Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone (45 page)

Steve nodded and clenched his jaw as Walker went back to work.

“In answer to your question,” Michael continued, “about as well as could be expected. Larr wants him home, I told him that wasn’t possible just yet. It sounds like Callin’s brother and sister are crawling the walls to come out and help. I know that Callin was against it, but personally, I wouldn’t mind the help on our next round.”

Steve grunted his agreement, then flinched, getting another mumbled apology from Walker. “You mentioned before about having some ‘balls rolling’ ...?”

“Working on backup from the home region, paranormal agents I’m familiar with. I believe one in particular could be helpful against the walrus—”

A chime sounded, and on impulse Michael reached for his phone. Then he realized that it wasn’t any of his ring tones, that it wasn’t coming from his phone at all — it was coming from the Taalu communicator.

With a worried glance at Steve, he answered, “This is Lieutenant Takayasu.”

“
Lieutenant!
” came Larr’s voice. He sounded uncharacteristically agitated. “
Is Callin available yet?
”

The instant Steve heard Larr’s tone of voice, he sat up and began straightening his uniform.

“Not right this second, Larr,” Michael answered. “Why, what is it?”

“
The Noctoponm signal is no longer heading east. Naltin’s rigged a means of detecting some of their prime field emissions through their veil. We ... we think it’s because Della and Charl went outside, out of the ship. They didn’t leave, I corralled them back inside right away, but ...
”

Standing, Steve raised his voice, “But what, Larr?”

“
Based on their new heading, we believe they are coming right for
us
!
”

Vortex’s mask was back on and he was limping for the door by the time Michael said, “We’re on our way.”

PARANORMALS AND THE TAALU

Takayasu caught up to Vortex where the hall reached the large nurses’ station. The bewildered staff were staring at the costumed man, but he ignored them as he asked the Lieutenant, “Which way?”

“Shockwave’s in the basement where they do MRIs. Shining Star’s down there,” he pointed across the nurses’ station, “last room on the left — look for the guards. Powerhouse is directly across the hall. I’ll head downstairs and get Mark.”

“Jeremy, go with him,” Vortex said as the
Davison
employee reached them. “See what you can do for Shockwave. Head injury.”

“Wait, wait!” Walker called. Vortex, who had already been working his way around the station, stopped. “Are we talking laceration or concussion?”

“Concussion,” Takayasu answered.

“I’m sorry, I won’t be able to do much for him. I’ve been working on it, but that kind of injury is still beyond me.”

Vortex cursed under his breath. “Okay, follow me.”

Takayasu bolted for the elevators as Walker ran to catch up with Vortex, who was on the move again. As they approached the end of the hall, the guards couldn’t decide if they should block Vortex or not.

“Come on, guys, seriously,” Vortex said, irritated at the delay. He fished around in his cape for the temporary PCA badge Ensign Vogt issued him about a million years ago; it was crumpled all to hell, but still in one piece. He held it up for them to see. “If the uniform doesn’t identify me, does this help?”

The guards exchanged a bedeviled look, but they cleared out of his way.

“Jeremy, get Powerhouse and bring him over here. If you can do anything about his bruises on the fly, do it.”

“I still need to work on your arm—”

“If Shockwave’s going back on duty with a concussion, I can suffer my arm. Go!”

Walker headed for the room on the right.

Vortex was already talking as he pushed his way into the room on the left, “Callin, you need to get up! Larr contacted us. The—” He stopped in his tracks. “What? What’s going on?”

Two female nurses were on either side of Shining Star, one of them pressing the call button while the other listened for a heartbeat.

Shining Star’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving. He looked awful. No, more than that — with his neck discolored and puffed up like an inner tube, he looked
dead
.

The call-button nurse turned to Vortex, and if she experienced any surprise from his uniform, her face didn’t betray it. “Your friend became unresponsive a few minutes ago. I understand his lack of respiration is
not
 a concern, is that correct?”

“Uh, yeah.”

She shook her head, muttering, “I’ll be damned.”

“What about irregular heartbeat?” asked the second nurse, the one still using the stethoscope. Just like her partner, she seemed unaffected by his flashy garb.

“I, uh, I know it’s okay if it doesn’t sound ‘normal’ compared to hu— to norm patients. But has it changed since he stopped responding?”

The nurse with the stethoscope barked a sardonic laugh. “Beats the hell out of me, kid.” She was looking at his chart now. “None of his stats make sense.”

Stepping closer to the bed, Vortex said in a louder voice, “Callin? Callin!”

As they had warned, no response.

Vortex tried again. “Hey, buddy, listen to this.” He yanked off his right glove and held his hand close to Shining Star’s ear, snapping his fingers several times. It was a long shot, and failed to get any reaction.

The second nurse was now using her stethoscope at the base of his distended throat. “He’s actually breathing a little. If he weren’t unconscious, I’d swear that was an improvement.” In a lower, softer voice, she bemoaned, “Dear God, his throat is so swollen. What the hell did this to him?”

“A paranormal rogue.” He took some comfort from its not being entirely untrue.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I hope you find this rogue and kick his ass.”

The door opened, admitting a third nurse. The call-button nurse was consulting with her when the door opened again, and Powerhouse entered with Walker in tow. Powerhouse looked terrible, too, with his exposed face as red as his shirtless chest was black and blue.

Upon seeing Powerhouse, the urge to move as fast as possible resurged within Vortex. He waved Walker over.

“Jeremy, listen. We can’t wait for our friend to wake up. We have to leave,
now
.”

Powerhouse opened his mouth to ask a question, but his eyes were on Shining Star’s still form, and he closed it again.

Vortex continued to Walker, “Do anything you can for him. The sting is on the other side of his throat. Try to reduce the swelling, try to ... I don’t know, sweat out the venom. You know your abilities better than I do.” He gripped Walker’s shoulder. “But here’s the
most
important thing: As soon as he wakes up, if he seems lucid to you, tell him that he must get back to his family as quickly as possible.” The stethoscope nurse overheard this and started to protest, but he cut her off. “I understand that he’s in bad shape. But trust me, he’ll feel much worse if he doesn’t get a chance to ...” Back to Walker, he said, “Unless he’s
completely
out of it, give him the message. He must get back to his family! Do you understand?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thank you.” He addressed the stethoscope nurse, “Please remove the throat wrapping and gauze for him.”

She eyed the young man. “Another paranormal?”

“Yes, ma’am. But Jeremy here is a
healer
.”

“I like him already.”

Vortex gave Callin one last look — Dear Lord, Steve knew what he would go through if those bastards kill off his whole family and he wasn’t there to protect them! — and then he was rushing for the door.

PCA

In more time than any of them preferred, they were back in the private jet and gaining altitude. Takayasu was again up front, and the moment his butt had hit the copilot’s seat, Vortex heard him ask their pilot about the jet’s top speed.

“A civilian aircraft like this,” the pilot had answered as he was taxiing for takeoff, “I should be able to get it up to about Mach point-nine, maybe a little faster if the wind’s in our favor. That’s about seven hundred m.p.h. We should reach these new coordinates in less than an hour.”

The pilot had sounded like he thought his answer was pretty impressive, so he was probably surprised when Takayasu replied, “Any extra speed would be appreciated.” And then Takayasu had his headset on and was jabbering away.

As they leveled out at a low cruising altitude, Shockwave groaned while he massaged his forehead. “Jesus ... here we go again. Right, guys?”

Vortex turned back to him. “How you feeling?”

Shockwave dropped his hands to answer, giving Vortex an unsettling view of his swollen left cheek and disturbing left eye; the sclera of his eye was blood red, literally. “Okay, I guess. I ate half a dozen Tylenol, so the pain’s backed off — a little. No nausea, which they tell me is good. But I guess this fight’ll be my cytorack, or whatever alien boy called it.”

Cytorem
, Vortex thought, but kept it to himself.

Shockwave cocked his head to one side until his neck cracked, then the other. “Speaking of alien boy ... you guys are aware we’re going into this one man down, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“No shit, Mark,” Powerhouse mumbled without rancor.

“No, I mean, you’ve done the math, right? We got our asses kicked just a coupla hours ago, and now we’re goin’ right back into the same fight, but without Shiny Star.”

“I wouldn’t say we got our asses kicked,” Vortex retorted, and he was serious. “We got hurt, yeah, but we knocked the triclops and the walrus flat a few times. It’s not like they just mowed us down.”

“Vortex is right,” Takayasu called back. Leaving the cockpit so that he could talk without raising his voice, he knelt on the first passenger seat, facing backward. “The problem was, we didn’t know what they could do before; now we do. And it was just a full-blown melee, without a coordinated effort on our parts.”

Shockwave rolled his eyes. “This the part where you lecture us on teamwork, young’n?”

Takayasu gave him the finger, which made Mark smile. But he answered, “Not exactly. The dynamics change, and we have to be free to adapt when they do. But I think we should focus. Powerhouse, you’re our best bet against the walrus. I hate to send you up against that gravity attack yet again, but at least you’re strong enough to handle it. It would kill the rest of us.”

Powerhouse shrugged. “Fine by me, but if I’m gonna be stuck fighting him on soft ground again ...”

Takayasu raised one finger and called up to the pilot. “Lieutenant, is our friend still with us?”

The pilot leaned over to check something, maybe the radar. “Yeah, he’s back there.”

Vortex tensed. “ ‘Our friend’?”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t being sarcastic. We’ve got another PCA jet behind us — they were already in the air, coming to join us in Cheyenne, so I rerouted them. It’s a little backup that should help Powerhouse’s fight, if they get there in time.”

I hope
we
get there in time
, Vortex thought.

“How are they gettin’ down, Mike? I’m guessin’ they can’t jump outta the plane like we can.”

“The perimeter infantry are laying down lights as we speak. Both planes can land just a mile from the Taalu camp. We’ll jump out before that.”

“Speakin’ of the infantry, how about we get some conventional backup this time? I mean, we know where the Nocto-guys are headin’, you know what I’m sayin’? Let’s shoot a rocket at ‘em, or toss some grenades at ‘em, or
somethin’
.”

Takayasu’s face darkened. “Bad news there. You remember how we pushed hard for privacy and seclusion for the Taalu? How the National Guard’s watching the perimeter, but were ordered to leave them alone?”

“Yeeeeaaahhh ...” Shockwave drawled, not liking where this was going; neither did Vortex or Powerhouse, for that matter.

“Well, that’s looking like a double-edged sword now. Seems the President feels that, since Callin demanded such staunch privacy, and insisted the PCA
act as liaison between the Taalu and the U. S. government ...”

“... this is our fight,” Vortex finished.

Takayasu nodded. “It was couched in a lot of political bullshit, but yeah. Long story short, we and the Taalu get to deal with the Noctoponm, and if we lose, they’ll deal with whatever alien-rogues are left standing, assuming they have to. Honestly, I think they’re hoping the Noctoponm might just leave Earth after they get what they want.”

“Lovely,” Vortex spat, disgusted.

“So, no help from the National Guard,” Powerhouse observed. “What about those robots?”

Shockwave did a virtual double-take. “ ‘Robots’?”

Takayasu smirked. “Yeah, Mark, you missed that, didn’t you? But I’ll fill you in later, because no,” he turned to Powerhouse, “we won’t be seeing them again, not this time. Asimov scampered first chance he got. I’m guessing the only reason he helped last time was because we were fighting on his front lawn.”

Powerhouse shook his head at the shame of it, then asked, “So who’s in the plane behind us?”

Takayasu’s reply was interrupted when the Taalu communicator chimed. With an expression of
Here we go
, he answered, “This is Takayasu. Go ahead, Larr.”

“
They’re here.
”

PCA

“Stall them,” said Larr. Beyond him, through the bridge viewport, Della and Charl could barely make out the veiled enemy ship against the night sky. It had landed out beyond the alpine drop-off — the only thing visually betraying its presence was its front portal, which irised open as they watched.

“It’s our fault they found us,” Charl said, miserable. “We should try to stop them.”

“You will
stall
them!” Larr snapped. “Your brother is on his way. You just have to fend them off until he gets here. Keep their attention, keep them occupied, but do
not
directly engage them!”