“Sure are,” Kane told her as he slowed the Manta and began to descend. “But I can’t see any sign of our supersoldiers.”

The whole journey through the air had been completed in less than two hours, from takeoff at the Bitterroot Mountains to arrival here on the eastern edge of the Mojave.

“Careful, Kane,” Brigid warned. “That camouflage technology they have rigged up could be playing havoc with your sensors.”

“Sensors is one thing,” Kane agreed, “but even trying to eyeball the airship, I’m coming up blank.”

Brigid peered out the cockpit, scanning the horizon as she confirmed their position. Kane was right: there appeared to be no evidence that the airship had been here. Skipping any discussion with her partner, Brigid engaged her Commtact and requested an update from Brewster Philboyd at the satellite monitoring station. “Has our bogey moved in the last however-long-it’s-been, Brewster?”

“Negative on that,” Philboyd told her. “I can’t see the airship but I can see its shadow. And your Mantas are just coming into view.”

“We’re just reaching the spot now,” Kane confirmed, taking over the conversation from Brigid. “No shadows here. Can you give me a wider scan of the area, Brew? See if you can pick up any anomalies that might be our target?”

“Roger that, Kane, I’ll see what I can do.”

Beneath his flight helmet, Kane ground his teeth as he waited, eyeing the ground with annoyance. The airship was not there; he was sure of it. Over their linked Commtacts, Grant was saying something similar, and Kane defused his obvious anger by confirming that Brewster Philboyd was checking into it back at Cerberus.

Below, the settlement looked normal enough. Well-kept houses painted in pale colors to reflect the punishing brightness of the desert sun. Roads nudged with sand where the desert continued its encroachment, inch by inch, speck by speck. But there was something else, something that nagged at Kane in the back of his mind. Despite the unusual sight of the Mantas in the skies, the streets were utterly empty. No one had come rushing out of their property to see what all the noise was about. No one was working in their garden or out buying food and just happened to look up. It was deserted, empty, devoid of all life. And Kane didn’t like it.

“Whole town’s dead,” Kane said.

“How’s that?” Brigid asked.

“Check for yourself,” Kane instructed as he did a low swoop of the main street. “Despite the noise we’re kicking up, no one’s come out to investigate. Like there’s nobody left to come out to play.”

“That is strange,” Brigid mused. “Kane, what if something happened to them? Do you think...?”

“Demented supersoldiers who get a kick out of killing people in strange ways,” Kane said, “coupled with a ghost town that doesn’t even have a roof tile out of place. Yeah, you bet
‘I think.’
I think a lot, Baptiste, and none of it good.”

“Bring us down,” Brigid instructed.

“You read my mind,” Kane told her, though perhaps it was not the most tactful choice of phrase given their recent experience.

* * *

K
ANE
LANDED
CLOSE
to the strip of garden, while Grant kept airborne, circling the little cluster of buildings and keeping a close vigil on the skies for any sign of their target. The cockpit of Kane’s Manta was open almost as soon as he landed, and he and Brigid leaped out, blasters in hand, ready for anything.

The settlement was colored by the whining sounds of the desert winds in the distance, a sound like emptiness. Stepping from the sloped wing of the Manta, Kane eyed the nearest of the buildings, waiting for signs of movement. None came.

Brigid called to Kane as he began to trudge over the street. “Kane, the garden—look at it.”

Kane turned, examining the strip of grass and trees more closely than he had when he had exited his craft. His point-man sense had not suggested anything out of order, just some trees, flowers, a handful of statues arranged amid the greenery. But as he looked again, Kane saw that the statues were far too lifelike; they looked almost like actual people, unclothed and posing as if waiting for a photo to be taken.

Brigid was already at the garden’s edge, pushing open the gate. The green space was surrounded by a decorative fence made of metal arches that reached midway to Brigid’s hips, the gate just slightly taller, causing her to dip down a little to work the catch.

The statue people waited as Brigid entered, none of them moving. Kane was behind her now, his Sin Eater in hand, scanning back and forth for any signs of an ambush. “Be careful,” he warned.

Brigid had her own weapon, the trusty TP-9, held warily in her right hand, carefully using it in time with her own line of sight as she watched the static figures. They stood on the grass, barefoot and mostly naked, a few wearing slips of material draped artistically around their motionless forms. They were neither hiding nor moving, but just stood waiting in their little groups, young and old, adults and children, a monument to the varieties of the human body.

There were fountains here, too, simple monuments made of stone or sheet metal, simply tooled into shape by a deft hand. The fountains tripped musically on specially arranged surfaces, the water playing songs that rippled like moonlight on the ocean.

Another noise came from the edge of the garden and the two Cerberus warriors spun, prepped for an attack. A Jack Russell dog, two feet from muzzle to tail, dirt and leaves caught up in its tangled fur, came bounding out of the cover of bushes, something caught in its mouth. It stopped before Brigid as she eased her finger off the trigger, dropping the thing it held at her feet. It was a stick, and it was almost as long as the dog was.

Brigid leaned down, holding her open hand out to the dog and letting it sniff her. “Who do you belong to, boy? Where’s your master?”

The dog yipped once before scampering back to the dropped stick and running in a circle on the spot, almost chasing its own tail.

“The mutt wants to play,” Kane said as he strode up to join his partner.

Brigid looked at it. “Looks pretty well kept, but he needs a bath,” she observed. “I’d guess he’s been forgotten about for the last few days, like his master went away.”

Kane nodded in agreement. “You reckon he belongs to the Dorians?”

“No,” Brigid replied. “He belongs to one of these people, the folks who used to live in this little spit of a town.” As she said it, she was gesturing to the nudes around her where they stood statue-still. Kane looked at them with new comprehension.

“You think they’re...?” he began and stopped, realizing that she was right. They were people, living people, trapped in time. “What happened to them?” Kane asked.

“Something bad,” Brigid replied as she padded over to the nearest group of “statues,” the eager dog following along at her heels. “The Dorians have exhibited the power of remote mind control. I suspect they used that here, to take control of this settlement.”

Doing a quick head count, Kane figured there to be about thirty people in total standing in the garden, including eight kids and a couple of teens. “Dozen houses, thirty people,” he calculated. “Matches pretty well. This is probably everyone who lived here. Turned into living statues.”

Brigid had placed her hand to the throat of one of the “statues,” feeling for a pulse. After a moment she regretfully removed her fingers and tried the next one to the same result. “Not living,” she told Kane. “Maybe when they were put here, but they’re dead now.”

Kane’s eyes roved over the nude figures. For the most part, they still looked alive. There were no signs of decay, and their eyes remained open and glistening. A few of them smelled a little off, like milk on the turn. “They died with their eyes open,” he said, sickened. “Locked in place like this, unable to do anything but die.”

Brigid swallowed against a throat gone suddenly dry. “We should check them all,” she said, “just in case. There may be some survivors.”

But there weren’t. Fifteen minutes to check each of the posed figures confirmed that. It was a travesty, as heart-wrenching as any the Cerberus warriors had seen.

* * *

K
ANE
AND
B
RIGID
were making their way back to the Manta when the call came over their Commtacts. Brewster Philboyd had found the airship again.

“I backtracked and reversed the search parameters,” he explained, “to try to track the wind pattern left by the airship’s passage.”

“That’s great work, Brewster,” Kane said bitterly. “But where is it?”

“Sorry,” Philboyd apologized, “got a little too excited about it all, I guess. The airship is about sixty miles to your west, moving on an almost straight westerly course.”

Linked in on the Commtact exchange, Brigid was already calculating the craft’s location. “It’s heading for Luilekkerville,” she said with a gasp.

“Correction,” Philboyd told her, “it’s already there.”

Brigid slipped in behind Kane in the cockpit as he slunk into his seat and adjusted his flight helmet. A moment later the bronze-winged craft was taking to the air once more, joining Grant’s matching vehicle as they sped toward the West Coast and the missing airship.

* * *

T
HE
AIRSHIP
CARVED
its slow path above the towering walls of Luilekkerville, drifting ominously toward the sinking evening sun. No music blared from its speakers this time; it simply glided across the blue-pink sky like a scar, some mighty, silent predator looming above the stunned populace.

On board, Hugh Danner rose from his golden throne and paced to the side door. The interior of the craft was still rudimentary—Algernon had a beautiful design sketched in his notes, but he was easily distracted into other projects and, what with Hugh’s request that he look into that atom splitter bomb and the subsequent trouble he had had sourcing fissionable material, the upshot was that the inside of the gondola still looked more like a submarine hull than the gentleman’s club he had in mind. Thus, for now at least the golden throne that Antonia had repainted would have to suffice.

Antonia and Cecily made do, using a low bench secured to the hill to gaze through the windows—open and not yet featuring any glass—at the massing crowds in the streets below.

“They love us,” Antonia said excitedly, “and they fear us. They can’t wait to see what we are!”

Up front of the hanging metal gondola, in a lower section separated by a short ladder, Algernon was standing at the pilot’s podium controlling the airship. The noise of the rotor hardly reached all the way here, leaving the pilot’s cubbyhole ominously silent. “We’re coming up on the center now, old man,” Algernon called back, his refined voice carrying through the passenger cabin behind him.

Hugh nodded, an alligator’s smile fixed on his lips as he opened the passenger door. The wind buffeted against him immediately, but Hugh merely stood there, looking down at the ville below, his dark mane of hair whipping about his head. “For your entertainment, fine ladies and gentlemen of my acquaintance,” he began in an announcer’s voice, “I present a play. A play about the ultimate war—the war between man and his nature. If you cast your eyes below, the play shall begin, and you shall see the opening act, where man fights his inner beast.”

Cecily and Antonia applauded delicately, silk gloves whispering against one another in delight.

Then Hugh stepped out of the open passenger door and strode onto the scaffold that waited beyond. The whole of the airship was caged in this scaffoldlike structure, a series of gangplanks and bridges that had been designed to hold the porcupine-like defense spikes in place. With perfect balance, Hugh paced out as far as he could go on the metal limb and spread his arms wide, his maroon coattails whipping about him.

Below the airship, hundreds of people had gathered to see what was happening. Their voices rose as they questioned each other, the sound drifting to the ears of the airship’s quartet of passengers.

“Coming up now,” Algernon called, bringing the dirigible to a halt above the towering cathedral in the center of Luilekkerville with its dominant red window located like some fearsome all-seeing eye. He flipped a switch on his control pedestal, powering the rotor blades down to hold the magnificent craft he had built from junk he’d found in the Panamint ruins in place.