Desert Kings by James Axler

Author:James Axler [Axler, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Speculative Fiction Suspense
ISBN: 9781426814242
Publisher: Gold Eagle
Published: 2008-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

As the huge black doors to the redoubt in southern Arizona opened wide, Edgar Franklin paused to frown at the dark tunnel. There should be a guardian here, and Everbrites along the ceiling. Clearly something was wrong.

For a brief second the TITAN agent panicked, thinking he had walked into a trap set by Delphi, then he saw the destruction along the tunnel. Scorch marks pitted the curved walls, the mold on the bricks, marking where the tunnel had been three feet deep in water but wasn’t anymore. There had been some kind of a major fight here, and his suspicions automatically went to Delphi. Only who had he been trying to kill?

Suddenly a huge shape moved in the darkness, lumbering toward the man.

Calmly, he studied the creature. It was a translucent blob, vaguely resembling a worm, but inside the living jelly was an armature of steel and twinkling lights, the metal flexing and bending. Franklin did nothing as the colossal thing approached. Towering over the human, it seemed ready to strike, then the thing stopped dead.

Reaching out a hand, Franklin paused, and the jelly parted to expose the armature. As he stroked the cool metal with a fingertip, the internal circuits read his fingerprints and a hatch cycled open the display a small control panel. Tapping in a code on the keypad, a tiny rainbow-colored disc about the size of a quarter jutted from a slot.

Taking a small box from his belt, Franklin inserted the mini CD and watched as the blast doors opened again, this time revealing Ryan and the other companions. Hitting fast-forward, the man skimmed through the numerous battles with the companions until the guardian was destroyed in a massive explosion.

“Well done,” Franklin said, turning off the video disc. The agent was impressed in spite of himself. There were very few people in the world who could tackle a guardian and live. Yet these postwar vagabonds had done so with little more than raw bravery and a stolen APC. Most impressive. Turning off the monitor, Franklin waved a hand at the guardian and the deadly jelly flowed to cover the armature once more.

“Stay,” he commanded, pointing at the floor.

The guardian bowed slightly and did not follow as the man casually strolled along the tunnel. The Type 4 guardian was not quite as smart as a Cerberus cloud, but then it was harder to kill, and lasted much longer. Two very valuable attributes. Plus, it was also harder to find. A Cerberus always reeked of ozone and you could smell one approaching from a hundred feet away. Try as they might, there was nothing Overproject Whisper could do to correct that flaw, and so the other types of guardians had been created to see which functioned the best as a possible replacement. So far, the question was far from being settled.

After a hundred or so feet, Franklin reached a huge crater in the floor, the rim broken and sagging. Now this was a recent addition. More handiwork

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