Cosmic Rift Read Free

though it took Henry a moment to recognize it; it looked like a sickle but it was longer and it glowed the green and gold of the ocean’s surface catching sunlight.
    Henry looked at the figure as it emerged from the star, a cloak billowing behind it as it stepped on Earth soil. It was then that Henry knew just what he had to do. He sank to his knees—graceless in the restraints of the armor—and bowed his head. Henry was a knight for Richard the Lionheart, and had willingly joined him on this pilgrimage to safeguard the Holy Land. He knew a savior when he saw one.

Chapter 1
    Serra do Norte, Brazil, July 2204
    It was always hot in Brazil, and in July it was hotter, Domi reflected as she took another sip from her water bottle.
    “Careful with that,” Mariah Falk recommended, peering up from her equipment. “Controlled sips, or you’ll start to feel bloated.”
    “I’ve done this before,” Domi replied irritably and made a show of smacking her lips. Dammit, that woman has the hearing of a bat, Domi cursed to herself. Mariah’s warning was sound advice, and reminding even a seasoned field agent like Domi was never something to regret. But it annoyed the heck out of Domi because Mariah tended to speak to her as if she were a child.
    It was understandable that she did, however. Domi was waiflike in appearance, her small frame more like that of a teenage girl than a grown woman. Furthermore, she dressed like a child, as well, favoring short, sleeveless tops that barely covered her small, pert breasts and cutoffs that left her thin legs bare. While slim, her legs and arms were still muscular, her physique reminiscent of an acrobat or a ballet dancer, all coiled sinew waiting to spring. Domi also preferred to go barefoot, whatever the terrain she found herself in; right now she was especially enjoying the way the tufts of grass that grew tenaciously from the sandy soil of the riverbank tickled her pale toes.
    “Pale” being the operative word, of course; Domi was an albino, skin chalk-white with hair to match, cut in a pixie-ish bob that framed her sharp features. Within that sharp face it was the eyes that drew attention—two pools of ruby-redness like congealing blood. In a simpler time she might have been mistaken for a devil or sprite and burned at the stake.
    Domi was a field agent for the Cerberus operation, a set-up based in North America that had dedicated itself to the protection of mankind from the dangerous forces that threatened it. The reason that sounded like a pretty weighty remit was because it was—Cerberus had fought with alien races bent on the destruction of humanity, battled creatures in other dimensions and even fought with world machines that had been programmed to bring forth Armageddon.
    Domi had grown up far away from the technological hub that was the Cerberus headquarters, a military redoubt built in the twentieth century that had been secured by her lover, Mohandas Lakesh Singh, the contentious leader of the Cerberus team. Domi had, instead, been born in the Outlands beyond the reach of the walled villes that dominated the North American landscape, and while she had witnessed and been a part of a great many lifestyles since then, she remained an outlander at heart, a wild free spirit with a quick temper and a keen survival instinct.
    Domi wore the bare minimum of clothing for decency and she wore something else, too—two weapons that she did not leave the Cerberus redoubt without. The first was a combat knife with a cruel, nine-inch serrated edge, cinched to her ankle in an undecorated sleeve. She had once used this blade on her ex-master, Guana Teague, when she had been indoctrinated into his cruel regime as a sex slave, and its value to her was incalculable.
    The second item, unholstered but slipped through her belt at the small of her back, was a Detonics Combat Master .45 pistol with a dull finish. While Domi might get more personal satisfaction from using the blade on an