“Friends”
by Writer345
Chapter Seven — On the Warpath
The sardine oil glistened on Ssstha’rel’s whiskers as she delicately licked her paw, the morning sun catching the golden rings piercing her ears. Rachel watched the alien’s throat work as she swallowed the last rancid fish whole, her pink tongue darting out to catch escaping droplets. “Three human yearss t ssell-by,” the feline murmured appreciatively, “only makess them... richer.” Her pupils dilated as Melanie slid a fresh cup of coffee toward her, black, no sugar, just how she’d taken it the last time.
Outside, the cruiser’s engine turned over on the first try, the sound somehow louder in the preternatural quiet. Rachel adjusted her Stetson, scanning the horizon. The town of Wide-Awake sprawled before them, its streets too quiet for a weekday morning. No school buses. No farm trucks rumbling toward the grain elevator. Just the occasional curtain twitching in a window as they ed.
“Sheriff?” Wendy’s voice crackled through the radio. “You copy?”
Rachel thumbed the mic. “Go ahead, Wendy.”
“Just had Siobhan Nolan check in, said she’s got a lead on some chicken thieves out by the old Miller place.” A pause. Static hissed like a deflating tire. “Thing is, Sheriff... Millers moved to Phoenix back in ’09.”
Melanie’s fingers tightened around the jacket that lay across her lap. Ssstha’rel’s ears swiveled backward as the rear door opened, silent as a shadow, and the tabby-alien slipped inside. Her left temple bore a faint silvery scar where Kaywaykla’s tomahawk had split her skull days prior.
“Sheriff Ra-chel.” The newcomer purred, settling onto the seat with liquid grace. Her stripes were much darker than Ssstha’rel’s, her frame more compact. “I am called Tssi’kha.” She bared her teeth in what might’ve been a smile. “I am in your debt.”
Rachel’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. The scent of sardines and something muskier filled the cruiser. “You here to collect?”
Tssi’kha’s tail flicked. ”No, no. To pro-tect... To warn.” She leaned forward, her breath warm against Rachel’s ear. “Your Air Force sssoft-meat... She liess even to herself now.”
Melanie twisted in her seat. “Atkinson?”
The aliens exchanged glances. Ssstha’rel’s claws extended, pricking the vinyl seat. ”Her mind has... fissures. Like river ice in spring.” She demonstrated by tracing a crack pattern in the condensation on her window. “The Nord-dic think they control her. But the cracks...” Her tongue darted out. “...they go deeper. So deep that she fallss into them... Cannot ssee what iss beyond.”
Rachel accelerated past the town limits, the tires kicking up gravel. Somewhere ahead, Nolan was chasing phantom poultry thieves, or being lured toward something worse.
“So what’s this about them being able to time travel?” Rachel demanded, her mind going back to something bigger golden-furred cat had said earlier.
“Rowl!” Ssstha’rel began, the noise no doubt giving he time to hunt for the correct wording. “Not travel through time, Ra-chel, that iss not posss-ible.”
There was another pause. “They... pro-ject them-sselvess acrosss time... Not the ssame thing.” She licked her paw thoughtfully for a few seconds. “More, it iss like the present affecting the t.” She finished by adding. “Or the t affecting the present.”
The Sheriff thought for a few seconds. “Did them Nordics come to this area in the past?”
The cat licked her paw thoughtfully but said nothing.
“Did they?” Rachel snapped. “Answer me damn you!”
“Yesss!” Ssstha’rel hissed very quietly. “In 1874, but they failed. If they can establish a quantum temporal resonance un-oppossed then they might jusst ssucceed in both timess... Your Warrior-Priesst... He knowss that the land re-s.”
Suddenly the radio squawked again, effectively ending the confusing conversation:
“Sheriff? We just got a multiple nine-one-one from the Cordova ranch. At least I think it’s a nine-one-one! The Military Police are out there and dealing with it but they’re asking for you..”
The Cordova Ranch — Today
The Cordova ranch gate hung splintered from its hinges, the wood charred where no flame had touched it. Rachel killed the engine twenty yards out from the ranch house, the silence heavier than the desert heat. Through the dust-streaked windshield, she counted three Air Force Humvees parked haphazardly near the sagging porch. No movement.
The Humvees sat like abandoned toys under the Arizona sun, their doors hanging open. Rachel’s fingers hovered over her holster as she stepped out, the crunch of gravel deafening in the unnatural stillness. Melanie stayed low behind the cruiser’s door, her pistol steady despite the tremor in her hands.
Rachel’s riding boots kicked up little whirlwinds of dust as she strode toward the Cordova place, her shadow stretching long and lean across the cracked earth. Longer than it should have... Ssstha’rel moved beside her with liquid grace, her paws silent on the hardpan despite the occasional crunch of a stray pebble. The feline alien’s ears swiveled constantly, drinking in every nuance of the desert’s unnatural hush.
The ranch door burst outward as if kicked by an invisible boot: six Military Police Non-Coms were crammed into the Cordovas’ parlor like sardines in a can. Coffee steam curled around their drawn pistols, all leveled at Ssstha’rel’s twitching whiskers. Rachel’s boot came down hard on a warped floorboard that groaned like a dying man as she stepped between the feline and the guns’ muzzles, her own hand hovering near her own Smith & Wesson.
“She’s with me!” Rachel snarled, letting her badge catch the sunlight streaming through the holes in the ancient curtains. The nearest MP, a staff-sergeant with sweat rings darkening his camo underarms,flinched when Ssstha’rel peered around Rachel and deliberately licked her claws.
Rachel turned to the sweat-stained man, his name tag reading “Driscoll.” His trigger finger kept tapping arhythmically against his holster. “Care to tell me what the hell’s going on here, Sarge?”
Driscoll exhaled noisily through his nose, this trembling mug sending ripples across the surface of the coffee in his mug. “Perimeter sensors tripped at 04-30. Infrared showed... shapes.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Glowing. Sorta see-through.” Behind him, a corporal crossed himself.
Ssstha’rel’s whiskers twitched as she sniffed the air.
Rachel accepted a chipped coffee mug from a wide-eyed young MP. “Well?”
“You ain’t gonna believe...”
“I believe in glowing intruders,” Rachel interrupted. “Tall blondes in silver suits?”
The room erupted.
“No ma’am!” Sergeant Chidí Todacheene shouldered forward, his Navajo features imive. “Apaches! Full warpaint, riding spectral horses!” His knuckles whitened around his sidearm. “My grandfather told stories about—”
“—Union cavalry!” A younger freckled corporal blurted. “Bluecoats from the old west, sabers drawn!”
Mrs. Cordova wrung her apron. “¡Como película! The Apaches shot arrows right through the soldiers!”
Ssstha’rel’s tail lashed suddenly, knocking over a spittoon. The metallic clang silenced the room. Rachel watched the alien’s pupils shrink to vertical slits as she stared at a water stain on the ceiling.
The stain darkened... Spread.
Drip!
Blood hit the floorboards between Rachel’s boots.
Ssstha’rel launched upward in a blur of fur and skin-tight suit, her claws extending towards the ceiling and catching nothing. The blood kept falling.
“Christ alive,” Driscoll whispered,as the blood faded where it landed.
“Si, si,” Mrs. Cordova nodded vigorously, her knuckles white around her rosary beads. “Just like it was a movie! The Apaches rode right through the soldiers, through them, like ghosts!” Her accent thickened with panic. “But the blood... ¡Dios mío, the blood it seem so real!“
“O-kay...” Rachel said very quietly, her voice cutting through the residual panic like a knife through wet paper. She holstered her revolver with deliberate slowness, letting the click of the hammer punctuate her command. “I’ll take it from here.” The MPs shifted uncomfortably, their coffee mugs gripped tightly and adrenaline shakes setting in. Rachel met each bloodshot gaze in turn. “You boys have had a long night. Go back to town, get some breakfast and some shut-eye.” Her lips quirked in a humorless smile. “I’ll see you for duty tonight: it’s either going to be a quiet one, or hell will be coming to breakfast.”
The MPs nodded their thanks, gulping the last of their coffee with the haste of men who’d just been handed a temporary reprieve from the apocalypse. Rachel caught Driscoll’s sleeve as he moved toward the door, his uniform reeking of sweat. “Sergeant,” she murmured, pulling him aside while the others filed out, “I’d be obliged if you’d transport my wife back to the sheriff’s office in Wide-Awake.” Her grip tightened imperceptibly. “I reckon I’m here for the day.”
Melanie’s protest died in her throat as Rachel shot her a look that brooked no argument. Ssstha’rel twitched her whiskers in silent approval from her perch atop the Cordovas’ upright piano, her tailtip flicking against the sheet music for Desperado.
Driscoll hesitated, his gaze darting between Melanie and the feline alien. “Ma’am, are you sure...”
“I’m sure.” Rachel’s tone left no room for debate. She plucked Melanie’s small Glock from her wife’s trembling hands and slipped it into her pants pocket. It was the one she’d confiscated after the third misfire during target practice last month. “You’re not gonna need this: not with the entire department to protect you.” Their fingers brushed, and Rachel allowed herself one fleeting moment to memorize her wife’s warmth before stepping back.
The screen door slapped shut behind the departing Humvees, leaving Rachel alone with two alien cats and a terrified rancher and his wife. The silence stretched like taffy until Señora Cordova burst into tears, her apron muffling the sobs. Tssi’kha flowed down from the piano with unsettling grace, her paws almost silent against the hardwood as she approached the weeping woman.
“No, no, no...” Señora Cordova recoiled, crossing herself violently Then holding up the crucifix of her rosary to ward the terrifying creature away.
The alien paused, her ears flattening. She cocked her head, studying the rosary clutched in the woman’s fingers, then deliberately retracted her claws. When she spoke, her voice was startlingly gentle, like wind through canyon grass. ”We do not harm...” Her tongue stumbled over some of the consonants. “Only the... de-ceiverss. We will pro-tect you... Thisss I promisss!”
Rachel’s boot heels echoed as she paced to the bloodstain on the ceiling. It had darkened to the color of overripe plums, its edges feathering outward in fractal patterns. She reached up...
“Don’t!” Tssi’kha’s tail lashed. “It ssingss.”
Rachel froze. “Say what?”
The alien female crouched beneath the stain, her patterned fur standing on end. ”The blood re. The Nord-dicss...” She shuddered, exposing needle-like canines. “They make it sing their lies.”
A drop fell, splattering Rachel’s badge. The nickel dulled where it landed.
Rachel glared. “There ain’t no blood!” She spat, her voice slicing through the thick warm air like a cold desert wind. Señora Cordova gasped as the ceiling stain flickered, then vanished like a bad memory. The sudden absence left the room lighter, the weight of dread lifting palpably.
Tssi’kha’s golden eyes widened, her pupils contracting into thin black slits as the tabby’s whiskers quivered. She then stared at Rachel’s star which was no longer tarnished. The sound of amazement that escaped her throat was beyond the human ability to either mimic or record on paper.
“Very good, Ra-chel,” Ssstha’rel purred, her tail curling in what might have been approval. “You learn quicker than I thought you could.”
Rachel didn’t acknowledge the compliment. She strode out to her cruiser, her boots kicking up dust that hung suspended in the dry heat. The radio crackled to life as she thumbed the mic. “Kaywaykla, you copy?”
Static hissed, then the Apache’s voice came through, calm and steady. “I hear you, Sheriff.”
Rachel relayed the MPs’ sightings: ghostly Apaches... spectral cavalry... blood that wasn’t there. She kept her tone flat, factual.
Kaywaykla exhaled softly, the sound barely audible through the speaker. “I’m on the way, Rachel. Bringing Ed Binning with me: we’ll need him.”
“You don’t sound surprised.” She murmured, staring at the horizon where heat ripples warped the landscape.
“Neither do you.” He countered, just as quietly before adding. “The land re.”
The transmission went dead.
Behind her, the Cordova ranch door creaked open, she turned and watched Ssstha’rel slink out, her fur bristling as she sniffed the air. ”Ssome-thing’s close,” she murmured, her voice a low growl. “Playing havoc with per-ception.”
Rachel replaced the radio’s microphone and, straightening up to her full six foot two she unsnapped her holster. “Then let’s play back.”
Ssstha’rel’s ears twitched. ”Careful, She-riff. Time is listening.”
“And the land re....” Rachel answered very quietly.
The desert stretched silent all around them: too silent. No insects, no wind. Just the oppressive hum of something unseen and unheard that vibrated through the ground like buried power lines.
Despite the bright sunshine the firelight prd their shadows long and jagged over the rising rocky slope: three humans, two aliens, moving in an uneasy circle around flames that burned too blue. Rachel’s boots scuffed the dry earth in time with Kaywaykla’s chanting, her Smith & Wesson a comforting weight against her thigh. Behind her, Ed Binning mimicked the Apache’s steps with the stiff precision of a man trying not to think about what he was doing.
Step!
Step!
Shuffle!
Pivot!
Step!
Ssstha’rel’s tail lashed as she prowled the perimeter, her slit pupils reflecting the unnatural fire. ”Faster!” she hissed, her claws extending as she ducked under Binning’s arm to the dance behind Rachel.
Tssi’kha moved like liquid shadow on the opposite side, her fur standing on end as static crackled between her whiskers as she moved with a fluid grace that no human... No monkey... Could ever hope to match.
Step!
Step!
Shuffle!
Pivot!
Step!
Down the hill, the Cordova ranch house stood dark except for a single kerosene lamp flickering behind half-closed shutters. Old Man Cordova’s Winchester gleamed dully in the sliver of light as he watched the strange ritual unfolding on the ridge.
“¡Dios mío!” Señora Cordova muttered from the kitchen, the click of her rosary beads barely audible over the rising wind.
“What you doin’?” The old man growled without turning.
“Saying my beads.” Her whisper trembled. “That Apache, he say I should.”
Cordova nodded, his gnarled fingers tightening on the hundred and fifty year old rifle’s stock. “The heathen said it would protect us.” He said dubiously...
Señora Cordova’s beads clicked faster. “Young Waya, he ain’t no heathen just ’cause he knows the old ways.”
The wind howled suddenly, sending dust devils spiraling up from the desert floor. On the ridge, the dancers moved faster... Rachel’s red hair whipping wild around her face as she grabbed Kaywaykla’s arm to keep her footing.
“What they doing now?” Señora Cordova breathed.
“They’re dancin’ round the fire.” Cordova squinted. “Now it’s like they’re puttin’ something on it.”
Step!
Step!
Shuffle!
Pivot!
Step!
The flames roared higher, turning violet at the edges. Ssstha’rel threw back her head and yowled; a sound that wasn’t entirely feline; as the ground beneath them began to hum once more. Binning stumbled, his boot catching on something unseen. When he looked down, the dirt was moving in concentric ripples.
Step!
Step!
Shuffle!
Pivot!
Step!
Rachel’s voice cut through the chaos: “Keep on movin’, damn it!” Her hand went to her revolver as shadows pooled at the edge of the firelight: shadows that stood upright, shifting between cavalry blue and war-paint red.
Tssi’kha’s ears flattened. ”They’re here.”
The temperature plummeted. Frost crackled across Señor Cordova’s window as he watched the spectral figures materialize: Union soldiers with hollow eyes, Apache warriors on ghostly horses: all circling the fire now, their forms flickering like a poorly tuned television.
“Or we are there!” Kaywaykla said as he seemed to shed a century and a half of white man’s culture... A century and a half of N’daa ways...
Down in the ranch house Señora Cordova gasped as the ranch’s large crucifix rattled against the wall. “Even the Sheriff dances?”
As the elderly couple watched Rachel moved with grim determination, her boots stomping intricate patterns that Kaywaykla had whispered in her ear. The feline aliens wove between them, their fur sparking with static as they sliced claws through apparitions that hissed and dissipated like steam.
Step!
Step!
Shuffle!
Pivot!
Step!
On the ridge, the fire suddenly inverted, sucking upward into a perfect violet spiral. The ground bucked violently. Rachel went to one knee, her hand suddenly reaching for, then gripping Kaywaykla’s arm as Binning shouted wordlessly and reached across to steady himself against her other arm.
Then... silence...
The fire fell back and flared again. The shadows vanished. Only the scent of ozone and the imprints of their boots remained, burned into the earth in a perfect circle. While overhead the desert sun blazed unforgiving and bright.
Three words ran through Rachel’s mind. Quantum Temporal Resonance. Words that Ssstha’rel had used earlier: the Sheriff didn’t know what they meant but the Cat-woman had spoken them like they were an explanation for everything.
The five dancers froze before shuffling closer to the fire and folding themselves down onto the deer skins that ringed it. The Medicine man, suddenly older, skin wrinkled and lined like old leather began to chant as he scattered dried herbs and sacred tobacco into the flames. The words were like nothing that any other humans had heard for a long, long time.
He looked around, eyes wild and seeing things the others were certain weren’t there... Face streaked with yellow and red ocher in patterns older than time... While all around them sage-smoke swirled in ways that defied the gentle breeze blowing in from the south. Quietly a small medicine drum began to beat out a rhythm yet there was no drum... No drummer. Then all around them the ages began to close in as they breathed the smoke.
Down in the old ranch house, Señor Cordova finally lowered his Winchester. Behind him, his wife’s rosary broke with a loud crack and clattered to the floor, its beads rolling away into the dark corners of the room.
“¡Dios mío!” Señora Cordova whispered again, but this time it sounded like a prayer as she crossed herself.
Then suddenly, without warning, flaming fire arrows rained down on the ranch house... They ed through the glass panes of the windows, they ed through the walls... One even ed through Señor Cordova but he felt nothing.
Then the ghost-arrows began to impact walls and floor: one even struck the piano, which began to burn fiercely. The ranch house rapidly became an inferno...
Except...
Except...
There was no heat and nothing burned yet the flames blossomed but anyone staring at them would see that they were pale and transparent...
Ghost flames...
Projections of a fire burning elsewhere, or rather: elsewhen.
If the Cordovas had looked out of the window they would have seen that the ghost riders were back: first a column of blue-coated soldiers approaching from the direction of Fort Lowell. Then the Apache Warriors came... led by a redoubtable Medicine man.
It could have been a movie set... Actors and film crews shooting a new epic out on location...
Except that there were no cameras; no vehicles; none of the hundreds of technicians and crews needed to service such a spectacle. There were just the Apache and the blue soldiers clashing... figures on horse back who looked washed out against the hot desert terrain. Figures that didn’t quite hide the landscape behind them.
Up on the ridge behind, five figures, three large, two smaller still sat around the fire and listened as one of their number chanted softly and periodically sprinkled dried herbs into the flames... Then slowly they too began to fade...
Finally a sky shape slipped into view: a rough dark disk-shaped craft that looked as solid as a large stone. It hung in the air in exactly the same way that stones do not.
The Apache and the soldiers stopped fighting and stared at it, whether frozen by fear or surprise or because of something else. On the hillside the chant rose to a crescendo before ceasing as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown.
Up above, the sky-disk too began to fade until the sparse clouds were visible through it.
Hell, indeed, had come to breakfast, but a day early.......
The Cordova Ranch — 1874
Captain Shank Adams reined in his bay gelding, raising a gloved hand to halt the column of troopers behind him. Dust swirled around the horses’ legs as Lieutenant Ed Binning trotted up alongside, his kepi pulled low against the desert sun.
Luke Cummings came galloping back from his scouting mission, his chestnut mare lathered and blowing. He drew up sharply, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. “Trail stops dead ahead, Shank. Like they rode straight up into the sky.”
Binning frowned. “How’s that possible?”
“Only way is if they’re using a drag,” Cummings said, wiping his brow with a frayed sleeve. “Brush tied behind the horses to sweep their tracks clean.”
“Do Apaches do that?” Binning’s voice held the skepticism of a man who’d studied tactics at West Point but they didn’t teach about Apaches there.
Cummings spat again. “A few. The real cunnin’ ones, like Kaywaykla.” His eyes flicked toward the distant hills. “Most don’t give a damn if we follow or not.”
A thin column of smoke caught Binning’s eye, rising beyond the ridge. The lieutenant pointed, his glove trembling slightly.
Cummings stiffened. “The Cordova place.”
Adams didn’t waste words. He he gestured ‘forward’ with his arm and spurred his mount forward, the column erupting into motion behind him. Binning kept pace, his mind racing. The ranch shouldn’t be burning, not with Kaywaykla’s band supposedly fleeing toward Mexico.
The cavalry column of about twenty men swept around the hill, their horses’ hooves kicking up chalky dust. Captain Adams raised his field glasses, the brass warm from the desert sun. The ranch house was intact, but before it, two impossible shapes shimmered: wheeled contrivances of polished white and black, emblazoned with markings that resolved under magnification: “Wide-Awake County Sheriff’s Office.”
“God Almighty,” Adams muttered, the lenses trembling slightly in his grip.
Binning’s gauntleted finger jabbed toward the hillside. “Shank, the fire...”
Adams swung the glasses upward. Five figures sat cross-legged around blue-tinged flames. One was unmistakably Apache, his face streaked with ochre. Another, a towering woman in a broad-brimmed khaki stetson, her red hair loose like spilled blood. The third made Adams’ throat tighten. “That’s you, Lieutenant.”
Binning snatched the binoculars. “The hell...?” His protest died as he saw his own face staring back from the ridge, mouth moving in silent chant. The fourth and fifth figures twitched feline ears, one had tabby-striped fur glinting metallic in the unnatural firelight. All five flickered like candle smoke.
War whoops shattered the moment. Two dozen painted Apache warriors crested the rise, their ponies’ manes braided with feathers. Adams barely had time to shout: “Form skirmish line!” before flaming arrows arced overhead.
The war cries tore through the air like shattered glass. Adams wheeled his bay around before painted ponies crashed into the skirmish line, their riders swinging stone-headed war clubs. An arrow thudded into Binning’s saddlebag, its flaming head scorching the leather as he drew his revolver.
“Steady, boys!” Adams bellowed, saber flashing in the merciless sun. His gelding reared as a warrior lunged, young, maybe sixteen, his face streaked with yellow ocher, and for an impossible split second Adams saw his own reflection in the boy’s obsidian eyes before steel met stone and the lad went down.
As the ranch house began to burn, the flames licking at its shingles and wooden beams rapidly gaining a hold.
Captain Adams’ voice cut through the chaos like a saber through smoke. “Dismount! Defensive positions!” The troopers scrambled from their saddles, carbines snapping into position as the Apache riders wheeled for another . Lieutenant Binning felt his horse shudder beneath him. not from fear, but from the unnatural vibration humming through the packed earth. His gauntlets were slick with sweat as he leveled his revolver at a warrior whose warpaint seemed to bleed into the air like ink in water.
The skirmish unfolded in jagged fragments of motion: Sergeant-Major Bullock’s saber deflecting a stone-headed club with a shower of sparks; Trooper Morgan’s carbine blasting a hole clean through an attacker whose chest wound sprayed blood; Corporal Davis stumbling backward as his boot sank ankle-deep into solid adobe. Binning fired twice both shots ing wide of an Apache who kept charging, his war cry mysteriously distorting into static.
The skirmish lasted right up until the black thing appeared in the sky overhead... translucent as stained glass, its edges warping the desert light like heat haze. Trooper Morgan’s carbine froze mid-reload as the Apache war party wheeled their ponies in unison, their painted faces upturned. Even the ranch house’s flames stilled mid-flicker, frozen in an impossible tableau.
The Medicine Man’s horse pounded across the no-man’s-land between the spectral armies, its hooves kicking up dust that refused to settle, each particle hovering unnaturally as if the air itself had forgotten gravity. Kaywaykla’s ocher-streaked face twisted with effort as he waved the makeshift flag, a strip torn from his own deerhide shirt as he shouted words that echoed strangely across the battlefield. Behind him, his 21st century shadow flickered in and out of existence, mouth moving in silent sync.
Lieutenant Binning spurred his mount forward without conscious thought, his West Point training overridden by something deeper, older. His kepi flew off as he galloped past frozen troopers, their faces locked in mid-snarl beneath the hovering war club of an Apache whose braids floated weightless. The lieutenant’s saber flashed as he sliced through a dangling arrow shaft still vibrating from its release, the two halves hanging suspended like broken clock hands.
“God damn it, Shank!” Binning roared at his immobile captain. “Call them off!” His voice cracked across the unnatural silence: the only living sound besides Kaywaykla’s pounding hooves and his shouting of “Cease fire!”.
The Binning wheeled his horse in a tight circle, the white cloth he was waving now glowing faintly violet at the edges. “They’re not seeing us!” he shouted to Kaywaykla in between gasps. “We’re ghosts to them!”
A war club quivered mid-swing, its obsidian teeth inches from Corporal Davis’ temple. Binning watched in horror as his own spectral reflection emerged from the hillside fire, dressed in khaki instead of Union blue, reaching toward the frozen skirmish line with a pistol glinting in the brittle light.
Kaywaykla dismounted suddenly, his moccasin-clad feet sinking into earth that rippled like water. He pressed both palms against the ground, chanting words that made Binning’s fillings ache. The whitish cloth floated upward of its own accord, twisting into a helix that pulsed once...
...and time lurched forward.
The war club completed its arc, Davis ducking with a yell as it grazed his ear. Adams finally bellowed “HOLD FIRE!” just as Kaywaykla’s pony reared between the lines, its hooves scattering sacred tobacco across both factions. The Apache warriors hesitated, their painted faces turning toward the Medicine Man with expressions Binning couldn’t decipher... Awe? Recognition?
Then the sky-disk pulsed.
Every head snapped upward as the craft emitted a sound like glass shattering underwater. The translucent hull darkened abruptly... became darker, but still not quite solid.
The three remaining figures seemed to be standing on its underside, impossible as flies on a ceiling:their features resolving with terrible clarity: Rachel’s towering form flanked by the feline aliens, her Stetson casting angular shadows across Ssstha’rel’s striped fur. Then they blinked and were gone... Instantly reappearing on the edge of the action.
“Raiders!” shouted an Apache warrior, the same youth who’d locked eyes with Adams. His stone club pointed accusingly at the disk. “From the sky-world!”
Kaywaykla whirled, his ochre-streaked face paling. “No! They’re...”
The world fractured into prismatic shards. Binning’s stomach dropped as the disk’s gravity reversed, sending troopers and Apaches tumbling upward with startled shouts. Adams grabbed a cactus root protruding from the inverted ground, his saber spinning away into the violet-tinged void. The Medicine Man’s chant rose to a scream as temporal vertigo wrenched at reality itself, only to snap back with concussive force as the levitating men fell back to Earth.
Suddenly the two Waya Kaywayklas became one as did the two Ed Binnings: an unstable fusion across time that all involved fervently hoped would not end too soon.
Binning found himself prone on unbroken desert sand, his uniform damp with sweat that hadn’t been there seconds before. Wordlessly, an Apache Warrior helped him to his feet.
Dumfounded, the Captain stared at the Lieutenant and the Apache Medicine man who were standing side by side. “What in tarnation is going on, Ed?”
But it was the Apache Medicine Man, Kaywaykla, that answered: the man whose warband they had been hunting for three months. The Apache spoke perfect English with no hint of an accent. “Captain, we have an enemy who is a greater threat to both of us than we are to each other.” His ochre-streaked face tilted toward the pulsing disk overhead.
Adams glanced up and then nodded slowly. “How can we fight that thing?”
It was Lieutenant Binning who answered. “We won’t have too... The longer we can delay them, the weaker they will get.”
The Apache took up the explanation. “If they land, bullets won’t affect them, but cold steel will... Knives, clubs, sabers... Melee work, just like in your recent war when you fought the gray soldiers...”
On the edge of the group Rachel’s spectral form stood tall, her lips moving soundlessly as she kept up the chant that Waya had taught her.
The Apache warriors and blue-coated troopers circled each other like wolves around a fresh kill, hands hovering near weapons. Captain Adams strode between them, his white campaign hat bobbing like a flag of truce. “Stand down, damn you!” His saber slapped against a cavalry boot as a painted warrior recoiled. “We’ve bigger problems than old grudges.”
Sergeant-Major Bullock bodily shoved a trooper backward, the man’s carbine muzzle swinging dangerously close to Kaywaykla’s ribs. “Mind your firelock, boy.” The grizzled noncom growled. “That heathen just saved your worthless hide.”
Lieutenant Binning wiped his saber clean on a dead man’s shirt: Apache or trooper, he couldn’t tell anymore, before sheathing it with trembling hands. The metallic taste in his mouth wasn’t just blood; his tongue tingled as if he’d bitten a telegraph wire. Above them, the black disk throbbed like a bruise against the sky.
“What about the Cordovas?” Adams jerked his thumb toward the blazing ranch house, its timbers popping like gunfire. Flames licked at empty windows where no silhouettes screamed for help.
Kaywaykla smiled, the ochre streaks on his face cracking like dried riverbeds. “Happily they pulled out last week, went to the nearest town...” He scooped a handful of sacred tobacco from his pouch, letting the wind carry it toward the inverted disk. “That fire was supposed to be the bait to draw you in...” He left the sentence unfinished.
To Adams’ surprise, the tall woman had come down from the ridge accompanied by the two ‘cougars’, only the cats were walking on their hind legs and wearing something like silver leotards that shimmered unnaturally in the desert sun. Their tails twitched with precise, almost mechanical motions as they flanked the tall redheaded, their clawed paws leaving no prints in the dust. Troopers and Apache warriors alike stepped back, their weapons lowering in stunned silence as centuries-old animosities evaporated before this impossible spectacle.
“What in tarnation...?” Captain Adams breathed, his white-knuckled grip on his saber slackening.
“They’re on our side, Shank.” Binning said, except his voice carried an odd, layered quality, as if two men spoke through the same throat.
The woman: who stood nearly a head taller than even the captain, smiled, her green eyes glinting with something older than her face suggested. “Captain Adams?” Her form wavered at the edges, like a reflection in disturbed water, yet her badge, ‘Wide-Awake County Sheriff’, remained crisp and clear against her khaki uniform.
Adams swallowed hard, his throat dry as the desert around them. How can a woman be a sheriff? He wondered
He mentally shrugged and answered . “That’s me, Ma’am.”
“They’ll appear like ghosts at first.” She continued, gesturing toward the pulsating disk overhead. “Lights will sparkle. But they solidify real quick. Get in close, melee range, and you can hurt them.”
The captain’s brow furrowed beneath his campaign hat. “You’re not from around here, are you, ma’am?”
She laughed, a rich, warm sound that seemed to ripple through the very air. “I was born about thirty miles that way,” she said, pointing northeast with a hand that briefly phased through solidity, “or will be, in about a hundred and twenty years time.”
“That’s impossible!” Adams choked out.
The sheriff arched one fiery eyebrow and pointed upward without looking. “And that isn’t?”
For a long moment, the captain stared at the hovering disk, then abruptly chuckled, the sound almost lost beneath the distant crackle of the burning ranch house. “If you’ll excuse me, Sheriff,” he said, tipping his hat with sudden, bemused courtesy, “I’d best go brief my troopers before they shoot something they shouldn’t.”
As Adams turned, the taller of the two feline aliens, Ssstha’rel, stepped forward, her tail lashing. ”Sssheriff,” she purred, the word thick with amusement, “your hair-trigger hu-manss are adorable, even if they are maless.”
Rachel’s spectral hand twitched toward a holster that wasn’t quite there. “Focus, Ssstha. They’ll be here any...”
The sky split.
Orange lightning pinpoints of light swirled like a million fireflies. Fashing, flaring dancing in the bright Arizona air then suddenly there were half a dozen towering blonde figures, seven feet tall if they were an inch, their blue eyes glowing like gas flames. They moved rapidly despite their height, their silver-white hair floating as if underwater. The nearest one turned its head with eerie smoothness, its lips parting to reveal teeth that were too perfect.
“Collectors,” Rachel hissed, her own form flickering violently.
Trooper Morgan’s carbine barked, the bullet flared and vanished in a flash of yellow when it struck the woman’s abdomen without effect. The creature smiled.
“Cold steel!” Kaywaykla roared, already sprinting forward with his obsidian-edged war club raised. “Sabers! Knives! Use your carbines as clubs!”
Adams didn’t hesitate. “Charge!” he bellowed, and the desert erupted into chaos.
Ssstha’rel’s fur stood on end as she crouched beside Rachel, her claws extending with audible clicks. ”Ssssee you on the other ssside, sssheriff.” Then she sprang, straight at the Nordics, her powerful hind legs propelling her like a silver gold rocket.
Rachel watched her bowl a Nordic straight off its feet, then turned toward the fray, just as another Nordic solidified fully and backhanded a trooper into next week.
“Close quarters.” She muttered, and charged.
The melee lasted only minutes, a whirlwind of saber strikes and war club swings, of feline claws raking across Nordic faces that shimmered like mercury. The Nordics fought with eerie grace, their movements almost too fast to follow, but the combined assault of Apache, cavalry, and cats proved overwhelming. When three more Nordics materialized in sparkles of orange light, their arrival only delayed the inevitable; these were merchants, not warriors, and their panic showed in the widening of those glowing blue eyes as all of Ssstha’rel’s claws found purchase in the tallest one’s leg.
Rachel watched, breathless, as the feline aliens worked with terrifying efficiency. Ssstha’rel pinned a Nordic by the throat, her hind claws scoring deep furrows in the Collector’s silver bodysuit before she sank needle-like fangs into the junction of shoulder and neck. The Nordic convulsed, a guttural sound escaping its perfect lips as Tssi’kha injected something into its wrist: a slender device that pulsed violet before vanishing, seemingly beneath the skin.
...and then the sky exploded.