Alien Collective (5 page)

“Our enemies so rarely care who else they hurt while they try to hurt us, Lillian’s theory both makes sense and comes as no surprise. Okay, so, if someone’s loosed a deadly gas in our embassy, how is that not spreading throughout all of Embassy Row?” Looked at Olga. “Oh, God, is that why you’re here?”

“No, no,” she said reassuringly. “I am here because the game is afoot and Mister Buchanan felt that if your embassy was compromised, Adriana and I could be targeted as well.”

Somehow she thought this statement was reassuring? Or that it indicated that deadly gas wasn’t wafting through all of Embassy Row? Had to wonder about my friends sometimes. “Ah, what about the rest of the Embassies around us? And everyone else in the Romanian Embassy? And so on?”

“The area around you has been evacuated,” Buchanan said. “Natural gas leak is the official cause.”

“Okay, so who’s risking their lives to verify that the area is secure?” Had to figure Centaurion agents would be assigned to this—hyperspeed meant they had the best chance of getting away if things were dire.

“Airborne.”

C
HECKED LORRAINE AND CLAUDIA’S
expressions, in case I’d heard wrong. They looked as freaked out as I felt. “Excuse me, did I just hear you correctly?”

Buchanan nodded. “Yes. Airborne is in charge of Embassy contamination cleanup and safety verification.”

Tried not to let my voice hit the dog-only register. Failed. “So, the team that has only humans on it, that’s the team everyone decided should go in with the deadly gas?”

Way back not so long ago I’d been the Head of Airborne. Shoved a longing for the Good Old Days away—as Olga had said, the game was afoot and I needed to focus on the here and now. Airborne consisted of Tim Crawford, who’d moved up to my old position, and my five Navy Top Gun flyboys, two of whom were Lorraine and Claudia’s husbands, Joe Billings and Randy Muir. So, as I was understanding it, my guys and their husbands were tramping around Potentially Poisoned Gas Ground Zero.

“No,” White said calmly. “The team with the closest U.S. military ties is using their influence and skills to ensure that those who are helping to decontaminate our buildings and those surrounding us aren’t, at the same time, planting bombs or listening devices, and so forth.”

“They’re all in protective gear,” Buchanan added.

“I wanted to go with them, Chief,” Walter said. “But I was overruled.”

“By whom?”

“By the Head of Security.”

A year ago, that would have been Gladys Gower, who had been pretty much the most formidable woman ever, right after my mother and Olga, at any rate.

But Gladys had died a year ago. The lump in my throat that thinking about anyone we’d lost from our side always gave me was even larger when I thought about who we’d lost during Operation Infiltration.

But we’d had to go on, and I had to go on now, too. William Ward, Walter’s older brother, had been moved into the Head of Security role. Meaning that he’d ordered his little brother to get to safety with everyone else. However, since Security always stayed, even when everyone else had to evacuate, that meant that the danger had been extreme. Which made sending Airborne in seem, in some ways, even more foolhardy.

Tried to think about this like Buchanan would have, since it was clear that he was in charge of Mission: Evacuation. Wanted to ask why we weren’t sending the people with the hyperspeed, but reminded myself that we were doing our best to keep as many A-C powers secret as possible. As it was, Jeff being the top empath in, most likely, the galaxy was far too common knowledge.

So, this was a very public thing, and in fact the police had been called and were involved. Meaning Buchanan wanted to ensure that the police, and human military, remained obviously in charge. After all, he hadn’t said that Airborne had no A-C Field Teams assisting, just that Airborne was in charge.

“Okay, Malcolm, I’ll assume that you, Tim, and the rest of the team have things under control.”

“I’m so flattered,” he said in a tone that indicated he actually wasn’t. “Really, Missus Chief, what do you take all of us for, amateurs?”

“Someone’s an amateur,” Vance said. “Because they let Cameron Maurer’s mother call Kitty.”

Chose not to mention that this was actually an impressively smooth conversational shift Vance had just advanced, and instead thank him silently and go with it. “Did they let her? Or was she trying to drive us into the Embassy to be sure we all died today?”

Vance shook his head. “She sounded frightened for you, and for herself.”

“Yeah, well, good old Leslie Manning sounded all worried for her safety, too. In order to get me into a position to try to kill me. So, you know, call me Miss Suspicious, but I’m not buying into the coinkydink.”

“Leslie was an android, though,” Vance said. “And before you say it, why in the world would anyone spend the time and money to make an android of a little old lady?”

“I’m more interested in who the ‘he’ was who she feared would kill her,” Mona said. “Did she mean her son?”

“There are so many options for Suspect of the Moment that we probably don’t have enough to go on to guess. But I’d really like to hear Olga’s opinion on my not-so-mystery caller.”

Olga shrugged. “I agree with the young man—Nancy Maurer sounded sincere and frightened for more people than just you, Kitty. I would suggest that this bears investigation.”

“Would that investigation be related to the deadly gas contamination, the bomb explosions, or its own special thing?”

“Why assume they aren’t connected?” Amy asked. “It seems like everything’s always connected.”

“Sometimes.” Considered who wasn’t doing a lot of talking and, under the circumstances, that seemed odd. “I’d like to hear what Mister Joel Oliver has to say on all that’s been going on today.”

He shook his head. “I was visiting Madame Olga when all the excitement happened.”

“Wait, what? You weren’t at the protest? You, the investigative journalist supreme, passed up that opportunity? Pull the other one.”

Mr. Joel Oliver had first come onto my radar during the festivities leading up to my wedding. That Chuckie—who I called the Conspiracy King because he’d always been into all the stuff everyone thinks is crazy to believe in, and was proven to be right every day of my life these last few years—felt Oliver was the most in-the-know reporter out there had been frightening at first.

But Oliver had proven to be a friend, and a trustworthy one at that. And when American Centaurion had been outed as being the aliens living on Earth he’d always said they were, Oliver’s cachet had risen dramatically. He was no longer that lunatic paparazzo; instead he was now the man with the insider information. However, while he’d stopped being journalism’s laughingstock, he’d not stopped being Mr. Well-Informed. Chuckie got at least half of his accurate tips from Oliver and his network. That’d he’d missed a big deal protest being bombed in his backyard seemed far-fetched.

“It’s true,” Oliver said with a shrug. “And before you ask, no, I wasn’t given any tips in regard to the explosions at the protest or the attack on your embassy, let alone whatever Missus Maurer was calling about.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Vance asked solicitously. He was Oliver’s self-admitted biggest fan, and pretty much thought Oliver walked on water. Figured Vance was ready to demand that Tito do a full physical on Oliver. Not that I could blame him. Oliver almost always knew what was going on.

“Yes, I’m well.” Oliver sighed. “I was working on . . . something else of extreme . . . delicacy.” He shot me a meaningful look.

Decided to both take the leap and not say aloud where I was leaping to, which was that Chuckie had asked Oliver to do a special assignment. Clearly one that had involved Olga and her Font of Knowledge. In part because she was wheelchair-bound, Olga liked to really make you work for the answers. Oliver had the best track record with her, and also the most patience for the game.

“Okay, so you two weren’t there. I’m still wondering how it is that Missus Maurer, if that was really her, thought we were still at the protest. Did we somehow not make the news for once?” Since Operation Destruction, we’d made the news with alarming frequency.

“Let’s see,” Mona said. She nodded to Khalid, who pushed a button on the wall, making a whole panel of books slide to the side, revealing a ginormous flatscreen TV. He had a remote and started flipping through the channels.

Khalid settled on CNN, where reporters were breathlessly discussing explosions and asking if homegrown or foreign terrorists were responsible. What they weren’t saying was anything about our being taken away by the police. Because the reporters weren’t talking about explosions at the protest.

They were talking about explosions at C.I.A. Headquarters.

I
N TIMES OF GREAT STRESS,
there is always the choice to freak out or to stay calm. I amazed myself and went with calm. “Malcolm, am I correct in believing that my husband, my mother, my best guy friends, the Supreme Pontifex, and several other key men attached to my diplomatic mission are all at Langley right now?”

“They were,” he replied tersely, as he made a call. He stepped to a part of the room that no one was in and started speaking in a low voice.

Buchanan was busy. I could trot over to eavesdrop, but he clearly didn’t want to be sharing. Fine. I turned to Serene. “Did your team happen to take care of hiding the bombs at the protest, or our removal from it?”

She was texting on her phone. “No, Kitty. I just checked. Imageering didn’t have anything to try to alter. There was no footage of us being dragged away. They have nothing of use from Langley, by the way.”

The word “try” wouldn’t have been used in relation to our imageers a year ago. But a year ago we were hit by the best hacker in existence, Chernobog the Ultimate. She’d not only wiped all our data, but she’d put some kind of anti-imageer bug into the digital systems worldwide. We still hadn’t isolated what it was that was affecting the digital feeds, but whatever it was, the imageers were blocked from all digital images.

Considering imageering talent meant that said imageer could touch an image and know everything about the person in the picture, that they were blocked was beyond frightening. Film was still “seeable” for most imageers, but right now they could read digital just like a regular human could—with their eyes only.

Christopher White, who was Amy’s husband and the most powerful imageer we knew of, said that pictures took copies of people’s minds and souls as well as their bodies. So whatever had been put into the digital airwaves was somehow blocking said minds and souls.

Christopher would be with Jeff and the others at Langley, as would Kevin Lewis, who was Mom’s right hand man in the P.T.C.U. and also our Defense Attaché. We probably had other guys there I wasn’t thinking of, too, because that’s just how our luck ran. So everyone’s husband was in some kind of mortal peril right now, how nice. Except for maybe Serene’s and Lucinda’s. Got a nervous feeling in my stomach. “Can we see if there are more attack sites than the protest and Langley?”

“Funny you ask,” Abigail said with no humor in her tone. “I’ve been checking our bases worldwide with William and Uncle Alfred. The Kennedy Space Center was just attacked.” NASA Base, where Jeff’s father, Alfred, worked, was part of Kennedy. “William had already put all bases on full alert due to the Embassy being attacked, so no one was hurt.”

“Why is this happening?” Mona asked quietly, while the reporters chattered on about terrorist bombings going off all over. “I mean this kind of effort, right now?”

“That is the correct question,” Olga said. And whenever Olga tossed off a really obvious hint, I paid attention.

Unfortunately for those around me, I did my best thinking while running my mouth. I could give in and freak out about how half the people I loved could be blown up or I could continue to give calm and in charge a go. Really wanted to start freaking out, but instead went with thinking.

So many weird and scary things had happened this afternoon, but the weirdest had to be the call from Nancy Maurer. Start there.

“Missus Maurer called to warn me to leave the protest. But she called after the bombs had gone off there, and after our Embassy had been gassed. So why did she bother?”

“Maybe she didn’t know what was going on, or where,” Culver suggested. “Just that something bad was going to happen.”

Lorraine nodded. “She didn’t sound like she was what I’d call in the know.”

“More like she’d heard something by accident and was trying to stop bad things from happening,” Claudia said.

“That would make sense,” Raj said, looking at his phone. “I’ve been researching the Cleary-Maurer campaign while we’ve been here, and there’s a lot of press about how Missus Maurer is supporting her boy. It’s clear that they’re using her in a public relations capacity, but that also means they’re bringing her out to a wide variety of events, including a few ‘closed door’ meetings where they’ve had her around for photo ops.”

“They’re going for the full-on flag, Mom, and apple pie approach,” Oliver said. “Emphasis on mom, since they’re using her to show that ‘decent women’ support them.”

“But how would she have known about bombs? Would the Cleary-Maurer campaign really be willing to try to blow up their competition?”

“You’d be surprised what politicians will do to win office,” Culver said dryly. Figured that, out of everyone in the room, she’d know best.

Vance cocked his head. “You know, Kitty, she said that you needed to stop taking an interest in the election and, if you did, ‘they’ would leave you alone.”

“You think this is all related to the election?” Serene asked. “Even the bombs at NASA Base?”

“If Kitty, as the Ambassador, is making the statement that she is against the Cleary-Maurer ticket, then the assumption would be that all the A-Cs are also against the Cleary-Maurer ticket,” Mona said.

“I don’t tell them how to vote.”

Abigail snorted. “Yes, you do. You’re the Ambassador, and the Pontifex and Alpha Team agree with you. That’s all it takes—we tend to vote as a bloc.”

“Really?”

Every A-C in the room nodded. It so figured.

Yet something else I was getting to learn on the fly. This I knew for a fact hadn’t been in the gut-busting Briefing Books of Boredom I’d finally managed to get through. They were a blur of points of parliamentary procedure, maps that merely looked like eye charts combined with mazes, and an unreal amount of if-then statements, but a statement pointing out that every A-C voted the party line would have caught my eye.

Buchanan got off his phone and rejoined us. “Miraculously, no one was hurt. Anywhere. Best we can tell is that these were all warnings, a sort of ‘see what we can do?’ kind of effort. Designed to frighten and intimidate without the bad side effects of killing people.”

“Our enemies are starting to attempt to be humane in some way? What’s this world coming to?”

“Why kill a registered voter?” Culver said. Like everyone else in my circle, she had a sarcasm knob. The horrifying fact that I was likely to become friendlier with this woman than I’d ever planned or wanted waved merrily at me. Chose to ignore this horror due to all the other crap going on. I’d save it for later, when I was feeling good about things, just to bring me back down to reality. “They want Cleary-Maurer to win, and you can’t win if the swing voters are all dead.”

“I wouldn’t count on the ‘no harm’ mindset to last,” Buchanan said. “The assumption is that they’re trying to show that they mean business to get what they want without killing . . . but that they did this to show that they can and will kill if needed.”

“Ah, so business as usual, gotcha.”

He managed a small grin. “Probably. Proud of you, all of you, for not losing it, by the way.”

“We’re good under fire,” Amy said. “But Kitty was trying to figure out what’s going on and I think Vance and the others have it right—it’s related to the elections.”

“Okay, so we oppose Cleary-Maurer. So what? We haven’t endorsed whoever’s running against them, so what does it matter?”

Everyone in the room gave me the “really?” look. Was glad Jamie and the other kids weren’t here—wouldn’t have wanted them to join in on this look and I had a feeling they would have.

“Oh, fine, fine. Yes, okay, Senator Armstrong is running and likely to get his party’s nomination. Senator McMillan’s already endorsed him. And we’re close to both of them and while we haven’t said anything outright yet it’s only a matter of time before we start waving Armstrong for President flags.”

Culver, Vance, and Nathalie exchanged a look. “Ah . . .” Nathalie said. “Kitty?”

“Oh goody, something else I don’t know but am going to find out. Thank God I live to learn and all that. What am I forgetting or not aware of? Other than the fact that both presidential candidates are going to be from Florida, I mean. Which is weird, when you think about it.”

“I’ve got some news you’re going to find weirder,” Vance said. “Like who’s being discussed, seriously discussed, as Vincent’s running mate.”

Took a deep breath. “Lay it on me.”

Heard some steps behind me and turned to see everyone we’d been told were at Langley enter the room, my husband amongst them. As relief washed over me, I examined everyone to make sure Buchanan was right and no one was hurt. Oh, sure, I looked at Jeff the most, but he was my husband, so that was only right.

Jeff was tall, broad, and built, with dark brown wavy hair and light brown eyes. He was, point of fact, the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen, which was the biggest reason I was looking at him the most. So I was a normal girl.

His expression matched the rest of those entering the room—stress, combined with worry, relief, and anger. So pretty much how everyone already in the room probably looked, too. However, Jeff was also looking a little uncomfortable.

Vance came up next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Meet the most likely vice presidential candidate on the Armstrong ticket, Kitty. You might know him as your husband.”