Strangers and Shadows (39 page)

The good news was that the field would end somewhere.  The entire planet was too large to be put entirely under the EM field—at least not with the equipment they’d brought through with them anyway.

Outside the field, Desmond’s people would be safe, for the moment.  He didn’t know what Julia’s plans were, but he had a feeling they included more of his world than just Cairo.  One way or another, the EM field would grow beyond the limits of the city, if it hadn’t already.  He needed to find out the field’s limits and make contact with his people outside the city.  They would have to establish a base of operations that was EM field-free.  Most importantly, they would need to begin organizing as quickly as possible if they were to keep ahead of whatever the invasion plan was.

Desmond began walking.  The streets were empty, except for the occasional patrol sweeping by.  He ducked into a doorway or alley whenever this happened but he knew he couldn’t stay exposed for long.  Sooner or later
,
he wouldn’t hear the whir of the speeder engines in time, and he would be spotted and captured.

He heard a speeder coming and was about to run for the next alley when the door to his right suddenly flew open.  A large man was standing in the doorway.  “Quick!  Get in here before they see you.”

Desmond paused for a moment, startled by the man, and then moved quickly through the open door.  The man closed the door behind him.  No sooner did it slam shut, than the speeder whizzed by with a team of four soldiers in it.  One piloted while the other three scoured the streets looking for anyone caught outside.

“
Whew!
  That was close, man!  What were you doing out there?  Don’t you know there’s an invasion on?”

“I hadn’t noticed that,” Desmond smiled briefly as he stuck out his hand.  “Desmond,” he introduced himself.

“Jerome.”  The man shook Desmond’s hand.  “But everyone calls me Drum.”

Drum was a mountain of a man, standing a good three to four inches taller than Desmond’s six foot three frame, and he guessed Drum out-weighed him by another seventy or eighty pounds, all muscle by the looks of him.

Desmond took his hand back, grateful that the large man had been firm but not crushing with it.  “Forgive my surprise, Drum, but you’re the first person I’ve seen since I left my building.  I had thought that everyone had been rounded up.”

“Well, most everyone around here has been.  They started the invasion not far from here, about eight or nine hours ago.  They just rolled those generators in on their hovers and flicked the switch. 
Presto!
  No powers.  Then they got on their loud speakers and told everyone to stay inside.  They said that anyone caught outside would be detained.”

“I don’t suppose they said why they were doing this?” Desmond asked, expecting the answer he got.

“Nope.  In fact, no sooner did they finish saying it, than they opened fire on the people out in the street.  They were stunning folks left and right and then they’d cuff them and throw them in a transport.  We’re still not sure what’s happened to the ones who were taken.  The rest of us scattered for the nearest building we could find when we realized that our abilities were of no use to us.”

Desmond nodded, taking in the new information.  “We need to get out of the city,” he told Drum.  Several people had gathered around them as they’d talked, five, not counting Drum.  “Are there anymore of you here?”

Drum looked around, checking to see if anyone was missing.  “No.  All present and accounted for.  We’ve seen others in the surrounding buildings through the windows higher up, but the majority of the population went out into the streets to see what was happening.  Most of them were captured as they tried to run away.”

Desmond nodded again, he probably would have done the same if he’d been here at the start of the invasion.  Run and try to get somewhere that his abilities could be used to his advantage. 
Hell, that was basically the plan now.
  “Have they searched any of the buildings yet?” 

“Not that we’ve seen.  They’ve only patrolled the streets, stunning and cuffing anybody they find.”

“So, we’ll need a reason for them to enter this one then,” Desmond said.

“Just what are you thinking there, friend?” Drum asked.  He had fallen into the role of protector over the folks inside the building and they had been perfectly safe inside thus far.  Why go looking for trouble?

Desmond saw the concern on the big man’s face and explained.  “I know it seems safe here now, and it is, but how long do you think that will last?  Do you think they’re just gonna let us sit in here forever?  And if they do, how long before we run out of food—out of water?  No, I think that they want us all out of the way, maybe not dead, but unable to do anything.  Sooner or later, they’ll come back for the ones they didn’t get on the streets.  After they’ve swept the rest of the city and put up their EM fields to blanket as much of the planet as possible, they’ll be back.

“That’s why we can’t just sit here and wait.  No one is coming to save us.  We have to get out of the city now and find or make a dead zone where we will have the upper hand.  We have to find as many of our people who are still free and get them to safety.”  Desmond paused for a moment, looking around at the faces staring back at him.  “I realize that none of us has asked for this, but, like it or not, this is our lot, and we must deal with it accordingly.”

Several of the faces staring back nodded in agreement, others looked hesitant and afraid.  Desmond was reminded once again of how innocent his people were.  They were like lambs, never causing any hurt and never wanting to.  He too, used to be a lamb, but now he was the lion—the lion protecting his sheep from the wolves.  It was because of his people’s innocent nature that he had formed the shadow agents, training lambs into lions for an occasion such as this.  But none of his agents were here now, he would have to use what tools he had at hand.

“Before we continue, I need to know that I have your cooperation.”

Beginning with Drum, all six nodded their heads in agreement.  “Sorry, I’m in,” Drum said.  “I keep forgetting that I need to verbalize everything.  I’m so used to mind-speak.”

“And the rest of you are in as well?”

A small boy, maybe six or seven years old stepped forward.  “Count me in!” he said enthusiastically.  This brought a chuckle from several others, including Desmond, who knelt down, addressing the boy face to face.

“Hello, there!  What might your name be?” Desmond asked.

“I’m Tim-Tom, and I’m eight!” the boy replied.

“No, you’re not, Tim-Tom, you’re only six,” Drum said.  “Sorry, he’s been trying to take advantage of us not having mind-speak by telling lies.”

This brought another chuckle from Desmond.  “Well, Tim-Tom, my name is Desmond, and I think I have just the job for you.  I need you to search the building for some big sticks and stones.”

Tim-Tom screwed his face up.  “That sounds stupid.”

“It might sound that way, Tim-Tom, but it’s very important.  Actually, if this is going to work, we all need to find something to arm ourselves with.”

He went on to explain his plan, trying to keep it as simple as possible.  He didn’t need these folks to be any more scared than they already were.

“Alright… everybody understand what they need to do?” Desmond asked, receiving nods in return.  “Okay, let’s search the building and then meet back here.”

Desmond watched through the window as the speeder bored down on Drum as he stood in the middle of the street.  He hoped the big man wouldn’t get hurt in the moments to come.

Drum threw several fist-sized chunks of brick at the approaching speeder.  The first one hit the windscreen, causing the driver to slam on the brakes.  The brick bounced harmlessly off, but the soldiers in the back were almost thrown off the vehicle.  Curses and cries of alarm came sounding out from the speeder.

Drum threw three more bricks, hitting two of the soldiers in the back of the speeder who were just getting back to their feet.  The others were about to regain their footing when Drum made his break for the building.

Stun bolts came flying by him as he ran through the door, narrowly missing.

“Good job, Drum,” Desmond said as the big man passed him.  “Set up for the next phase.”

Drum continued past him without acknowledging and went through the lobby to the stairs.

The soldiers piled out of the speeder, clearly looking to pursue the trouble maker.  The pilot seemed to be trying to talk some sense into the enraged soldiers.  All hopes of that vanished when the first salvo of rocks and debris rained down on the squad from several floors above.

Right on cue, Desmond’s crew threw down whatever they could find, pelting the armored troopers below.  For a moment it looked like the soldiers would take cover in the speeder, possibly high-tailing it out of there.  Desmond worried that his plan might not work after all.  His worry ended quickly when the pilot took a particularly heavy looking potted plant to the helmet.  He hit the ground, out like a light.

The remaining three troopers stormed the building.  Desmond receded into the shadows watching as the soldiers burst through the door.  Their training kicked in as they immediately formed up into a wedge.  They swept the lobby, finding no hostiles.  “Clear!” the man in front yelled.  When they proceeded in a slight crouch, Desmond knew it was time to move.  He bolted from his cover, sprinting for the stairwell.

“There!”  The troopers spotted him just a moment too late, and their stun bolts impacted the walls where he’d been just moments before.

The soldiers followed in hot pursuit, bursting through the door to the stairway and climbing, following the echo of footsteps from above.  They went up one flight, turned the corner and made it halfway up the next when they noticed the large black vase that Drum was standing behind.  The rounded vase was five feet tall and two feet thick, weighing almost as much as Drum himself.  Once it was on its side, however, it was fairly easy to move.  Drum gave the vase a push and watched as the soldiers tried to backpedal out of the way.

The first two were unlucky and slow.  The vase crashed into them and they tumbled backwards head over heels down the stairs.  The third soldier was able to leap out of the way back down to the previous flight of stairs.  Seeing that his comrades were down, he wasted no time in spraying the stairwell with stun bolt after stun bolt.

Drum dove out of the path of the incoming fire putting the next flight of stairs between himself and the weapon.  The bolts splashed harmlessly against the walls around him.

The trooper, seeing that he had missed with his initial volley, was about to climb over his fallen comrades and find a better angle on his target when he caught a flash out of the corner of his eye.

Desmond’s make-shift club, formerly a table leg, came crashing down onto the man’s trigger hand.  There was a loud crack, and the soldier cried out in pain, dropping his weapon and clutching his hand.  Desmond swung again, hitting the man in the helmet and causing him to stumble over his downed squad mates.  The soldier fell to the ground and Desmond quickly bent down and scooped up the fallen stunner.  A flash of light and a grunt later, and the stairwell was quiet.

Several floors above, it was Tim-Tom who broke the silence.  “Can we come down now?”

Desmond fired a stun bolt into the other two troopers just to be certain.  “Yes, you can all come down now,” he called up.  Nearer than everyone else, Desmond asked Drum for his help out front.

They dragged the unconscious pilot inside and Drum held one of the double doors open after propping a brick against the other.  Desmond flew the speeder through the doors and into the lobby, thankful for the time he’d spent learning how to fly one of the things back when he was still married to Julia.

He hopped out after the craft came to a stop.  “Alright, now that that’s off the street, we need to strip the uniforms off these four and then tie them up.”

Ten minutes later the soldiers were bound and the uniforms were laying on the floor in front of the group.

Four of the adults would dress in the soldier’s uniforms, and the other two would act as captives, along with Tim-Tom.  To the young boy’s credit, he didn’t make a fuss about not getting to wear a uniform, although Desmond could tell he was disappointed.

Drum was too large to fit in a uniform, so he and the only woman of the group, Sarah, would be the captives, along with Tim-Tom.

Desmond and the other three changed clothes.  The fit was a little snug on Desmond and a little loose on others,
but “beggars can’t be choosers,” he remarked out loud.

Tim-Tom tapped Drum on the shoulder and motioned for him to lean his ear down.  Cupping his hands around his mouth for secrecy, Tim-Tom whispered, “What’s a beggar?”

This brought a laugh from the big man, which
earned
a dirty look from Tim-Tom.  Drum curtailed his laughter and leaned back in, replying in a low voice, “It’s someone who wants something, but doesn’t have anything of value to trade for it.”

“Why doesn’t he have anything to trade for it?”

Sensing that this could drag on for hours, Drum looked to put an end to it.  “That’s something you might understand when you’re older, and have traveled the Verses a bit.”