by Dana Fredsti
“These tanks want to kill us.”
The gunner swore and jerked his crosshairs onto the Panzer ahead of him, slamming down on the firing pedal without hesitation. His shell exploded in a direct hit.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Got those bastards!” The rest of the crew stared at him in shock. The wireless erupted in a new burst of frenzied radio chatter.
“Verdammt fool!” the commander yelled, grabbing him by the collar. “Are you insane? That was one of ours!”
“These tanks want to kill us!” the gunner wailed.
Another fiery explosion sounded off from their left. The tank commander released the raving gunner and stared in furious disbelief through the view-slit. At the other end of the formation, the hindmost Panzer had just blasted its neighbor apart, as well. He turned away from the sight of the burning vehicle. The loader looked up at him, shell in hand, uncertain what to do. The gunner already had returned to locking in on the next Panzer.
“What are you waiting for? Load it!” the gunner barked, turning to the man, his eyes both blazing and pleading. “These tanks want to kill us!”
For a moment, the commander could only stare.
Then he drew his Luger.
* * *
“Been good to know you, Singh,” Blake said without irony.
“You as well,” the Sikh replied.
They stared down the barrel of the cannon, both fully expecting to be blown to pieces. Then the ground started to shake and the big gun swiveled away on its turret.
“What the bloody hell…?”
The two men exchanged astonished looks before cautiously emerging from cover. The German troopers surrounding their position were abandoning their cover and rifles alike, running for their lives. Blake whistled down to MacIntyre and the others, and the three came up to see the spectacle as well.
Then Blake understood the reason for the German’s rout, and froze in disbelief. A few of the enemy tried to lob grenades or launch mortars at the gargantuan beasts, but the explosions were lost amid the wave of thundering saurians—as were the screams of the Panzergrenadiers.
Riveted, Blake and Singh watched the roaring brontosaurus charge the big Panzer. Its main gun wheeled around at the last second in time to fire on the creature. The blast blew through its massive neck, dropping it like falling timber, just before the rest of the dead beast’s bulk plowed into the tank, crushing it with a sickening crunch. Both slammed into the ruins of the mausoleum. Another meter of skidding and their combined bulk would have entombed Blake and his men where they stood. Instead, it gave them new cover.
They took a chance scrambling atop the smoldering wreckage to avoid the stampede raging all around them. From there the soldiers had a decent vantage point of the ensuing carnage. In a matter of seconds, the rest of the German infantry was wiped out, and the remaining tanks in the formation destroyed.
A familiar keening drone rose above the sound of the carnage and burst into skirling music. MacIntyre had emerged with his pipes, as if calling the dinosaurs to war. Blake thought the man must be insane, but the music was a welcome distraction.
The day was not won yet, however. Off to the south, the remaining half-dozen Panzers repositioned in a new wedge. They opened fire on the charging herd, their barrage taking good effect until one tank suddenly burst into a blossoming flame—followed seconds later by another. Both appeared to have been blasted, point-blank, by their fellow Nazis.
“How the hell…?”
Blake stared in disbelief as the German formation twisted and turned on itself, ignoring the wave of dinosaurs that thundered toward them.
“What the hell…?”
He wondered if he was as insane as MacIntyre.
Behind the herd came his stolen German motorcycle. And that wasn’t all.
“Amber…?”
Then he saw the driver.
“Christ!” he swore, and raised his gun. “There he is! He’s got Amber!” It wouldn’t be an easy shot, and his stolen submachine gun was no sniper weapon. He might hit Amber, and taking out Mehta could result in a fatal crash, but it was a gamble he had to take. Silencing his doubts, he focused on taking his shot and brought Mehta’s head in his sights.
He held his breath and flexed his trigger finger.
“Blake,” Singh said.
The commando didn’t respond, concentrating as his weapon tracked the motorcycle. He had a bead on his target.
“Blake,” Singh repeated urgently.
“I’ve got the shot,” Blake hissed.
“Look.” Something in Singh’s voice gave him pause.
“What?”
The Sikh said nothing, pointing to a stream of dinosaur blood floating gently upward from the torn flesh of the dead brontosaurus. The droplets defied gravity to form delicate, lacy red traceries in the air. Bits of broken Panzer and limestone pebbles slowly tumbled up to join in the silent waltz. A curious hissing began, growing louder.
The hair rose on the back of Blake’s neck.
“Run!” he shouted. “Everyone, run for it!”
* * *
“We’re doing it!” Amber shouted, watching the surviving Panzers blast each other as the stampede closed in on them. DeMetta grinned.
Flushed with victory, Amber didn’t immediately recognize the sensation thrumming through her body, vibrating through her bones. Then she heard a keening wail, accompanied by a weird, almost electrical crackling and sizzling. So loud… and getting louder.
Oh god.
In front of them, a ragged line of earth disintegrated into a vertical scattering of debris, ash, and dirt, all careening skyward as if hoovered up by a cosmic vacuum, replaced a fraction of a millisecond later by a blinding torrent of sheer, unstoppable power, a pillar of the earth bursting forth to be transformed into the fiery lance of Heaven.
The roar of its overwhelming power drowned out her scream. This close to the raw energy flow, Amber could feel it pulsating through her, all the way down to her fingertips and toes, and up and down her spine.
For an instant she was back on the rowboat with Gavin.
Gavin was dead.
“Stop the bike!” she shouted, sending DeMetta a visceral image of the threat they faced. He slammed on the brakes and swerved, but the motorbike continued on—somehow trapped in a dreamlike slow motion, bouncing along the ground and threatening at any moment to lurch straight into the surging flow of energy flaring up alongside them.
Amber’s mind fractured—shifting back and forth between the punt outside Romford while the Event raged… staring in horror out the window of the Vanuatu as it plunged into a dive to avoid a wall of fire… between the arms of the Sphinx as a trio of aftershocks split the horizon…
… and then, just like that, time returned.
DeMetta pulled the bike to a skidding halt.
The curtain of energy vanished, along with the thundering percussion of battle. An eerie silence reigned, broken only by the soft crackling and hissing of super-heated sand fused into lines of glass.
The aftershock had fragmented a leaf-shaped patch roughly a mile or two long, taking out most of the necropolis and extending out into the desert. Within the boundaries of the glassy lines, still faintly smoking, the terrain had splintered and multiplied, like pieces of a fractured mirror. The Panzer tanks and the herd of brontosauruses had been diced into pieces, large and small, all of them replicated so many times they formed a grisly collage of metal, flesh, and bone.
“It’s over… just like that?” Amber asked, dazed by the extent of the carnage. “Is everyone dead?”
DeMetta shook his head. “I don’t know.”
A terrible thought occurred. Where is Blake?
“Wait.” DeMetta pointed south to the desert. “I see somebody. Over there.” Out of the dust and heat haze, a lone shape approached on foot, only just shimmering into clarity. With a sharp burst of relief, Amber stood up and waved her arms.
“Blake! Blake! We’re here! Over here!” she shouted, signa
ling to the distant figure. Then she stopped, realizing her mistake.
The approaching shape was a German soldier.
He wasn’t alone.
* * *
Line after line of tanks—another two dozen mixed Panzers and mobile guns, along with supply trucks, all escorted by a full platoon of more Panzergrenadiers. Behind them, like ant drones attending to their queen, a crowd of armored cars and half-tracks surrounded an imposing armored command car.
Rommel’s mobile HQ.
Or rather, Mehta’s. The general and his master stood atop the vehicle, surveying the battlefield through binoculars. Mehta was pleased at the outcome. The first two waves had been advance probes to draw out any resistance. Now the main body of the Afrika Korps would take Alexandria, and there was no defending army left to offer the slightest resistance.
* * *
Amber’s heart sank as she and DeMetta watched the encroaching army’s inexorable advance. For a few moments it had seemed as if, despite all the odds, they could win this mismatched fight…
“What do we do now?”
“Get out,” he answered, his voice flat.
Amber stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, get out of the sidecar.” His expression was deadly serious. “Now.”
“But—”
“Go on, do it!” His voice cracked like a whip, leaving no room for argument.
Stunned, Amber pulled herself out. “What are you… are you leaving me here?”
“Yes.” His tone was uncompromising. Then it softened, slightly. “Don’t worry. I have a plan. You’re just not going to like it.”
“What do you m—”
She lost consciousness.
* * *
Amber collapsed like a sack of potatoes, and DeMetta dismounted to make sure she was uninjured. He brushed a stray lock of hair from her face and, after a moment, came to a decision. Touching her forehead, he placed a message in her mind for later.
Then he remounted the bike and drove toward the Germans.
* * *
“Herr Generalfeldmarschall!” One of the radiomen called up to Rommel from inside the command car. “We’ve spotted a rider on one of our motorbikes. He is… waving a flag of truce?”
Rommel took up his binoculars again.
“Yes, I see him. Tell the front infantry to allow him safe approach to within parleying distance, and hear what he has to say.”
Standing beside the field marshal, Mehta said nothing, but kept his binoculars trained on the approaching motorcycle. He was willing to bet Blake was the rider—the ringleader of the commandos that had harried them all the way here.
An invaluable asset. Mehta smiled at the thought of Blake back under his control. He turned to Rommel. “Tell the troops to bring him directly to me.”
The German commander gave a curt nod.
* * *
DeMetta kept his speed slow and steady across the flattened necropolis, his makeshift white flag clearly visible. He’d made it from the strips of white silk cloth that he’d found crumpled up on the floor of the sidecar. No way to know where they came from, but they worked well enough.
It seemed as though the entire Deutsche Afrika Korps infantry had their guns trained on him, but no one shot him. One German trooper stepped forward, holding up a hand to halt him, and he slowed to a stop at a discreet distance from their line. Raising his hands to show he was unarmed, he left the bike’s motor running. The lead soldier walked up, shouting something at him. DeMetta shrugged and shook his head.
“Runter vom Motorrad!” the soldier yelled. “Das motorbike— off! Now!”
DeMetta smiled and shook his head. “That won’t be necessary,” he sent with a gentle psychic push.
“Sie können auf dem Motorrad bleiben,” the soldier replied with considerably less antagonism, waving DeMetta forward. “Lass uns gehen!” A guard of six soldiers lined up to escort him toward the mobile command.
“Yes, take me to your leader,” he sent to each of them in turn. “He wants to see me. We’re old friends.”
* * *
Mehta frowned to see the prisoner still on his motorbike, approaching like a foreign dignitary with a full honor guard. How the hell did Blake manage to sweet-talk those idiots into this?
“What’s going on with your troopers?” he growled at Rommel.
Raising his binoculars again, he zoomed in on the rider for a closer look. What he saw froze him to the core.
It wasn’t Blake’s face.
It was his own.
He grabbed Rommel by the lapel.
“Shoot him!” he shouted. “Shoot him now!”
16
Still keeping his bike to a crawl, DeMetta kept pace with his armed guard, observing his surroundings. He and his entourage made their way past the infantry and the foremost lines of tanks. Beyond that, still more tanks and guns, and then—
Ah. That has to be it.
A motorcade of smaller combat vehicles, all clustered protectively around a single oversized armored van. Clearly it was the mobile headquarters. Two figures stood atop it.
One of the pair was his target, he’d stake his life on it. No time to worry about which one—he just needed to concentrate on staying cool long enough to slip past all the troops and armored units until he was close enough to take both men out with a psionic assault.
Then he realized it was never going to happen.
“Erschieß ihn! Erschieß ihn!” someone yelled.
The time for subtlety had run out. DeMetta’s guards stood still, confused by his mental tinkering, giving him just enough time to gun the engine and race forward. Bullets zipped by him, dangerously close to his head, and he wished he had an aptitude for telekinesis—a bullet-proof shield would be just the thing right now.
Being a telepath, he had to pick and choose his targets one at a time—his psychic tricks didn’t work en masse. He reached out for the mind of the gunner in the closest tank, planting the idea that all the shooters behind him were British infiltrators. The man opened up on the imagined attackers, mowing them down.
As DeMetta sped between the rows of Panzers, another tank’s heavy machine guns turned toward him. He quickly struck the gunner psychosomatically blind, and when another tank opened fire on him, he prompted the main gunner of the Panzer behind it to blast it to smithereens.
He ducked as flaming shrapnel flew overhead.
His route was a gauntlet of tanks and infantrymen, all trying to kill him. A rifleman popped out from behind a tank, and DeMetta made himself unremarkable and unnoticeable. As others came into his line of sight, he employed a variety of rapid-fire tactics—terrifying one trooper, inspiring overwhelming anger in another, and turning still others against their own comrades in bursts of paranoia.
Bullets flew everywhere—it was impossible to keep track of all the shooters. He ducked down as shots whizzed past his head, striving through the haze of gun smoke to keep his eye on the bulky command vehicle dead ahead—and on the two commanders atop it. He just needed to get close enough to make eye contact.
Approaching the ring of armored cars, he could see the two officers up top. Both drew pistols on him, and in rapid succession he paralyzed both before they could fire. He could almost make out their faces—
* * *
Watching his doppelganger racing through a gauntlet of bullets, Mehta felt an unpleasant new sensation—fear. His supreme self-confidence cracked as the motorcycle charged toward them through the blazing chaos, seemingly invulnerable to gunfire.
When the bike roared up to their defensive line of armored cars, he drew his Luger. Rommel instantly followed suit to protect his master. Mehta spent a moment to take careful aim, unwilling to miss the shot, and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing. His finger—every muscle in his body—would not obey. He could only stand there frozen with his Luger raised. No shot rang out, so Rommel had to be in the same condition.
Fear turned to terror.
* * *
DeMetta came within optimal psionic range, when a rifleman popped up from one of the cars, firing at him from close range. The bullet narrowly missed his head. Instinctively plucking the man’s worst childhood fear from his subconscious, DeMetta unleashed it on him.
The soldier suddenly experienced the sensation of a wolf-sized tarantula tearing into his face like a rabid wildcat. Screaming, he clawed at it in self-defense, inadvertently discharging his rifle again.
The second shot caught DeMetta square in his ribs. Its impact hurled him off the motorbike onto the rocky earth.
* * *
Locked in place, unable to look away, Mehta silently screamed as his double drew closer. An instant later the rider caught a bullet and was flung off his motorcycle. The bike smashed straight into the closest armored car, flipping up and over the hood into the screaming rifleman, killing him instantly.
Mehta was free again.
The two commanders snapped back to life with a sharp dual exhalation. Mehta wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shook his head.
“Follow me,” he barked to Rommel, then swiftly descended mobile HQ’s ladder, pistol drawn. The two approached their fallen enemy, sprawled face-up on the ground, the hot parched soil hungrily sopping up the dark pool of blood spreading beneath him. The man’s unblinking gaze stared up somewhere far past them.
“He’s you,” Rommel said. “He even has your verdammt witch-eyes.”
Mehta looked down in morbid fascination. It was true. The man was his twin, like the one he’d killed just a few days earlier. How many more like him were there?
A medical corpsman ran up and knelt over the body, checking for vital signs.
“Is he dead?” Mehta asked the medic. Before the man could answer, Mehta’s twin groaned and closed his eyes.
