Your Planet or Mine? (6 page)

“He thinks he did. My armor’s AI saw the camera and blurred the return image. The suit is capable of enhanced invisibility, as well. How do you think I followed you to the market without being seen?”

“I haven’t had time to think about it. It’s been a little busy. But now that you bring it up, how did you get from the ranch to the store—fly?”

“Only to the nearest road. I hitchhiked on a series of cars and then a truck. Hung on for the ride.”

“Omigod.”

“They never knew I was aboard.”

“Unlike me,” she muttered. She left streaks of rubber on the driveway as she backed up, tires spinning. The car careened down the block, leaving a trail of bedroom and porch lights coming on behind them.

T
HE
S
AFEWAY BAG SLID
across the backseat of the Lexus and thumped into the door. The smell of chocolate mixed with that of factory-new leather. So much for eating the Phish Food. “Where’s the assassin?”

Cavin checked his gauntlet. “Gods, he’s—” A ball of lightning ripped past her window. The air smelled as if it was on fire.

Jana screamed. “What the hell was that?”

“Plasma mortars.”

“Rifles? Grenades? The guy’s a traveling arsenal.”

“Accelerate!”

The urgency in his voice was enough motivation to obey without argument. If Jana slid any lower in the driver’s seat, she wouldn’t be able to see over the dashboard. “How did he sneak up on us like that?”

“My wrist gauntlet shows the pursuit. Unfortunately, it also helps the assassin hone in on us. I can switch it on long enough to take a peek then I have to turn it off. Until just now, it was off.”

Great, just great. All that advanced technology and he couldn’t use it. “Why’s this guy after you? Because you came here?”

“Someone hired him. Someone driven by arrogance, and ignorance, and fear.”

Okay. He did not sound happy. There was more going on here than she knew. But nothing she had time to worry about now. Her plate was full enough keeping the car moving at top speed without killing any innocents.

“My visit to Earth has nothing to do with the REEF’s attempts to kill me, but it does complicate things.”

Jana rolled her eyes. “Ya think?”

She raced through the surface streets and merged onto the highway, headed west. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she wanted to get there fast.

The fog was thickening. Cars traveled slowly. She wanted to drive even slower than they were, but she remembered the threat of Cavin’s boot over the accelerator. Jana drove as fast as she could stand it until the visibility became so poor that she could see no more than a couple of car lengths ahead. She lifted her bare foot off the gas pedal.

“Don’t slow down,” Cavin ordered.

“I can’t see.”

“I can.”

“How can you see?”

He tapped on his visor, which he’d pulled over his eyes. “With this I can see for miles ahead. Fog, darkness, no problem.”

“No problem,” she muttered, imitating him. “How do you speak English so well if you’re an alien?”

“A universal translator brain implant.”

“You have something lodged in your head?”

“Yes. I have several bioengineered, enhanced features throughout my body. All soldiers do.”

“Enhancements, huh.” Jana’s mind went wild with possibilities as she ran her gaze from his head down to his big…thick…hard…platform boots. Then she forced her attention back to the road. “But how did you get access to the language?” She was a self-avowed intellectual geek; she loved asking questions to satisfy her curiosity. But now she asked as much to cling to sanity as to learn. Lose her anchor to reality, and she feared she’d dissolve into a useless, trembling puddle. “Do you know other languages, too?”

“Not
know
. Ability to access is a better description. Most of Earth’s dialects are available via my translator. Not all, because unfortunately, we were limited to those dialects we could harvest from the communications signals leaving the planet. Your TV, music and radio radiate out into space—think of a pebble dropped in a still pond. The Coalition captured the ripples.”

Again, intellectual fascination battled with a primal fear of something far more powerful than anything on Earth. “Say something in your language.”

He spoke a few words that reminded her of her mother’s Russian. It was a blessedly normal-sounding language, devoid of weird buzzing noises and the insect-like clicking sounds one would expect from an alien language, if one actually spent the time to ponder alien languages. She knew she never had. Until Cavin, Jana assumed the concept of aliens visiting Earth was the invention of really bored people with low-quality cameras living in remote parts of New Mexico and Nevada.

“It is the official language of the Coalition,” he said. “The queen’s tongue.”

It seemed very Buck Rogers to actually have a queen of the galaxy. “What’s she like?”

“Queen Keira? I saw her only once, at a distance during her coronation. She was very young. She’s a grown woman now, and said to be quite beautiful, but somehow she’s resisted taking a consort. She almost killed a man who tried to take her by force.”

You go, girl
. “Almost killed? Why didn’t she finish the job?”

“Once she had sliced off his male parts with her plasma sword, I suppose she felt that killing him at that point would have been considered an act of mercy. He lives on as a palace eunuch as a reminder for those suitors who would attempt to force themselves on the queen.”

Man trouble. Jana felt a certain kinship with the young queen. She wondered if Brace Bowie could benefit from similar treatment. “What did you say, by the way, when you spoke in your language?”

“Concentrate on your driving.”

She made a face at him and focused on the road ahead. Suddenly, the visibility shrank to fifty feet or less. Ahead was a solid, white blanket of fog. A bare minimum of reflector bumps kept her centered in the lane. “I can’t see. Help me out here.” Her foot came off the gas.

“No! Do not slow. Go…go right.
Right
.”

She swerved into the right lane—and moaned as they narrowly missed a late-model Volkswagen.

“Left!”

She veered left. Another car swept past in the fog. Focus on the reflector lights. Stay between the lines. She saw no more than a few car lengths ahead, and she must be going sixty or seventy, at least.
Concentrate. Stay between the lines
. Jana wanted to barf from nerves. All that held her back was the thought of soiling someone else’s car.

“Foot off the fuel pedal slightly,” Cavin said. “Now…right turn.”

She did as he said.

“Accelerate.”

As Cavin calmly issued directions, the Lexus wove in and out of the slower cars, making them look as if they were standing still. By now, they were almost to downtown Sacramento. The fog was even thicker here. She was driving almost completely blind. On the plus side, if she couldn’t see anyone then no one could see her. Except the assassin.

To calm herself, she counted backward from ten, found it too complicated and stopped.
Stay under the radar, keep a low profile
. Only hours ago she’d promised her grandfather exactly that. “Snow,” she whispered. “Virgin snow.”

“Snow?” Cavin peered outside into the fog. “It is forty-six-point-two of your degrees outside. That is too warm for the precipitation to freeze.”

Jana decided against an explanation. It was all she could do to concentrate on staying in her lane and pray this nightmare came to an end soon. “Where’s the assassin now?”

“He lost us, it seems.”

Jana shot him an outraged look. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because your local law enforcement vehicles have been redoubling their efforts to catch us.”

Her heart tumbled. “What?”

“Left—now!” Cavin shouted.

She swerved into the left lane, but not before she almost clipped a police car. By the time she managed a small scream, the police car’s flashing lights had disappeared in the fog.

“Cavin, we almost hit a police car!” An image of its two occupants’ startled faces burned in her mind.

“Exit here.”

“Why?” Jana asked even as she obeyed his order.

“The police have formed a roadblock ahead. They’ve an array of weapons aimed at us. And they’ve thrown spikes in the road that will tear apart these tires and cripple the vehicle.”

Jana’s stomach ached. Her head throbbed, and her throat was dry. “But the police will recognize this car. If the fog clears, we’re done.” And she’d get to explain it all during the arrest. Yet, even if she could talk her way out of any blame, how could she leave Cavin to take the fall? She couldn’t. He was Peter, first of all, and they shared some sort of bizarre bond that was as powerful now as it was decades ago. He looked too human for anyone to believe he was an alien, and the gee-whiz tech he had on him would only get the military involved, the FBI, CIA, DIA, DHS, too, and every other acronym-laden organization in existence. By morning, he’d be on his way to an undisclosed mental facility, where he’d “disappear” and she’d be on her way to the front page of the
Sacramento Sun
. The headline scrolled across the back of her eyes: Can We Trust Them? Jaspers Continue Downhill Slide. She grimaced.

“Here, Jana—stop!”

She fishtailed to a stop at the bottom of the entry ramp.

Several old cars were parked along a gritty street. Across the road was a bar with no name and a neon sign that said Cocktails. Fog drifted in cottony strands, muting the letters. “That one,” he said, pointing to an old Chevy decked out in green and purple iridescent paint.

Jana eyed their new target dispassionately. Her lack of upset over stealing another car was a testament to how shell-shocked she was.

Before abandoning the Lexus, she grabbed her purse and the sticky grocery bag. At the bottom of a puddle of thick melted ice cream and the little chocolate fish she’d never get to eat but no longer had the appetite for, she found the receipt and shoved it in her purse. Now the only evidence left behind would be a squishy Safeway bag and a container of Phish Food.

Cavin took her hand and they ran across the street. The pavement was cold, and her feet were freezing. A flick of his wrist and the Chevy’s door locks popped up. Jana slid behind a steering wheel molded to look like a thick, linked chain. The interior smelled like cigarettes. A statue of Mary sat on a square of red velvet on the dash.
Save me
. Jana crossed herself as Cavin started the motor. The Chevy roared to life with a deep rumbling that echoed down the quiet street. In seconds, shouting patrons swarmed out of the bar like angry bees.

All Jana saw was a blur of tattoos and black leather before she jammed her foot to the gas pedal so fast that Cavin had to grab hold of the dash to keep his balance. Up the entry ramp she raced, and onto the highway headed back to where they’d started.

“Left,” Cavin directed. As she veered onto the far left lane to go around a slower car, Jana thought of the Safeway near Evie’s house. Her Jeep waited for her there. Her little brown Jeep. The memory spurred a yearning so sharp that she almost burst into tears. But she needed to keep her wits about her. No crying. No falling apart. She was a respected politician, a state senator.

A state senator who had stolen three cars in one night.

Two involuntarily. One eagerly.

Heaven help her.

“No making headlines for anything but the bills you pass.”

Jana winced at the promises she’d given her grandfather. If this ended badly, how could she face him tomorrow? Or her father and brother for that matter?

She felt Cavin’s gaze on her. “You’re thinking,” he said.

“About my family. About my father fighting charges that he misreported the funds used to finance an election campaign. A lie, Cavin, a horrible lie. And I’m supposed to be helping by staying out of trouble. How am I doing, huh?”

He acted unhappy at the news. “I’ve seen your entire record of public accomplishments. You have achieved much. I am not surprised at all.”

“How do you know so much about me? My real name, my job?”

“The Coalition has collected data on Earth’s leadership. We know the identity of all leaders, and where to find them.”

The back of her neck prickled. “Even a state senator? A minor player in the grand scheme of things?”

“From tribal leaders to kings.”

Something told Jana the information wasn’t being gathered to put together a guest list for a tea party. The whole thing was starting to sound too much like
War of the Worlds
. Obviously, plans had been a long time in the making.

Maybe as long as
twenty-three
years ago. “You said your father was a scientist, that he brought you to Earth. What was he studying that he had to come all the way here?”

Cavin shifted in the seat. “His job was to investigate the suitability of your world for Coalition use,” he said a little awkwardly.

“Use,” she sneered. “Call it what it is—an invasion!”

“For what it’s worth, that’s the same thing I told my father.”

“How could you keep it from me? We played, we laughed together, and all the time you knew your people planned to invade Earth. Why did you let me believe you were magic?”

“Because I didn’t know a word of your language, Jana, and you didn’t know a word of mine. Why do you think I called you Squee?”

The soft and special way he said the word gave her a heart sensation she hadn’t felt since she was nine. “Where was your mother? Why didn’t she come?”

“She was dead.”

“Oh.” Jana slid lower in the seat. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t remember her. My father felt her absence more than I ever did. He buried himself in his work to compensate for her loss. I grew up independent, perhaps a little wild. I hated being cooped up so much on the long voyages that when we finally arrived at the next planet I’d stay outside as much as the conditions would allow. Then we came to one world populated by humans, and I saw an alien girl. She fascinated me.”

“Why?” she almost whispered.

“Because she was so full of life. She was so silent most of the time, then, when no one was around, she’d laugh. Laugh and dance.” He rotated his index finger. “Spinning around on her toes.”

Jana remembered that girl, too. She’d been gone a long time. With an unexpected sense of loss, she didn’t realize how much she’d missed her.

“I watched you for days while my father worked. One night I decided to fly up to the porthole of your dwelling to see where you went at night. I swooped in too low, tried to fly out of my error and got tangled in the tree.”

And the rest was history.

“I called you Peter,” she confessed. “After Peter Pan. He was a character in a children’s story. A magical boy who flew and never grew old.”