Shadow Born
Earth remains the tortured battleground of near-immortal aliens. But these god kings never anticipated unified resistance from a group of humans possessing the tenacity and spirit to reclaim their planet. In the ongoing war for independence, the Cerberus fighters forge an epic showdown, as evil shape-shifts and unfurls its grand design…The madness surrounding entombed secrets of an ancient race puts Kane and his allies on a death chase across the African subcontinent. Facing relentless attack from winged hell beasts and marauding militia, the rebels are forced into an unholy alliance with a deadly foe. Only the dark goddess spawned of humanity's most brutal overlord can challenge a superhuman interloper and navigate an ancient ziggurat that guards a nightmare. The price for miscalculation will be paid in blood–with the eternal damnation of the human race.
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DOMINION PLAGUE
Earth remains the tortured battleground of near-immortal aliens. But these god kings never anticipated unified resistance from a group of humans possessing the tenacity and spirit to reclaim their planet. In the ongoing war for independence, the Cerberus fighters forge an epic showdown, as evil shape-shifts and unfurls its grand designâ¦.
UNSTOPPABLE JUGGERNAUT
The madness surrounding entombed secrets of an ancient race puts Kane and his allies on a death chase across the African subcontinent. Facing relentless attack from winged hell beasts and marauding militia, the rebels are forced into an unholy alliance with a deadly foe. Only the dark goddess spawned of humanityâs most brutal overlord can challenge a superhuman interloper and navigate an ancient ziggurat that guards a nightmare. The price for miscalculation will be paid in bloodâwith the eternal damnation of the human race.
âGet out of my head!â Kane growled
He wrestled against the forces assailing him. The other entityâa shadowy form zooming between Kaneâs view of the world and his embattled mindâlooked over its shoulder at the ongoing struggle.
Kane heard a voice no human on Earth ever had. It was deep, rumbling, pervasive. It might have been male, but there was an odd quality to it that seemed almost sexless. âYour friends are going to die.â The vibrations of those words burrowed deep into himâlike termites chewing through the heart of a tree.
Kane writhed in the smothering grasp of his opponent.
âYouâre going to shoot them,â the shadow taunted. Kaneâs right arm tore free from the engulfing mass of darkness, and he reached out, fingertips brushing the icy flesh.
âIâll rip you out of my skull first!â Kane bellowed. âIâll shred you into ribbons!â
Shadow Born
James Axler
Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force, one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.
âLeon Trotsky,
1879â1940
The Road to Outlandsâ From Secret Government Files to the Future
Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermathâforever known as skydarkâreshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlandsâpoisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.
What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.
Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.
In the villes, rigid laws were enforcedâto atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the baronsâ public credo and their right-to-rule.
Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technologyâ¦a question to a keeper of the archivesâ¦a vague clue about alien mastersâand their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.
Contents
The Road to Outlands
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Neekra dreamed of ages past, her memories stretching far back through the delirium and pain of the orichalcum scepter jammed through her avatarâs torso. She sought escape from the incalculable energies held within the unstable alloy scorching through her hijacked cellular structure. The superstring biological computers that sheâd molded into her core, powerful transmitters that allowed her incredible telepathic ability and the power to sculpt human bodies as if made from clay, misfired and shuddered...
