THE ANCIENT MILITARY redoubt that served as the headquarters of the Cerberus operation was located high in the Bitterroot Mountain Range in Montana, where it had remained largely forgotten or ignored for the two bleak centuries that followed the nukecaust of 2001. In the intervening years, a strange mythology had built up around the shadow-filled forests and seemingly bottomless ravines of the mountains. The wilderness surrounding the tri-level concrete structure was virtually unpopulated; the nearest settlement was some miles away in the flatlands beyond the mountains themselves, just a small band of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians led by a shaman named Sky Dog who had befriended several of the Cerberus warriors over the years.

      The facility itself had not always been called Cerberus. Its official name was Redoubt Bravo, named, like all prewar redoubts, after a letter of the alphabet, as used in standard military radio communications. Redoubt Bravo had been dedicated to the monitoring and exploration of the newly developed matter-transfer network. However, somewhere in the mists of time, a young soldier had painted a vibrant rendition of the fabled, two-headed hound of Hades to guard the doors to the facility, like Cerberus guarding the gates to the underworld. The artist was long since dead, but his work had inspired the people who had taken over the facility to call it the Cerberus redoubt.

      Hidden within the rocky clefts of the mountains around the building, disguised beneath camouflage netting, concealed uplinks chattered continuously with two orbiting satellites to provide a steady stream of data for the Cerberus operatives within. Accessing the ancient satellites had been a long process, involving much trial and error by many of the top scientists at the redoubt. The Cerberus crew could draw on live feeds from both a Vela-class reconnaissance satellite and the Keyhole communications satellite.

      Despite its location high in the fresh air of the Bitterroot Mountains, the Cerberus facility was a self-contained unit. Its personnel had become accustomed to recirculated, filtered air as provided by vast air-conditioning units that continually churned and cleansed the facility’s air.

      The Cerberus operation had been founded and staffed by a cryogenically displaced scientist called Mohandas Lakesh Singh, who had dedicated the redoubt to the continued survival and freedom of humanity.

      Kane, in his previous life as a Magistrate at Cobaltville, had come upon evidence of a vast conspiracy that threatened the autonomy of humankind. Kane had stumbled on the first clues to the existence of a hidden alien race called the Annunaki who had been dabbling in humankind’s affairs for longer than anyone could comprehend. Appearing as gods to early man, the Annunaki had, from the shadows, guided the course of human history over the subsequent millennia, with an ultimate agenda of utter subjugation. Recently, the Annunaki royal family had revealed themselves on Earth once more, and Kane and his colleagues now found themselves in a deadly war of attrition against this seemingly unstoppable foe.

      The Cerberus warriors were one of humanity’s last bastions in the secret battle for the freedom of humankind.