“If you want an equally scary comparison,” said Martin, as excited as he was disturbed by his own words, “according to John Hunt, each of our Agent friends have a laser almost as powerful as this deuterium beast built into their left eyes. More than amazing even than the size factor, the implications that statement has for the kind of power sources they must have inside them are phenomenal.”

The scientist’s eyes widened at his own statement as he thought about the Agent’s technological prowess, and then he got back to examining the burn marks on the plating and the scale of the buckling. With the detachment of a scientist, he was able to find the whole concept of the invasion fascinating. That was his objective point of view. But when he lay in bed at night and thought about his one-year-old nephew, or his widowed mother, about them being slaughtered by the alien army that even now hurtled toward Earth, Martin Sobleski shivered with the same fear and anger that haunted the rest of the team.

Chapter 38: Little Princess

As always, New York was busy and vibrant. The city was one of the busiest places in America, on Earth even, and Times Square was one of the busiest places in the city. In the weeks since his arrival, Agent Shahim Al Khazar had taken to walking through the bustling crowds in this mecca of commercialism. Having spent his first months on Earth mired in one of its most unforgiving and brutal regions, this was a stark comparison. His original mission had been clear: infiltrate the ranks of the insurgent army that occupied the mountains that covered northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now that mission had taken a sharp detour, but the end goal remained clear. Shahim needed to move this mission forward, balancing carefully a need to expedite his return to the Kush mountains without being too successful and accelerating destabilization before the rest of the team, and the Armada, were ready to sweep in.

So his missions now refocused on the United States, and the range of potential targets his brief had laid out for him.

One of his proposed missions was to build and deploy a dirty bomb in New York. Both he and the Council had been appalled at the thought of deliberately releasing a radioactive device in any place, not for ethical reasons, but environmental ones. But Shahim’s superiors in Al Qaeda had insisted that it remain on the list of options.