by Mia Archer
I did that a couple of times before they realized they were firing on their own equipment. At that point I just started throwing trucks off into the distance. Most of them landed in the middle of fields where they weren’t going to hurt anyone, and by the time I was done there was a small crowd of the men who’d been manning those things standing around looking like they had no idea what the hell they were supposed to do now.
Good. That was just what I needed. Natalie had always said it was good to make an overwhelming first impression on someone when you were trying to get them to do something for you. This was a little unorthodox compared to how I usually dealt with people, but I figured it’d have to be good enough.
So I flew down and hovered over them.
“Okay then, so are we done trying to do something stupid like shoot at me?” I asked.
“Um, I guess?” one of the guys said. “You destroyed all our trucks. What the hell else are we supposed to fire at you?”
“Good,” I said, beaming down at them like a teacher looking at a student who’d just learned an important lesson. “Now would one of you be kind enough to take me to whoever is in charge of this force?”
They glanced at one another again, but then a noise in the distance spared any of them from having to take me to their leader. There was a truck of some sort moving through the massive military encampment, and when it came to a stop the person who hopped out looked like they had some rank on them. At least all the other army guys suddenly stood at attention as he stalked up to me with a scowl and a set of lips that were so puckered they looked like the backside of a cat.
“Are you quite done destroying our equipment?” he said, the irritation dripping from his voice.
“Is that really the way you want to talk to someone who just took out most of your anti-air capability on this side of Starlight City?” I asked.
“What do you want?” he asked. “I don’t have time to deal with your kind coming through here all the time when we have real problems brewing in the city!”
I turned to look at Starlight City. There were more flying saucers firing down on things in the distance, but none of them were engaging the US military who was presenting one hell of a juicy target out here. Maybe they were fighting Natalie in there, though it was difficult to tell from this distance.
More interesting than all of that, though, were the pink portals hovering over the city. Portals that had a steady stream of aliens coming through the things and settling in over Starlight City like they belonged there.
I turned back to the military guy. “I think you’re going to need a lot more army guys when they eventually decide to break out of Starlight City.”
The guy’s mouth turned down in a frown. Some of the lower ranking army guys muttered among themselves, then stopped when they realized the higher ranking army guy was glaring at them.
“Would you please tell me what it is you want?” he asked.
“I need to talk to whoever’s in charge around here,” I said. “I think that seems like a reasonable request, don’t you?”
His mouth worked as though he was chewing on something for a moment. He was certainly chewing on whether or not it would be a good idea for me to talk to whoever was in charge.
“I promise I’m not going to do anything weird like rip his spine out or something,” I said. “So if you were worried about that you don’t have to be. All I want to do is talk.”
The guy jumped and went pale. “Well I wasn’t thinking you were going to do anything like that before, but I’m certainly worrying about it now!”
“That’s cute,” I said. “But you’re going to have a hell of a lot more to worry about before this is all done if you don’t take me to your leader, and you don’t do it sooner rather than later.”
“You’re not the first one we’ve had come out to our blockade,” the guy said. “Do you really think we’re afraid of you now?”
I thought back to that fight on top of the flying saucer, and wondered how many copies of me there were running around the city. Then I thought about how they’d been hit with that strange pink ray and it’d taken them out, while with me it’d merely been a temporary inconvenience.
I also wondered how the hell the military was dealing with a bunch of copies of yours truly since they clearly didn’t have the kind of hardware that could be used to take me out given my recent performance, but I figured if I talked to someone who was in charge out here then I could ask them.
So I walked over to the nice little truck the guy had come in here on. I slammed my fist down on the hood, and it went down clear through the whole thing. A horn sounded in protest, and there was a hiss of steam and some clanking as the pieces of the internal combustion engine running the thing tried to do their thing and completely and utterly failed at it.
I turned back to the army guy and smacked my fist into my open palm a couple of times.
“That’s not the worst I can do to some of your toys, so I’m going to need you to go ahead and take me to your leader before I go through this camp methodically and take out all of your equipment one by one.”
The guy glared at me, but it was a glare that said he knew when he’d been beat. Finally he sighed, and the impressive boards on his shoulders sank.
“Fine,” he said. “Come with me please.”
11
Top Brass
“Y’know this really is quite impressive,” I said as I floated next to the truck thingy my military friend had “requisitioned” by shouting at the soldier driving it that was bouncing around the uneven pavement.
It wasn’t even bouncing around because it was moving around on uneven terrain outside the city or anything like that. No, it was driving along on good old fashioned pavement. It’s just that the authorities between Starlight City and the state were always fighting about where the line began for their responsibility regarding road maintenance, and the practical upshot was the creation of a no-man’s land between the city suburbs and the rest of the state where the potholes reigned supreme.
They’d never bothered me. A bunch of jostling around wasn’t going to bug me all that much, but my dad always swore up a blue storm about how we were going to blow a tire or something back when we took family vacations that involved leaving the city by car.
That was a pleasant memory to think of as we moved through a quite impressive array of military hardware that’d all been pointed at an American city which I was pretty sure violated some part of the constitution. Like I’m sure the ACLU was having a field day with this.
“Isn’t this violating some laws or something?” I asked. “Last I checked you weren’t allowed to have a bunch of military types inside the US doing their thing.”
“Yeah, well that was before a bunch of space aliens invaded and decided to try and take over the world,” the military dude growled. “Turns out Congress can move their asses pretty fast and carve out an exclusion to Posse Comitatus when there’s a danger of aliens breaking out and taking over the rest of the country.”
I glanced back towards Starlight City. More particularly to where there weren’t any aliens trying to break free and take over the world. No, they seemed pretty content to remain in Starlight City for whatever reason.
“Doesn’t look like they’re doing much of anything right now,” I said.
“Yeah, well that doesn’t mean they’re not going to do something in the future, and we’re going to be here waiting for them when that does happen!”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Where have I heard bullshit like that before? Seems like if you really wanted to do something about the invading space aliens you’d go in there and take them out. Or is there some reason why you’re not attacking them?”
The nice army man turned several different shades of red. I guess he didn’t like what I was insinuating, but I was having fun with this.
“We’re not attacking them because we haven’t been given orders to go into the city and attack them,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re going to get your ass kicked if you go in there.”
“Well maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if you hadn’t betrayed your planet in the first place,” he said, his voice rising.
“You know you’re not the first person to mention that,” I said. “What the fuck is that all about? What did I do to piss in everyone’s Wheaties?”
The guy stared at me for a long moment, the only change in his expression coming when his conveyance hit a particularly bad pothole that jostled him a little more than a pothole should.
They really needed to get somene out here to fix those things, though I got the feeling there wasn’t a chance that was happening now that the whole alien invasion thing was going down. Maybe when the aliens finally took over they’d share some of their hover technology with the world so potholes became a transportation problem that was right up there with worrying about a horse throwing a shoe.
“You copies are so fucking annoying,” he growled.
That was the end of any conversation. Which was just fine with me. He wasn’t exactly the greatest conversationalist to begin with, and if he didn’t want to talk to me then I didn’t want to talk to him.
We finally came to a large tent that’d been set up on the other side of the encampment. As far from the part of the ring of military hardware that’d get attacked first as could be. Which meant that whoever was in charge here was a fan of leading from behind all the weapons they had pointed at the city rather than pulling a Patton and being right there on the front lines.
Then again even being within sight of the city was sort of the modern day equivalent of pulling a Patton and leading from the front lines considering anything that came out to attack from the city would probably reach this spot pretty damn quick for all that they had a shitload of hardware pointing at those invaders.
“Nice tent,” I said. “Did you put that together all on your own?”
“Shut up,” the army guy growled. “And follow me.”
“Well I’ll follow you,” I said, having fun tweaking this guy. “But I can’t say that I’m going to shut up any time soon, and I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it.”
Natalie had always gone on about how much fun it was messing with the authorities. It wasn’t something I’d ever really understood or appreciated until this moment. I’d always been perfectly happy working with the authorities rather than pushing them around, but if this guy was going to be a supreme asshole then I was going to give as good as I got.
“Just follow me,” he growled, gesturing for me to follow him into the tent.
“If you say so,” I said. “Far be it for me to thumb my nose at the power of the almighty US military.”
The high-ranking Army dude stopped at the entrance to a rather massive tent that seemed out of place even in the military tent city we’d been walking through. He pulled up a flap and gestured for me to step inside. I paused and stared at him, suddenly wondering if this was supposed to be some kind of trap or something.
"What the hell are you waiting for?" he growled.
"You know if there's a trap in there I'm going to destroy everything here, right?" I asked. "I'm not the same person I was when whatever happened to me… happened to me."
I winced at the awkward phrasing. As a writer and a journalism major I prided myself on saying my right words, but there was something about all the bullshit I’d faced down since waking up in the remains of Starlight City University that had me just a little off my game.
"Oh I don't doubt you’ll do everything you can to kill all of us," he said. “That’s about what I’d expect of you after everything else you’ve done.”
“You’ll forgive me,” I said. “But everyone keeps talking about what I’ve done, but no one’s actually bothered to tell me what I did.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t remember what you did. I bet you sure as hell remember all my stuff you destroyed though. It was so nice of you to do everything you could to only destroy the multimillion dollar equipment and not kill any of the men in that equipment too.”
There was a sarcastic twist to his voice that said he really did think it was a disappointment that I’d only gone after the equipment and not the grunts sitting inside that equipment. Like he would've preferred it if I'd started killing the men rather than destroying the multimillion dollar equipment.
I suppose from a pure value proposition the life of a soldier wasn't worth as much as some of the stuff the US government was regularly paying ridiculous amounts of money for to support the military industrial complex, but still. Hearing someone say it in such baldly mercenary terms was disturbing.
It certainly made me hate this asshole even more than I already did. My eyes narrowed as I thrust a finger out and poked him in the chest. He looked down and I got a reaction other than thinly-veiled annoyance or anger for the first time since he’d showed up. No, he looked genuinely worried this time.
Good.
"I'm coming for you first," I said.
"You're not the first person to threaten my life," he said, recovering just a little and puffing up his chest. "You're not even the first one of you."
"Yeah, but I'm the original," I said, even as there was a part of me that wondered how true that was.
Was I the original? Was I the real me? Talk about the kind of fucked up question you could only ask yourself in Starlight City. It was a hell of a town.
I felt like me, but seeing a bunch of copies of myself running around was the kind of thing that would shake any girl's confidence as to whether or not she was the original or the clone.
"So are you going to go in or not?" the army guy asked. "I'm not going to stand here holding this open for you all day long."
"Remember my promise," I said, my eyes boring into him.
The flap closed behind me and I found myself in a surprisingly well appointed room that looked like an office on a base and not a tent. Clearly whoever I was meeting here was the kind of person who enjoyed creature comforts, and didn't mind that he was getting those creature comforts while the men all around him were enduring far more Spartan conditions.
The man enjoying all of that cushy decor looked kindly, which was a surprise. I was expecting the dude in this place to have the whole “hardass wannabe Patton” thing going for him.
He had plenty of white in his hair, but he kept it close cropped. He wasn't wearing a hat, and he stood and nodded to me as I stepped into the tent. I didn't bother nodding back to him. I wasn't interested in nodding to anyone right about now, though I did find myself resisting the urge to fly this tent up into the stratosphere, tie the guy to it, and see if he could untangle himself to the point of using it as a parachute.
I wasn’t going to do anything of the sort, of course. I wanted information out of this guy. As much fun as it’d be to have him go up into the stratosphere and force him to use this fancy tent as a parachute, that wouldn't be very conducive to getting information out of him.
Though it did occur to me that bringing him up into the stratosphere and dropping him a couple of times might be a good way to get him to sing about what the hell they were doing here sitting on their asses while there was an alien army occupying the city.
"So you're Fialux?” the general asked.
12
Double Cross
"Don't patronize me," I said.
"Excuse me?"
"There were enough of your troops out there acting like I wasn't the real deal that I know you don't think I'm the real thing either. I’ve run into a few of my doppelgängers, and I can understand why someone would be a little upset with me after running into them. I don't know what they've done or how they even got here, but I promise you I will do everything within my power to make it better."
"Everything in your power to make it better, huh?” he asked.
"There's an awful lot that's within my power," I said. "I'm sure you'
ve seen the same coverage on Starlight City News Network that everyone else has."
"I have," the general said. "The only problem is I don't believe you're going to be able to do any more than all the others who’ve come in here and promised to help me."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Oh this has all happened before, and it's all going to happen again," the general said, waving a hand vaguely in the air.
He also had the sort of look Natalie always got when she'd just done something she thought was fabulously clever, but in order for it to be clever it relied on me picking up on some geeky reference I wouldn't ever get in a million years without watching every science fiction and fantasy movie that’d come out between 1977 and 2014. She seemed to have a lot of time on her hands for that sort of thing, which now that I thought about it might explain why she hadn’t conquered the world yet.
Odd to think that the world might’ve been saved because it took people awhile to work their way through every Star Trek on Netflix.
This general was doing the same thing. He even got the same disappointed look she used to get when she realized I didn’t catch the reference.
"None of the others appreciated that joke either," he said. "I'm surprised. All our intelligence has you with Night Terror, and she was supposedly a huge fan of the new Battlestar."
"You mean that TV movie with the guy from Stand and Deliver?" I asked. "She watched that with me, but we didn't spend much time actually watching the show, if you catch my drift. That blonde chick who flew the starfighters was pretty hot, though."
I decided I wasn't going to react to this prick knowing Natalie and I had been dating. I wasn't sure how he had that info, but I’d learned enough from Natalie to not give anything away by reacting. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d thrown me off, and I certainly wasn’t going to bite if it turned out this was a fishing expedition and he didn’t know as much as he was letting on.
