Aliens Abroad

by Gini Koch

  “How is the interior of the curved tail part different from what we’ve seen in the saucer?” I asked.

  “It’s a smaller setup basically,” Tim, who’d just joined us, replied. “Complete with sleeping quarters and all the rest. It’s more maneuverable but still roomy. The sports car to the rest of this ship’s RV.”

  “I want to see the sports car!”

  Jeff chuckled. “I knew you would.”

  “Where’s Alicia?” I asked Tim as we headed for the elevator to take us to the sports car portion. “And have you seen James?”

  “Alicia saw the ship during the friends and family tour, and has no real interest,” Tim said. “I think it makes her nervous that I’m going to be on this, and she doesn’t want to think about it. She’s with the rest of the families outside. Commander Reader is inspecting Engineering and Weapons.”

  These sections ran through the center of the ship, from aft to stern or whatever we were supposed to call it on a ship like this. I didn’t understand the reasons why, but those who did said it made the most sense, so I hadn’t argued. As with everything else, there were sections that could be locked down as needed. I didn’t plan to spend much, if any, time down there—weapons were normally fired from strategic areas that weren’t in the middle of the ship, and reality said that were I ever on this ship for any extended reason, what I’d care about were the guns, both big and small, so that’s what I’d paid attention to, inasmuch as I could via blueprints. Now that we were here, though, I knew better than to ask to see all the guns. Some arguments were better left to privacy.

  “Why so formal about James all of the sudden? Did you two get into a fight or something?”

  Tim grinned. “No. But James would really like to be on the mission, and because he can’t be, he’s going overboard in ensuring that he knows how everything runs. You know him—he likes to be the best at everything.”

  “Which he always is.”

  Jeff grunted. “Thank God he’s gay and married to Paul is all I can say.”

  “I thought you were past jealousy these days.” Reader was my other best guy friend, the former top international male model in the world, all-around awesome, and handsome enough to be constantly mistaken for an A-C. Our joke that wasn’t really a joke was that if he was straight, or even bi, he’d have taken me away from all of this ages ago. But he was gay and was not bi, so we both had to make do with being married to awesome, handsome aliens with incredible stamina and regeneration powers. It was tough, but we managed to find the will to go on.

  “I’m holding your hand. I can feel the lust and admiration for James, trust me.”

  “Poor baby. So, who’s with James?”

  Tim shrugged. “Chuck and Nathalie, because he’s interested and she’s doing the time-honored thing of pretending to be fascinated by whatever it is your sig-O is into in order to be a supportive life mate.”

  “Well, it is time honored. I mean, I’m pretending to love being the FLOTUS and all that.”

  “Yeah? You’re not doing a good job of it, and Alicia’s not following that plan anymore, anyway.” Tim laughed. “Which is okay. We’re finally ready to start talking kids, and what she’s focused on are everyone else’s. She’s with Amy, wrangling JR. On the other hand, Serene isn’t faking interest at all. She’s with them, too, because she’s as into this as James is. I know for a fact she lobbied to go and was shot down by her husband.”

  “Glad I missed that fight,” Jeff muttered.

  “Oh, trust me, you are.”

  “Well, we need them on Earth,” I pointed out. “Having the Head of Alpha Team and the Head of Imageering off gallivanting isn’t necessarily a good thing. We need them here, protecting our world.”

  “We do. I’ll try not to be offended that no one feels that they need me on Earth.”

  “You’re the Head of Airborne. It’s kind of your thing to be going, isn’t it?”

  Tim grinned. “True enough. I haven’t rubbed that in to James and Serene at all, either.”

  “Much.”

  We all chuckled as the elevator took us down. Until the elevator stopped and the doors didn’t open.

  Possibly because the ship was lurching again.

  CHAPTER 9

  THIS LURCHING WAS DIFFERENT. Before, it had been side to side. Now it was more of an upward, pulling feeling.

  “Are there communications in these elevators?” Jeff asked, Commander Voice on Full.

  Tim nodded and hit a button. “This is Commander Crawford. Can anyone report?”

  Heard some static that sounded like people speaking. “Think something’s damaged?” I asked as I dug my phone out of my purse and dialed.

  “No idea,” Tim replied as Christopher answered.

  “Kitty, is it my imagination or is the ship moving again? I’m the only one who can see it, from what I can tell.”

  “You’re not imagining nor seeing things that aren’t real. It feels like the ship is trying to go up and Jeff, Tim, and I are stuck in an elevator. Belay any comments you want to make and get people off the ship and out of range in case it collapses or something. We have Charlie but I don’t know where Jamie, Lizzie, and Wasim are.” Managed to keep panic out of my voice. After all, this might be nothing.

  “On it.” He kept the line open so I didn’t hang up, either.

  The pulling feeling didn’t stop and neither did the static. Tim hit the button and turned the static off. Sadly, this didn’t stop the lurching. Or open the doors.

  “Any way to get out of this elevator? I’m asking because it tends to be really bad to be stuck in one when a building collapses and such.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Jeff said. He handed Charlie to me and went to the elevator doors. Realized what he was doing and handed Charlie to Tim.

  “I’m really glad my wife isn’t here to watch this emasculation,” Tim muttered. “And yeah, yeah, you’re enhanced and I’m not. I’m protecting the small child, so that’s got to have some kind of hero points attached to it.”

  “A lot,” I said, as Jeff started to pull the doors apart and I helped him. We got the doors open about a foot, so we could see that there was a floor just above our heads.

  “Think we can get through that?” Jeff asked.

  “Not sure. Charlie and my purse, yes. Me and Tim, maybe. You can’t, for certain, though.”

  “One of us out is better than none, and if you and Charlie are safe, I’m good with it. Tim safe would be an added bonus.”

  “I’m not crawling out and leaving you in here, however.”

  Jeff looked ready to argue when the elevator lurched again. Tim pulled me back and Jeff leaped back using hyperspeed, which were good things, as the doors slammed shut and we continued downward.

  “We’re not plummeting. I’m going to count that as good.” And I was glad I hadn’t decided to shove Charlie through the opening, let alone the rest of us.

  “Is that some failsafe?” Jeff asked Tim. “Because we were going to be able to get the doors opened all the way and get at least some of us out of here.”

  “I have no idea,” Tim said. “I didn’t study the elevator’s escape routes.”

  “You’ve been with Centaurion longer than me and yet you let that slide?”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “I’ve been with them a month longer than you, and I was focused on how to fly it, use the weapons systems, and handle other emergencies, like a shutdown in life-support systems.”

  The three of us stared at each other. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”

  “Kitty!” Christopher was back on his phone. “Are you guys okay?”

  “Yeah, putting you on speaker. Where are you?”

  “I found your parents, the Joint Chiefs, your Secret Service details, some politicians, and all the crew other than Brian. They’re off and at a safe distance, at least h
opefully.”

  “How did you get the Secret Service to leave without us?”

  “I didn’t give anyone a choice, honestly. I just grabbed and ran, explained what was going on while running, and left them to barf a safe distance away.”

  Hyperspeed was hard on humans, and we all tended to barf after any extended hyperspeed experience. Well, before Tito Hernandez had joined us. When I’d met him he’d been in med school, working three jobs, and cage fighting during his copious free time. Tito had joined us and gotten his medical degree. He was a genius and, in addition to a lot of other helpful things, he’d created Hyperspeed Dramamine. All human agents and those who worked closely with Centaurion took it regularly, and I carried a big bottle of it in my purse, just in case.

  However, Christopher was so fast that the Hyperspeed Dramamine didn’t work on anyone. Even other A-Cs barfed if they had to go at his Flash Level too long.

  “Thanks for ensuring that no one barfed on the sparkly new ship or in view of cameras.”

  “I was the Head of Imageering for over a decade, Kitty. I’m not an idiot.” I was fairly sure he was glaring at the phone, but since I couldn’t see it, decided not to care. “Anyway, we have Centaurion agents here, ready to grab everyone and run. But the ship doesn’t look like it’s falling to anyone on the ground, so I couldn’t do an evacuation, even though your mother confirmed that the ship was moving erratically. Raj won’t leave the ship until he has you and Jeff. I can’t find the others.”

  “I thought you said you just grabbed and ran,” Tim said.

  “That works for the humans, Tim, but not necessarily for other A-Cs.”

  “You mean you slowed down near A-Cs,” I said.

  “Christopher knows what he’s doing,” Jeff countered, ever in defense of his cousin.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jeff. Anyway, I found Lizzie, who also won’t leave the ship. She said that Jamie wanted to play hide and seek and she won’t go until she has Jamie and Wasim with her.”

  “She’s a human kid. Why didn’t you grab her and get her to safety?”

  “She’s a human kid who’s adopted father is a hybrid assassin who’s spent years training her. And now she’s your protégé. Take a guess for why I didn’t grab her.”

  “Sorry about your groin.”

  “Exactly. I’m staying with Lizzie, searching the ship for Jamie, but we can’t find her or Wasim. I have no idea if they’re on or off the ship. I don’t have a clear idea of who’s still on board, either. Some of those I didn’t find could have left on their own already and others could have come back.”

  “Great,” Jeff groaned.

  “How is it that the Flash can’t determine that?”

  “Chose to stay with the youngest person I found, who won’t let me take her hand because she doesn’t trust me to not take her to safety.”

  “Cannot argue with this logic.” The doors finally opened and we hustled out of the elevator. “We’re out. No idea where we are, but we seem to be alone. Where are you and Lizzie and have you found anyone else?”

  “We’re somewhere on Deck Fourteen. Keep in mind that this version of hide and seek they’re playing is the one where if you find the hider, you hide with them, meaning Wasim might be with Jamie. But Jamie has hyperspeed and could literally be anywhere, on this deck or any of the others.”

  “What about the adults who went with them?” Jeff asked. “Gadhavi, Mahin, and Naveed?”

  “You’re on speaker now, too,” Christopher said, as he repeated Jeff’s question.

  “They totes said they were going to play the game, too, but I think they all went to find a place to sit down and relax where they thought they would be near us,” Lizzie shared. “But we haven’t found them yet, either.”

  “Fabulous,” Jeff groaned.

  “Sorry,” Christopher said. “All I have for you is that the adults likely still on board are all field trained or experienced. Or are in your Cabinet, Jeff, because I haven’t found any of them.”

  “They probably went to meet up with the others in Engineering,” Tim said. “Did you check there?”

  “No, because Lizzie said that she’d made that section off limits for the game and I stopped grabbing people once I found Lizzie.”

  “That was the right choice,” Jeff said. “Lizzie, if Christopher says you two have to go, I expect you to do so.”

  “Not until we find Jamie and Wasim,” she said calmly. “And don’t even try to pretend you’d do any differently. And also don’t try the ‘we’re adults’ line, either. My dad taught me to ignore that a long time ago.”

  “Well, one small favor that none of the kids are in Engineering or Weapons, I guess.” Said more to stop any more bickering than because I was calm about the situation. Tried not to worry about where Jamie was and if she was alone or not. Failed utterly. “I have no idea how to get everyone into one safe place, particularly my daughter who prides herself on her hide and seek skills.”

  In the past couple of years Jamie had really gotten into this game and all of its variations, and she’d gotten all the other kids into it, too, even the older ones. There was no way Jamie was going to give away her position unless she was certain the emergency was real. And I had no way to let her know that without potentially terrifying her.

  “No idea, but I can at least tell you that, so far, Deck Fourteen is clear. We’re heading to Deck Fifteen.”

  “Let’s get off the phones, but call if you find her and we’ll do the same.” We hung up and I dropped my phone back into my purse. Noted the time and realized that we hadn’t been in here all that long—it just seemed long in terms of what had been going on, but we hadn’t been inside the ship more than thirty minutes.

  “How do we get up to the command deck without using that elevator?” Jeff asked Tim.

  “There are stairwells.” Tim headed off and we followed.

  Hyperspeed made stairs a great option, but you still had to do the stairs. Fortunately, I’d spent high school and college running track under the most sadistic and thorough track coaches in the world, so stair charges had pretty much always been a part of my life. And since becoming enhanced, getting to do them using my own hyperspeed instead of someone else’s was a point of pride. During training. Right now, I was more than happy to let Jeff do the heavy hyperspeed lifting as he took Charlie from me and grabbed my hand while I grabbed Tim’s, and off we went.

  We searched every floor of the sports car section, just in case. For good or bad, no one else was in this part of the ship. We were in one of the stairwells that connected the sporty flyer to the cruiser when Tim’s phone rang. “Hello? What?” His face drained of color while whoever was on the other line talked. “No,” he said finally. “Stay there, where you are. I mean it! Alicia! Dammit!” He hung up.

  “What?” Jeff asked. “Whatever it is, it sounds bad.”

  “It is bad,” Tim said, voice shaking. “All the Embassy kids are missing. Becky and JR included.”

  “How?” Jeff asked.

  “No one’s sure. One moment they were all there, the next, they’d disappeared. Most of them have hyperspeed and we all know they compensate for the ones that don’t, just like all we adults do.” Tim held up his hand that I was still holding. “Why they chose now to do this, though, is really unclear. And badly timed.”

  “What’s Alicia doing?” Had to ask, because I’d rarely heard Tim yell and never at his wife.

  “She’s going with Amy and the other parents to search for the kids.”

  “Why is that a bad thing?”

  Tim shook his head. “Because they think the kids are on the ship.”

  Got a really bad feeling. “Jamie called them, didn’t she? She hid somewhere and called her friends over to her.” Looked at Charlie and thought about several things—mainly that it wasn’t Charlie’s nap time and yet he was sleeping lik
e the dead, and that Jeff had said Charlie was talking to someone. In his sleep. Just like I had earlier. Maybe we both were having really weird dreams today. Or maybe that whole DreamScape thing was real. “Wake him up, Jeff. Wake him up now.”

  “What?” Jeff sounded confused. Realized his stupid blocker was working far too well, because if he couldn’t feel me, then he couldn’t read my mind, either. Due to the amount of Surcenthumain—what I called the Superpowers Drug—Jeff had been given by our enemies during Operation Drug Addict, his abilities had expanded. He couldn’t read everyone’s minds, but he was very good with mine and the kids’. But this blocker appeared to be better.

  “Wake him up, right now!”

  “Why? Him sleeping means him not being frightened.”

  “All required personnel accounted for,” a pleasant robotic female voice announced. “Takeoff imminent. All personnel to assigned stations.”

  We stared at each other again. “What was that?” I asked Tim. “Or, rather, who was that?”

  “That was the master computer, I think. But unless Christopher was wrong or the crew came back inside after he took them out, personnel can’t be accounted for, let alone the required ones.”

  “Jeff, what is Charlie dreaming? Tell me what’s going on with him, and don’t argue, just do it.”

  Jeff still looked confused. “He’s talking to that imaginary woman.” He jerked. “And he sees the other kids—they’re with Jamie and Wasim in some room where they can all sit in what look like bucket seats. They’re all buckled in, too. Lizzie and Christopher just arrived . . .”

  He’d have said more, but we were all too busy trying not to fall down the stairs, as the ship lurched upward for real this time. And this time, it didn’t stop.