Cradle Of Destiny

Grant managed a smirk, seeing the shore of Thunder Isle. “Grant out.”

THOUGH HER HEADBAND was meant to keep the sweat and her flowing red-gold hair out of Brigid Baptiste’s eyes, she still needed to mop her eyes as she paused. Her hands had been callused from her years of adventure, but the effort of prying apart the sunbaked sandstone with a foot-long utility knife was raising new blisters on her fingers. The pebbling on the Micarta Fiberglas handle had worn a red patch between the base and knuckle of her index finger.

So far, she’d gotten the sleeve out to the shoulder, and from the tailored length of what she’d freed, there was no doubt as to the owner of the duster. She sat back, a wave of nausea rumbling in her stomach.

Brigid raised Kane on her Commtact. “Did you warn Grant?”

“Yes,” Kane answered. “His response was that you’ve found the coat, so he’s already destined to go on a trip to the ancient past. You’re sure it’s his coat?”

“By now, absolutely,” Brigid answered. “No one else in Cerberus has arms as long as he does.”

Brigid glanced to one side, and saw Domi’s ruby-red eyes locked on the armored leather spilling out of the crack in the temple remnant.

“You heard what Kane said?” Brigid asked.

“Was on party line,” Domi answered, her diction returning to the abbreviated Outland form of speech. It was a sign of nervousness or heightened stress, and Brigid could feel sympathy for the young albino. Usually, when her words became terse and tense, she at least could engage in combat to deal with what had gotten under her skin. When Domi couldn’t utilize the energy pumped into her bloodstream by the fight-or-flight reflex, Brigid could see her grow morose and withdrawn.

Domi was walking an emotional edge, especially considering how close she had grown to Grant since he had first saved her life back in the Tartarus slums under Cobaltville. Grant had been the first person in a long time to show the wild woman kindness. Domi had gone from fighting, literally tooth and claw, for survival to being one of pit-boss Guana Teague’s prostitutes. Gentleness and humanity had been a rarity in her life, and Grant’s act of protection had earned her undying loyalty, first demonstrated when she stopped Teague from strangling Grant to death.

There’d been a brief period when Domi had thought their relationship was sexual in nature, but it eventually settled down that she had found a father figure. When Cerberus was a much smaller staff, before the influx of lunar staff, she had finally found her family. The added freezies from the Manitius Base had made her uncomfortable, intruding on her sense of community, which only drew her closer to Grant, Kane, Brigid and Lakesh.

Brigid didn’t want to think of the pain Domi would be in if Grant was gone forever.

“We know roughly when he was transported,” Brigid said. “And this place has none of the traditional indications of a Sumerian crypt.”

“So not cemetery,” Domi muttered, looking around. “Not much temple.”

“Not now, but we have millennia of erosion and deterioration that’s removed most of what this place used to be,” Brigid answered.

“Erosion?” Domi asked. Her face screwed into a mask of skepticism. “Or bombed.”

Brigid frowned as she looked around. “We’ve only been digging for a few minutes—we can’t tell.”

“Snake-faces ruled here,” Domi mentioned.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that,” Brigid answered.

“Never forget anything,” Domi agreed. “But didn’t say so.”

“You’re trying to say that I’m keeping information from you?” Brigid asked.

Domi looked away from the sleeve, the first time in the several minutes since they’d discovered the armored garment. “No. Softening news. Maybe. Not say lying.”

Brigid rested her hand on the diminutive albino’s shoulder. “We would have found skeletal remains if he was killed here. This was just a memento…buried and lost in time.”

“Too hot for long coat here, even then?” Domi asked.

“Absolutely,” Brigid answered.

“News is getting better,” Domi said, recovering some of her language skills, stress lessening.

“Plus we’re not even sure he’s going to be tossed through time just this minute,” Brigid said. “It could be some time in the next thirty years, for all we know. Or even Grant’s son, if he has one.”

Domi snickered. Brigid tilted her head.

“Remembered line about assumptions,” Domi said. “You make an ass out of you and umption.”

Brigid nodded.

“Because, you know, I’m pretty big, too,” Edwards interjected from his overwatch of the temple dig. “Grant could have lent me his coat.”

“Too fat,” Domi replied.

Edwards grimaced. “That’s muscle.”

“You want to get punier?” Domi asked.

Mariah Falk let out a sigh. “Brigid, I thought that you wanted to see the chamber that this coat seems to be walled into.”

Domi tilted her head.

Brigid explained for her friend. “That device she has is a sonar locater. It registers echoes off loud noises returned from objects of heavier density.”

Domi smiled with comprehension. “So when Mariah set off the boom stick on the ground, she was looking through the sand.”

“When did you start getting so smart?” Edwards asked.

“Boyfriend cuts holes in universes as shortcuts,” Domi noted. “Brigid friend is living encyclopedia. Six years hanging around with them, knowledge rubs off, newbie.”

Edwards smirked. “Attitude rubs off, too.”

“It’s not attitude if you can back it up,” Brigid countered. The archivist walked over to Falk, who had put another image on her portable tablet computer. “You’ve double-checked this?”

“I don’t know what kind of scientists you’ve worked with in this time, but I didn’t get assigned to Manitius by being sloppy and second-rate,” Falk answered.

“Point taken,” Brigid said. “My apologies.”

“None necessary,” Falk replied. “I just wanted you to know who you were working with.”

“How deep is that pit supposed to be?” Edwards asked.

“From ceiling to floor, we’re looking at thirty feet,” Falk explained. “The overall floor space looks to be the size of four football fields blocked together, with pillars that could easily be five feet in diameter.”

“Football fields?” Edwards asked. “Say it in postapocalyptic terms for those of us without a frame of reference.”

“Two hundred yards long, and we’re looking at about fifty yards wide,” Falk translated. She snorted with amusement.

“What’s so funny?” Edwards asked.