“The target,” Temple corrected, “is the event.”
“What event?” she asked.
Orlando let out a big sigh. “What he means, what he’s getting at but won’t tell you, is that the government’s not stupid.” He glared at Temple. “He knows what the scientists and the so-called quack archaeologists found. The skeletons flattened in the streets. Huddled in their homes, holding hands as they met their doom.”
“Flattened?”
“Devastated. The walls bear evidence of extreme heat and exposure to an unknown source of energy. Something that left a radiation signature across this whole place. A signature not seen again until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Phoebe frowned at him. “Conspiracies-R-Us?”
“Try, The Mahabarata. The old Vedic epic and holy book… there’s a whole battle scene in there that describes the gods raining these kinds of arsenals down upon their foes. I recall one of the verses went something like: ‘…a single projectile, charged with all the power of the universe/ as bright as the thousand suns / a column of smoke and flame rose in all its splendor.’ Then something about reducing the people to ashes, corpses burning, hair and nails falling out. Descriptions that sounded way too much like nuclear fallout.”
Temple grinned. “You’ve said too much, Orlando. Let her work with an unclouded mind. Phoebe, just try to see what happened here. What did them in?”
“Why?” she asked. “If you guys apparently know it all? What’s the point?”
“Because,” he said. “We need to know exactly what we’re up against, and we need you to understand that what we’re doing isn’t because we’re power-hungry elitists who want to jealously guard the truth from the pitiful masses.”
“That’s a relief.”
“That’s the truth,” Temple said. “We have much bigger problems. Because whatever did this, whatever happened here, it’s going to happen again if we don’t get that Tablet back.”
She saw it on the way down the hill. Just a few steps from the first wall of red brick, the dust already kicked up by her shoes. Maybe it was the smell, the proximity to the ancient stone. The sudden feeling of belonging here. Being one of with Mohenjo-Daro’s population. Seeing it-
-for the first time… The sound, the bustling throbbing sound. A perfect cadence of voice and motion. People, such a mass of people. Bright colors, hats, silken scarves, elegant robes and practical coverings. Commoner and royalty, it seemed, merge as one in the streets and… flee.
Out of the city. Not a mob, but not so orderly as to be a ceremonious event. They’re scared. Carrying some possessions, boxes, bags. A little girl carrying a dragon-shaped doll…
A rumbling in the earth.
Screams, people turning.
Something in the center of the city draws their attention. A tower, of sorts. Pyramid-shaped, glowing at its tip. The rumbling continues, intensifies—and a gathering light at the tip of the pyramid appears. Brighter and brighter, until the crowd moves slowly away, as if mesmerized by the sight, yet terrified of what might happen next.
There are things in the sky. Lights moving bright against the blue background, multi-colored orbs and flattened disc-shaped brilliances. They seem to be at war with each other. Some are spinning, dissolving, falling in snowflake-like patterns across the sky and over the mountains.
And the light from the pyramid turns darker, a deep indigo hue that in the blink of an eye blasts upward with a force that shatters the outer layer of stones from the pyramid and flattens nearby homes. Now there’s a beam of light, pure nearly blinding light stabbing through the sky—and beyond. The air shimmers, people cover their eyes.
And as if in reply to this city’s offensive, something comes down from the sky. Nothing entirely visible, but this nothing lands with an impact like a god’s fist striking the ground. The earth trembles, the walls and buildings shake. But then the aftershocks, like concentric circles of energy, descend one upon the other, in widening diameters until the whole city, the entire plain is caught in its frequency.
A frequency that shatters living beings, flattening them like insects underfoot. The crowds, as one, are gone. Everyone still in the main center of the city—just pulverized. Whatever this force is, it spares the bricks, the earth, the structures, but leaves them smoking, simmering.
Everyone’s gone except those who had just made it out of range. Stumbling away into a ravine, looking back in horror, back toward the beam from the pyramid. The beam that’s flickering now. Fizzling, its power used up.
Amid the wailing, screaming and desperation, a last, lone look up at the sky…
And the tiny light, tinged in the approaching dusk with a light reddish hue. The only object in the sky above the pyramid. The only available target…
“What… the hell…” Phoebe clutched at Orlando’s shirt, meeting his eyes with such lingering horror, “…was that?”
Orlando shook his head. “I didn’t get enough. Just saw, I don’t know, like I was in some structure, and I had a tablet. It might have been the same one you guys found. I was sitting in some throne-like contraption, and all these strange symbols and I don’t know, equations or something, were whirling about my head. And it seemed they were directing this device, this coiled apparatus that had colored electricity sparkling from it, and—”
“Jeez,” Phoebe backed away from him. “Where were you?”
He shrugged.
“Probably,” said Temple, “you could find out with another vision. But not now. I think Phoebe saw what we needed her to see. Now, before we head back. There’s one more target.”
“Come on, man. Phoebe’s been through enough. Let her rest.”
“I’m fine.” She smoothed back her hair, stood up straight and turned back to the city’s ruins, looking over the ancient walls, seeing for a moment the former glory of Mohenjo-Daro, and again feeling the crushing loss, the doom that was so decisively brought to them.
“I saw them! I don’t know, it seemed like it was a war. In the skies, with lights attacking each other. But I think the people here, they got off a shot from some tremendous weapon. Maybe the same thing that hit them a moment later.”
“A shot to where?” Temple leaned in, focused.
“Dumb question,” Orlando said. “If they launched a missile, it would go up straight, then follow the curvature of the earth as it approached its target.”
“Let her finish.”
Phoebe raised a finger to the sky. “It wasn’t a missile or anything like that. It was a beam of light. So I’m guessing it went straight. The only thing I saw up there was a tiny light. Maybe it was a ship.”
Temple was nodding, but looking at her closely.
“…or maybe it wasn’t. It looked like a star. Or a planet. And… it was reddish-colored.”
Orlando closed his eyes. “Mars.” He shook his head and stepped in front of Phoebe, facing Temple. “You know more about this than you’re telling us. Come on, spill it.”
“Not here. And anyway, you need to see one more thing. Final pop quiz, if you like. Before you join us.”
Orlando let his shoulders sag, but his fists were clenched. “You’re really pissing me off.”
“I can live with that. Now here goes. It’s a trick that seems to work well with the other recruits. Kind of like free association. I’ll give you the target, you give me the first thing that comes to you, the first thing you see.”