Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

terrifying at the same time. My heart pounded in my ears and I kept swallowing. Would they be waiting for us? What kind of automated defenses did they have planted out there in the seemingly featureless sands? I feared we might be fooling ourselves, pitting our own amateur wits against an organized military force. But it was too late to turn back.
    I had second thoughts as the rip loomed up under Gilling’s nurturing hands. I thought about calling the army or the marines. Surely, a pack of trained government agents could do a better job than I, with or without objects. But I knew just convincing them I wasn’t a lunatic would take weeks, if it could be done at all. And I didn’t have weeks. The Gray Men would not stop coming. They were hunting us down one by one.
    When we were on pure sand again on the far side, I immediately checked out our position. My pistol was in my hand, even though I knew it didn’t have much range. Luckily, we seemed to have made it across unobserved. I gazed toward the cube city and the smaller, closer stack of cubes to the east. It was the smaller stack that interested me more. It was little more than a geometric shadow in the night. How far was it? It was hard to tell in the open desert, but it had to be several miles. A second moon peeped over a distant rocky set of mountains behind the cube city.
    Abigail had her eyes closed and her palms aimed up toward the sky. I knew she was using her air-thickening trick to hide us. Fiona prowled around ahead of me, her knife twitching in her hand. She was more than a little mental,Gilling had told me quietly while the rest gathered. When he’d found her, she’d killed her own parents by accident, slashing at the air. He’d taken her in and taught her to control her object. I thought it was a clear testament to the power of these objects upon the human mind that she had refused to give it up even after the knife had brought her so much grief.
    As Abigail’s shield began to take hold, Old Red finally stepped out of the rip. He was a cagey one; I had to give him that. He had held back inside the safe zone to see if we all died first. He stepped up to my side, his head swiveling this way and that. His hunter’s cap remained firmly planted on his head.
    “Don’t pull anything out of your hat,” I told him. “I might need every bullet.”
    Old Red gave a raspy chuckle. “Don’t worry, bud.”
    “Someone’s coming,” Fiona said.
    My head whipped around. Behind us, a single light shone. The light was bluish in color and very bright. It was moving toward us—moving fast.
    “They saw us,” Old Red said. “Let’s go home.”
    I hesitated, staring at the approaching light. It was like the brilliant eye of a cyclops. Some army we were. The first time a Gray Man even poked a nose in our direction, my “combat team” wanted to run for it. The worst of it was I wanted to run too.
    “We can take them,” Fiona said.
    “How did they see us? Abigail? Is your little trick working?”
    She didn’t look at me, but pointed upward. I did and saw the wavering stars. It was the same effect I’d seen back home.
    “I bet they saw the rip when it first flared up,” Old Red said. “Gilling made it a big one.”
    “They’re slowing down,” Fiona said. “They can’t see us now. If we wait, they’ll probably drive right by.”
    I thought about it. “Can we close up this rip if we go to the far side and tell Gilling to turn it off?”
    “Doesn’t work that way,” Old Red said. “Takes time to die. You’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
    I had indeed seen more than my fair share. I decided to wait around. We were supposed to be scouts, after all. “Let’s see what they do. We can always step back out to safety. We have an army on the far side to back us up.”
    The others were nervous, but willing to go with my plan. We waited. The enemy vehicle did not make a straight path toward us. Instead, it drifted westward as it drew near.
    “See?” Old Red crowed. “They can’t see us. They’re going to sail right by.”
    I could tell he wanted very much for that to happen. But it didn’t. When they got close, they suddenly slowed and began to circle. They drove in a full loop around us. I glanced back and saw Old Red was about one foot from backing into the rip. I couldn’t really blame him. He was an old homeless guy who stole coins with his trick hat. He hadn’t signed on for a fight to the death with aliens in a strange desert. He’d