Alien vs. Alien (38 page)

CHAPTER 68

I
TROTTED INSIDE,
and there he was, furiously stacking old pizza boxes and Big Gulp cups. I did my best Columbia from
Rocky Horror
. “Eddy!” Long, squealing, and drawn out. Missed Chuckie—he’d have appreciated it and found it funny. No one else seemed to either get it or be impressed.

Stryker turned and gaped. “Kitty? You, ah, got here really fast.”

“Dude, we walked over from Headquarters and down an unreal number of steps. Not my fault you live like a pig. You know, like you always have.”

I did a quick study. Still an average-size guy if you ignored the gut and man-boobs, still wearing a “The Truth is Out There” shirt that I hoped was a newer edition than the one I’d become familiar with when I was in high school and college. Full beard, and it was still fairly unkempt. Hair still worn long and sort of curly. Stryker would have had beautiful hair if he ever took care of it. That was Stryker’s only attractive physical quality, thoughր if I believed him, he was supposedly lovely with his pants off. No amount of money in the world would be enough for me to want to find out, however.

“What in the hell are you gentlemen doing in here?” Franklin snarled.

Stryker stood up straight. Not much of an improvement. “Our jobs, sir. Supreme Commander Reynolds understands.”

I couldn’t control the Inner Hyena. “Oh, dude, did he really tell you to call him that?” I asked in between snorts of laughter. “God, I love Chuckie’s sense of humor.”

“Kitty, shut up,” Stryker hissed at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Colonel Franklin, I know you know why Eddy and the others are here in the ‘bunker.’ They’re C.I.A. operatives monitoring all incoming data for security threats and breaks.” I made eye contact with Stryker. “And I do mean
all
.”

“No idea what you mean, Kitty,” Stryker said, giving me the “shut up, shut up” look.

“Eddy? I’m married to a space alien, okay? Who, along with my oldest friend, is missing, snatched out of thin air kind of thing. Everyone with me knows about it. So stop with the ridiculous posturing. True believers here, okay?”

Stryker relaxed, a little. “Fine. Yes. We monitor all incoming and outgoing transmissions.”

“All?” Buchanan asked. “You mean worldwide?”

“He means world and galaxy and potentially universewide, don’t you Eddy? In fact, the information that has everyone in a tizzy was probably filtered to everyone from down here in the ‘bunker’.”

Stryker nodded. “We have the highest-level security clearances. And, yes, we’ve been monitoring the . . . activity.”

“You’re paid thirty thousand dollars a year,” Franklin snapped. “No one at that salary level has these kinds of clearances.”

I checked out our other bunker-mates, most of whom were, like Stryker, vacillating between looking at Franklin in a terrified manner and checking out Abigail, Naomi, and Jennifer while trying to pretend they weren’t so checking and while also trying to hide their drooling. Dazzlers had that effect.

One of the nervous droolers was tall, skinny, and black but otherwise matched Stryker, including in his love of the
X-Files
. One was small, scrawny, bald, and Chinese and also one with the idea that the
X-Files
was the best show ever. One looked Indian or Pakistani, but with an actual normal body build, and also wore a shirt proclaiming his
X-Files
devotion.

The last one, who was the only one not staring at the gals, was actually rather boring, albeit very Slavic-looking, if you didn’t notice the dark sunglasses and the fact that he looked as though he worked out. He was a big guy and normal for the regular world and therefore looked totally out of place here,. He was apparently also more open-minded, or else just held to the classics, because he broke the uniform and was in a vintage
Star Wars
shirt.

It was like entering the set of
The Big Bang Theory
. I refrained from asking why none of them were supporting that show,
Eureka
,
Star Trek,
Warehouse 13
,
Fringe
, or
Men in Black
, let alone a host of other options. Maybe Sundays were
X-Files
days at the Hacker Central offices, and my big man in shades was just a rebel.

“They have those clearances if they’re not doing this so much for the money—because they all already have their own from a variety of other pursuits—but because they live for this stuff, and they also probably like the benefits.”

Stryker grimaced. “Yeah, so what? Government bennies are great, and we do a good job.”

“I’m sure you do. Colonel Franklin, you see before you the top hackers in the world, and if they’re not the top in some area, they know who is. Stryker Dane, aka Eddy Simms, resident U.F.O. expert and extraterrestrial languages expert.”

I pointed to the skinny black guy. “Big George Lecroix, who is Europe’s best hacker. Helps that Big George speaks, reads, and writes twenty languages fluently. And, no, I’m not making that up.”

Our scrawny Chinese guy was up next. “Doctor Wu, otherwise called Henry. He really has a doctorate, several, actually, and his last name really is Wu. The fact that his name is the same as a cool Steely Dan song is just an added bonus. Covers all the languages that Big George doesn’t, also a software expert. China’s best hacker.”

I pointed to our Indian. “Ravi Gaekwad, Indian, wait for it, their best hacker. He’s also big into both the software and hardware sides of the house—if you need it made or unmade, Ravi’s your guy.” I chose not to share his nickname.

“Geekwad?” Tito asked. “Really?” Never mind. Tito figured it out.

Ravi glared at him. “It’s a fine name where I come from. Particularly when pronounced properly.”

“Tito, now isn’t the time. Besides, his real nickname is Ravi the Geek, like Jimmy the Greek, only less flattering.”

“That’s not how I like to be introduced,” Ravi said sulkily. “And I prefer my name pronounced properly.”

“Oh, please. Like you haven’t heard that one as often as I’ve heard the ‘Hottie from Hot Town’ jokes? Let it pass. Last but in no way least, meet Omega Red, aka Yuri Stanislav. Yuri wears his sunglasses at night because he’s legally blind. So, really, they should have named him Daredevil, but he’s Russian, so, you know, had to go with the fitting code name and all. Killer with the audio cryptology among other pursuits.”

“You know all these guys but had no idea of what your parents did for a living?” Buchanan asked. I could tell he was trying not to crack up.

“Chuck could never keep a secret from you,” Stryker fumed. Sadly, I knew this to be untrue, since Chuckie had figured out what my parents really did when we were in high school and hadn’t shared. But I chose not to mention it.

“Why do you have a parrot and a huge peacock with you?” Ravi asked.

“They’d better not crap all over our equipment,” Big George added.

Bruno cooed. Bellie mercifully remained silent. “They seem pleasant,” Omega Red shared.

“I don’t like birds,” Henry said quietly. “They scare me. Just a little,” he added a touch too defensively.

“Whatever,” Stryker snapped. “It’s Kitty. Be happy she didn’t bring her dogs.”

“One party, Eddy, that’s all. One party when I had to dogsit and you and Chuckie insisted I had to attend. They didn’t break that much, anyway.”

“They destroyed my entire collection of Happy Meal collectibles.” Stryker sounded as though he’d had a collection of Ming vases on his shelf, not a bunch of kiddie toys.

“Not my fault they were covered with hamburger smell. Or that you left them just lying around.”

“They were up on a shelf that was at head height.”

“Give the bitterness a rest, Eddy, it was a decade ago. The people with me work with me in some capacity. In my current job, as Ambassador for American Centaurion.”

I did a really fast first name intro of everyone with me. The fact that I had a lot of people with me registered at this point. This many people had probably never been in Hacker Central at one time, ever. Good, it’d be something for Hacker International to remember, a red-letter day sort of thing.

I had to figure Bruno had shown himself to one and all because they were trustworthy. Either that or Bruno wasn’t a good judge of character. I chose to go with the former.

“Now, charming introductions over. Your new boss of less than a week and the good senator from Florida may want a more thorough review of your skills, but we don’t have time right now. Two of the most important men in my life have been kidnapped with clear intent to do serious harm, and we have what appears to be the biggest alien armada ever on a direct course for little old Earth. As Chuckie likes to say, you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem. So get to work.”

The hackers all looked at each other. “Doing what, exactly, Kitty?” Stryker asked finally.

I sighed. “Dude, seriously. Colonel Franklin has the huge Encyclopedia Centaurion in his office. In it, it lists that when we have lost the head of the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division, also known as Chuckie, we are to, against all logic and common sense, come to Stryker Dane for the save. So, save.”

“I need a protocol,” Stryker said. I got the feeling he wasn’t being co
ntrary.

“A protocol?”

He gave me a look I was familiar with. The “you’re giving me orders why?” look. “A protocol, a code phrase, something to indicate that I should trust you.”

“I know what they are. But it’s me, Kitty, remember? Known you almost as long as I’ve known Chuckie?”

Stryker shrugged. “You could turn on Chuck, be mind controlled, be a robot. I have to know I can trust you.”

I’d managed to keep the anger and fear somewhat at bay. But every minute we wasted was a minute I could bet Jeff and Chuckie were suffering in some horrifying way. And my baby was in both the safest and most dangerous place right now, and the longer we delayed, the more danger Jamie, ACE, anۀd everyone else were going to be in.

“Eddy? You either tell me, right now, why Chuckie has you listed as his immediate backup when things are beyond dire, or I will kick you in the balls so hard that you’ll wish you’d never, ever, heard of the term U.F.O.”

Stryker grinned. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

I knew I wasn’t the only one gaping. “Excuse me? That was the protocol?”

He laughed. “For you, yeah.” Stryker shrugged. “What can I say? Chuck knows you really well.”

CHAPTER 69

B
EFORE I COULD COME UP WITH
a suitable retort, Stryker was giving orders. All the hackers raced to their stations, easily spotted by the fact that they were the messiest parts of this particular high-security pigsty.

“How does Yuri not kill himself in here?” I asked as Omega Red lumbered to his station without incident, even though his path was scary cluttered.

Stryker shrugged. “Nanotechnology’s good for a lot of things.”

Bruno seemed to agree, or at least he liked the trash Omega Red had. He flapped up out of the way, settled into some of the mess like it was a nest, tucked his head under his wing, and, as far as I could tell, went to sleep. I chose to take this to mean I was safe and among friends.

“Whatever. Where are my men?”

“Geez, Kitty, give a guy a minute. I don’t remember you this impatient.”

“Do you remember me stating that my husband and oldest friend are missing?”

“You’ve checked the obvious places?” Stryker asked as he sat down at his console and started typing away on what looked like a megakeyboard. It had more than the standard qwerty stuff on it, by far.

“We’ve searched all the way to the Alpha Centauri solar system. There is no sign of Jeff or Chuckie. I think they’re on Earth but in one of the many rooms our enemies have constructed that appear to be impenetrable via normal and alien means.”

“Nice to know you think we can work miracles,” Stryker snapped.

“The Supreme Commander’s January report indicated that a number of subterrestrial locations that have been recently identified are priority one,” Henry shared. “So that’s where we’ve been focusing.”

“Dudes, really, what’s up with the Supreme Commander stuff? You’re aware that Chuckie’s laughing his butt off when he uses that title, right?”

“Sure,” Ravi replied. “But he
is
our Supreme Commander.”

Franklin cleared his throat. “Not if you’re on the U.S. Air Force’s payroll he’s not.”

I thought about the various chains of command I’d learned about over the past two-plus years. “Actually, Colonel, they might be right. But guys, really, lay off with the titles.”

Big George shrugged. “If we must. However, Henry’s right. There’s a network of sub-terrestrial strongholds we have yet to map completely.”

“Put them onscreen,” Franklin snapped. “Speaking as the Supreme Commander in attendance.”

Henry did some fast typing, and a map of the United States appeared. The map was hard to read since it covered all the U.S., but I spotted what I was confident were the locations of the Dome, the Dulce Science Center, and Caliente Base. Each was surrounded in red. “Why are those circled?”

“Chuck wants us to ignore them,” Stryker replied. There was a lot of color in the area where NASA and East Bases were and even more in the D.C. area.

“And you do?” I found this hard to believe, knowing Stryker as well as I did.

“Yeah, we do, ’cause Chuck monitors every damn thing we do, and he’s gotten really nasty in his old age.” Stryker sounded annoyed. Considering Chuckie and I were ten years younger than Stryker, this was amusing.

Stryker zoomed in on the D.C. area. Sure enough, there was the Embassy and the Pontifex’s residence, circled in red. Jeff and I were going to have a serious talk about this once I found and saved him and dealt with the people who’d, again, taken and most likely hurt my men.

However, there were a variety of locations marked in green. “Eddy, the green ones are the ones you guys are mapping?”

“The green circles are subterrestrial locations. The green lines are the access tunnels that connect the subterrestrial locations to each other and to upper-level exits and entrances. We’re mapping the entire network.” He zoomed out a bit. It was a rather impressive network of green lines. This boded.

“Trying to map,” Omega Red added. “They’re difficult for a variety of reasons.”

“The rooms or the tunnels?”

“The subterrestrial locations are more difficult than the access tunnels, but both have their own challenges,” Stryker said.

“Cloaking, lead walls, visual and audio disturbances,” Henry clarified. “Very little computer activity we can track.”

“Any more,” Ravi added. “Fortunately, we monitor and save everything, and so did our predecessors.”

“Predecessors?” Franklin sounded like he was going to get a migraine. “How many predecessors?”

Stryker shrugged. “Enough.” He looked over his shoulder at Franklin. “You’re in charge and this is a surprise?”

“These functions are not a surprise. Who’s doing them is the surprise.”

Stryker shrugged again. “You want the best for this kind of work? Accept that the best of our breed don’t join the military.”

“Yeah, most hackers aren’t into the up at five a.m., run twenty miles with a full pack on, and　 do two hundred pushups lifestyle.” They were into the sleep until noon, catch up on the latest internet porn, eat all the junk food they could manage, while spying on the world lifestyle. I looked around. Sure enough, there were some donuts. I checked them out. Fresh. Snagged one, took the box around and offered it to the rest of the gang. I got a dirty look from Stryker, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Glad you’re making sure we have fuel,” White said. “As always in these situations, I was a bit peckish.”

“Donuts are nice,” Tito agreed. “However, we’re not much of anywhere, Kitty.”

I looked at the map again. “I think we are. ACE said Christopher was looking the wrong way. Since he was looking all over the planet and in two solar systems, Christopher and I both figure ACE didn’t mean that Christopher just needed to work harder and try to reach another galaxy. Oh, and note how many of the ones with green circles radiate out from the one with the red circle that happens to correlate to where many of us now live.”

“Seven,” Buchanan said. “Nice to see you’re keeping on top of things.”

“You’re almost as funny as Chuckie and Mister White. Big George, how far are you into any of these?” I pointed to the green circles near the Embassy. There were others, dotted all over the globe, but these seemed the most likely targets.

Of course, “near” was a relative term, because maps always made things seem closer than they actually were. I assumed the circle nearest to the Embassy was the remains of the Secret Lab where Amy’s father and his cronies had done their horrible and horribly successful experiments. The others were farther away, and none were in a straight line from the others.

“As noted, in the D.C. area, we’ve identified and located seven rooms,” Big George said, rolling his pointer over different points of the map. “We call them rooms, but they could be a series of rooms, caverns, something else that has a general cube shape. But they’re not tunnels, because we can actually enter the tunnels and confirm structure.”

“We call them dead zones until we can confirm their structure,” Henry added. “Because we can’t read anything within them, so it’s like they’re dead to our equipment.”

“Henry, I think everyone with me understood ‘dead zone’ without the condescending explanation. But it’s nice to see you’re still the fun party dude I remember.”

“One of the D.C. dead zones, the one nearest to your Embassy, was declared destroyed by Chuck, but we mapped its area as best we could as well,” Big George went on quickly, pointer on the green circle closest to the Embassy. He rolled the pointer. “We feel there’s another one in this area, but haven’t finalized mapping.”

The one Big George’s pointer was now on seemed to be within or near to the metro area of D.C. But in order to show the dead zones all on one screen, the map was small enough that I couldn’t really make out city names or exact locations. However, the others were all farther away, and one, per the map, appeared to actually be in the Atlantic. I presumed under the ocean floor, but I put nothing past the Club of Evil Super-Geniuses these days.

“So, by mapping you mean what, exactly?”

“　We send sonar, infrared, electronic, and other forms of probes and scanning through the earth,” Omega Red explained. “Areas our equipment’s unable to access in some way are declared dead zones. Some are just dense rock. But others are clearly structures or constructs of some kind, because their shapes are too regular.”

“Because of the tunnel under the American Centaurion Embassy, we were able to begin exploration, which also allowed us a way to determine how to spot either a tunnel or what we’re choosing to assume is a room,” Stryker added.

“So, the dead zones you’ve mapped—have you entered any of them?”

“We haven’t been able to determine how to breach any dead zones yet,” Henry admitted. “Only the tunnels. They’re easier. They’re hidden from us, but not to the same degree as the rooms.” He paused, a little too obviously.

“Okay, fine. Explain how they’re not hidden in the same degree as the presumed rooms.”

Henry looked like I’d just offered to have sex with him. Had to give Hacker International this—it was easy to make these guys happy. “The tunnels don’t have the same level of blocking. It’s more like what’s around certain areas Chuck doesn’t want us probing.”

“Areas in, say, New Mexico and Arizona?”

“Among others.”

“Okay, super.” I’d ask about all the similar locations another time. “So the tunnels are cloaked in some way, but not like the dead zone areas. Fine, I guess that makes sense.” In the Bizarro World I now lived in, of course this made sense.

“We haven’t finished a full mapping of all the tunnels worldwide, either,” Big George said. “And until we map, we can’t send in agents to physically examine the system.”

“Chuck’s pissed about it, too,” Ravi added. “He doesn’t like the delay.”

We’d only discovered the Embassy’s secret lab four and a half months ago, so it wasn’t as though they’d been working on this for years. Figured I’d better check. “When did Chuckie start you on this particular project?”

“January, like I said already,” Stryker replied. I loved being right. “Four and a half months ago,” he added, sarcasm knob positioned around six on my scale. “We were working on some high-level transmissions prior to that.”

“How high level?” Franklin asked.

“Out of this world,” Big George replied.

Stryker nodded. “From systems past Alpha Centauri.”