“Circle around to the left, Fiona,” I said. I didn’t want them to take cover on the far side of the vehicle and shoot under it. We had to stop them quickly.
Fiona did as I asked without hesitation, scuttling sideways like a crab over the desert floor, staying low and keeping her eyes on the vehicle. She wanted to fight. I could see that clearly. Could these objects, depending on their natures, alter the mental outlook of their users? I felt it had to be the case, watching Fiona. No normal young girl would act like that. She was a like some kind of barbarian.
“Keep up our shield, Abigail,” I shouted back over my shoulder. I glanced and saw she still stood with her hands held high. To stop her, they were going to have to cut her down. I didn’t want to see that happen, so I kept flanking them.
In the end, a Gray Man hiding on the other side of the vehicle edged around it, shooting. He didn’t see me immediately in the dark. The only source of light was the big rip itself, slowly spinning in the sand. Unfortunately, the Gray Man got off a shot before I could take him down with my pistol. A blue-white blaze of plasma fired toward the rip. I put five rounds into him and he went down. I kept going around the vehicle. There was only one other Gray Man, and he was dead in the desert. Fiona stood over him with her knife in her twitching hand. She panted and stared at the body.
We’d won.
Victory had come at a price. The Gray Man who’d gotten off a shot had killed Old Red. His cap and the dolly had survived, of course, but the rest of his upper body was a block of ice. The ice had cracked when he’d hit the sand. You could see frozen organs and shattered ribs inside.
Abigail stood still, eyes closed, concentrating.
Fiona came up beside me and stared at Old Red’s remains. “What do we do now?” she asked.
I had been scanning the horizon, but didn’t see further signs of the enemy. I figured they had to be coming, though. The group we’d ambushed must have reported our position. After losing contact, the next time they sent a force they would come in strength. I imagined Gray Men quietly scrambling and loading their weapons into more trucks out there somewhere.
“We’re scouts, so let’s scout. We check out their truck, learn as much about their technology as we can,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.
The design of the truck was odd—there were no curves to it. There were slanted, diagonal lines, but no rounded edges. The corners of the vehicle were so sharp they couldn’t have been molded metal; they had to be flat sheets of steel that met at precise points. Was this an example of advanced engineering or their chosen style? I wasn’t sure.
The cockpit had very simple controls. A bar of metal shaped like a delta wing seemed to serve as both the throttle and the steering mechanism, depending on how you manipulated it. The system reminded me of a joystick. There didn’t seem to be an ignition or even a start button. Experimentally, I touched the power bar. The engine thrummed into life. I nodded; it had sensed my contact. My physiology must have been similar enough to a Gray Man’s to fool it. I gave the bar a tiny nudge forward, and the vehicle surged a few feet in response.
“Anyone could drive this,” I said to Fiona. She stood outside in the sand, watching me with big eyes.
“Are we going to steal this machine and ride to their base?” she asked. The next words she blurted out in a rush: “I want to kill more of them.”
I glanced at her, trying not to appear disturbed. She stood there with dead Gray Men all around her feet. Old Red lay farther away, turned half to ice behind her. The smell of burnt alien flesh alone was cloying and difficult to take. But all Fiona could think of was her next kill. That knife she gripped and regripped in her hand had a hold over her mind I didn’t fully understand. Maybe only certain objects generated such emotions. I had several objects and didn’t feel any urge to kill.
“I don’t think so,” I told her, climbing down out of the cockpit. “They’ll all come to this spot. We can’t be so obvious. I’m going to go back and talk to Gilling. Stay here and cover Abigail.”
As I walked to the rip and stepped within its embrace, Abigail spoke to me. Her voice was just above a whisper. I could tell all her concentration was required to keep up our shielding.
“Can’t we all go home?” she asked.
Abigail was so peaceful compared to Fiona, the contrast was shocking. Her curly black locks hung around her neck. Her upraised hands were tipped with blood-red nails. She was as peaceful and calm as Fiona was bloodthirsty. She only wanted to go home to our existence, and I felt bad turning her down, but I didn’t want to give up yet. We’d proven we could fight with them and win on their turf. We were the aggressors for once. I wasn’t ready to run yet.