“Will you stop playing with those things,” Sutton said. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be giving away our position every time you start fiddling with them?”
“That’s exactly what I want to show you. Take a look.” As he had shown them before, when the device came into contact with skin, hundreds of tiny diamond shapes appeared, seeming to float just below the transparent surface. Although they assumed the slowly pulsating shapes formed an intelligible pattern, they were unable to determine what it was.
“Help me,” Edward said. “I can’t read alien.”
Tye grabbed for the first stray hand he could find. It turned out to be Fadeela’s. He held it down on the counter and dropped the medallion into her palm. Using a pencil he found on the counter, he pointed at one of the tiny shapes near the periphery of the display surface. “Keep your eyes on this dot,” he said. Then he put a second medallion in the shopkeeper’s hand. When he did, the diamond shape in question doubled. When he picked up the third medallion in his own hand, it tripled.
“That’s us,” Reg said, figuring it out. “We’re on their screens.” “I knew it. You’re showing them where we are,” Sutton said. “Pretty interesting, don’t you think?” Tye asked.
“Maybe too interesting,” Fadeela said. She took the pencil from Tye and pointed to a double diamond moving slowly across the screen. “It looks like this one is coming in our direction.” After watching for a moment, the others could see she was right.
“It looks like they’re coming from the north,” Reg said. “Try moving your hand to a new angle.” Fadeela did, and the diamonds on the screen adjusted to her new position. “It works like a compass.”
“More like a global positioning device.”
“Well, whatever it is, let’s go out and have a look.”
They hurried out of the store and ran around the back side of the building. Far to the north, something was moving across the open desert fast enough to kick twin trails of dust high into the air.
“Are all of you dense?” Sutton demanded. He slapped the medallion out of Tye’s hand and sent it skittering across the asphalt with a kick. “You’re leading them straight to us. We’ve got to make ourselves scarce. I’ll get Yossi. The rest of you get the truck started.”
“Hold on there,” Reg said, still staring across the sand. “I’ve got another idea.”
Five minutes later, a pair of alien chariots trotted out of the desert and parked themselves on opposite sides of the restroom building. Their passengers dismounted and took a long look around. After a moment, the two that had stopped closer to the store turned and marched toward the men’s bathroom. Except for their hideous, otherworldly appearance, they could have been just two more motorists who had stopped to use the facilities before continuing on their journey. Most of the pilots were hiding inside the store, along with the two men who ran the station.
“Okay. Now I have seen everything,” one of the old men said in Arabic.
A heartbeat after the first alien walked through the bathroom door, he was blown back outside by the jet of fire shooting from Edward’s flamethrower. His startled companion backed away, but didn’t get too far before Remi stepped outside and unleashed a second torrent of flames. Both skeletal bodies staggered through the flames, slapping at themselves with hands and tentacles until the walls of their suits opened and the creatures inside squirmed out and tried to run. One of them collapsed in the fire. Edward polished the other one off with a single shot from his pistol.
Even before they saw the flare of the flamethrowers, the other two aliens knew there was trouble. One of them came sprinting around the comer, moving too fast to maintain its balance. The knuckles of its curved toes slid out from under it, and it spilled sideways to the ground. As it fell, it fired a series of quick shots that sent Edward and Remi scrambling back into the men’s room for cover. The creature used its tentacles to lift itself to its feet, then began marching deliberately toward the rest room, firing one pulse blast after another. The blasts tore into the wall, tearing it down a few bricks at a time. The remaining alien brought the chariot around to offer backup. Maintaining a cautious distance from the building, the alien brought it to a stop in the middle of the highway. Its comrade continued to pulverize the front wall of the restroom building, moving closer each time it fired.
“They’re in trouble,” Yossi said. “Let’s help them.”
“Where’s that alien gun?” Reg asked Tye. “Time to give it a test.” The men rushed toward the exit doors, leaving Fadeela with the dumbstruck shopkeepers. She was about to follow them outside when she had an idea. She picked up one of the amber medallions and pressed the coppery side against the back of her hand. As soon as she did so, the alien firing the pulse blasts froze for a moment and swiveled its magnificent shell head around to look in her direction. Then it pointed its finger straight toward her.
“Get down!” she yelled. The old men hit the deck a split second before a white flash shattered the window and tore into the store.
This momentary distraction was all the opportunity Remi needed. He popped out of the men’s room and discharged another spike of liquefied fire. It splattered against the alien’s back. As the creature screeched and fell to the ground, the other soldiers opened fire on the alien sitting in his chariot. Before their bullets could do more than ding against his armor, the creature ducked behind the protective front wall of the vehicle. Under a hailstorm of bullets, the sled broke into a backwards sprint, moving just as smoothly as it did when running forward.
“Come back here, you bloody wanker,” Sutton shouted after the retreating vehicle.
“That’s the first time we’ve chased one off,” Tye observed.
“We’ve got him outnumbered and outgunned,” Reg said. “He’s the first one to show any sense.”
But the creature’s retreat was only temporary. After stopping a safe distance out in the desert to survey the scene, it charged to the attack once more. The alien kept low behind the superhard material of the chariot’s front wall and fired blindly as it came.
Tye was amazed. “It’s like a pit bull with a bone in its mouth. It just doesn’t know when to give up.” A moment later, a pulse zinged past him and ripped into the front wall of the station house.
“Keep him pinned down,” Reg yelled to Sutton and Yossi. “We’ll move up and get the angle on him.” Then he and Tye hustled forward to the edge of the road and took cover behind a stack of discarded tires. Tye unwrapped the pulse weapon and let it climb onto his arm. Then he stole a glance over the tires and was alarmed to see the chariot heading directly toward them. He was nervous and breathing hard.
“What if it doesn’t work this time?” he asked, looking down at the thing on his arm. Reg patted him on the shoulder and tried to reassure him.
“Remember: It’s all mental. If we both tell it to fire, it’ll fire. All we have to do is concentrate. Aim right at the head, and we’ll be okay.”
While bullets and pulse blasts ripped by in opposite directions overhead, Reg and Tye hunkered down and waited. The next time they peeked out, the front wall of the chariot was nearly on top of them. It was about to pass well within a tentacle’s reach.
“One shot,” Reg said. “Make it count.”
Tye extended his arm like a rifle, and Reg gripped the copper-colored flippers. When the front end of the chariot brushed past, they came face-to-face with the crouching exoskeleton. The eight-foot-tall beast recoiled when it saw the humans. Reg mentally willed the gun to fire, but nothing happened. The sight of the hideous beast so close to them had distracted Tye from his purpose. With a screech, the startled alien lifted a tentacle to lash at the men.
“Fire!” Reg yelled, visualizing the pulse leaving the end of the weapon. It worked. The shell face blew apart just as the tentacle came across the side of Tye’s head; it connected with the force of a heavyweight’s punch and sent Tye flying. Reg pulled out a pistol and stood over the still-quivering body. A pair of reflecti
ve eyes stared up at him through the jagged opening in the armor. He pointed the pistol and prepared to kill it, but hesitated. Would it be possible, he wondered, to take the thing prisoner? Could I interrogate it the same way they did to me? He could feel it trying to attack telepathically, but its mental energy was very weak. Reg knew it was dying. He was still standing there thinking when Sut ton ran up and pumped twenty shells into the opening, turning the alien’s head into a lumpy liquid paste. Sutton could have gone on firing, but Reg stopped him.
“First the Israeli woman, and now Tye.” Sutton was trembling with anger. “He wasn’t much of a soldier, but one hell of a nice kid.”
“I’m not quite dead yet,” came a voice from behind them, “just resting.”
Blood was streaming down the side of Tye’s head. He’d lost a chunk of his left ear, but was otherwise uninjured. With help from the others, he got to his feet and slowly regained his balance. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ve taken harder hits during rugby matches.”
Once he saw that Tye was going to pull through, Sutton regretted sounding like a mollycoddler and changed his tune. “It’s your own fault, you know. You ever hear of a thing called ducking?” Then he took one of his friend’s arms and led him back toward the damaged service station.
Yossi had gone to check on Edward and Remi. They came out of the destroyed rest room and extinguished their flamethrowers. The three men walked over to the alien chariot and took their first unhurried look at the inside of the vehicle. Like the other alien technologies they’d seen, it looked like the shell of a living thing. The riding area was shaped like a shallow bowl coated with a thick slathering of the same clear jelly lining the inside of the bioarmor cavities. Sand, dust, and twigs covered this sticky substance everywhere except where the aliens had recently been kneeling. There were no steering controls, knobs, or dials. There wasn’t even anything to hold on to.
“Should we burn it?” Edward asked.
“No,” Yossi told him. “Maybe we can use it.” He whistled Reg over to take a look, then used a pocketknife to scrape away the layer of gelatin until he reached the layer of tough gray meat lining the inside of the shell. “Watch out, it might jump,” he warned the others before stabbing down at the meat with his knife. Nothing happened. Although the surface of the flesh gave when he touched it with his blade, he couldn’t tear it open.
“He wants to steal their car,” Edward said when Reg walked up.
“Maybe it works the same way as the pulse weapon,” Yossi said. “1 think we should try it.”
Reg looked down at the sand-soaked goop lining the inside of the chariot. “It’d be nice if we could run it through a car wash and clean it up first.” But he agreed that they should experiment. He used Yossi’s knife to clear the gunk away from a second area, then pressed a finger down onto the shell’s spongy lining. Nothing happened until Yossi did the same thing. With both of them touching it simultaneously, the joints in the stick-figure legs flexed and bristled. “Make it walk,” Reg said.
Yossi looked at him uncertainly. “How?”
“Just imagine it. Try to picture in your—”
“Agh!” Yossi yanked his hand away when he felt the thing begin to step forward. The legs quit walking the moment he broke the contact. He looked at Reg. “It is very disgusting.”
“I agree. Let’s try it again.”
Within a few minutes the two men were walking the chariot around the grounds of the filling station like a clumsy, obedient dog. Using nothing more than their fingertips, they learned to make it stand in place, turn in a slow circle, and move in any direction they ordered. It was easy once they got the hang of it, simply a matter of will. But they couldn’t get it to move as gracefully as the aliens had. The legs became confused whenever the men gave it conflicting mental signals. They also learned that the gelatin material was an essential part of the operating system. When they cleaned it completely from an area, the vehicle didn’t register their skin contact.
It was Fadeela who stopped them. “It’s time to go,” she said, reminding everyone they had an important message to deliver to the army at the oasis.
“I think we should take this thing with us,” Yossi said. “It could be useful.”
“It’s too big,” Fadeela told him. “There isn’t room in the truck.”
But Reg knew what he had in mind. He grimaced down at the chariot’s bed of slime and then up at his Israeli ally. “All right. But it’s going to be a long, sticky ride.”
A few minutes later, after saying good-bye to the elderly gas-station keepers, the truck rolled out onto the road and turned in the direction of Qal’at Buqum. A few car lengths behind, Reg and Yossi sat cross-legged in the alien chariot, their rear ends sunk into the layer of extraterrestrial ooze. They looked like characters in a futuristic version of A Thousand and One Nights, riding a strange-looking magic carpet across the desert.
12
Back to the Oasis
The sky was black, except for a streak of violet hanging over the western horizon when the old truck grumbled to the top of a rise in the road overlooking what still remained of Qal’at Buqum. The only lights in the oasis came from the scattered fires burning the last of its buildings. Ali pulled onto the shoulder and steered toward a cluster of civilians who had gathered on a bluff above the ruined village.
When they saw the alien chariot skulking through the darkness behind the truck, the civilians panicked. Shots rang out. Fortunately, neither Reg nor Yossi was hit. Word of the captured vehicle spread fast, and soon there were a hundred people crowded around the sled-shaped craft. The human charioteers brought it around to the front of the truck and parked in the one remaining headlight to give everyone a chance to examine it. Some of them used the opportunity to throw stones and kick at the sticklike legs. When Reg made no move to stop them, neither did the others. These people had every right to be angry. Angry not only with the armor-clad alien warriors who had decimated their town, but with Faisal’s army, which had allowed it to happen.
Soon after Reg’s group had stolen away to the east, Faisal and his advisors had concocted a plan which they quickly put into motion. After dumping poison into the outdoor pools and burying a few land mines, they withdrew their forces toward the mountains and established a camp. The townspeople were left to their own devices. As the old woman who had sold them ammunition earlier that day put it, they were left as bait. Most residents had loaded their possessions into their cars and driven into the mountains, taking the road toward Dawqah on the coast. Others, the people standing around them, had retreated a few thousand yards into the desert, onto the bluff. A handful of desperate men, with only a few weapons among them, had stayed behind to defend the oasis.
Late in the afternoon, the people on the bluff had watched the chariots come across the desert and spread out around the oasis before entering en masse. The men and boys who had stayed behind were counting on Molotov cocktails as much as on guns to repel the attack. Apparently, it didn’t work very well because the aliens used very few pulse blasts to subdue the human defenders. One group of survivors made it to the edge of the oasis, but when they tried to run across the open desert, a chariot followed them out and caught them one by one. As it began to get dark, the fires started, and the oasis village was burned to the ground. Some of the chariots had left again in the direction of their crashed airship, but no one could agree on how many.
Reg stared down the hill as the last of Qal’at Buqum’s fires burned down. A pair of headlights came over the distant horizon, headed along the road that would take them through the center of the village. Everyone on the bluff watched quietly as the headlights entered the town, paused for a few moments near the central post office, then continued up the hill in their direction. Reg and the others ran out into the road to meet whoever was coming up the hill, which turned out to be a pair of Saudi soldiers in a jeep. The civilians surrounded their car, asking questions about their village. The soldiers said they’d seen nothing but a few
dead humans and burning buildings. They said they were on an important errand and couldn’t answer any more questions. The driver put the jeep in gear and began plowing slowly through the crowd until Ali Hassan stepped into their headlights. When they saw him, the soldiers killed the engine and got out of the car. Ali told the crowd to stay back, then held a short conference with the pair. The three of them talked for a few minutes before returning to the jeep. Ali sat in the driver’s seat and spoke on the radio, shouting angrily into the handset. When he was finished, he began arguing with the soldiers, who drove away only after Ali threatened them at gunpoint.
“What was that all about?” Reg asked, when Ali came striding toward him a moment later.
“We need to talk,” the Saudi captain said, clapping one of his powerful hands onto Reg’s shoulders and escorting him toward the truck. When they were inside, he told Reg to roll up his window, then looked around to make sure no one was lurking nearby.
“What the hell is going on?” Reg asked. He didn’t know what Ali had learned from the passing soldiers, but clearly it wasn’t good news.
“It’s Faisal. He’s moved his army into the mountains. They are about six miles up the road that leads to the town of Dawqah. I know the place. It is easy to defend. If the aliens attack him there, he will make them pay.”
“Then let’s hope they do attack. But not until after we’ve convinced Faisal not to bomb the destroyer.” Reg stayed quiet for a moment or two, waiting to hear the reason for the private conference. But Ali only stared straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel as if he meant to strangle it.
Eventually, Reg broke the silence. “How long will it take to reach Faisal’s camp?”
“There is a problem.”
“Yes, I was beginning to suspect as much.”
After glancing around once more, Ali explained. “Faisal has given an order. The order is to kill Reg Cummins. There is a reward for the man who does it.”
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