Cosmic Rift by James Axler

Author:James Axler [Axler, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781460321737
Google: BAMcEfyWlFQC
Amazon: 0373638809
Barnesnoble: 0373638809
Goodreads: 17900077
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Serra do Norte, Brazil

Twin cones of multihued light materialized from the ether, one above ground and the other, counterintuitively, beneath, forming an hourglass shape amid the greenery of the dense forest. Streaks of lightning hurtled within those eerie cones like witch fire, creating an impossible sense of depth within those swirling lights.

It was the interphaser, Cerberus’s teleportation device, appearing out of nowhere. Birds squawked at the strange intrusion, while rodents scampered back to their burrows or hid themselves amid the low-hanging ferns, turning startled eyes away from the sudden burst of light.

A moment later, the multicolored cones coalesced into four silhouettes as the Cerberus recovery team appeared from the quantum ether. There were four of them in all—Falk and Cataman for the investigative side, Edwards and Sinclair for security.

Edwards was a tall man with broad shoulders and a body language that spoke of aggression. He didn’t walk so much as prowl, and he didn’t speak to people, he talked at them. Or shouted.

His hair was shaved to a faint shadow on his head, and his right ear was mangled where a bullet had clipped it. Edwards wore a camouflage jacket with loose pants, the legs of which were marked with a half-dozen pockets, each one bulging with supplies. He was checking a Beretta 93-R pistol in his hands, assuring himself that it was loaded. He also wore a rifle on a strap across his back—an M-16 derivative manufactured in the late twentieth century by Colt.

Sinclair was the other part of the security detail, a dark-skinned woman whose short hair was cropped close to her scalp. She wore a flak jacket and camo pants, and like Edwards she had armed herself with a lightweight pistol—in her case a Smith & Wesson 0.45 Third Generation with a magazine clip in its butt. Like Edwards, she had trained in the deadly arts of combat—in her case, as a Navy SEAL back in the late twentieth century before being held in suspended animation for two hundred years inside the Manitius Moon Base. She had been with the Cerberus unit ever since, acting in a security role.

The third member of the group was an ageing man with a slightly stooped bearing. He was a pale man with salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from the sides of his head in two extravagant wings. It gave him the air of an addled professor, an impression his singed lab coat only served to enhance. This was Roy Cataman, one of the more recent additions to the Cerberus scientific community. Most recently, Cataman had been pivotal in an investigation into an ancient supersoldier program.

Mariah Falk rounded out the team, exhausted from worry but determined to see things through to the bitter end.

Edwards was striding out of the mystical light show almost before the quantum gate had sealed and he called to Mariah as he marched.

“Whereabouts is the spot where you found the spaceship?” Edwards barked.

Mariah trotted after him, still trying to get her bearings after the teleportational jump through quantum space.

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