Alien vs. Alien

by Gini Koch

  “Extremely glad your Super-Dramamine is a success because Hughes and Walker don’t look like they’re working.” I’d been so fast that the people were basically where they’d been when I’d left, with the woman still doing CPR on Hughes and her husband checking Walker for all the places he was bleeding.

  They’d seen me arrive, so this group didn’t look as shocked as you’d expect. Either that or what with a space armada attacking, maybe someone appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye seemed perfectly normal.

  “He’s a doctor,” I told them, pointing to Tito. “Please do what he says.”

  Tito knelt down between the two pilots and did a fast check. “Please continue CPR,” he said to the woman. Her husband translated. She nodded and kept on.

  The man stood up and dug a handkerchief out of his jacket. “Here.”

  “Why are you giving me this?”

  He smiled and gently wiped my face. “Because you are crying.”

  I was? Put my fingers to my cheeks. I was. Wanted to say I

  was crying because I was so angry. But I knew I wasn’t. I was crying because Hughes wasn’t breathing and Walker wasn’t moving. “Thank you.” I sniffled and did my best to keep it together. Had to focus on the rage. Hughes and Walker expected me to avenge them. If I broke down, then I wasn’t going to be good for anything.

  Tito made a call. He was requesting emergency support, and he sounded grim.

  “How are they?” I asked when he hung up.

  He stood up and took my hand. “Kitty, last time we were in this situation, I lied to you. You want lies Ӏor the truth this time?”

  My throat felt tight. “That bad, huh?” My face was wet. Should have kept the handkerchief.

  “Not looking good for either one of them, no.”

  “I’ll take the lies. Because you’re a better doctor than you give yourself credit for.” Heard an explosion behind me. Turned to see a fireball going up into the sky. I was fairly sure it was near the Lincoln Memorial. “Tito, I—”

  “Have to go. I know. Be careful, Kitty. I’ll do my best here.”

  I hugged him. “I know you will. And I’ll do my best there. Please make sure all these people get to some kind of safety. They’re the only ones who stopped to help anyone else.”

  “No,” the man who’d wiped my tears said. “We hid. You stopped. We came out to help you, but only because you were here to be helped.” He gently wiped my tears away again. “Never forget that you stopped.” He nodded his head toward the spaceships. “Now go stop them.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s exactly my plan.”

  I turned and ran across the water again, heading for the fireball.

  Yi

  CHAPTER 100

  THE SOUND OF EMERGENCY VEHICLES managed to float over on the breeze as I reached the Lincoln Memorial. I hoped some of them were heading to help Tito, but couldn’t think about that now.

  The fireball was already high enough up that I couldn’t be sure where it had originated, though there were a couple of smoking supersoldiers on the far side from where I was, so I had a good guess.

  Saw no activity at the top of the Lincoln Memorial steps, but there was a congregation of superbeings and supersoldiers near the bottom of the steps, so I ran over there. Not because I was crazy, but because I had to figure that if Jeff and Christopher were anywhere, they were there.

  Sure enough, and they weren’t the only ones. The Peregrines were with them, as were some Field agents, along with the three Z’porrah. They were all fighting—each other and the superbeings—while dodging the supersoldiers. Everyone was moving fast, but the Z’porrah didn’t seem to have the same speed as anyone I’d ever met from the Alpha Centauri system. One small favor.

  A group of androids ran into the fray, and I joined them. “What are you doing here?” Christopher shouted as he ran past me. “Get to safety!”

  “There is no safety right now! And I’m trying help you guys.”

  Of course, I needed a weapon. A Glock wasn’t going to do squat against anything I was looking at here. Had a nostalgic moment for our last intergalactic battle. I’d had a cool Amazon Battle Staff then. Now, I had, well, me. I’d been great with the really fast running, but otherwise, I wasn’t feeling the Living Weapon jazz. Started to consider Christopher’s wisdom. Buրt I hadn’t found Jeff yet.

  Ran through the fight, jumping out of the way here, dodging a supersoldier foot there, sliding past a superbeing attack, to end up at the home plate of where Jeff was, fighting Al Dejahl and all three of the Z’porrah.

  One of the Z’porrah had its back to me, and I jumped on he, she, or it, wrapped an arm around its neck, and started hitting.

  “Get off me, you damned naked ape!”

  “Not gonna happen, Flying Dino Dude. And only my friends get to call me a Naked Ape.” Wrapped my legs around the thing’s waist—sort of the inverse of doing this with Jeff. My mind shared that it hated where I’d taken it and wanted a chlorine rinse.

  The Z’porrah spun and thrashed, and I held on and pounded its beak. Its wings were very ineffectual—had the distinct impression they were décor at this point, not useful appendages.

  Tried to do the twist and break the neck thing, but its neck was really thick, and while it didn’t have the Alpha Centauri hyperspeed or superstrength, it certainly wasn’t a ninety-pound weakling, either.

  The Z’porrah put it’s little T-Rex arms out and made some weird, high-pitched sounds. They were almost musical, but not quite. Then it rolled its eyes back so it could look right at me. “Your world will be over now.”

  We waited a couple of seconds. Nothing seemed different. “That thing you do with your eyes is pretty freaky, but it doesn’t seem to be working.”

  The Z’porrah looked shocked and confused. I tried to twist its neck again. Sadly, no luck, and my attempt seemed to remind it that we were fighting. It went back to thrashing around, and I went back to hanging on and hitting it.

  We spun around like this for a little bit, which gave me a weird view of the action and also the chance to hit Al Dejahl on the back of his head with my purse as my bucking Z’porrah and I went by him.

  I lasted more than eight seconds before the Z’porrah managed to flip me off its back, so I had a future career as a bull rider, should we have a future.

  Flipped in the air so that I’d be able to roll as I landed. Did and rolled into Jeff.

  As I did, one of the Field agents got hit and staggered back, right into the Z’porrah I’d been fighting. It opened its jaws and bit. The agent screamed as the Z’porrah ripped his arm off. And ate it. The agent tried to get away, but the Z’porrah literally bit his head off, crunched it up, and swallowed. I wasn’t positive, but the Z’porrah looked a little bit bigger after this.

  “Get out of here, baby,” Jeff said as he pulled me to my feet.

  “No.” I found my Glock, made sure the safety was off, and walked over to the Z’porrah. It opened its beak, pr

  esumably to bite my head off. I aimed and did the rapid-fire technique Mom had taught me. Unloaded all fifteen rounds into the thing’s head.

  Its head exploded. It didn’t bring the agent back, or Hughes and Walker, but it was incredibly satisfying.

  My satisfaction didn’t last long. Jeff grabbed me just before a supersoldier stomped whereۀg I’d been. The rest of the Z’porrah was squished flat, so that was one for the win column.

  However, the superbeings and supersoldiers were boiling around us, and we had to leap out of the way of a variety of feet, or at least things that hit the ground. Decided it was time to be a good wife and obey my husband’s orders, just this once.

  However, before I could get out of the action, there was a loud sound from above. Suddenly, all of us were in shade. And it was spreading.

  Looked up to see what was causing our growing shadow. A Z’porrah ship had been hit enough that it was breaking up, but it wasn’t breaking apart. Instead, it was crashing. Right onto us.

  The c
rush of supersoldiers, superbeings, remaining Carnivorous Flying Dinos, and androids left us no escape openings. More supersoldiers were tearing toward us, firing whatever projectiles they had at the falling ship.

  Felt someone hit up against my back and looked over my shoulder to see Christopher back-to-back with me. Jeff was at my side. And I knew we were all going to die, right here and right now.

  I took Jeff’s hand. Time for last words. Or something. As I watched the Z’porrah ship head toward us, I felt compelled to say something. “I really wish we had a protective shield around us right now, and, barring that, I wish we’d gotten to say good-bye to Jamie.”

  And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, there she was.

  Yi

  CHAPTER 101

  MY BABY WAS RIGHT THERE, on the ground at my feet. She was standing and had her hands up in the air, as if she wanted me to pick her up.

  I let go of Jeff, dropped to the ground, grabbed Jamie, and pulled her to me, while I did the wrap and cover every mother’s ever done to put herself between her child and something horrible.

  While I did this, my mind shared that it had a few questions. Was this really Jamie or another Peregrine? If it was Jamie, how did she get here? And how in the world was she standing up on her own?

  Jeff stepped in front of us, Christopher blocked us from the rear. I cringed. And Jamie pulled away from me a little, so that she could look up at the sky. And she kept her hands up.

  After a second or two, I realized that we were all still alive and unsmooshed. Looked up to see the flying saucer just hanging in the air above us. Everything and everyone around us was still fighting, but they were avoiding us, as if our little area was repelling them. Other than the Peregrines, who, to a bird, gathered around us, cooing.

  Thought about all the times Jamie had done something she’d heard me say and chose my words carefully.

  “It would be nice if the big, round, metal space ship were to be put down, very carefully, so that it didn’t hurt anyone or anything on the ground.”

  Sure enough, the flying saucer sailed slowly and landed, bottom side down, balanced on the reflecting pool.

  “What a good girl you are.” I hugged her. “Mommy loves you so much. And look at my big girl, standing up all by herself!” And so early, too. She’d be walking sooner than average, but then she wasn’t an average baby. I snuggled her, and she giggled at me.

  “Ah, Kitty? Could we maybe be sure we’re going to survive this before you go into full on Mommy Mode?”

  “Uncle Christopher’s just a little jumpy, Jamie-Kat. Let’s make him feel better. Why don’t you, Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Christopher, and all our wonderful Peregrine birdies all get away from where we are right now and go where it’s a little safer?”

  The Power Cube had moved us faster and more smoothly than a gate ever had. We moved the same way now. One moment, we were in the middle of Fighting Fugly Stew, the next we were on the top of the Lincoln Memorial steps.

  I stood up, holding Jamie in my arms. She reached for Jeff, who took her and cuddled her. “My Jamie-Kat is such a good girl,” he said as he gave her lots of Daddy Kisses, and she giggled happily.

  “How is she doing all this?” Christopher asked me quietly. He sounded a little freaked out.

  “No idea. Just glad she can.”

  Supersoldiers surrounded the downed Z’porrah ship, but no one came out of it. Which was probably good, seeing as there were still superbeings loose, and the rest of the supersoldiers, assisted by the androids, were fighting them and/or taking the hits the Z’porrah were still sending toward us.

  “We’re going to need to bring in artillery to get rid of the superbeings,” Jeff said. “Before they destroy all the supersoldiers and we have even more superbeings.”

  “We could call Stryker’s team and tell them to have the supersoldiers stand down,” Christopher said. “But I’m not sure that we want them stopping, because some of the supersoldiers are destroying the superbeings.”

  “I think we need to stop the Z’porrah ships from blowing us all up first.”

  The Lincoln Memorial was set up so that you could, from the top, see everything across the Mall. So we had a good view of what happened next.

  More spaceships appeared.

  It was another armada. Only these ships weren’t flying saucers. Some looked like big cat’s paws, some like big dog heads, some like giant lizards with wings. These were accompanied by three ships that screamed “I’m an Imperial Battle Cruiser from Star Wars” only with extra bells and whistles.

  Our friends were here, and Earth wasn’t standing alone any more.

  The Z’porrah ships were a little slow to react to the new arrivals, which gave our allies a chance to blast some of them out of the air without trying too hard.

  However, that didn’t last long. All the Z’porrah ships stopped firing at targets on the ground and focused on those in the air. The Feliniad, Canus Majorian, and Reptilian ships fired back.

  The sun was beginning to set, but you couldn’t tell because there was so much light in the sky. The Z’porrah ships could fire from various points around their saucer. The Feliniad, Canus Majorian, and Reptilian ships couldn’t, but apparently they made up for this inability with stronger firepower. Both sides seemed equally matched in terms of flying agility, other than the Alpha Four Battle Cruisers, which were just as unwieldy as you’d expect a huge battle cruiser to be.

  The Z’porrah obviously realized this too, as they started focusing much of their attack on the cruisers.

  Jets appeared again and reengaged with the battle. They’d learned from my flyboys and were focusing their firepower on the tops of the Z’porrah ships. Some of the Feliniad and Canus Majorian ships caught on and followed our fighters, firing where they were.

  A handful of the Z’porrah ships decided to start firing at the ground again. Or, rather, at the supersoldiers. Couldn’t guess whether they’d realized that once a supersoldier was destroyed, a weapon that worked against us was released, or if they just wanted to get rid of our backup, but they were sending a lot of firepower at our sort of living weapons.

  Over a dozen supersoldiers went down, and over a dozen superbeings came out. They started the usual superbeing attacks, flailing at anything near them. Other than two. Two of them noticed us. And headed for us.

  “Time to run?” Christopher asked.

  Three jets disengaged from the big battle and flew low. Their shots were carefully placed, focused solely on the superbeings. “Wait.” I recognized the flying signatures again. “It’s the rest of the flyboys.”

  “What do you mean, the rest?” Jeff asked.

  “Hughes and Walker are . . . down. It . . . doesn’t look good. But Tito’s with them.”

  Jeff took my hand. “They’ll pull through, baby. But I think Christopher’s right, we need to get out of here.” He had a point—one of the superbeings was at the stairs.

  No sooner said than one of the flyboys drilled the superbeing. It exploded. Body parts just missed us. “Awesome! Of course, now we have the lovely smell of fried fugly to add to the rest of the day’s fun sights and sounds.”

  “We also still have a superbeing after us,” Christopher shared. “And more being created every minute.”

  This was true, but the flyboys were the best, and they were undoubtedly upset about Hughes and Walker. My guys didn’t let their friends get shot down and not retaliate to the fullest measure.

  Of course, better safe than sorry. I was about to agree that running away from the next superbeing heading up the stairs was the right choice when something big exploded in the sky.

  Looked up to see a Reptilian ship breaking apart, just like the three Z’porrah ships it had collided with. All of which were directly overhead. Over our heads.

  Yi

  CHAPTER 102

  I CRINGED AGAINST JEFF as he pulled me and Jamie both closer in to him, and the debris plummeted out of the sky. But it never reached us.

  Th
e debris floated in the air, a good way above the tops of the buildings. “Is, ah, Jamie doing that?” Christopher asked.

  Tore my eyes away from the sky and looked at my daughter. She didn’t seem to be concentrating. “Not sure, but I don’t think so.”

  Noticed something. The sounds of battle were far, far less. Took a better look at the sky. No one was firing any more.

  Well, no one up high was. There were still fighter jets flying around, but they were focusing on the superbeings.

  “What’s going on?” Jeff asked.

  “No idea. We need to get our guys out of the sky. Once all the superbeings are down.” Tried not to think about the Reptilians on board their downed ship. What if Jareen and Neeraj, my Reptilian Soul Sister and her hubby, had been on board?

  “Already handling,” Chuckie said.

  “Where did you come from this time?”

  “The ground. I walked up the steps while you all were focused on the sky.”

  “Well, can you blame us? Um, what happened?”

  “The Reptilian Sacrifice is what it’s called.”

  I steeled myself. “How many of them died?”

  “None.”

  “Excuse me? Their ship rammed three others and broke apart.”

  “Right, but we’re talking about beings that routinely create spatiotemporal warps as part of their marriage rituals. The Reptilians get into position, sacrifice their ship while taking out several others, then warp over to other enemy ships. It’s amazingly effective, especially on beings they don’t routinely tangle with.”

  “Well, who expects the other guy to sacrifice his entire spaceship?”

  “No one.” Chuckie grinned. “Most races aren’t willing to lose a ship, but the Reptilians make new ships quickly and easily, so it’s a very worthwhile tactic.”

  “So, the fight’s over?” Jeff didn’t sound like he believed it. Couldn’t blame him.