Callsign Cerberus Read online

  Two centuries after Nukeday, the eternal battle between order and chaos, slavery and freedom has not ended. Pockets of fortified city-states are ruled by nine powerful barons, plenipotentiaries of humanity’s invisible enslavers. They carry out an ages-old conspiracy of mankind’s domination.

  But there are those who wage a tireless war to stop the tides threatening human survival.

  KANE, a renegade Magistrate who is always in the centre of a battle—sometimes against his better judgment.

  BRIGID BAPTISTE, the brilliant historian who possesses the mind of computer within the form of a sunset-haired beauty.

  GRANT, Kane’s comrade-in-arms who knows the hard realities of post-Nukeday Earth, but still dares to dream of a better life.

  DOMI, born a feral child of the hellzones, the white-skinned, ruby-eyed she-devil makes war as savagely as she makes love.

  Together, they are CALLSIGN CERBERUS!

  Dedication:

  Forever and always...

  to Lissa

  Callsign Cerberus: Exile To Hell © 2020 Mark D. Ellis & Markosia Enterprises, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All names, characters and events in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Published by Markosia Enterprises, PO BOX 3477, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 9HN.

  FIRST PRINTING, May 2020.

  Harry Markos, Director.

  Paperback: ISBN 978-1-913359-58-4

  eBook: ISBN 978-1-913359-59-1

  Written and created by Mark D. Ellis

  www.MarkEllisInk.com

  Cover illustration and design:

  Michael Herring and Melissa Martin Ellis

  Book design by: Ian Sharman

  www.markosia.com

  MARK ELLIS

  EXILE TO HELL

  We had not long forth pass’d but that we saw

  Black Cerberus, the hideous hound of hell,

  With bristles rear’d and with a three-mouth’d jaw

  Fordinning the air with his horrible yell,

  Out of the deep dark cave where he did dwell

  —Thomas Sackville, The Mirror For Magistrates

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mesa Verde Canyon, Colorado

  WINGS OUTSPREAD, THE DEATHBIRDS swooped out of the setting sun and plunged into the hellzone. The cliffs on either side of the three choppers were worse than sheer they tilted crazily above the floor of Mesa Verde canyon, sloping inward, then outward. Crevices beneath the out-thrusting overhangs were in deep shadow and could conceal anything, even alarm devices.

  Though the Deathbirds’ approach trajectory was too low for a ground-based radar sweep to find them, Intel had indicated vid cameras and motion sensors were planted on any likely area where an aerial incursion might be attempted.

  The vanes of the Deathbirds chopped the dry air. The engines and turbines were equipped with noise bafflers, so only the hiss of steel blades slicing through the sky was audible.

  All three of the craft were sleek, compact and streamlined, painted a matte-finish, nonreflective black. The curving forward ports were tinted in smoky hues. The metal-sheathed stub wings carried thirty-two 57 mm unguided missiles, two full pods to a wing. Multibarreled .50-caliber miniguns protruded from chin turrets beneath the cockpits.

  They flew in a delta formation, and the Deathbird occupying the fore point of the V flooded the rock-strewn canyon floor with infrared light, the electronic eyes of the craft reaching out to their full five-mile limit. The signal-processing circuitry broadcast the view to monitors aboard all three aircraft.

  Seated in the cockpit of the point bird, Kane gazed at the computer-generated image of the landscape on the overhead tactical display. It was a harsh black-and-white view, all colours and shadows washed out. Data scrolled down the side of the screen, reviewing primary areas of interest beyond his line of vision. Each boulder, outcropping and curve in the canyon showed in detail. A red square of light suddenly appeared on the screen, superimposed over a small, grid-enclosed area of the terrain. Simultaneously the warning chime sounded.

  “Registering an anomalous signature,” Kane announced. The voice-activated microphone at his throat transmitted his words on the scrambled frequency to the crews of the other Deathbirds. “Looks like part of the ground ahead is made of plastic.”

  In the pilot’s seat, Grant reached toward the fire-control console. “Locking a Shrike.”

  “That’s a big neg,” snapped Salvo’s voice through the comm link. “We don’t want to give Reeth forewarning.”

  Kane and Grant exchanged puzzled, irritated glances. “With all due respect, sir,” Kane said, trying to blunt the sharp edge of annoyance in his voice, “he must know we’re here.”

  “He doesn’t know that we know,” Salvo replied sharply. “My order stands.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kane’s tone was neutral, but his lips were tight.

  He glanced again at Grant, and their eyes met in a silent, wry acknowledgment of their opinion of the order and the man who had issued it. Since all three Deathbirds were comm-linked, they couldn’t voice their opinions.

  They could make faces, though, and Grant’s long, heavy-jawed face momentarily twisted into an imitation of their superior officer’s standard expression—pinched, puritanical and miserly. Kane smiled wryly in appreciation of the mockery. He noticed Grant was sweating. Droplets of tension-induced perspiration reflected the lights of the control console, causing them to sparkle against his dark brown skin like stars. The ends of the moustache framing his mouth glistened, too.

  Kane realized he was sweating, as well. He could feel the drops forming in the roots of his thick, dark hair, starting to slide down his high forehead from his hairline.

  Grant and Kane hated forestalling pre-emptive action. Like all hard-contact Magistrates, they cursed the long hours of preparation for a mission, the seemingly endless briefings and strategy sessions that burned the details of the operation in their memories. The other four members of the hard-contact team, deployed in the two Deathbirds behind them, were finely honed enforcers, superbly conditioned by a constant regimen of merciless training and even more merciless experience.

  But always the minutes directly preceding a deep penetration into a hellzone felt like a chain of interlocking eternities and were the hardest to endure. Though the streets and alleys and Tartarus Pits of the Cobalt barony were sometimes dangerous, leaving the security of its walls was always a little unnerving. There had been no outward display of fear, or even false bravado about the mission— just a calm, self-confident and professional ease.

  Banking the Deathbird slowly around a curve in the canyon wall, Grant kept one gauntleted hand near the fire-control board. The course was narrow, with little room for fancy evasive manoeuvring if it was called for.

  Kane fastened his grey-blue eyes on the display monitor and the rapidly changing features of the terrain above, below and all around them. He intoned, “Coming up on the anomaly in twenty seconds—mark.”

  Grant nodded, glanced at the illuminated compass on the panel and made a three-degree course correction.

  From ahead and below, a searchlight came on.

  A white funnel of incandescence swept up and across the ramparts of the canyon walls. It struck the Deathbird and stayed there. Despite the tinted Plexiglas canopy, the light momentarily blinded them.

  “Well, shit,” Grant mumbled mildly, squinting and pulling back on the stick.

  The Deathbird rose swiftly, the rotor blades whining, c
hurning to a blurred, hazy circle. Before Grant was able to correct for attitude, a fireball bloomed portside, barely two meters below the missile-fitted stub-wing.

  The craft shuddered from the rolling concussion. Kane felt the shock from the deck plates traveling up from his feet to the top of his head, only slightly absorbed by his body armour.

  From the bottom of the canyon, a cylindrical tower rose, a hump of textured brown plastic falling away, popping up like a trapdoor, sand and pebbles cascading down.

  The tower rotated, and the searchlight mounted atop of it swung up, following the Deathbird’s sudden ascent. Multiple gun barrels protruded from four oblong slits on each side of the ten-foot-tall tower.

  “What the flash-blasted hell?” Grant bellowed, angling the Deathbird away from the questing finger of light.

  Kane stared with stunned disbelief at the image of the Vulcan-Phalanx gun housing on his tactical display. The rotating multibarreled weapons fired uranium-tipped explosive shells at 6600 rounds per minute. Only one shell had been fired, either as a feint or as a range-finding tactic.

  The Vulcan-Phalanx system was a standard defence the network of united baronies stretching across the length and breadth of the Terra Infernus. The housings were automated, containing tracking and fire-control radars. Finding one of them in a Colorado hellzone was as unprecedented as finding a reptilicus in Baron Cobalt’s bathtub.

  Salvo’s voice crashed over the comm-link “Point Bird! Status!”

  “Under fire,” Kane responded smoothly. “A Vulcan-Phalanx turret.”

  No reply filtered over the link. Kane repeated the report and added, “Bird Three, do you copy?”

  “Copy,” snapped Salvo. His voice was full of strain and even anger. “Take evasive action. We’re falling back.”

  “Complying,” Kane replied. “Further orders?”

  Once more there was a long, static-filled silence. Then Salvo said, “Point Bird. Take it out.”

  Grant’s and Kane’s eyes met and Grant nodded curtly, fingers tapping the keys to transfer the fire-control system to Kane’s console.

  The Deathbird began a slow, careful descent, following the canyon floor as it snaked its way between the cliff walls, sliding under the searchlight beam. The gun turret was less than a hundred meters ahead.

  Flickering spear points of flame erupted from the slits of the housing. The Deathbird lurched sideways as a piece of the canyon wall exploded in a flaring shower of rock chips. The fragments rattled noisily against the fuselage.

  Applying full throttle, Grant pulled into a steep climb, rising so swiftly and sharply that the craft appeared to be standing on its tail. The manoeuvre created a force equivalent to three times that of gravity, and both of them were slammed into the nylon webbing of their seats.

  Grant referred to this manoeuvre as “peel up/pop down” and it was successful— the radar-controlled searchlight and miniguns couldn’t react quickly enough to the abrupt change in the target’s altitude and trajectory.

  At the apex of the ascent, with the airspeed decreased to thirty knots, Grant pushed the yoke forward and nosed the Deathbird into a steep dive.

  Kane swallowed, hoping to keep the contents of his stomach from rising into his throat. The cockpit resonated with the high-pitched whine of stressed engines and the slipstream of air sliding around them.

  Struggling against the amplified G-force, Kane reached for the fire-control board. The craft dropped rapidly to an altitude of barely twenty feet while increasing its airspeed to a hundred and twenty knots. Grant levelled the craft off, and the Deathbird hurtled forward, skimming the rocky ground, leaving streams of grit swirling in its wake.

  The searchlight still tracked across the empty sky, swinging to and fro. The thudding hammer of the Vulcan-Phalanx guns continued, pulverizing the walls, starting miniature avalanches, punching the stony ramparts full of gaping cavities.

  Kane knew that the few seconds’ respite from the radar could be counted on the fingers of one hand. The tracking controls would re-establish their lock at any second. He worked the keyboard of the console, raising the mast-mounted sight over the main rotor assembly. On the display monitor, he adjusted the electronic cross hairs, superimposing them over the image of the gun turret.

  He achieved target acquisition just as the cone of the white light dropped straight down out of the sky, washing the interior of the cockpit with a blinding blaze. He pressed a key.

  Trailing a short, fluttering flame banner, a Shrike missile burst from the starboard stub wing. The three-foot-long projectile inscribed a fiery, down-plunging arc, like a lazy meteorite.

  The Vulcan-Phalanx gun tower vanished in a billowing red-orange ball as the high-ex warhead, mixed with an incendiary agent, detonated precisely on target. The searchlight went out with the suddenness of a candle being extinguished. The thudding of the guns ceased abruptly as the delicate circuitry within the turret was smashed, scorched and melted. The roar of the explosion rolled down the canyon, bouncing back and forth off the ramparts.

  Grant pulled the Deathbird into a climb and reduced the airspeed to a hover as Kane punched up a status display. The missile had struck at the base of the tower, leaving only a split-open stump of smouldering metal protruding from the ground.

  “Target flash-blasted,” Kane said calmly. “Zone secured.”

  “Copy that, Point Bird,” came Salvo’s reply. “Get dirt-side. We’ll join you in a minute.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The aircraft flew a hundred feet beyond the shattered gun turret, and Grant settled its skids gently onto the ground. Before disembarking, both men methodically inspected their ordnance. Though they had double-checked each other before leaving Cobaltville, their training told them Magistrates should never assume they were invincible.

  Kane ran his gloved fingers over the joints of his black polycarbonate body armour, making certain all the seals were secure. The armour was close fitting, moulded to conform to the biceps, triceps, pectorals and abdomen. Even with its Kevlar under sheathing, the armour was lightweight and provided no loose folds to snag on projections. The only spot of colour anywhere on it was the small, disk-shaped badge of office emblazoned on the left pectoral. It depicted, in crimson, a stylized, balanced scales of justice, superimposed over a nine-spoked wheel.

  Kane knew it was designed to symbolize the Magistrate’s oath to keep the wheels of justice turning, but to his mind it was nothing more than a target. To kill-crazy blastermen, all it said was, “Shoot here.”

  Raising his right forearm, he inspected the Sin Eater holstered there. It was a big-bore automatic handblaster, less than fourteen inches in length at full extension, the magazine carrying twenty 9 mm rounds. When not in use, the stock folded over the top of the blaster, lying along the frame, reducing its holstered length to eight inches.

  When the Sin Eater was needed, Kane would tense his wrist tendons, and sensitive actuators activated a flexible cable in the holster and snapped the weapon smoothly into his waiting hand, the stock unfolding in the same motion. Since the Sin Eater had no trigger guard or safety, the blaster fired immediately upon touching his crooked index finger.

  It was a murderous weapon and almost impossible for a novice to manage. Recruits were never allowed live ammunition until a tedious six-month-long training period was successfully completed.

  Attached to his belt by a magnetic clip was his close-assault weapon. The Copperhead was a chopped-down subgun, gas operated, with a 700-round-per minute rate of fire. The magazine held fifteen rounds of 4.85 mm steel-jacketed bullets. Two feet in length, the grip and trigger unit were placed in front of the breech, allowing for one-handed use. An optical image-intensifier scope was fitted on top, as well as a laser autotargeter. Because of its low recoil, the Copperhead could be fired in a long, devastating full-auto burst.

  Kane lowered his right hand to touch the familia
r handle of the fourteen-inch-long combat knife scabbarded in his boot. Honed to a razor-keen cutting edge, it was also balanced for throwing, although only a fool would throw a knife in hand-to-hand combat. If a Magistrate was down to his blade, then tossing it made him weaponless and as good as dead.

  From a hook on the back of his seat, Kane removed his helmet. Like the armour encasing his body, the helmet was made of black polycarbonate, and fitted over the upper half and back of his head, the red-tinted leaving only a portion of the mouth and chin exposed.

  The helmet annoyed him, even though it was lightweight and its polystyrene lining conformed perfectly to the shape of his head, ensuring a snug and comfortable fit.

  The slightly concave visor served several functions it protected the eyes from foreign particles, and the electrochemical polymer was connected to a passive night sight that intensified ambient light to permit one-color night vision.

  The tiny image-enhancer sensor mounted on the forehead of the helmet did not emit detectable rays, though its range was only twenty-five feet, even on a fairly clear night with strong moonlight.

  Kane slipped his helmet on just as Grant did, both of them snapping the underjaw lock guards simultaneously. Glancing at Grant, Kane realized again that the design of the Magistrate armour served something beyond functional, practical reasons. His partner was now a symbol of awe, of fear. Although he stood well over six feet, he looked even bigger in the armour — strong, fierce, implacable and invulnerable.

  When a man concealed his face and body beneath the black armour and the red visor, he became a fearsome figure, the anonymity adding to the mystique. There was another reason for the helmet and the exoskeleton, and it was a reason all Magistrates were aware of but never spoke about openly. When a man put on the armour, he symbolically surrendered his identity to serve a cause of greater import than a mere individual life.

  Kane’s father had chosen to smother his identity, as had his father before him. For that matter, all current Magistrates, the third generation, had exchanged personal hopes, dreams and desires for a life of service. It had been the only way to bring a degree of order to the anarchy of post Nukeday America.