Egyptian Tahtib: Destruction
"What are they doing? What's going on?" If a whisper can be a scream, Rose was managing it.
"That's the transformation hub. They're being upgraded!" Jared's voice, in contrast, was flat and hard – and very, very dangerous.
"No..." Her denial was automatic.
"Hell, no!" was his agreement, hissed out between gritted teeth. "Not this time!"
"How are they being controlled?" Rose was frantically trying to keep it together, searching her memory for how they'd done it last time. "We've got to disable it!"
Jared had already whirled about, searching the grounds. "Controller, controller... it would have been the first thing they set up..." Suddenly he stopped, blowing out a disgusted snort and rolling his eyes.
"What?"
"We're hiding behind it," he informed her, pointing to the machinery they were crouched by.
"Oh. Well, then. That makes it easy. How do we turn it off, then?" Just then, a scream rent the air. The processing had begun, and it knocked the imp right out of her. "Jared, hurry!"
"With this," he answered her previous question. "Stand back!"
Rose watched in fascination as her intended stood up, whipped out the sword hanging by his side as if he'd done it a thousand times, raised it over his head, and brought it flashing down on the cable running from the pyramid. The cable parted like cooked spaghetti, sparking and spitting, and the machine went dead.
And all hell broke loose across the way. The freed slaves stopped their lockstep shuffling, gaped around wide-eyed, and started screaming, shouting, and ripping off earpieces. A mad scramble ensued, as the edges broke apart and men started streaming into the desert. The half-dozen Cybermen who had been directing the slaves tried a few more orders, then went into automatic Delete mode, firing their built-in hand lasers indiscriminately into the crowd.
Now the oil rig structure began emptying of silver Cybermen, as they stomped out to join the riot patrol. "And there's our distraction!" Jared grinned, and grabbed Rose's hand. "Come on!" And they ran across the open space towards the back end of the rig, ducking low, Tock as ever at their heels.
Then, in the midst of the chaos, one man stood alone, angrily drawing his short, pudgy form as regally tall as he could, and began bellowing above the cacophony.
"Francais! Soldats! Arrêter! Á moi! Á moi!"
Most of those in French uniforms stopped, looked around, and began gathering around the man, joined by some of the people in desert garb. It looked like a battle was about to be joined, as their leader launched them barehanded towards the Cybermen.
"Is that Napoleon?" Jared paused at the corner of the rig and grinned. "I knew he'd pop up."
"No," Rose replied, bewildered, squinting. "It's General Bon!" She'd recognized the long, curly brown hair, unlike the famous General, whose gaze she would never forget. "I don't see Napoleon anywhere."
"Ah, well," Jared shrugged, already turning back to the task at hand. He led her in through the open-weave pylons and cables supporting what was to Rose an incomprehensible jumble of machinery. Reaching the control area, Jared whispered quickly, identifying the parts of the process. The remains of an industrial laser which had apparently been used to "drill" the original well was angled at a surprisingly shallow angle generally eastwards, "towards the Saudi oil fields," he commented. "There's really not much oil under this part of Egypt. They're stealing it from quite a distance!" The stolen oil, drawn somehow through countless miles of Earth's crust, was being fed into a hopper, then funneled down onto a small stage, where a constant bombardment of sparkling blue-green energy beams from several angles was continuously hyper-miniaturizing the sludge, slowly building another brick for the pile awaiting on the nearby anti-gravity sled.
"How did they build all this in just two days?" Rose asked, bewildered.
Jared gave her a double-take. "No, it's been three weeks since the split – on this side. The portal circuits in the pyramid locked onto you standing in the chamber in the parallel regardless of the time difference." He put aside any deeper explanations for later, though, and began searching for a way to shut the operation down a bit less than catastrophically. "Now, where's the off switch?"
Tock's growl saved them again, giving them that crucial second's warning. "DELETE" came from one side at the same time the returning single Cyberman started firing at them, but they had already ducked. The laser bolts hit the oil transport machinery instead, causing ominous metallic shrieks and rattlings to fill the air.
"Rose! Keep looking!" Jared yelled at her, as he scrambled towards their attacker, sword once more in hand, keeping his head down. Incredibly, the Cyberman continued to fire at Jared, causing more and more damage as his target kept barely ahead of the shots. Tock, barking angrily, dodged the other way, distracting the metal man for only a moment before he turned back to Jared again.
Swallowing her fear, Rose turned and frantically scanned for controls – then ducked again, as another Cyberman appeared on the far side of the miniaturization platform and started shooting at her! She dove sideways past the beam mounts to her left, rolling on the floor before coming to hands and knees again, one eye on her assailant and the other one still looking for an "off" switch. Both of the metal men kept shooting, chanting "DELETE DELETE" in unison, as if their own "off" switches had jammed, their laser bolts pinging wildly around the machinery, continuing to damage their operation. Pretty soon, they'll do the job for us, if we can keep this up, Rose thought grimly.
Jared launched himself through a gap, turned a Rambo-like somersault and came up swinging the sword, aiming it at the Cyberman's forearm above the deadly laser hand. Just as it had before, the magnificent blade sliced through the Cyberman's shell with barely a quiver, shutting the gun off as it dropped to the floor. Jared took a quick, relieved breath, even as he continued the figure-8 as before, raising the sword high to effect another beheading.
It never landed. A sparkling blue-green energy beam beat him to the Cyberman's head, slashing across it and leaving nothing in its wake. Jared blinked and stared, then whirled around and ducked, taking in the situation in a blazing instant. One of the hundreds of shots had knocked a miniaturizing beam cannon – no, two of them! – off target, and they were both spinning wildly, spraying their beams in all directions. Jared heard an ominous screech from a nearby pillar as a center section was miniaturized right out of it, and knew instantly that the entire structure was about to come crashing down around them.
"ROSE! RUN!" The words left his mouth in a scream even as his wild eyes found hers, and they both began an insane scramble for the edge of the pylon forest, not even trying the impossible task of avoiding the spinning beams. Somehow, they both made it, just before a tremendous metallic groan and crash announced the promised collapse of the superstructure. Rose was screaming for Tock, wilting in relief as the familiar black figure slipped out behind them – before Jared pulled her up again. "Keep running!"
Chaos reigned all around, full of bodies both moving and still, screams and cries and smoke and terror. The former slaves had apparently managed to overwhelm and render inoperative several of their erstwhile masters, while the remaining Cybermen abruptly broke off their attack at the collapse of the processing plant, turning stiffly and marching towards it futilely. An insane impulse to try to stop them from entering it and self-destructing flittered across Jared's mind, but he swatted it away and just kept running, pulling Rose along behind him. Instead, he filled his lungs with air and bellowed the command to leg it, first in French, then in Arabic. The slaves, needing no further encouragement, turned as one and took off into the desert – those who could still move. There were far too many bodies lying lifelessly on the ground, and both time travelers knew the sight would be burned into their memories.
A hundred yards further on, Jared and Rose could go no further, and they collapsed onto the sand, Tock flopping down beside them, then they rolled over to look back just as a mighty, roaring screech filled the air. A gigantic sand devil had grown out of nowhere, building and swirling above the spot where the futuristic oil refinery had stood, obscuring I-beams and bodies alike. It towered above them, clawing at the sky, then, as if a gigantic switch had been thrown, it abruptly fizzled into nothing, sand and dust simply falling lightly as snow all around them.
And when it finally cleared, there was nothing left. Only the black pyramid remained, canted precariously on the edge of a newly-formed pit a few dozen yards wide and deep. The surviving slaves had all disappeared into the distance, leaving only Jared and Rose, and Tock, staring across the tortured landscape, panting heavily into the deafening silence.