“Just give me a few minutes more, Abigail. If you drop the shield, they will see the rip clearly and come right here. They will know everything then.”
Abigail nodded slowly, sadly, accepting my instructions. Fiona had no difficulties with my instructions. She stood near Abigail and slashed at the alien truck. It was odd, seeing her cut the air and hearing scraping sounds coming from the metal of the vehicle that stood about fifty feet away. I wondered vaguely if slashing something metal could dull the edge of her knife—even though she wasn’t actually touching it.
Feeling like a bastard, I stepped back home and left them in the hostile desert. A half dozen hands with tightly held objects rose up to confront me when I stepped into view. They lowered their objects when I stepped out of the blurring rip and they realized who I was.
“Where are the rest?” Gilling asked. His voice sounded confident, almost disinterested, but I could tell he had been waiting nervously like the rest of them.
“The Gray Men saw us before we could get the shielding up. A truck came out to investigate.”
A dozen glittering eyes stared at me. No one spoke. I could see they thought I might be the last survivor. Rheinman, the mechanic with the ball-peen hammer, tapped his palm with the head of his object. His cheeks twitched. He probably figured I’d ditched the rest—or killed them.
“We won the fight, and we captured their truck,” I said.
A murmur went through the group. They were relieved and fearful all at once. I understood what they were thinking as they exchanged worried glances. They’d officially announced war upon the Gray Men now.
“Where are the rest?” Gilling asked again.
“Abigail is maintaining her shield. Fiona is protecting her. But Old Red died in the fighting. He was hit by one of those big projection guns of theirs.”
“It’s a failure, then,” said the rifleman named Souza. “We’ve alerted them. We have to abort the mission.”
Everyone started talking at once. Everyone except for Gilling and me. Instead, Gilling eyed me curiously. Maybe he didn’t believe my story. I barely cared. While they argued about what to do next, I reloaded my .32 auto.
I let them talk for a minute or so, shouting that our cover was blown, that this was supposed to be a quiet mission, not a pitched battle. The consensus was that we couldn’t face their organized army on their own ground.
I listened, but not too closely. My mind was made up. I was going to press ahead.
Gilling raised his bejeweled fingers and the group quieted. “Let’s hear what our scout suggests.”
“I want to open a new rip to the east, much closer to the cubes. Who’s coming with me?”
People shuffled their feet. A siren rose and fell in the distance. They looked this way and that, studying the streets that wound down the hillside. I knew they were getting nervous. Without Abigail to cover them, someone might have called the cops and sent them up here by now.
“If nothing else, we must retrieve the body of Old Red,” Gilling said. “Show us where he is.”
I stepped through and a dozen people followed me, most of them reluctantly. I was relieved to find Abigail and Fiona as I had left them. The only change was the rising of a second small moon on the horizon. It was yellow and sickly looking in comparison to our own luna. The surrounding desert was dark and quiet. But maybe the trucks were out there, full of angry Gray Men with their deadly weapons. Maybe they’d grown smarter and this time kept their lights off to surprise us. Thoughts like these caused the skin on the back of my neck to crawl.
They hauled Old Red’s remains home and experimented with the beam rifles the Gray Men had dropped. No one could figure out how to make them operate, however. Perhaps they were linked somehow to their users.
“Are you going to go out into the desert with me and open a new rip?” I asked Gilling.
He shook his head slowly. He didn’t bother looking at me. He was too busy staring out into the darkness. I could tell he was wondering what was stalking us out there. I followed his gaze and wondered the same thing.
“Lost your nerve already?” I asked.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this. We signed on for a quiet raid. We can’t fight an army.”
“I don’t care,” I told him. “I’ll take that alien truck to the cubes alone if I have to.”
Gilling stared at me as if I were crazy. “They know we are here now.”
“Maybe. But they don’t know what we’re planning. They don’t know who we are. I doubt they will suspect a serious raid. I want to hit them now, while we still have a shred of surprise left.”
Gilling shook his head. “We aren’t an army. Not even the scouting mission went right. More are sure to die—maybe all of us. I can’t order them to do this.”
“All right,” I said, turning away from him and facing the ragtag crowd.