Colony: Desert 1, by DarkBeta
(The Rat Patrol are not mine. Nevertheless i'm taking them out to play . . . a long, long way from home. This first chapter is a boring list of names and relations. If you can slog thru it, i think the next one will be better. [kowtows abjectly])
[North Africa, Sunday, 1942]
One of the Arabs said he'd seen a German tank, but a full day's patrol found no sign of it. And then, just as Troy was about to order them back to base, Moffitt's jeep skidded into a patch of soft sand. Shovels and sweat failed to get it out. They had chained the two jeeps together to yank the second one out of its sandtrap, when Tully spotted rifles at the dune crest. They went to ground between the vehicles as bullets scraped the sand.
"We haven't done anything to make the locals mad, have we?" Hitch asked, shifting his matchstick to the other side of his mouth.
"You, Rahouleh, Thursday night," Tully grunted.
Hitch grinned, snapping off a shot that made one of the rifles slide out of sight.
"She's not mad at me any more. Not since Friday."
"General dissatisfaction with my countrymen, perhaps. I've heard no rumors of anything more organized," Moffit reported.
Troy rose for a couple of shots, and dropped to sit with his back against the tire as a fusillade answered him.
"You hear something?" Tully drawled.
They all heard it, a grumble that got louder, the thunk of tread on sand. The tank they'd been hunting lurched across the shoulder of a dune.
The turret swiveled. The great gun dropped to an easy target. A staff car pulled up by the tank. Sheltered by its armor, Hauptmann Dietrich called down to them.
"Welcome, Sergeant Troy. Our new camouflage was working so well, I was content to avoid complication and allow your vehicles to pass. Until nature conspired against you, that is. Do you intend to surrender, or shall I test the tank's ordinance as well as its concealment?"
"Think I can get him with a ricochet," Hitch muttered, sighting along his rifle.
Troy's jaw was clenched in his patented glower. Only a few admonitory bullets whinged by, as both sides waited on his decision.
Under the glaring desert sun, they saw no other lights. Only a shadow overhead, and then nothing they would ever remember.