Alien Research

by Gini Koch

  Didn’t bother to answer, just grabbed her hand again, scooped Bruno up in my free arm, and ran at the fastest hyperspeed I could manage, which, considering I was revved up on a combination of anger and panic, was pretty damn fast. Which was a good thing. Because I’d understood Bruno’s scream, and it interpreted to, “We need to run away like bats out of hell.”

  He hadn’t been exaggerating. The explosion was huge, and it knocked us down. We rolled over and Mahin got her hands up just in time, the flames were engulfed and the debris settled down. But the stairs we’d just come up were no more.

  “For the record, your talents are really cool, especially when people are trying to blow us up. They’re cutting off access. But why?”

  “Maybe someone or something is down there they want, or don’t want anyone to get.”

  “You and I would be the only things I can think of.”

  “I’d want to get rid of us. They were supposed to kill me if I didn’t go with them and we both know they want to kill you.”

  “Good points. Bruno, where to now?”

  He took off, and we took off after him, as the music changed to Pink’s “Runaway,” as if we needed telling. Fortunately, the next set of stairs were easy to find, in part because there were a lot of people in uniform running down them, toward us. Ah perhaps my musical clue was for them more than for me and Mahin.

  “Explosions are contained,” I barked out in the most authoritative tone I could manage. “All of you, get back up to ground level!”

  “Do it! Evacuate!” a deep voice bellowed. It was a voice of authority, and all the military personnel stopped, spun around, and headed back up. It was also a voice I happened to know well.

  My Uncle Mort was there, giving me a look I could only think of as “I knew it” crossed with “why me?” He was an older, tougher, far more imposing version of my father. And he was one of the most comforting things I could have seen right about now. If my Uncle Mort was here, I wasn’t going to the brig, and we had a shot at winning or at least coming out even.

  “What are you doing here, Katherine?” Uh oh. Uncle Mort only called me Katherine when I was in trouble. Then again, I was in the middle of an exploding Guantanamo—of course I was in trouble. On the plus side, there’s no way Ronaldo would know that. “Besides listening to music at an inappropriate time, which is no surprise to me, of course.” Yep, it was the real Uncle Mort.

  “Hey, I have it low enough that I can hear everything clearly, including the explosions, unfortunately. And, um, as for what we’re doing, ah, well, breaking Mahin out of prison before she was murdered by our enemies, trying to at least contain the explosions because we’ve been too late to stop them, and running for our lives. That about covers it, right?” I asked her.

  “Right. Oh, and Gladys is under Ronaldo’s control again.”

  “Right, forgot that. Uncle Mort, we need to get to ground level. Bawl me out once we know if the bombs are done going boom and we’ve caught and hopefully killed all the bad guys. Which may not actually include Gladys.”

  He shook his head. “We have people down there.”

  Thought about it—we hadn’t passed anyone. At all. And we’d been all over the place. Maybe Bruno hadn’t been lost—maybe Bruno had been confirming that the Poofs had found everyone they’d gone to rescue. “No, I don’t think you do. Where would a very intelligent animal put the people who were down here?”

  Had to say this for Uncle Mort—nothing, absolutely nothing, fazed him, including questions like this. He’d seen a lot in his years with the Corps and he’d known me all my life. On, as Hacker International called it, the Kitty Weird Scale, this question was likely only a three or four. He’d heard far weirder from me over the course of my lifetime. “Probably in one of the empty hangars. There’s one close by.”

  “Then let’s go there.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Then at least we don’t blow up or drown.” Decided not to let Uncle Mort argue any more or possibly win this battle of wills. Put Bruno down. “Let’s go, big guy.” Grabbed Uncle Mort’s hand, Bruno took off at Bird Hyperspeed, and we followed.

  Only one more flight of stairs, and, therefore, only one more bomb that went off right after we went past it. Mahin was getting really good at Explosion Containment by now. We stopped, Uncle Mort gagged from the hyperspeed while Mahin got things under control, and we took off again.

  “They wanted to trap personnel,” I said as we exited into daylight. “That’s why that last bomb went off so late.”

  “Seems logical. Does your father know you’re here?” Uncle Mort asked.

  “Um, what do you think?”

  “I think I want to officially request whatever it is your human agents are taking to help them not toss their cookies after running at hyperspeed.”

  “You got it, I’ll have Tito send you your own private stash.”

  We reached the hangar and ran inside. There were a lot of people there. Many were in uniform, and they were all standing with weapons drawn, surrounding a variety of those not in uniform who were sitting in reasonably neat rows.

  The nearest uniform saluted as soon as Uncle Mort stopped gagging. “All prisoners and personnel from Major Containment present and accounted for, sir.”

  Looked around. “Where are the Poofs?”

  “Ah, if you mean the fluffy creatures who turned gigantic and picked us up in their mouths before we could activate weapons, took us here, and gave us the nonverbal but extremely clear suggestions to stay put, ma’am, they left once we were all in the hangar and military were surrounding the prisoners.”

  “Good job. Uncle Mort, where would you go if you needed to get about six people off the base quickly?”

  “Plane or car, meaning anywhere on the base,” Uncle Mort answered promptly. “I’m more concerned with there being other explosives we haven’t found yet.”

  A thought occurred. Two thoughts, really. The first thought was that there was more than one reason to blow things up. And the second thought was that the best reason to blow things up aside from creating mayhem and destruction was as a really effective distraction. B.o.B.’s “Bombs Away” came onto my iPod. Apparently Algar wanted me to consider that our enemies were probably going for a twofer. “Where’s your main computer center?”

  “Nowhere close to prisoner containment.” Uncle Mort’s expression said he’d made the same leap I had, without the benefit of musical clues. Well, he was older and more experienced. “Who, exactly, is on this base without authorization? Aside from you, I mean.”

  “The same people who were screwing things up over at the Science Center last week.” Mahin and I gave Uncle Mort a quick description of the five we knew about. “I don’t know that Gladys is really mind controlled or not,” I finished up.

  “Unless you can be sure, we have to treat her like a hostile,” Uncle Mort said.

  “Jeff might be able to tell, if he were here and they weren’t using an emotional blocker or enhancer.” Cleared my throat. “So, um, never mind.”

  “Well, I can’t speak to whatever empathic doodads your enemies are running with, but I can say that the rest of the troops have arrived.” Uncle Mort nodded his head behind me.

  Spun around to see a shimmering, and then Jeff, Christopher, White, Chuckie, Reader, Tim, and the flyboys stepped through the floater gate. Sure enough, the cavalry was here.

  “No Field agents?”

  Reader shook his head. “The only ones indoctrinated against mind control so far are assigned to protect your neighborhood.” He flashed the cover boy grin. “You’ll have to make do with us, girlfriend.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  Jeff looked around. “I’m not even going to ask. Why is she with you?” He pointed to Mahin.

  “She’s on our side now. Bruno approved.”

  Jeff studied her for a few long moments. “Okay. Who are we after?”

  “Gladys, who may or may not be under the mind control, Ronaldo, Dier, Kozl
ow, who’s been shot but sadly only winged, and a kid who looks like he could be Serene’s younger brother.”

  Reader grimaced. “It’s a big area to cover without an A-C.”

  Christopher shot Patented Glare #1 at him. “I’ll manage. Alone. Without a problem.”

  “The main containment area’s been blow up in certain areas,” I told him. “It’s unlikely they’re there, but possible. I’d check everywhere else first, though, and I’d suggest starting with all the vehicles, because they’re probably going to do their thing and then split.”

  “Don’t go alone,” Jeff said.

  “We’ll go with him,” Hughes said, indicating himself and Walker. “We’ve taken our Hyperspeed Dramamine and we’re good with the high supersonic speeds. We’ll be fine.”

  “And that way Christopher won’t get to kick butt all by himself and will have to share the fun, and the glory, with me and Matt,” Walker added with a grin.

  “Yeah, it’ll be a party,” Christopher said. But he grabbed Hughes and Walker and they all took off.

  “Where are we headed?” Jeff asked me. “Since Christopher and his flyboys are off to check the entire base.”

  “Just because he’s fast doesn’t mean they’ll find who we’re looking for. If our Gang of Four Plus One have done their bad deeds, they’ll be looking to escape. We, however, are going to the main computer center. Because the bad deeds Ronaldo and his gang are perpetrating are either going to turn out to be hacking into the military’s system, launching missiles, or both.”

  “Both,” Uncle Mort said. “They’re not here for grins and giggles.”

  “I can agree with that. So, if we’re right, and Ronaldo and his merry gang are going for or have already hit the computers, that means they either had a linkup to Chernobog or Chernobog is here. If she’s here, would she be on the base?”

  “Unlikely,” Uncle Mort said. “However, she could easily be in Cuba. In fact, it would make a lot of sense. They’d certainly be happy to house an enemy of ours.”

  “Where’s the base commander?” Jeff asked. “I know you’re not officially in charge here, Mort.”

  “In the same building as the computer center. At least, hopefully.” Uncle Mort sounded grim. Couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t confident we weren’t going to find a lot of dead bodies littered all over the base. They’d already killed some Marines when they broke Dier and Ronaldo out of the air—why stop there?

  I was ready to run to the computer center, but my feet didn’t choose to move. Because something was wrong with all of this. The problem was that I didn’t know what. My memory really wanted me to remember something, too.

  My music changed to “Who’s That Creepin’” by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Apparently Algar was a fan of this band. Went with it. The song was about someone breaking into the singer’s house. My memory deigned to share that the bad guys had been dressed like Marines.

  “I think we need to split into two teams. Most of you need to go with Uncle Mort. Mahin and I need to check out something else.”

  Jeff snorted. “I’m going with you. Period.”

  “No, you need to go with Uncle Mort. He has to have someone who can protect him. But,” I said quickly, before anyone else could complain, “we’ll take Richard, okay?”

  Jeff nodded. “James and Tim are the ones in charge, so they’ll be going with Mort. Jerry, Joe, and Randy can go along for muscle. It’s up to Chuck and Uncle Richard if they’re going with them or us, but I meant it, baby, I’m coming with you.”

  “I’m going with you as well,” Chuckie said. He was giving me a look that said he knew that I was up to something. He was as hard to fool as Jeff sometimes.

  “I wouldn’t miss working with my partner for anything,” White added solemnly.

  “Who goes with whom isn’t as important as us all actually going,” Uncle Mort said. “I’ve managed most of my career without an A-C to drag me along, Kitty. We’ll be fine. We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s move out. Now.”

  CHAPTER 69

  UNCLE MORT’S TEAM trotted off at a military run that I knew they could all keep up for miles. “I still wish you’d gone with him,” I said to Jeff as we went to the door. “No A-C in that group could be a problem.”

  “Why did you want to get rid of us, Missus Martini?” White asked. “What are you and Mahin up to?”

  Mahin shook her head. “I have no idea. I also don’t know why we’re stopping here instead of going somewhere.”

  “I want to think.” Actually, I wanted to be sure we were far enough away from the other people in this hangar that they couldn’t hear our conversation.

  “I agree with Richard,” Chuckie said. “I know that innocent look you’re trying to keep on your face, Kitty.”

  “I know, sorry, I just don’t want anything to happen to my uncle.”

  “He’ll be protected,” Jeff said. “Now, take off your iPod and tell us what’s going on.”

  Wanted to argue, but the music stopped, mid-song. Okay, Algar apparently wasn’t going to be sharing any more right now anyway. Pulled my earbuds out and tossed them and the iPod into my purse.

  “Something’s wrong, and I mean above what we all know about. Ronaldo and Dier were ‘rescued’ a few days ago, right? Before they reached Guantanamo. And yet they’re here. Why go through a huge in-air rescue, and kill all those Marines, only to end up in Guantanamo anyway?”

  “Because they aren’t prisoners this way,” Jeff said.

  “Ronaldo used his mind control on the Marines, it’s obvious from the reports Tim got.”

  “I agree,” Chuckie said. “And so do Cliff and Vander. And yes, I’ve shared intel with them in part because I have to and in part because we need their help.”

  “Okay, let me know if they offered any good insights. Otherwise, I’ll keep going.” Chuckie nodded and I continued to think, or, as everyone else liked to call it, run my mouth. “Ronaldo can’t control us, and he can’t control Mahin, because she wouldn’t go with him earlier and he wanted her to. But he can’t fly, and Dier certainly can’t. So, how did they get out of the air alive?”

  “No reports indicate another aircraft in the vicinity,” Chuckie said. “And believe me, we’ve been looking for one.”

  “Okay. So, who rescued them?”

  “I think it was the boy, Darryl,” Mahin said.

  “What’s his full name?” Chuckie asked.

  “Darryl Lowe. I believe, anyway. I haven’t seen his talents, but from what they said before Kitty and Gladys arrived, I believe he can do with the air what I do with the earth. I’m not certain, though.”

  “Fabulous. We have an airbender, too. Does it get any better?”

  “I actually know what you mean, because you made me watch that whole series,” Jeff said. “More than once. And I suppose it’s possible. But what of it, baby? Or, more to the point, we told your uncle we were splitting up, and yet we haven’t gone anywhere.”

  Turned around and looked at all the people still in the hangar with us. “No, we’re still here.” Cleared my throat and spoke very softly. “Poofs assemble.” Nothing. “Poofies, Kitty needs you.” No bundles of cuteness appeared. “Mahin, I have a question. When you were left to try to stop us out there in the desert, what were your orders? I mean if you weren’t able to kill us?”

  “I was to go with you as a prisoner of war. They said they would rescue me. Which, they did try to do. Though I honestly expected them to arrive much sooner.”

  “Uh huh. Mister White, we’re really predictable, aren’t we? Especially if you have access to Gladys, who knows our entire playbook.”

  “Yes, Missus Martini. They assumed we’d take Mahin to the Embassy. I believe we guessed that before.”

  “We did, but they didn’t really count on Malcolm, and no one would have guessed Dad would be along. And they made the difference, in more than just where Mahin got taken.”

  “Yes,” Mahin agreed. “I wouldn’t have been open to listening to you if I hadn’t s
pent time with your father.”

  Pulled out my phone and sent a text.

  “What are you doing?” Jeff asked.

  “Telling Christopher, James, and Tim to figure the base commander’s under Ronaldo’s influence or actually is Ronaldo. They escaped so we’d know they escaped and assume they were anywhere but here. They killed people because they could and also because those were the only Marines who would know what Dier looked like in person. Put her into a uniform, and she looks like a regular servicewoman. She’s good at that kind of blending in.”

  “You think they’ve infiltrated this entire Naval station?” Mahin asked. “Then why did they leave me in captivity for days?”

  “To see if you’d go with them or not when they showed up. You didn’t go where they expected you to, so they adapted. And that’s not a Ronaldo move. That’s a Mastermind move. And Dier sounded like she was in charge, and she was working with Clarence’s team during Operation Sherlock, and he was absolutely not hanging with Ronaldo at that time. Clarence was working with the Mastermind.”

  “So why are we standing here?” Jeff asked.

  “In part because I want to know if the people here are under mind control or not. And in other part because I’m trying to figure out how they captured the Poofs.” And I was betting it was all the Poofs. I’d had more Poofs than just Harlie and Poofikins in my purse when we’d come, but there were a lot of people in front of us, and my gut said Harlie had called in the Poof Cavalry, especially since no Poofs at all had come when I’d called.

  “You think the Poofs are captured?” Chuckie asked. “Why?”

  “Because they aren’t here. They did their jobs—they saved everyone from being blown up or buried alive. And what are the odds that whoever’s calling the plays knew they’d do that?”

  “I’d say good, Missus Martini.” White was looking around. Assumed he was doing what I was and trying to spot which of the Gang of Four Plus One might be hiding in plain sight.

  “Uncle Mort felt this hangar was the obvious place to take all those people who needed saving, and sure enough, here they all are.”