Planet Hate. James Axler

their redoubt headquarters, Kane’s team had taken one of the units for ease of transport while they went undercover. Right now, Grant carried the foot-high unit in its protective case inside the rucksack on his back.

       Rosalia’s dog whined plaintively as the companions continued to stride along the dusty street. It was a simple path marked out on the ground by the basic virtue of repeated usage. A woman in her thirties sat in a weather-beaten rocking chair outside the front door to one of the tumbledown shacks, her fingers moving deftly as she knitted a pair of baby booties. Grant acknowledged her with a dip of his head, touching his fingers to his brow for just a second.

       “Things don’t feel right here, you guys,” Rosalia said, her voice a whisper.

       Kane looked over to her and a lopsided smile touched at his lips. “Weren’t you the one who was complaining about we ex-Magistrates skulking around like frightened schoolgirls?”

       In response, Rosalia showed him her teeth in a sarcastic imitation of a grin. “Just an observation, Magistrate Man,” she said, subtly stretching her arms out as if to yawn. “Don’t jump at shadows on my account.” As she did so, she shifted two hidden knives that were located beneath her sleeves.

       With the open stream running to the right of them, Kane continued on, making his way toward the crop silo he had pointed out a few moments before. “Keep the interphaser to hand,” he instructed Grant out of the corner of his mouth. “I want to be on our way as soon as.”

       They were heading for a meeting high on the Californian coast. A coded message had been piped through to Kane a few hours before from their old Cerberus leader, Lakesh, providing them with coordinates of a meeting point where he hoped to set up a temporary base.

       As the three of them rounded the corner of the silo and a simple lean-to building that stood at its side, Kane spotted a small chunk in the sandy dirt at the external edge of the silo itself. It looked like an ancient mile marker, a little hunk of rounded stone sticking up about eighteen inches from the soil. The marker sat in the lee of the lean-to, obscured by the shadow that the tall silo cast.

       “Five’ll get you ten that that’s our parallax point,” Kane stated, indicating the marker stone half-buried in the ground.

       As Kane spoke, a figure appeared from the far side of the silo fifteen feet away, striding into view before halting, his eyes locked on Kane and his teammates. The man was tall and wore a rough-hewn robe made of a dirty brown material that covered him from neck down to his ankles like a cassock. The robe featured a voluminous hood that the man had pulled up over his head, hiding his features in shadow so that only his eyes glinted in the fierce morning sunlight. His right fist was held loosely clenched at his side, and Kane could tell immediately that the hooded stranger was clutching something within that balled fist. The man’s fustian robe featured a red badge pinned to the left breast, and the insignia flashed as it caught the sun’s rays.

       “Can I help you gentlemen?” the robed figure asked, challenge in his tone.

       “We’re just passing through, friend,” Kane stated, feeling a disquieting roiling in his stomach.

       Beneath the hood, the man closed his eyes for a moment, reaching out with uncanny senses. Kane and his companions watched as the strange figure shook his head infinitesimally as if confused by what he could feel. “Cannot…” the man muttered before opening his eyes once more. “This is a sanctified town, sirs,” the man said in an authoritative tone. “Are you faithful?”

       Kane stared at the robed man in disbelief. “I…I…” How could he possibly answer that question?

       “I suspected as much,” the robed man stated, his tone rising in fury. “Mr. Kane, is it not?”

       Kane became aware that figures were massing behind him. Where moments before they had seemed to be wary of the strangers but simply going about their workaday lives, now the townsfolk appeared to be closing in, subtly blocking the street and hemming the Cerberus teammates in at the alleyway between the silo and the one-story lean-to beside it.

       Kane took a steadying breath. “You seem to know me, but I don’t think I caught your name,” he told the robed figure at the farther end of the silo.

       The hooded man nodded once in acknowledgment. “I am stone,” he stated.

       Kane had heard the phrase before. It was something of a battle chant for an expanding class of warriors who fought in the name of a sinister being called Ullikummis. In speaking the phrase, the hooded figure had not merely confirmed his allegiance, but he had also entered a meditative state whereby his physical attributes would change.

       Kane’s eyes darted to the subtle movement as the man unclenched his right fist and a simple cord of leather with a cuplike design at the farthest extension of its loop sagged from his hand.

       “And you are an enemy of stone,” the hooded figure said. Even as he spoke, the leather cup whirled around the man’s arm as he launched a cluster of lethal projectiles at Kane and his teammates.

      Chapter 2

      “Get down!” Kane shouted as he dived out of the path of the hurtling missiles.

       A handful of sharpened pebbles had been flung from the simple slingshot that the robed man had hidden in his fist, and the rocks picked up speed as they whipped through the fifteen-foot distance separating the man and Kane’s team. The stones cut through the air and, by the time they reached the space where Kane had been standing, the half dozen pebbles had taken on a lethal velocity similar to bullets fired from a gun. The projectiles had been aimed at Kane’s face, but by then Kane had dropped out of their path, his left palm slapping against the dirt even as he called his Sin Eater pistol to his right hand with a practiced flinch of his wrist tendons.

       To either side of the dark-haired ex-Mag, Grant and Rosalia also flung themselves out of the path of those vicious rocks, and Grant snarled as one of them clipped against the swishing tail of his Kevlar-lined duster as it leaped high in the air.

       Across from Grant, Rosalia kicked out as she ran at the high, curving wall of the silo. Suddenly she was running up the side of the silo, her skirt tearing as she kicked out again and flipped herself high into the air, over the path of the hurtling stones and onto the low roof of the lean-to beside it, her back to the man in the robes. She landed with catlike grace, looking out at the gathering crowd on the main street, two short blades appearing in her hands from their hiding places in the ragged sleeves of her denim jacket.

       As Rosalia landed, Kane’s index finger tightened on the Sin Eater and a stream of 9 mm bullets cut through the air toward their mysterious attacker. The red badge at the robed man’s breast caught the light once more as the bullets streamed toward him. Kane realized what the badge meant: it was a symbol of authority, a mockery of the Magistrate badge that he and Grant had worn when they were in service.

       Kane was moving for cover as he unleashed that flurry of bullets, but he watched as the robed man held up his free hand. The bullets struck against the man’s outstretched arm but incredibly—impossibly—the man let out no sound of pain; he just stood there, jaw set as four bullets cut through the hemp sleeve of his robe and rattled against his flesh. His other arm arced behind him and he launched a second salvo of stones from his slingshot as Kane’s admirable figure disappeared behind the wall of the lean-to.

       Kane looked down for a moment as he almost tripped over something. Rosalia’s mongrel was there, lips peeled back in a fearsome snarl as it looked at the approaching crowd of townsfolk. A bearded man wielding a claw hammer was leading the charge at the strangers, drawing the hammer back in a vicious arc. The dog jumped then, jaw snagging around the man’s arm and pulling him to the ground in a cloud of disturbed earth.

       Grant meanwhile had spun to his right, slapping his back against the curved wall of the silo as the bullet-like stones cut toward his companions. They had met these hooded figures before, and Grant knew that they could be tenacious opponents. They’d need something with a little more stopping power than the Sin Eater, and Grant had just the thing. While stones clashed