Armageddon Axis: Book Summary

The novel begins Oct 3rd, 2002, over a year and a half after the holocaust. Lakesh is inside the anthill complex and watches as one of the inhabitants takes his own life. It is his 50thyu Birthday and he is off to see the woman who is his lover, Dian.

He witnesses a man try to drown a Russian woman who is then subdued by guards.  He makes his way deep into the anthill.  He meets with Dian Baptist, who is twenty years his junior but isn’t going to join him in the cryosleep.

They make love and the next day he goes into cryo sleep.

Exactly one hundred and forty eight years, three months and thirteen days later he is revived.  It is a major shock to him and he learns of the damage that was inflicted years before.

Kane, Grant, Domi and Brigid are at the Dulce New Mexico redoubt. They are quite sure that another harvest is about to take place so they are determined to prevent it from happening. They are using special stealth cloaks to hide their heat signatures from prying eyes. Domi encounters a guard and takes him down with a non-lethal nerve agent. They interrogate him and find out how to get into the base.  He was assigned 3 months previously from Mandeville.

Grant, Kane and Brigid head into the base and see a hanger where an experimental craft called the Aurora is being prepped for flight. The three of them leave and meet up with Domi.  Rhein refuses to tell them when the ship will be taking off but they find out soon enough.

Grant sets up a Dragon Missile launcher and destroys the Aurora as it takes off from the base. After the destruction they are chased by a Deathbird. They assumed that it was to escort the Aurora. It turns out that the helicopter was just a diversion for a hovertank that comes after them.  It isn’t too hard for them to capture the tank and they use it to escape back to their Hotspur. The tank is disabled when they hit an invisible energy barrier. One of the mags manning the tank runs for it. He hits the field and is killed.

A second Deathbird shows up and hovers at a distance and uses its strobe light to try and mark their location. Grant takes a shot with his sniper rifle and kills one of the crewmen.  It flies off erratically.

In a desperate move Kane lobs a shell from the tank and Grant detonates it. The explosion disables the energy field and they are able to get past. They reach the hotspur and take off and find themselves being chased by a ATV manned by four mags. By pure luck Domi gets a grenade out of the vehicle and it detonates in the air, taking out the pursuing vehicle.

Just when they think they’re in the clear they are attacked by a miner, a specialized borer piloted by a female hybrid. Kane nearly kills them all with a desperate act, he dropped explosives down the maw and it works.  Barely. Domi wants to kill the hybrid but Grant orders her to stand down.  They leave the creature and continue the long journey home to Cerberus.

Lakesh awakens from a nightmare and contemplates all the events over the past several months. He is almost grateful for Kane lifting so much of his responsibility. He heads into the Mat Trans control chamber and checks on Banks and the groups transponders.  Without warning the chamber activates and a Transadapt arrives, holding a implode grenade in his foot. He demands to see Brigid.

The next day there is still no sign of pursuit. They spot a stream and the women go for dip to bathe.  Grant spots a group of dregs approaching. The dregs recognize the group and thank them for starting the revolution and are very polite calling them baron blasters. Already a legend of their exploits has spread across the outlands. Turns out that baron Colbalt has been spreading the word that they are dead.

Baron Colbalt is going over the communications from the other villes. A man named Guende waits patiently.  A lot of data on the rebellion is brought up and the baron demands that Abrams be brought to him. When Guende questions him he almost destroys his privates.

Abrams and the baron meet. Because Abrams knows he is condemned, he speaks his mind openly and freely.  Due to the damage caused to the Dulce facility the baron plans to stage a coup where he is the only one with the means to cleanse his fellow barons.  He knows the facilities they need are in the Anthill and wants Abrams to check it out.

The others finally arrive at Cerberus they are taken to see the Transadapt who has been in the mat trans for over thirty hours.  The little man recognizes Brigid and tells her his name is Leland. He gives Brigid a disk from Sindri and banks takes him off to use the facilities.

The group watches the disk.  They see a corridor and hear fighting.  Sindri is terrified and is pleading to them to come help them.  While they watch, Lakesh has Brigid rewind then freeze and enhance part of the image.  A woman can be seen and when Lakesh sees her he turns and is very ill. Dafore takes him to check his condition.

When Lakesh leaves, the others talk to the transadapt. They what Sindri and the other Transadapts have been up to since the last meeting. They go to see Lakesh and fill him in with what Leland told them.  Lakesh is acting very strange. Brigid follows him when he leaves and presses the issue.

Lakesh has no choice but to give in under her pressure.  He relates the history between himself and Dian.  The way he figures it is that Dian is Brigids great, great aunt. He asks her to persuade Kane into helping them go to the Anthill. He, her, Leland and Kane will go while Grant and Domi stay back to act as back up in case they need rescuing. 

After getting his new assignment Abrams goes and gets Kearny. He humiliates the man and then forces him to do a near impossible job of collating all the intel on the raids over the past few months. He also wants near hourly reports from the man.

Brigid approaches Kane about the jump to the Anthill complex. He is dead set against it but he also realizes that he can’t prevent either from going, short of confining them to the detention cells.  Reluctantly, he agrees to go. But at the same time he forces Brigid to get a weapon and go in packing.

As it would be expected, Grant is Livid that he is forced to stay behind. But he understands the need for him to stay behind if they do need a rescue.  Kane asks him to wait six hours after they jump before they come in guns blazing.

They jump to the anthill.  The smell inside the complex is horrible and it is very cold and damp.  They head deep into the complex and pass through a huge storehouse filled with tons upon tons of predark goods.  Lakesh finds the terminal Sindri used and discovers that somehow the small man locked the system out.

Leland makes a break for it and Kane gives chase after him.  He is brought down by Sindri’s transadapts. Kane figures it was a trap until Sindri orders his people to release him.

They meet up with Sindri and they discuss what is going on.  Sindri apologizes to them. He leads them to the lower levels, through the mock up of Washington DC. Here they come under attack from the few people left inside the facility. Several more of Sindri’s trans adapts are wounded.  They fight their way into the oval office and catch a glimpse of a woman before they are shocked into submission.

When Lakesh awakens he is with Dian. She lets him know that she was the one who allowed him to take the goods from the base to stock Cerberus.  She is very happy that they are together once again.

Sindri has Kane strung up like a side of beef.  He confesses that it was just a ruse to bring them all there, mainly Lakesh though.  He tells Kane how he is going to use the Anthill to overthrow the barons.  Mainly by using the Aurora craft.

Lakesh tells Dian about Brigid and how she is Dian’s descendent. The woman is very happy to learn about this. She realizes that the genetic sample she contributed to Scenario Joshua must be the reason for her existence.  She very much wants to meet Brigid.

When they meet Dian embraces her.  Brigid isn’t sure how to react and finds her heart racing from either compassion or revulsion. Sindri and Kane arrive and Sindri demands that they keep their end of the bargain.  Dian doesn’t like the way that he looks at Brigid. But they go to the mat trans and take a very short trip, to a canyon about two miles from the Anthill.  There they head into a huge vault, that hasn’t been entered in at least two hundred years. There are all manner of prototype aircraft, tanks and other vehicles. Including the fully functional Aurora craft, which is a hell of a lot larger than the one that they shot down.

Sindri forces them into the Aurora and does a diagnostic. Everything seems to be in perfectly working order.  He announces his plans to use the nuclear weapons stored on board to force the barons into line, even if it means destroying one or two. Brigid is sick of listening to him and repeats his words on how he truly feels about the Transadapts.  He orders two of them to take Kane down and shoot him four times in the head. The craft passes MACH four and they are thrown off Balance. Sindri bowls into the other two Transadapts and Kane takes advantage of the situation and tries to Disarm Sindri. The little man’s gun goes off and blows a hole in the ship.  The ship starts to go down.

During the fight Dian tries to get past them. Kane feels that she is about to harm Brigid so he shoots her in the back. But she was trying to protect Brigid, not harm her.  She forces the knife deeper into the wound where he had been stabbed.  She forces him to stay with Dian as they use the ships escape pod and watch as the ship crashes.  Brigid is very upset with Kane.

Abrams is about to head out to the Anthill complex when the baron stops him. The baron knows about his plans and has him Killed. 

End of Armageddon Axis.

A total of Six Days passed in this Novel

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