Blackjack Villain (36 page)

I pulled out the message that Retcon had dropped off in our hotel room and showed it to Cool Hand.

“There’s also this. Looks like coordinates on a map.”

Cool took the paper and looked at both sides, nonplussed by the numbers.

“Sweet, another mission. We keep knocking these out, I’m gonna buy me an island on the Caribbean. I’ll give this to Haha so he can figure it out. Alright you two lovebirds, I’ll leave you to it.” He leaned forward to me and whispered in what amounted to normal speaking volume. “Dude, hit that shit.”

“Ahem,” she said.

“Yeah,” he stammered to cover. “I’m trying to get the ball rolling, you know? I’m gonna head up and make some of my world famous chili for when you guys are done. Then I’ll tell you all about the alien we saw on Calypso. Badass true story.”

And he was gone.

“I think he meant Callisto,” I said and took off the belt and harness. I tossed them on the table with my quiver and other items which the guys had apparently recovered from the New Yorker Hotel fight. I sat back on the chair and leaned back, stretching to the fullest of my ability. I lifted my shirt and scraped off my stomach the last bits of the dark gray hardened goo.

“So you and Influx, huh?”

“Nothing happened.”

“He seems to think it did.”

I smiled. “He thinks you and I did it too.”

“Did you care for her?”

I stopped picking at the scab and nodded.

“I knew her from a long time ago” Apogee said. “Actually went up against her once. Like two years ago. She was Moonglow then. Her and Death Blossom, Kamikazee and Seppuku.”

“Alone?”

“Oh God, no. I was with Mirage, Pulsewave, Matchstick and Steeltoe.”

“The Revolution.”

“Yeah,” Apogee said, lost in the memories of the group. “She was tough,” she finally added. “And really pretty.”

An odd silence followed. She probably thought of The Revolution, reflecting on Pulsewave’s death, her difficulty with Steeltoe and Matchstick. My mind drifted to Influx, her striking face, immaculate skin, graceful demeanor, and tantalizing eyes, the pleading desperation of her final moments.

“Before I forget, thank you for saving me from Zundergrub,” she said, lifting me from my reverie.

“Don’t mention it,” I said, going back to peeling the gray/black scabs from my skin.

“That’s going to take you forever,” she said.

“It’s itching like crazy.”

Apogee walked over to me and knelt between my legs, slapping my hands away.

“You need nails for a job like this,” she said and took off one of her gloves, leaning her chest on my pelvis and her elbows on my thighs, filling my lower body with her warmth. Her breasts pressed against the insides of my legs and crotch and I could feel the beating of her heart, and her slow, rhythmic breathing.

“Man, you should see your face,” she said, with an amused expression.

Apogees’ fingers were a blur, as she engaged her speed power and her flicking fingers ripped the material off my skin, but I flinched from how ticklish it was.

“Quit fidgeting,” she snapped, but her touch was both tingly and titillating. Feeling her pressed against me was overwhelming all my senses. I had to fight a natural tendency to bring her closer and kiss her, to take her to the bed and make love to her.

“If Cool Hand comes in now,” I started, with a bit of a nervous tone in my voice, “you’ll totally be validating what he-“

I bellowed in pain as she ripped off the last bit.

“That hurt.”

Apogee put her hands on my thighs and used them as a crutch to stand up, grasping my legs too close to my pelvis, firing a shiver through my groin and up my back.

She looked at her handy work and then up at my face, with a demure smile still on her face. I almost reached out to her.

“All done,” she said and went back to the bed. “I’m going to take a quick nap.” She lay down, turned away from me, covered with a skimpy blanket. The blanket outlined her shapely figure. I guess the quiet of the room startled her, so she turned and looked at me. The way she twisted her body, the outline of her form was both alluring and tempting.

“You can breathe now,” she said, not even bothering to turn around.

***

We met in the lounge thirty minutes later to talk, plan and catch up. I asked Apogee to wait in our room, but she insisted on coming, so I asked her to stay in the command center outside the lounge, which doubled as our mess and briefing room.

Cool Hand’s chili was surprisingly good, and I cleared three bowls of the stuff. Zundergrub sat across from me but abstained. I noticed that he avoided looking at me, instead concentrating on Mr. Haha’s presentation on the large monitor.

On the screen was a decades-old picture of Nostromo’s moon base. It was a tall stone spire designed as a replica of the legendary Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The tower was designed in three stages in its entirety, over ten times the size of the original, and over a mile in height overall. Its base was lower square structure, perhaps fifty or so stories, with a central core. Above that was an octagonal open platform, with eight massive Greco-Roman columns. At the top was an enclosed circular section. And at its apex was positioned a mirror, which reflected sunlight during the moon’s day, reminding everyone on Earth that Nostromo watched over them all.

Haha changed the monitor so we could see a live view from the onboard cameras. He zoomed in capturing its full grandeur, despite the limited lighting, and how impressive it was. I could only think of what the Greeks accomplished thousands of years ago.

“Good, isn’t it?” Cool Hand asked, shoveling the last vestiges of his chili bowl into his mouth.

“Not bad,” I told him, finishing my third bowl.

“Did they tell you what happened on Calypso?”

“Callisto,” Haha corrected.

“Whatever!”

I shook my head. Zundergrub raised an eyebrow, while Haha paused his presentation.

“You guys didn’t tell him?” Cool asked.

“He was alone with his playmate until now,” Zundergrub scoffed.

“Perhaps we should debrief him,” Haha suggested.

“An alien, bro. A fucking bonafide alien,” Cool Hand spat out, unable to control himself. Haha cocked his head, the only clue that the interruption displeased him.

“What?”

“Yeah, and it got pissed and tried to kill us. Killed Knighthawk. It ripped him apart.”

“Perhaps we should tell the story from the beginning,” Mr. Haha interjected, uneasy at Cool Hand’s haphazard style of storytelling.

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re right,” Cool Hand said. “So after we take off, Zee appears here because he has a magical thingie that teleports him or whatever. Then we go to Callisto on the rocket. Took like an hour, ‘because it was fast as shit. Then, BAMMO! An alien tries to kill us. Fucks up the ship, then fucks up some stupid Super that followed us from earth.”

“Knighthawk?”

“Yeah. He’s the guy with the suit. East coast guy, so you probably don’t know him from Elvis. You know, I didn’t know he could fly in space; but whatever, the guy followed us all the way from New York City.”

“Are you guys fucking with me?” I said looking around the table, but I got nothing from Zundergrub, and a shrug from Haha.

“For real,” Cool Hand continued. “It was like a floating flashlight then it came at us, and inside the light, was this thing. I can’t even describe it.”

He paused, motioning to the others to fill in the gap.

“I would say it was similar to Cnidaria with elements of Sepiida,” Haha said.

“My biology and Latin are rusty, Haha. Mind translating that to English?”

“It was a Cnidaria in form, a jellyfish, Blackjack. Closest in appearance, I’d say, to the hydromedusa Aequorea Victoria. It was interesting because it was radiating bioluminescence through photophore structures. The elements of Sepiida, which are cuttlefish, including the chameleonic ability to rapidly change its skin colors at will. Even changing color and light polarity in a form of communication that I have, as of yet, been unable to translate.”

“A jellyfish/cuttlefish alien?” I asked.

“At first, yeah, but then it changed, B. It turned into an angel. A pissed-off angel of destruction. It had wings, a sword, and a sexy toga thing. And she was pretty hot.”

“It wasn’t an illusion,” Haha said, seeing the bemused look on my face. “It was a transformation of some sort.”

“Yeah, she transformed, and went at the Rocket Flyer like an angry ex-girlfriend. We were in real trouble until Knighthawk went at her.”

“I used the moment’s distraction to fire the rockets and leave the area.”

“And Knighthawk?” I asked.

Cool shrugged and we all sat in silence, pondering the possibilities. Why would an alien be on Callisto?

There was nothing there. I was far from a specialist on the moons of Jupiter, but I could recall the flights of Voyager from my youth, the more recent images from the Galileo unmanned spacecraft. There was nothing on Jupiter. In fact, Saturn showed more promise of life with the moon of Titan having signs of water.

“So, the question is; what was it doing there?” I wondered aloud.

Zundergrub cleared his throat, “I believe it watches us.”

***

I came back to my room after the briefing, bringing Apogee a bowl of Cool Hand’s chili, but the only thing on my mind was that alien and what it represented. We had no video as the attack had destroyed most of the surveillance gear. Judging by the serious damage to the ship, the guys were lucky to have escaped at all.

But what was that alien doing there? If Zundergrub was right, it was watching us, but to what end? Why waste time watching a bunch of barely evolved monkeys? From their description, the alien was able to survive in outer space, able to transfigure between different forms and maybe even types of energy, and had enough power to destroy a Class-A super like Knighthawk without much trouble. If this was the case, what could it want with us? The only obvious answer to that was unsettling.

I walked into the room and Apogee was in the shower, which had no door or screen. She made no effort to conceal herself, so I turned away and sat on the bed placing the chili on the desk.

“I’m reduced to washing my hair with soap,” she complained, hearing my ruckus.

“When you go to the moon, you have to make sacrifices.”

“Shampoo is a sacrifice? Moisturizer is a sacrifice? Not to me.”

I ventured a peek as she had her back to me and what a sight, lithe and athletic, but not so much that it made her unfeminine. Apogee’s buttocks were tight and high, toned from years of exercise that had forged her long legs into two powerful pistons of muscle.

“You guys decide what to do with me?” she asked, suddenly facing me, almost taunting me to look at her, but I averted my gaze.

“We didn’t talk about you.”

“Oh?”

“We talked about the alien.”

“An alien. You expect me to take you seriously,” she said, shutting off the water and squeezing the water out of her hair.

“That’s what they’re saying,” I said, not really sure what to believe.

“Mind grabbing the towel for me?”

I picked up the towel, left for some reason on the bed, as far from the small shower in the tiny room as possible, and handed it to her, trying to keep myself from scanning her flawless body but failing miserably. She was smiling. She knew I couldn’t help myself, and I doubt any man alive could.

“Thanks,” she said, wrapping her body with the towel, standing awfully close to me. “So this alien, did it have a name? Alf perhaps? Or ET?”

“I didn’t see it, ok?” I said. “I was stuck with Ms. Needy in the voyage from hell.” I walked away from her, and plopped down on the chair again.

“Why are you angry with me?” she said wringing more water out of her hair into the sink.

“You’re getting the whole floor wet.”

“Is my being nude bothering you? I was taking a shower, you know. You came in without knocking.”

I felt my hand clench on the table, and without realizing it, I twisted the aluminum into a shredded mess.

“Ah, crap,” I said, releasing the mangled metal.

“It really bothers you?” she laughed.

“No, it doesn’t bother me. But you’re flashing your tits in my face, pressing yourself against me earlier. There’s only so much I can take, you know?”

Apogee laughed.

“I’m serious.”

Closing the gap between us, she grabbed my face like a kid, and said, “You big stupid lug.” Apogee held on too long then patted my face. “I’ll try to behave myself.”

“It’s not even that. Hell, that was the best part of my day.”

She laughed again.

“So what is stressing you out? Is it the others?”

“Yes,” I answered after a long pause.

“What did they say?”

“Nothing, like I told you,” I shot back, irritated. “But you know how it is. Us playing house isn’t kosher, you know? Keeping you around is causing problems for me.”