Alien Nation

by Gini Koch

  He zipped over. Explained what was going on. “Are you able to swim down there at Flash speeds?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not confident. It’s deep, meaning I’d need deep-sea diving equipment, equipment that I’ve never used before. Plus, we don’t know where it is, other than under the area the Treeship is over. I can try, but we can’t count on me.”

  “I could go with him,” Mossy said. “However, the depth could prove an issue. But I am also willing to try.”

  “Call Jeremy, Raheem gave us scuba equipment.” Christopher stepped away and made the call. Mossy went with him. “If he can’t do this, we don’t have time to find the bomb, and with Nerida dead, we have no one who can pull it out of the water.”

  “What are we going to do?” Chuckie asked quietly.

  “Well, what I’m going to do is give this one to the smartest guy in the room, who thankfully still has all his brain capacity intact. Take it away, Chuckie.”

  “Thanks for that,” he said with a laugh as he turned back to the computer and started to fiddle around. “I need help, Kitty. This equipment is potentially older than Richard.”

  “I’ll choose not to take offense,” White said from behind us. “Adriana shared that all of our computer team is fully aware of what’s going on. You’re on speaker,” he said as he put his phone down.

  “Chuck, it’s Stryker. You have the whole team, including Chernobog and Olga, all on the line. Tell us what you’re seeing, we’ll get it solved.” Chuckie started saying technical things very quickly and getting technical answers back just as fast, and without bickering. Clearly Hacker International was aware of the magnitude of the issue.

  This was not quite as bad as hearing A-Cs talking at hyperspeed, but it was close enough. Stepped away and went over to Christopher and Mossy. Jeremy came through a floater gate carrying equipment at the same time.

  Jeff joined us. “No,” he said, as he took the equipment away from Christopher. “We can swim, baby, but we aren’t a water race. Swimming in and running on water are one thing, but deep-sea diving is another. The pressure of the water will make it difficult for both of them to get back to the surface. If it takes them too long to find the bomb, then they’ll be at even more risk. I can’t allow it. And yes, I’ll take the hit and the blame if we can’t save these people any other way.”

  “Jeff, are you sure?” Christopher asked. “I can at least give it a try.”

  “This is an order,” Jeff said. “No one’s going down there, you least of all.” He looked at Mossy. “And not you, either, so don’t get any ideas.” Jeff handed the equipment back to Jeremy. “Thank the king profusely for his generosity. Then get a lot of agents here to get that thing,” he indicated the dead Rexie, “over to Dulce for study.”

  “The agents are on their way, per Commander Crawford’s request,” Jeremy said. “The Science Center is just preparing a room for the cadaver.” He nodded to us and stepped back through the floater gate.

  Leaned my back against Jeff’s chest, he wrapped his arms around me, and we both stared at the TV.

  “Thirteen minutes,” Adriana called.

  “The pressure isn’t helping,” Chuckie shared.

  And neither were we. My music changed to “Fly” by Sugar Ray. Took the hint. Pulled out my phone and dialed.

  “Commander, it’s always so nice to hear your voice. How goes the offensive?”

  “It’s our usual, Jerry.”

  “That bad, huh? What can your favorite flyboy do to help?”

  “Um, right now? Not let the Treeship land.”

  There was silence. “That’s not possible,” he said after a few long moments. “They’re in final approach. If they try to take off now the Treeship will rip apart.”

  Took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay, so Plan B is out.” Filled him in fast on what was going on, including that we’d nixed the idea of swimming down there.

  “Wise choice, Commander. I honestly don’t think someone untrained in scuba would have a chance of survival, A-C or no A-C. Not even Christopher, not even with his speed.”

  “Ten minutes,” Adriana called.

  “Jeff agrees. I don’t want to count our team out, but it’s not looking good, Jerry. Can the helicarrier do anything?”

  “Uh, pick up survivors. The Treeship can’t allow anyone to beam in or out right now.”

  “They have beaming technology?”

  “Yes, but it’s useless at the moment. During landing, the Treeship is incredibly vulnerable, with all power focused on the safe landing. It’s part of why they’re heading for the landing site they are—it was made for ships like theirs.”

  “I’m officially done with the entire idea of us being in the boondocks. Apparently we’re the vacation getaway of choice for this entire damn galaxy.”

  “Eight minutes.”

  “Jerry, anything? Any ideas at all? I’m really open to anything crazy that anyone wants to suggest, and I totally include the Vata in that. Oh, my God, we are so stupid! Is Tevvik there?”

  “He is. Well, in his ship, I mean, but he’s in the same vicinity. I can transfer your call to his ship while still keeping you connected to me. Hang on.”

  “Seven minutes.”

  “You know, Adriana,” Tim said, “that is getting really annoying. And it’s not like Chuck and the others aren’t aware that time’s ticking away.”

  “She can count down if she wants to,” Buchanan said in a very calm and also very protective way that suggested that Tim was about one syllable away from getting punched in the face. Reminded me a lot of Jeff.

  “Uh, sure, okay, yeah, the pressure’s probably what Chuck actually needs right now,” Tim said. “I’ll just go over and mop his brow or something.” He shot me the WTH look as he skedaddled over to Chuckie.

  Jeff leaned his chin on my head and sighed. “All the good stuff won’t matter if we can’t save these people.”

  “No, it won’t matter if we can’t stop the Aicirtap.” Would have said more, but Tevvik came on the line. Shared what was going on as fast as humanly possible. “So can you connect to this machine and make it stop?”

  “Let me try . . . ow!” There was a lot of cursing that the universal translator wasn’t catching, probably because it related to Vatusan anatomy. “It’s rigged. It’s rigged against us. How could anything that old be set up to repel Vata?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “It was set up by people who knew the Vata were here and also knew how to circumvent you. I’ll say this for the now dead piles of dust—they were damned smart and cagy, and they were chess masters.” Heaved a sigh. “Our enemy may be dead, but, as he said, he’s about to get the last laugh.”

  “The hell with that,” Chuckie snarled. “That bastard who spent his entire life trying to ruin mine is not going to win. Put the Vata on speaker, Kitty.”

  Trotted over and did as requested. Those not involved in cleanup came with us. Which was pretty much everyone, since cleaning up didn’t matter at the moment. Put my phone down next to White’s. “Tevvik, you’re on with Chuckie.”

  “Can I just unplug this damn machine?” Chuckie asked. “Or will that trigger the bomb? Any guesses?”

  “Something made to repel us is likely on some sort of kill switch,” Tevvik said. “To me, that seems a given and the risk is too high to safely attempt.”

  The lights went out, the computer stayed on. Rahmi had taken over cleanup and was zapping another pile of clone bodies. “Why are you doing that?” I asked when she was done.

  “Three minutes.” Tim wasn’t wrong, Adriana doing this was nerve-wracking. But I understood why she was—everyone dealt with fear in their own ways.

  “Just because things look as if they are at the end doesn’t mean that they are,” Rahmi said calmly, as she unplugged the Killer Octopus. “I know you’ve been in similar s
ituations and overcome them to be victorious. I see no reason to assume that this time will be different. You and Charles will figure it out.”

  “I’m tired of being in crazed mad scientist lairs, but you’re right, we get out of them. I mean, during Operation Confusion, when we left the room of Hot Zombies we had the entire place folding in on itself on top of us. And Mister White, Chuckie, and I are still here to talk about it.”

  Chuckie jerked. “Oh my God, could it be that simple?” He looked around wildly and shoved Tim, who’d righted the best available chair to sit in, out of said chair.

  “God, is it me?” Tim asked as Chuckie flung the chair in front of the obvious place someone would sit if they were managing this system, then flung himself into it. The system suddenly seemed far more active.

  “V.A.R.I.S., this is Doctor LaRue Demorte Gaultier,” Chuckie said.

  “Negative,” the computer said, in a computer voice I remembered. “Doctor Gaultier is a woman.”

  “Rahmi! Get over here!” Chuckie leaped out of the chair.

  But Wruck beat Rahmi to the punch. He shifted into LaRue and sat down. “V.A.R.I.S., this is Doctor Gaultier,” he said in her voice. “Well done.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. What may I assist you with?”

  “Status of explosive devices in the Persian Gulf,” Chuckie said, which Wruck repeated in LaRue’s voice.

  “All bombs ready to explode in—”

  “One minute.”

  “– one minute,” the computer echoed.

  “Terminate the program,” Wruck said.

  “Cannot do that, Doctor Gaultier.”

  “No,” Chuckie said. “Terminate Protocol Close Encounter.”

  Wruck repeated this.

  “Forty-five seconds.”

  “Are you sure, Doctor Gaultier?” V.A.R.I.S. asked.

  “Yes,” Wruck said.

  Nothing.

  “We’ve achieved checkmate,” Chuckie said and Wruck repeated.

  Nothing.

  Chuckie looked at me. “Kitty, there’s got to be a code phrase to confirm. I think that’s what it’s waiting for. What do you have?”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Chuckie had guessed for Cliff. But the person who’d created V.A.R.I.S. was LaRue. Flipped my Megalomania Girl cape on and considered what LaRue would have used for a confirmation of cancellation. All I could come up with was what the LaRue in Bizarro World had said to me, roughly right before I killed her.

  “Ten seconds.”

  “The only good Naked Ape is a dead Naked Ape.”

  CHAPTER 93

  WRUCK REPEATED THIS, while everyone gave me looks that said they thought the Treeship was going down.

  “Thank you for confirmation, Doctor Gaultier,” V.A.R.I.S. said. “Explosives have been deactivated.”

  “All of them?” Wruck asked.

  “Yes, Doctor Gaultier. All explosives in and around Kharg Island and all explosives on the underwater docking area have been deactivated.”

  The entire room let out its collective breath. Heard breaths being let out via both cell phones, too.

  “Getting off the line,” Jerry said. “Landing is commencing.” My phone turned off. No music came on. Put my phone into my back pocket. Wished I had my purse—needed to get all these extra clips out of my pants.

  “We’re getting off, too, Chuck,” Stryker said. “We’re all watching the landing.” White’s phone disconnected and he took it back as well.

  “Well done, V.A.R.I.S., thank you,” Chuckie said. Wruck did the repeat. “And now, V.A.R.I.S., I’d like full printouts for all plans, missions, projects, and protocols, completed, currently active, and upcoming.” Wruck repeated again.

  “Yes, Doctor.” The sound of printing started.

  “How did you know what to say?” Jeff asked me, as we turned to watch the television.

  “It was that or ‘I’m the Queen of the World.’ But when I boiled LaRue down to what her driving motivation was, it was hatred.”

  Rahmi had brought in a broom and dustpan from the cleaning supplies closet and was sweeping up the dead bad guy dust into a bucket. “Since when did you get so domesticated?”

  She shrugged. “One day, when The Great Tito and I marry, I will have to share in the care of our home.” Resolved that, no matter what, that marriage was happening as soon as possible. They’d had literally the longest engagement in history. Rahmi smiled. “I knew you would be victorious.”

  Chuckie turned around. “We wouldn’t have been without you, Rahmi.”

  She cocked her head. “Why so?”

  “If you hadn’t said what you had, Kitty wouldn’t have said what she did, and I wouldn’t have made the connection. As with everything we do, it was a team effort. Your mother, sister, and fiancé will all be very proud of you.”

  She beamed at him. “Thank you, Charles.”

  “Time to watch a ship none of us could conceive of before last week land,” Jeff said. “That’s an executive order, folks. Let’s join the rest of the world and see what no one on Earth ever has before.”

  We all clustered around the screen. The Treeship was huge and, as the sun hit it, it glowed in rippling shades of green and blue. It was beautiful and amazing and gigantic.

  Chuckie and Wruck had the computer system turn the sound on for the TV, so we got to hear the announcer’s commentary. Realized why Cliff had had the sound off—they were kind of vacuous. Until commentary switched to Mr. Joel Oliver.

  Oliver was sharing the history of each of the races confirmed to be in the Treeship. We’d done this at a very high level during my Impromptu World Teleconference, but Oliver was going into far more depth. He also had Lyssara and Themnir as guests, voiceovers only, since all video was focused on the ship. They added interesting facts and tidbits as well, sounding buzzy and sloshy respectively. But it was cute and not off-putting.

  The Treeship took an hour to safely dock. But it didn’t seem like it. And Adriana didn’t have to count down to anything.

  “Six years ago, I’d have had to have all of Imageering hide this,” Christopher said softly as Oliver announced that the Treeship had successfully docked.

  Naval ships from all the countries that bordered the Persian Gulf and yachts owned by kings and princes in the region were all heading to the ship to offload the passengers. And no one was shooting at anyone else.

  “Six years ago the world was different,” White said.

  “Not as different as it is now,” Jeff said.

  “The world is the same,” Reader pointed out. “It’s the people on it who are different now. And that’s a good thing.”

  “Our brave new world,” Chuckie said.

  “The world you always told me was out there.” Was next to Jeff, our arms around each other. Reached out and took Chuckie’s hand. “How does it feel to never be wrong?”

  “Well, as I keep on reminding you, I was wrong about where Hoffa was buried.”

  “Right, you know, finally tell me, where is Hoffa buried?”

  Chuckie’s mouth opened but everyone’s phones started ringing. We all stopped looking at the screen and answered our phones. My call was from my mother.

  “Hey Mom, amazing timing. Every one of our phones just started ringing.”

  “Because Walter just confirmed that the Aicirtap have entered our solar system.”

  “Crap.”

  “And they’re moving faster than any of the other ships have so far.”

  “Does it get any better than this?”

  “Yes. The lone Z’porrah ship has managed to stay ahead of the Aicirtap, but they’re not sure that they’ll make it to Earth before the Aicirtap overtake them. They are begging for help.”

  “That we have no way of giving them.”

  “Correct.”

  “So, the
y’ll be the appetizer and then we’ll be the main course?”

  “It looks that way. You and Jeff need to get back to D.C. The President needs to be in the White House.”

  Mom and I said we loved each other and then hung up. Everyone else’s calls had been short, too. “We need to get out of here,” Reader said briskly.

  “We can’t leave this equipment yet,” Chuckie pointed out. “We can’t allow any of it to fall into enemy hands, and Kitty essentially promised Gadhavi that she’d blast this place once we were done.”

  “We need to move the Killer Octopus, too, and it’s incredibly heavy.”

  Jeff, Reader, Tim, and Chuckie started mildly arguing about what to do. Realized my purse was still in the alcove. Trotted upstairs. No one appeared to notice. Yeah, we were all a bit preoccupied.

  Retrieved my purse and found the Poofs snoozing. Relieved myself of the tons of clips I’d taken with me and realized that I had no idea where my Glock was. Chuckie had had it last, meaning he’d probably put it down onto the computer. Couldn’t see the computer all that well from this alcove, so couldn’t confirm that.

  Put my purse over my neck and turned around. To find Siler standing there with a gun in his hand. Managed not to scream, but couldn’t stop myself from jumping.

  “Sorry,” he said with a small smile as he handed me my Glock. “You’re heading back to D.C.?”

  “Thanks. And, well, we all got the calls. You did, too, right?”

  “Yes. My call was from Lizzie. She’s frightened. So are the rest of the children. The news has announced that the Aicirtap are coming within a few hours.”

  “So, I guess you’re heading home with us, then, right?”

  He looked at me. “Why bother?”

  That wasn’t what I was expecting. “Come again?”

  “Why bother going anywhere? Why go lie to the girl I promised to protect from harm when there’s nothing I can do to stop what’s coming?”