Apocalypse Unseen. James Axler
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BATTLEFIELD EARTH
Far in the future, mankind endures the relentless onslaught of alien oppressors, an ancient battle whose tide has begun to turn through the efforts of the Cerberus rebels. This remarkable band of warriors fights an elusive enemy, traveling through dangerous portals of time and space, where reality and un-reality collide in stunning, deadly purpose...
LIGHT OF THE DAMNED
The diamond mines of the Congo are ground zero for a calculated new power grab by an ancient Mesopotamian god. Darkened and depraved, Nergal intends to harness the power of light to lock humanity in the blackness of eternal damnation. But Nergal’s ability to blind his opponents is only the beginning. The Cerberus rebels will have to find the human who’s pulling Nergal’s strings...which means venturing into the gaping mouth of hell itself.
Behind Kane, something was stirring
Something large and reeking of amniotic fluid and newness. Something alien.
Kane dragged himself out of the tantalizing promise of unconsciousness. His side hurt, his right arm hurt, his head... He had hit the wall and lay there now, on the floor amid a scattering of fallen drapes and totems and jars, trying to make sense of where he was.
He turned, pain rushing through his neck as he strained his muscles, his breath coming through clenched teeth. An Annunaki stood behind him, large and saurian, larger than any that Kane had ever seen before. He had fought with Enlil and Marduk and others, gone toe-to-toe with Ullikummis, whose surgical enhancements made him a towering pillar among his own kind. But this, an Annunaki of gold and green, was something else. Something huge and muscular, its power barely restrained.
Kane gathered his thoughts, commanding the Sin Eater back into his hand from its hidden sheath. He squeezed the trigger as Anu turned, the light of recognition appearing in the monster’s blood-red eyes.
And in that moment, Kane knew just who he was looking at.
Apocalypse Unseen
James Axler
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1817–1862
The Road to Outlands—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, DC. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned 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 enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ 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 technology...a question to a keeper of the archives...a vague clue about alien masters—and 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.
But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?
Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.
Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.
For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.
After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.
With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.
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