by Gini Koch
The mere thought of that made my stomach clench. My mother might want me looking at options, but I wasn’t really open to the idea. I hurried into the galley—I wanted a soda.
“Coca-Colas.” I opened the fridge and there they were, any variety I might want, all frosty cold. I closed the door. “How about some Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper?” Opened the fridge again and, sure enough, now there was Dew and Dr Pepper there, as cold as if they’d been in there for hours.
I played this game a bit more, choosing regional and hard to find soft drinks. Every single time, whatever it was I wanted showed up. The how of this drove me crazy, but Martini refused to give me the tiniest hint as to how this worked.
I took a Cactus Cooler and closed the fridge. It worked the same for food, but I wasn’t all that hungry for some reason. We’d had a great dinner, but it was heading toward breakfast time. But no hunger pangs.
I walked through the cabin, feeling like a stewardess on a redeye flight, what with everyone snoring. So I headed to the cockpit. To hear Reader arguing with someone over the radio.
CHAPTER 20
“... I DON’T CARE. This situation’s escalated out of of control.” Reader sounded truly upset.
Tim looked back as I came in. “Hey. You want to take the ’com, Commander?”
Oh, it was that kind of situation.
Reader nodded emphatically and Tim pulled off his headset and handed it to me. I cleared my throat and tried to flip myself into Major Military Mode. I wasn’t very good at it, but I made up for my lack of military-speak skills with a dogged determination to get what I wanted at any cost.
“Hello, this is Commander Katt. Who am I speaking to?”
“This is Karl Smith, head of Canaveral Ops. I’d like you and your team to return to Centaurion Home Base and not get involved, Commander, and I’d like confirmation of your return now.”
I looked at Reader and gave him the “WTF?” signal. He rolled his eyes and shrugged, then went back to paying attention to flying.
“I’m sorry, but why, exactly, are you now asking us to go home when you asked us to come out there in the first place?”
“The request was not made by Canaveral Ops.” Smith sounded angry. I got the impression Martini, Sr., had broken some sort of protocol by contacting his son. I decided to support the A-C side of the house.
“You know, Mr. Smith, I’d love to just turn around and go home, but we’ve already burned all this fuel, and it’s a bitch to explain to the guys in accounting.”
Dead silence for a moment on the ’com. Tim, however, was snickering up a storm.
“I beg your pardon? Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I think I’m the head of Airborne for Centaurion Division. I also think I’m tightly connected to the P.T.C.U.”
“This isn’t any of their concern.”
“Oh, hell, yes, it is. Whatever’s going on there at Kennedy required Centaurion Division’s activation. I’m spitballing here, but I’ll wager we have a special visitor or two from outer space hanging about the Space Center. Which means both Centaurion and the P.T.C.U. are quite concerned.”
Dead silence. Reader nodded his head and shifted his headset. “I wish you’d read the damn files. Yes, shuttle went up, shuttle got hit with something, shuttle landed back at the Space Center, something is in quarantine along with the astronauts.”
I thought about this. “Mr. Smith?”
“Yes?” I could tell his teeth were gritted.
“It’s pretty unusual for a shuttle to land back at the Center, isn’t it?”
“Unheard of.”
“But that’s what’s happened, yes?”
“Yes.” The word sounded dragged out of him.
“Karl, may I call you Karl? Karl, has it occurred to you that the only beings on this planet potentially equipped to handle whatever the hell our shuttle brought home are in Centaurion Division?”
“You may not call me Karl.”
“Too late, Karl, already did. Now, answer the real question.”
He sighed. “Your people are the best equipped, yes.” Your people. I wondered if Smith was anti-alien.
“So, why don’t you want my people there?”
There was a significant pause. “Go secure.”
I looked at Reader. “We’re not secure?”
Reader hit a couple of buttons. “Centaurion ’com secured.”
Smith spoke, rapidly. “There’s more going on than this incident. There have been several attacks on Centaurion personnel in the past few days. Most of them avoided, but we have two A-Cs in critical here. I don’t want more of you in danger. We have enough problems—we can’t afford to lose Centaurion.”
Nice to know he was pro-alien, or at least wanted to appear that way to us. “Look, Karl, every A-C’s related to every other A-C. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s be real. They aren’t going to stay home if their family’s in danger.”
“You’re human?”
Whoops. “Yes.”
“Are you all armed?”
I looked at Reader. He indicated arms might be in our possession. “Somewhat. Why?”
“Good. Look, if you’re hell-bent on coming, I can’t stop you. Just make sure you’ve got the means to protect yourselves at all times, don’t let your guard down for any reason, and don’t trust anyone.”
“Including you?”
“For all I know, yeah. It’s ugly here right now. You’re human, you understand—when things get ugly, good people do bad things.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes good people do the right thing and bad people reform.”
“I’m talking reality, not a movie.”
“So am I.”
“We’ll do what we can, but that may not be enough. You have to remember, not everyone likes that the A-Cs are here, and some of those people will do anything to get rid of them.” I heard something in the background. “Remember what I said, we want you to go back.” His voice was back to angry. I could hear voices, faint, but there were at least two other people with him. I could hear Smith talking to them, but his voice was muffled, like his mic was covered.
The voices raised, and I heard some sharp sounds. They were muffled, too, but I looked at Reader, and he made the universal hand gesture for “gun.”
“Karl?” No reply. “Karl, are you there? Are you okay?” Silence. “Karl Smith, do you copy, repeat, do you copy?” The ’com went dead.
Reader and I looked at each other. He turned off the ’com. “We’re in trouble, girlfriend.”
“I think Karl’s in worse trouble.”
“I think Karl’s dead. Tim, see if you can raise anyone at Kennedy.”
I gave Tim back his headset, and he started fiddling around. “James, fill me in on everything in the file.”
“You have time to get caught up.”
“The hell with that. You tell me the pertinent stuff, and I’ll skim the damn thing later.” I was trying not focus on the fact that if Smith was dead, it was likely because he’d taken the risk to warn us about whatever it was he thought he’d warned us about.
“Fine. The shuttle wasn’t actually a shuttle. It was a prototype for long-range space travel, very hush-hush. It only had three astronauts in it. They were heading toward Mars, got hit with something, no one knows what. Whatever it was, it got into the interior without causing a breach.”
“Sounds like a parasite.”
“Maybe, but none of the astronauts turned into a superbeing.”
“Well, that’s a blessing.”
“One of those astronauts was an A-C, the other two were humans.”
Oh? This was indeed news. “Who was the A-C?”
Reader heaved a sigh. “Paul’s brother.”
CHAPTER 21
“PAUL HAS A BROTHER?” Why this was a shock to me I couldn’t say. But in the five months I’d known these guys, they’d never shared this fact.
“Yeah, Paul’s the oldest of four. Mi
chael’s a couple of years younger. They also have two sisters.”
“Why hasn’t anyone mentioned this before?”
Reader shrugged. “Not important. All of Paul’s family live around and work out of East or Canaveral Base. No one was keeping the info from you, girlfriend, just hasn’t been a reason to mention it before now.” All of Martini’s family did the same, but I knew about them. Then again, I was sleeping with Martini, and Reader was sleeping with Gower, so maybe this lack of information flow was understandable.
“No wonder Richard wanted Paul kept back at Home Base.”
“In a way, yeah. No one knows what’s going on, but the three astronauts are under the highest-level quarantine, and no one we have access to has been allowed to talk to them.”
“We’re sure none of them turned superbeing?”
“Not a hundred percent, but seems a good bet so far. I don’t think a NASA quarantine chamber could stop a superbeing.”
Couldn’t have stopped any of the ones I’d ever run across, but who knew? “How long until we’re close to Florida?”
“About an hour,” Tim answered.
I looked out the windshield. It looked light. I tried to do the math and gave up. “What time is it there?”
“Right now? About nine,” Tim said. “We should land around ten.” I opened my mouth, and he put his hand up. “We had to go around some weather, it caused the delay. And, James, I have Alfred on the ’com. He’s sending a team to check on Smith.”
“Who’s Alfred?”
Reader gave me a grin. “Jeff’s dad.”
“You keep the headsets.” Tim and Reader both gave me looks that said I was a chicken. True enough, at least in this case. “Everyone else is fast asleep. Not sure if I should wake them up or not.”
“Let them sleep for another few minutes,” Reader said. “Jeff in particular needs the regeneration.” This I knew to be true. Sex, even great, mind-blowing sex, didn’t regenerate him. Sleep did, being in an isolation chamber did it better, and, I’d discovered, watching old TV reruns helped him, too. He insisted that cuddling with me helped as well, but most of our cuddling sessions ended in sexual acrobatics. Then again, we were on an airplane, and I wasn’t going to start anything with the others aboard.
“Okay, I’m going back to the cabin. I’ll wake them up in a little while.”
“Sounds good.”
“James, before I go, do we have weapons with us?”
“Plenty. We go equipped for war at all times.” He was serious. Five months in, this shouldn’t have felt like a surprise.
“Good. I guess.” I wandered back to my seat. Martini had shifted and looked like a big cat to me, stretched out and ready for a tummy rub. I knew better than to do that, though—too many others about, and besides, he needed the sleep.
He cracked an eye. “C’mere.” He pulled me into his lap. “How much more sleep time before you tell me what you’re upset about?”
“Thirty minutes or so.”
Martini flipped a blanket around me and shifted again, so I was still in his lap but lying down. “Good. Close your eyes, think calm thoughts.”
I snuggled my face into his neck and practiced Serenity Time. At least, that’s what I called it when I was trying to keep my emotions low and quiet. I wasn’t very good at it, even though I practiced every day. Quiet time for me meant “think about all the things I want to do,” not “focus on the lotus blossom.” My kung fu instructors despaired of my ever getting anywhere in the sport because of it. My track coaches had merely seen it as proof I was a sprinter. Martini felt I was just wired horny. He was probably right.
However, I gave it my best shot with the lotus blossom. Nada. Tried for the Happy Place. Worse . . . now all I could think about was Martini naked. Then again, while it didn’t keep me calm, it sure kept me happy.
I spent some time trying to choose my favorite position, naughtiest location, and most mind-blowing orgasm. I gave up on the orgasm—it was like trying to rate different levels of nirvana. Favorite position was “whatever one we’re in right now,” so while I could enjoy reminiscing over our repertoire, I couldn’t come up with a definitive answer.
Naughtiest location, however, was a good one, and that kept me occupied for quite a while. Elevator, the Pontifex’s office, top of the Empire State Building, cave off a main trail in the Grand Canyon, and potentially our just left but fondly remembered maintenance closet were vying for positions in the Top 10. Of course, the men’s room in Guadalajara and the women’s in the Paris Metro were also highlights. The cabana in Cabo wasn’t really naughty, but it was still my favorite. The best vacation I’d ever had, one week of pure bliss. We hadn’t been able to get away anywhere since then, not even for a weekend.
“My fave, too,” Martini murmured. He always knew when I was thinking about Cabo. “You’re not clear on how to get to a calm place, are you?”
I shifted in his lap, which caused him to give a low growl. “Not my fault.”
“Uh-huh.” He lifted me off his lap and deposited me gently in the seat next to him. He stretched, then kissed me, deeply, for quite a while. He pulled away, eyes half-closed. “I’d love to move this conversation to the back of the plane, but we might as well wake everyone up so you can bring us up to speed.”
I nodded. He stood up, belt buckle in my face. I sat on my hands and forced myself to lean back.
Martini grinned at me. “I promise, we’ll get a room.” He wandered back and shook the others awake while I reined my libido in, albeit unwillingly.
In addition to everything else, the chairs swiveled. Everyone shifted their chairs so we were in a circle, and I brought them up to speed on the little we knew.
“You’re sure Smith’s dead?” Gower asked.
“Not for sure. Tim said Jeff’s dad was sending a team to check on him.”
Martini got up and walked to the cockpit. He was back quickly. “Yeah, they found him, shot through the head twice.”
“James and I heard two shots. And I know there were at least two people with him.” I tried not to let this freak me out. Without much success, if Martini rubbing my neck was any indication.
“Could you identify their voices?” Christopher asked.
“No, they were muffled. Did your father say anything about the attacks?” I asked Martini.
“Nothing. He told me we had a potential unidentified ET at Kennedy. That was bad enough news.”
I looked at Kevin. “Any suggestions?”
He nodded. “I want to advise Angela of everything the moment we land. I have the authority to find out what’s really going on at Kennedy, but it’ll take some time.”
“My dad is a cryptologist for NASA’s ET Division.” This had also been surprising news five months ago since I’d thought he was a history professor at ASU. It seemed I’d been the only one in my family not living a secret life. Now I suspected every relative of being in a covert operation of some kind, though my parents insisted this wasn’t the case.
“Good, but that may just mean he’s a target,” Kevin looked more worried, not less. Wonderful. “I’ll mention it to Angela, though I’m sure she’s already on it.” I knew she was; she’d been protecting my father since they’d met in Tel Aviv. It was a romantic story—just them, anti-Jewish and anti-American terrorists, and a few hundred bullets.
“My parents should be aware, but it never hurts to warn them.”
Kevin sighed. “I’m a lot more worried about all of you, though. This team has to be careful—you’ve already been targeted once. Those lunatics would have been successful if you hadn’t figured it out.”
“Okay, so no one goes anywhere alone,” Christopher said. “We’re used to that, we normally work in teams.”
“I think you’d better be more than buddied up,” Kevin said. “I’d really suggest that there’s more safety in numbers. Including when you’re sleeping.”
I had no intention of bunking with anyone other than Martini. He apparently felt the same way.
“We can sleep at East Base if we have to. We have a small base outside of Kennedy, too.”
“But are your own people trustworthy?”
It was a good question. As we’d learned the hard way, the answer wasn’t always yes.
Martini sighed, and I heard the resignation in his voice. “My parents can house all of us, including you,” he nodded to Kevin. “And, though being there might kill me, I’m pretty sure the rest of you will be safe.”
CHAPTER 22
“I’M SURE WE DON’T WANT to impose!”I didn’t mean for it to come out as a shout, but I wasn’t always good with shocks to my system.
Martini closed his eyes but kept rubbing my neck. “They live for impositions. It gives them more reasons to complain about me.”
Christopher didn’t look any more excited about this than Martini did. “They do live the closest to Kennedy,” he said, as if he were admitting to having herpes.
“My parents live in East Base,” Gower said. I heard the regret in his voice. “I’m sure we’ll have to stay closer to the Space Center than that.” East Base was in New York, and since we were apparently not allowed to use gates, there was no way we were staying there, no matter how much most of us were going to want to.
I tried to remind myself that this was going to put a crimp in Reader and Gower’s love life, too, not to mention that Tim and Christopher weren’t going to have any shot of privacy, either. It didn’t make me feel any better. And lord knew how they were going to react to Kevin.
“You sure?” Kevin asked. “I don’t want to put your family into danger.”
“They’re A-Cs. From what little we know, every A-C’s in danger.” Martini rubbed his forehead. “Besides, our house is secured, and I have five older sisters, none of whom live at home any more. They have a huge house, and they haven’t converted any of the bedrooms—other than mine, which is now the grandchildren’s playroom.”
