Grailstone Gambit. James Axler

sunlight slipped over the top of the building and cast a shifting yellow halo on the road below. A thunder of drums, a rhythmic engine throb and sharp voices echoed between the walls of the concrete canyon. Kane crept closer to the cornice edge and peered through the rifle’s scope.

      Straight down the potholed street came the procession, and on either side milled the Farers and Roamers, lean people wearing rags, but their faces were those of predatory animals. They yelled and shouted and waved at the vehicle chugging slowly over the potholed blacktop. In a previous incarnation, some two centuries earlier, the long automobile had been a bright yellow Cadillac convertible. Garlands of artificial flowers festooned the bodywork, from the gleaming grillwork to the sharp tail fins. Four men marched beside the vehicle, hammering on drums made of old metal containers.

      Although he had never seen him before, Kane had no problem identifying Baron Shuma. An enormous man stripped to the waist stood upright in the rear seat, his arms folded over his thick chest. His hairless head was small in proportion to his massive torso. He resembled a toad more than a lizard. His blunt-featured face was coated in overlapping scales of a dark gray-green. His nose was a blob, a lighter shade of gray. His pendulous lips drew back over yellowed teeth in a savage grin. His black-rimmed eyes glittered brightly even in the dim light.

      Kane recalled that Lakesh had speculated the scalies were the descendants of humans modified for war. Most likely the first generation were little more than expendable fighting machines, with their brains modified to ensure that they remained under the control of those guiding their actions.

      With a sudden surge of disgust, Kane realized that Shuma was under no one’s control. He made that very clear by parading his captive down the street in full view of his subjects.

      Grant lay spread-eagled on the broad hood of the Cadillac, arms and legs held at painful angles by taut lengths of rope. His olive-drab T-shirt was ripped and stained. Kane was unable to tell if the gleam on his brown-skinned body was from perspiration or blood.

      Grant was a big man with a heavy musculature. His black hair was sprinkled with gray at the temples. Beneath the fierce, down-sweeping mustache, black against the dark brown of his skin, his teeth were bared either in a silent snarl or a rictus of pain.

      Kane adjusted the scope and sighted through the lens, carefully pushing a cartridge home into the chamber, gauging the distance at 250 yards. He gave the small figure sitting hunched over in the back seat beside Shuma only a brief visual appraisal, dismissing him as a servant.

      His Commact buzzed and Domi’s voice whispered urgently, “Kane?”

      “Here.”

      “The car is about twenty yards from me…” Domi’s voice trailed off.

      “What is it?” Kane demanded impatiently.

      “Not sure…. I see something that—”

      The Commtact squirted out a burst of static and Kane squinted against the needle of pain boring into his skull. “Domi?”

      There was no reply.

      “Domi!”

      Nothing.

      He opened the channel to Brigid. “Baptiste, can you see Domi?”

      “No…why?”

      “She was cut off.”

      “Cut off how?”

      “How the hell do I know? That’s why I’m calling you.”

      “Do you think something has happened to her?”

      Kane inhaled a slow, thoughtful breath before answering, “I guess we’ll find out.”

      “That’s no answer,” came Brigid’s sharp, reproving response. “Until we know what’s happened to her, we should scrub the mission.”

      “There’s no time for that.”

      “Dammit, Kane—”

      Edwards’s voice blared through the comm unit. “Sir, I’ve got Shuma dead center. I haven’t heard from Domi.”

      Brady announced, “Commander, I just tried checking in with Domi, but she didn’t respond. Do we scrub?”

      “Stand by,” Kane said flatly. “Everybody, just stand by.”

      Brigid said curtly, breathlessly, “We need to pull back and regroup before—”

      “Shut up, Baptiste,” Kane snapped.

      The Cadillac lurched as the tires rolled into a rut and Shuma reached out a claw-tipped hand to steady himself. Kane settled the rubber-cushioned stock of the OICW into the hollow of his shoulder and held his breath. The skin between his shoulder blades seemed to tighten and the short hairs at the back of his neck tingled.

      He squeezed the trigger.

      Chapter 2

      When the crowd first glimpsed Shuma, a simultaneous roar erupted from every Farer and Roamer throat. All of Manhattan seemed to echo with it.

      Standing at the mouth of a litter-choked alley, Domi narrowed her ruby eyes and tugged the hood of her long coat farther over her face, casting it into shadow. She had visited the ruins of Newyork before, but back then it had been strictly a place of the dead. To see it filled with screaming, roaring people unnerved her.

      According to the intel briefing, people had been pouring into Newyork across the river for the past two years, coming from the distant Adirondacks and the barren lands south of the Atlantic seaboard. Domi recognized and could easily tell the difference between the Farers and the Roamers, even though they dressed alike.

      Farers were essentially nomads, a loosely knit conglomeration of wanderers, scavengers and self-styled salvage experts and traders. Their territory was the Midwest, so Farer presence in and around Newyork was very unusual.

      Roamers, on the other hand, were basically marauders, undisciplined bandit gangs who paid lip service to defying the ville governments as a justification for their depredations.

      The reports of both groups assembling in such great numbers on Manhattan Island was alarming enough to dispatch the Alpha Away Team from the Cerberus redoubt. They returned in full rout, beaten and bloody and minus of one of their members, a woman named Wright. She had been captured four days before by Shuma’s followers and all contact with her was lost.

      Activating her Commtact, Domi whispered, “I’m ready to join the pack.”

      “Acknowledged,” Kane responded. “In your rig, they won’t give you a second glance.”

      “Hope not.” She took a deep breath. “Kane?”

      “Here.”

      “Aim good. You be very careful.”

      “Aren’t I always?”

      Domi snorted derisively. “Hell, no. That’s why I mentioned it.”

      Sounding irritated, Kane shot back, “Just make sure the target is where he’s supposed to be…and be aware of all our people’s positions.”

      “Gotcha.”

      Domi cut the connection and stepped away from the mouth of the alley. She didn’t care for crowds on general principle. Her senses had developed in the savage school of the Outlands, and it felt to her that the wind gusting through the ruins carried with it the whiff of blood about to be spilled.

      An albino by birth, Domi’s skin was normally as white as milk. She was every inch of five feet tall and barely weighed one hundred pounds. On either side of her thin-bridged nose, eyes glittered grimly like polished rubies. The hood of her long beige coat concealed her short, bone-white hair.

      As the laboring of the engine grew in volume, she stepped out of the alley onto the cracked sidewalk and she was immediately jostled and elbowed. Although her temper flared she managed to keep it in check, although she did shove a man