Cradle Of Destiny. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ was used to studying rocks, but she had complained before they made the interphaser jump. She wasn’t an archaeologist, but Brigid wanted a set of eyes that knew about terrain and natural earth formations. Tomb raiders were in short supply among the redoubt’s newly expanded staff.

      Edwards tilted his head. “Okay, now I really am playing dumb. One like him?”

      “Humbaba, or Humwawa, was appointed by Enlil himself as the guardian of the Cedar Forest. He was a giant with the face of a lion in some sources, and in others, his features resemble coiled entrails of men and beasts,” Brigid said.

      “Maybe he’s a sloppy eater, or saving leftovers for later.” Edwards chuckled nervously.

      Brigid raised an eyebrow at the thought. “That is a possibility.”

      Edwards rested his face in his palm. “Great. A man-eating giant kitty cat.”

      “He couldn’t be that big,” Domi said. “If he can wear the guts of his meal as a face mask.”

      “Well, the legends said that Ullikummis was a giant who was so large his shoulders scraped the skies,” Brigid said. “The real one was nowhere that huge.”

      “Small favors,” Edwards grumbled. “Humbaba’s alive, or dead?”

      “Allegedly, Gilgamesh and Enkidu slew the beast,” Brigid answered.

      “Who and what?” Edwards asked.

      “King Gilgamesh, one of the original human heroes of mythology. His ally was a bull-man, sent by the gods to slay Gilgamesh—Enkidu,” Brigid said.

      Edwards looked a little unfocused for a moment. “Why does that name sound familiar?”

      “Which? Gilgamesh is a rather—”

      “The other one,” Edwards cut Brigid off.

      Brigid stepped closer to the large man. “Perhaps it’s a residual memory?”

      “From when Ugly Commish took me over?” Edwards asked.

      Brigid nodded.

      Edwards closed his eyes, as if looking inside of himself for answers. “I don’t know why I’d remember anything.”

      With that, he opened a small pill bottle and downed a couple of pills without benefit of a splash of water from his canteen. “Not everyone can remember everything like you, Brigid.”

      Brigid smirked at the subtle jab, then turned back to see Falk dig a little more furiously at the ground. The geologist’s spade hacked at rocklike sand that disintegrated as the steel of Falk’s tool smashed into it. Nervousness set in on the older woman’s features. “What’s wrong?”

      Falk tugged on a length of stretchy fabric. Brigid knelt next to the woman, tugging it from deep, hard-packed sand. As soon as she touched the leatherlike material, Brigid knew what it was. She had never worn it, but Kane and Grant had donned the long, armored dusters, one sleeve outsized to accommodate the folding Sin Eater blaster. Domi recognized the jacket sleeve, as well, and her stomach twisted. Edwards had not brought his duster.

      “This is a Magistrate jacket,” she pronounced. “How long has it been here?”

      “Given the density of the sand, it’s hard to say,” Falk hedged.

      “That’s a lie,” Brigid answered. “How long has this been trapped here?”

      Falk looked at Brigid, swallowing before she dared to answer.

      “It’s been here for nearly five thousand years,” Falk answered.

      Brigid looked down at the uniform embedded in the stone. “We need to dig deeper. See what else is in there.”

      “I haven’t found any skeletal remains,” Falk replied.

      “They might not have been buried here with the clothing,” Brigid answered.

      Domi could tell from the stress and urgency in her friend’s voice that one of the Cerberus people was going to be lost in the depths of time.

      The question was, who would go missing?

      Chapter 2

      Gongs reverberated throughout the Tigers of Heaven dojo in the heart of New Edo. Though the transplanted Japanese had access to technology such as radios, they were also traditionalists. Alarm Klaxons produced by loudspeakers were not an improvement over the classic padded hammer striking a gigantic dish of bronze. The loud, air-shaking noise drew attention and focused it like few other sounds could.

      Instinct pushed Grant and Shizuka to grab their weapons, the big ex-Magistrate sliding the Sin Eater holster over his thick right forearm. Shizuka slid her katana through a single loop of the sash around her waist, slung a quiver of ya arrows over her shoulder, and scooped up her kumi samurai bow. Every member of the Tigers of Heaven was trained in the arts of the samurai, so that even with a wild supply of automatic rifles and handguns, they were still deadly with their “primitive” weaponry. The penetration ability of a ya launched was insufficient to spear through the polycarbonate plates of full Magistrate assault armor, but Shizuka’s aim was quick and accurate enough to slip her deadly arrowheads in the gaps between those panels and through the Kevlar and Nomex underneath.

      Still, the exchange of technologies and ideas between New Edo and the Cerberus redoubt had been enough for the Japanese archers to utilize shafts and bows of carbon fiber over a laminated wood core, and stiff nylon supplemented turkey and swan feathers to make the ya fly true. While Grant himself was a man who appreciated powerful firearms like the Sin Eater or his Copperhead, Shizuka had been teaching him kyudo, the samurai’s “way of the bow.” His upper-body strength was more than sufficient to handle a kumi with an eighty-eight-pound draw and keep the bowstring nocked and on target with very little vibration. It was a slow process, however. Grant was familiar with the basics of marksmanship, but it was akin to the early six months of training that he had been given on the dangerous, lightning-fast Sin Eater machine pistol. He could hit a bull’s-eye given a few moments, but he was not adept at utilizing the bow in combat. Shizuka, on the other hand, could nock, draw and launch a ya shaft in the space of a second.

      A 20-round, full-auto machine pistol firing armor-crushing 240-grain 9 mm slugs would have to do for now, Grant mused. He paused and looked at his folded Magistrate trench coat. Shizuka had already slithered into the bamboo-and-polymer-plate armor, and Grant was loath to go into action without some protection. He had left behind the shadow suit at Cerberus redoubt, but the protective long coat was sufficient armor, its leatherlike material interwoven with polycarbonate strips and ballistic-resistant cloth, and extremely comfortable. The duster fluttered as he picked it up, whirling it like a cape around his shoulders as he shrugged into the roomy but supple garment.

      “You really need to wear that with your shadow suit,” Shizuka spoke up. “You look magnificent with your coattails flapping.”

      Grant managed a smile. “I sometimes worry about snagging this thing.”

      “Have you ever?” Shizuka asked.

      Grant thought about it for a moment as he and the samurai commander prepared to rush to the Tigers of Heaven’s СКАЧАТЬ