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  “Our models posit this: a powerful extraterrestrial being, imprisoned, or immobilized, millions upon millions of light years distant from Earth, yet merely an arm’s-length away. The creature adores our legends, our myths, and our terrors much as we delight in the antics of industrious insects. It devotes a fragment of its consciousness to examining our world, to toying with us as a child might interfere in the lives of an ant colony and with no greater purpose than fleeting diversion from an eternity of boredom. The entity may not have a name, not by human standards, but it loves Lovecraft and it explores us through the author’s warped narratives. Wolfmen do not stalk the moors. Nor vampires, nor devils, nor demons. Certain malign and inhuman interlopers enjoy manipulating such legends to humankind’s detriment. There is no such thing as Azathoth either. However, the thing that masquerades as Azathoth most definitely exists.”

  “An entity who reads pulp fiction,” Mac said.

  “An entity who reads Lovecraft, listens to our music and television shows and leads soft-minded mortals around by their noses in the interest of performing its own theater. Yes, exactly.”

  “What of this cult? Their provenance, their goals?”

  “The Cult of the Demon Sultan is disparate and scattered. It hasn’t operated for long, yet it may have infiltrated various governments and corporations, including our own. In that light, reporting to Sword HQ with data in hand is fraught with peril. Should key personnel be compromised, you might find yourself chloroformed and bundled into a small room with the concrete walls sliding together.”

  “Yes, I’d hate it,” Mac said.

  “There’s another thing you’re liable to hate,” Labrador said.

  “Oh?”

  “We are no longer on neutral ground. The accord does not apply. Mr. Whalen?”

  Whalen pressed the barrel of a Colt revolver between Dred’s shoulder blades. Labrador said with an avuncular smile, “Boys, you’re perfectly safe as long as you remain calm. No hijinks, please.”

  “Please, hijinks,” Whalen said. “Dusting baby psychopaths is God’s work.”

  Every jounce of the vehicle swung the occupants in their seats. Mac kept his hands on his knees and watched for an opening.

  Labrador gestured and Dr. Campbell passed him the boys’ rucksacks. “Quantum entanglement is a tricky business and the laws of physics have more loopholes than the Bible. Both you and your brother are contaminated, albeit far less thoroughly than Arthur.” The Zircon CEO sniffed at the knives, canteens, and miniature bottles of booze. He hefted Black’s case in his hand and quirked his lips in satisfaction. “Whatever have we here?” Snick went the catch and he withdrew the diamond and studied it intently.

  “Shall we get this over with?” Mac said. “Neither my father nor grandfather will concede to ransom demands. It’s against corporate policy. I can’t imagine what you hope to gain.”

  “As it happens, I’m holding Drederick hostage. His fate does not rest with corporate policy or Grandpa Danzig’s whims. Brother Drederick’s fate rests with you. Say, Dr. Campbell, is this what it appears to be?”

  Dr. Campbell nodded. “Yes, sir. Type X crystalline structure. Almost identical to-”

  “Thank you, doctor. Mac, I suppose this explains how you meddling children were able to track the probe and anticipate its reentry coordinates. Where was I? Ah, right. Mac, I have no idea who at Sword Enterprises or Zircon might or might not be a fifth columnist in service of the cult. As I said, we own a proprietary technology that performs calculations based upon quantum physics. Our system requires a mere scrap of information and, voila, it tells us when, where, and what accuracy to the nanosecond and millimeter. Everything we know regarding Nancy’s fateful voyage we learned in the last few hours as the result of a computer model.”

  “Peachy.” Dred scowled and crossed his arms. He hid a flat shiv up his sleeve and the action got him closer to drawing it smoothly.

  “Maybe you’ll win a prize,” Mac said dryly as he continued to weigh his alternatives. Better than even odds he could dispatch Whalen with a chop to the vagus nerve. Much worse odds of striking the revolver aside before the soldier’s reflexive convulsion caused him to squeeze the trigger and ventilate Dred.

  “This is fascinating. My God, the implications.” Labrador ran his thumb over the onyx diamond, exploring for a node or a seam. “I want the flight data from Nancy. The probe glimpsed unholy sights and I blanch to contemplate what she brought back in her memory banks. Once Tom reaches the perimeter of your property, we’ll permit you to fuck off wherever you’ve stashed the material and fetch it back to a specified location at a specified date. We shall then exchange Drederick for the material and part amicably. Fail to retrieve the data, or should you alert your grandfather, father, or other representatives of Sword Enterprises, it’s curtains for your brother. While Sword Enterprises refuses to negotiate with kidnapers, it is my fervent hope you are young enough to possess a flicker of a soul and some rudimentary twinge of compassion.”

  “Seems as if you’ve got me over a barrel, Mr. Labrador. I’ll make the trade, but I have to know what you intend to do with the data.”

  “Do? Study it, destroy it, lock it in a safe and sink it to the bottom of the Atlantic. Pretty damned much whatever I please. The cultists communicate with Azathoth through crude and esoteric methods. I wager Nancy’s data cores are packed to the gills with nasty technologies that could be used for all sorts of mischief, perhaps even a means to make direct contact with the alien lifeform. Mainly, I wish to deprive your awful grandfather of this discovery. The old bastard would love nothing better than to become hierophant to a malevolent god.” Labrador shook the diamond in frustration. “Blazes! How does this device work, anyway?”

  “Free us and I’ll activate Little Black.”

  “Nice try, no cigar, kiddo. Be a sport and give me a hint.” Labrador nodded at Whalen. Whalen’s free hand darted and he stabbed Dred’s shoulder with a pocket knife. Dred flinched, but he choked back a full-fledged scream and settled for a stream of curses.

  “This can’t be the Sword AI,” Dr. Campbell said, oblivious to the blue language and blood flowing from the younger boy. “Unless, unless . . . Astonishing. Your AI operates on the micro and macro scales. Does this fragment possess sentience as well?”

  “Why am I always the one to get tortured?” Dred said. “I’m younger and more malleable. You should be torturing Mac to manipulate me!”

  “I read your file,” Labrador said. “You have the empathy of a turnip.” He gestured to Whalen. Whalen flicked blood from his knife and leaned forward.

  “All right,” Mac said. He made a wooden mask of his face. “Don’t hurt him. I’ll cooperate. Black, resume active function.”

  The diamond hummed briefly. Hello, Macbeth Tooms. Hello, Drederick Tooms. Hello, Mr. Labrador. Hello, Dr. Campbell. Hello, Mr. Whalen. Hello, Tom. Black hesitated. Macbeth Tooms, several individuals present are designated enemy operatives. Mr. Labrador is not authorized access to my system.

  “Electromagnetic modulation to vocalization!” Dr. Campbell said, giddy as a drunken schoolgirl. His expression changed quickly with dawning realization. “Mr. Labrador, you need to drop the AI before—”

  Mac said, “Black, pacify non-authorized individuals.” He hadn’t a clue as to whether Black was capable of molding electromagnetic energy into an offensive weapon.

  Affirmative, Macbeth Tooms. Assume crash position.

  SOUL SUCKER

  Dred wasn’t particularly worried about getting a hole blasted through his spine until Mac started talking to the AI. The younger Tooms brother hadn’t wasted the best winters of his life at the Mountain Leopard Temple for nothing. The instant Black said affirmative, he snapped his torso into his knees and threw himself onto the floor. Whalen’s revolver boomed. A pulse zipped through Dred as if he’d brushed a live wire and made his hair stand on end. Labrador yelped. The lights shorted and cast the compartment into darkness. Gears and metal screeched and the Crawler roll
ed over and its passengers were flung about and Dred’s skull knocked hard against metal.

  He floated in deep, starless space. Somewhere in the distance, yet drawing nearer at terrifying velocity, a hideous red light flickered and spread. Horns and flutes played in a discordant chorus, blatting and shrilling. A giant disembodied hand swept through the void and slapped his cheek.

  “Are you alive?” Mac said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dred stared past his brother’s shoulder to a circle of daylight and leafy branches patched by blue sky.

  Dimness prevented them from clearly determining the individual fates of their foes. Labrador stank and smoldered like fired charcoal. Mac had struck Whalen in the neck and either killed him or rendered him unconscious. He’d seen Dr. Campbell scramble up toward the light and presumably escape into the woods. Tom the pilot had been impaled by a shorn gear lever and his face mashed to jelly against the control panel.

  The boys extricated themselves by climbing out the busted dome in the forward section. They stood on the forest floor in the shadow of the wrecked Crawler and caught their breath. Both were contused and lacerated. Dred suspected a cracked rib or two. Decent outcome, considering the circumstances.

  Mac removed Black from his coat pocket and set the diamond upon a mossy boulder. After the crash, he had spent several desperate moments fumbling in the gloom for the AI. “Black?”

  I am here, Macbeth Tooms.

  “Earlier, you mentioned damage to your memory. You said everything associated with Nancy’s flight recorder and data core was corrupted and you suffered memory loss.”

  Total file corruption and severe memory degradation localized to NCY-93 data. That is correct.

  “Black, you are a Type X crystal and have undergone an accelerated biochemical maturation process. Am I also correct to assume your damaged systems will regenerate?”

  The AI was slow to respond. Finally, it said, Yes. Damaged sectors will be restored within six hours. May I suggest—?

  Mac crushed Black with the rock he’d concealed behind his hip. He continued savagely smashing the diamond until only powder remained and that he scattered with a scuff of his sleeve. He met Dred’s gaze. “I don’t think Granddad needs to see whatever Black had buried in its memory core.”

  “Dang, brother. Isn’t it late in the game to become an altruist?”

  “I’m fourteen and a half. I’ve time enough.”

  “Seriously. You’re not going soft on me, right?”

  “I’m not. We better make a decision about Nancy, though.”

  Dred sighed. “Wouldn’t be easy, but with some finagling, we could be on hand prior to launch. A loose heat shield tile, an x instead of a y in the guidance control computer. Bang. She’d break up in orbit or lose power and drift into the gravity well of Jupiter, or wherever. There’d never be an interdimensional jaunt and no meeting with aliens.”

  Mac lighted a cigarette. “Or, possibly, we interfere and that’s what sends Nancy into the darkness. I wish Arthur was here to tell us what the play should be.”

  “Yeah, and I wish you hadn’t abandoned two of Dad’s favorite rigs. Gotta get the fliptop back, or else.”

  “C’mon. We can discuss it over a tall one.”

  “Hear, hear.” The brothers, tattered and weary, put an arm over one another’s shoulders and limped for home.

  Not long after the boys departed, Whalen emerged from the vehicle. His left arm dangled and he’d lost his hat. He rested against the bole of a pine and immediately fainted. Noises from the cockpit revived him momentarily. Somehow, the pilot slid off the lever that had spitted him. He tumbled loose as a ragdoll and hit the ground. Then he stood, his jumpsuit rent in several places and drenched in dried gore, and rearranged his face by aligning bones and cartilage with his thumbs. It worked, somewhat. In an hour or two, all traces of violence would be reversed.

  “Hello.” He leaned over Whalen before the smaller man could slither away. Tom’s tongue drooled forth and kissed out the Marine’s eyes. The next kiss sealed Whalen’s mouth, and a sharp, deep inhalation took everything worth having.

  After a satisfying interval, he lurched to the mossy boulder where the boys had done terrible damage to the AI. He flexed his pale, delicate hands and hummed. Birds dropped, stone dead, around him in a soft patter against the bed of needles and leaves. A sliver of obsidian crystal zinged from the bushes and levitated into his palm. “Oh, Dad. All this just so your son can make a collect call home.” He regarded the jagged sliver, and popped it into his mouth and crunched it methodically, and swallowed.

  Tom straightened. “Dr. Campbell? Wait for me!” He walked the opposite way the boys had gone. His stride smoothed and lengthened. He whistled a strange and repellant tune. Every so often, he swung himself around a small tree and clicked his heels.

  PART II:

  X’S FOR EYES

  DEAD NORTH

  The boys were urinating off the Ugruk Glacier when the cargo plane circled camp.

  “Tally ho, it’s Uncle Nestor!” Dred waved at the plane.

  “Hurray,” Mac said.

  “Aw, don’t be a wet blanket. Nestor’s the good uncle.”

  “Get a grip, brother. We’re in peril. Uncle Nestor may as well be a lightning bolt from the heavens.”

  “Even if you’re right, fretting is useless. Chin up, Macbeth.” Dred buttoned his long johns, pulled on his fur mittens, and jogged toward the airstrip (several hundred feet of packed snow dutifully packed down by laborers), showing no ill-effects from the various injuries he’d sustained on Darkmans Mountain. Twelve years old, made of rubber and youthfully exuberant, unlike his elder brother.

  Mac adjusted his glasses. He stared across the ice sheet dusted in volcanic grit at the Chugach Mountains. August in Alaska, yet he smelled a sterile chill on the north wind that didn’t originate from the glacier. Already, the balance was shifting from summer to autumn and the return of winter. He had to come to prefer the cold, to welcome it the way a masochist welcomes the sting of the lash. Headaches and nosebleeds plagued him of late (and nightmares that faded upon waking). Pressing snow against the nape of his neck quelled the symptoms.

  Gazing at the misshapen lump of crystal he’d salvaged after the disaster with Arthur a couple of months back disquieted him. Unfinished business and best hurled into the inlet. He hid the fragment again, honoring the faint notion this item represented the last real connection between the young scientist and himself. Arthur had a continual starring guest role in his dreams.

  Ultimately, after much debate and a minor scuffle, he and Dred decided to keep mum regarding the adventure with NCY-93. Sword Enterprises security concocted a story about a tragic incident that apparently claimed the lives of the Navarro children and their beloved caretaker. The bodies had burned to ash, stymying any real investigation. Behind the scenes, Cassius Labrador took the blame thanks to Sword counterintelligence and propaganda efforts. Rumors pointed to an unprovoked attack on the Tooms family, orchestrated by Labrador and his henchmen resulting in several unfortunate deaths, including Cassius himself. As for Dr. Campbell, apparently he’d made it safely to Zircon headquarters in New York City. The doctor hadn’t breathed a word of the curious events on Darkmans Mountain that fateful afternoon in June. Meanwhile, Cassius Labrador’s brother, Robert, assumed the reins of Zircon as CEO and the world rattled on.

  All to the good, yet the circumstances demanded a more permanent solution. Erring on the side of extreme caution, the Tooms brothers determined to destroy NCY-93 before it escaped from orbit. What would it do to the timeline if they succeeded? The brothers could only shrug and admit there was no way to know. Admittedly, they could’ve asked one of several world class scientists employed by Sword Enterprises, but that entailed a wee too much personal risk.

  On the morning of launch, Mac distracted the maintenance team with a small circuit fire (blamed on spilled coffee) while Dread sneaked onto the pad with his uncanny stealth skills. He crept around the idle probe, loosening a
few key bolts. Two hours later, the second stage booster rocket detonated while still attached to NCY-93 and she fireballed into the Atlantic. The subsequent investigation hinted at sabotage, although nothing was conclusive.

  Dr. Luis Navarro officially went into seclusion. Unofficially, that meant he reserved a padded room at a certain private hospital. Between the launch disaster and his son’s death, he’d endured the worst year ever. Granddad Tooms released an internal memo vowing to capture the saboteurs. He also claimed the launch of NCY-94 would occur in November.

  Mac suggested to Dred a vacation might be in order. They packed traveling bags and departed late one night on an impromptu walkabout, as their Aussie friends might say. While other lads their age spent summers at camp or tending their grandparents’ farm or on a Florida road trip in the back of Mom and Dad’s station wagon, the Tooms brothers elected for more adventurous fare. In that light, the boys beelined for the Last Frontier and attached themselves to a research team in the second month of a major archaeological expedition—independent contractors hired by Sword Enterprises to explore the Ugruk Glacier for anomalous structures.

  A clerk toiling in the archives uncovered musty photographic plates shot from a company spy plane back in the latter 1930s. If one squinted the plates revealed truly odd shadows beneath the ice sheet. The research team, led by Dr. Slocum, welcomed the able assistance, not that he had much choice. Mac and Dred possessed the family signet in ruby, which essentially meant the boys could go anywhere and do anything they pleased short of amethyst clearance.

  Mac steeled himself and trudged back to face the music.

  “Mac the Knife, you’re taller.” Uncle Nestor was the next to youngest uncle on Dad’s side. The handsomest of them all, he could’ve body-doubled for a younger Errol Flynn—definitely could have instructed Flynn on the proper use of weapons. Whereas Dad embarked upon mysterious missions for Naval Intelligence during the Second Great War, Nestor flew a P-51D Mustang into dogfights against Japanese Zeroes and retired an ace. If the boys could be said to love a fellow Tooms, Nestor would have been the one.