by Logan Jacobs
I realized that we were still in our disguises for Earth. Nobody here knew that I was Marc Havak, Earth’s Champion and highly qualified good guy, foe of the Skalle Furia, and rescuer of the First Family. To them, we were just strangers willing to kill.
Before I could say anything to reassure the scared woman, the plate-glass window on our left shattered, and the wallet on the floor exploded in a burst of black leather and green paper.
I ducked under the table and saw my Alliance and my father with me, ready to crawl. Only Olivia remained standing.
“Remain calm, and you may get out of this alive,” Olivia said to the civilians in a calm tone. “We’re not shooting at you, but they are shooting at us.” She gestured to our squad to indicate. Her confident charisma and the calm authority in her voice was starting to get through to the terrified civilians. “I’m going to need someone with a geolocation device on their communication unit to first mute their phone, then use it to contact whatever law enforcement authorities you have.”
One man hadn’t gotten out of the big leather Eames chair in the corner. He seemed frozen, tiny espresso cup doll-like in his big fist raised halfway to his lips. The espresso cup shattered in his fingers. He blinked, so at least he was still alive, but I couldn’t tell if it was a bullet or if he’d just squeezed the crockery to death.
“Cover your ears,” Tempest told everyone casually. She raised her own Glock and squeezed a round out of the shattered window, and a fuschia body fell out of an arched window and added its own dead pink star to the Walk of Fame.
The speakers crackled like an old-fashioned record player switching tracks. Danny Elfman had his fill of the Solar System’s finest California Girls, so Jello Biafra came in over East Bay Ray’s jagged intro riff to warn us about the Zen fascists who would force us all to jog. It didn’t help the mood any. A bullet struck the table by Tempest’s head.
“Fuck a duck!” she exclaimed, and two hot pink corpses joined their skull-masked brethren as a pile of pink on the street. “I did not need splinters today. That’s gonna sting for hours.”
Tiny espresso cup guy slumped over in his chair. I wasn’t sure if he’d been shot or if he just had a heart attack until a patch of red eradicated the alligator on his pink polo shirt. The Skalle must have had silencers. At least Tempest had been able to spot them so far.
Another bullet smashed the complicated tangle of pipes that was still circulating someone’s hot java, sending glass shards and boiling coffee spraying everywhere. We had to get out of here, we were drawing too much fire and were sitting ducks in a killbox. “Tempest, anyone left in that shooting gallery?”
Tempest answered with three more shots, and three more Skalle fell like stockbrokers on Black Friday. Which would have made it Fuschia Friday. “Not anymore.”
The familiar sound of a phone dialing a number sounded from the front of the shop. Someone had followed Olivia’s orders about calling 911, but only halfway. I knew it was going to happen and I knew I couldn’t do anything about it, but there was another shot and another scream.
“That one came from the front,” PoLarr said. “They’re probably stationed across the street. Get out to the left, draw fire away.”
Tempest and PoLarr led. Nova grabbed one of the tables and held it out in front of them as a shield. It probably wouldn’t stop the Skalle bullets entirely, but it would slow them down and make it harder to aim at our bodies, so I grabbed the other table and used it to shield Aurora. I heard a chair scrape against the concrete floor, which I hoped meant that Thomas and Olivia had done the same.
Nova, Tempest, and PoLarr swung into action as though they’d choreographed it just for this situation. PoLarr drew both 1911s and danced between the lampposts on the corner, making an irresistible target for the terrorists. I thought I even saw her moonwalk as she traded shot for shot with the Skalle snipers. Tempest hunkered down behind Nova’s makeshift shield to give herself time to line up her shots. Every time she squeezed the trigger, another Skalle bit the dust.
I glanced to the right to assess the sniper situation. Someone had pushed the doors of the coffee shop open, and people were filing out quietly. Mr. Turtleneck was helping a girl in a sundress over the planters where he’d tripped. It looked like we’d done the job of drawing the Skalle’s fire, but now we had to get out of there and make our way to Nakatomi Plaza.
“Fuck a fuckin’ kangaroo!” There was a hole in the battered table and a hole in Tempest’s right arm. She dropped to one knee and hissed as she clutched her bicep. “Gang bang an orangutan, that hurts, I hate getting shot...”
“Shit, are you okay?” I asked,
“Yeah, it just grazed me,” she answered through gritted teeth. “And pissed me off.”
I followed the trajectory of the shot. It looked like it had traveled diagonally, so I swung my Glock to the sniper on the curved roof of the building across the street on the left, but he fell before I could even pull the trigger because Nova had already blown him away with her Desert Eagle.
PoLarr stopped peacocking. It was like watching Childish Gambino drop the beat with a gun in “This is America,” if you knew how to look for the telltale rhythms of the art of Ar’Gwyn. She extended her arm and squeezed off a quartet of perfect shots. They were answered by four perfect thuds.
The street fell silent. Even the sad hoopties whose owners either couldn’t afford or didn’t care to outfit them with hover-converters seemed to muffle their endless rumbling. A scared voice broke the silence. “Are we safe?”
“Keep evacuating,” Olivia barked. “Just because they’ve stopped firing doesn’t mean there aren’t any more of them.”
“I need a smartphone!” I yelled.
I didn’t see it happen through the crowd of exiting patrons, but someone must have crouched down and sacrificed their iPhone to us, because it came skipping over the floor like a stone over a still pond. It glanced off a chair leg, spun off a table leg, and came to rest a few feet from my Doc Martens. I grabbed the phone, quickly input the Fox Plaza into the mapping app, and got us directions.
PoLarr expertly prodded the area around Tempest’s wound. Cobalt blood seeped from Tempest’s emerald green muscle tissue, and I felt my stomach drop.
“I don’t feel any shrapnel,” the blonde woman said to Tempest. “Can you stand?”
“I got shot in the arm, not in the leg,” Tempest groused.
“She’s worried about shock, sugar,” Aurora put in.
“Shock schmock.” Tempest didn’t seem to mind PoLarr’s hands on her arm, even though the prodding must have hurt.
“I need a tourniquet,” PoLarr said.
Nova popped off the bottom two buttons of her shirt and exposed her well-muscled midriff. The fabric tore like tissue paper under her fingers. She ripped a neat strip from the bottom of her shirt and handed it to PoLarr, who wrapped it expertly just under Tempest’s shoulder, far enough above the bullet wound to stop the blood flow.
“Time to exit...” I checked the iPhone. “Stage right.”
“So, left?” Thomas asked.
“No, just right, but we’re in Hollywood, so I said stage right. It was a joke. Maybe not a great one.”
“So not stage right. Regular right.” Thomas pointed right. “Just so we’re making sure.”
“Why you gotta bust my chops, Da--Thomas?” I asked.
Thomas took a deep breath. “Look, I’m not used to how you communicate yet, I just met you. Are we going right or not?”
“We are going west,” I said definitively. “West, like in the Tom Petty song, except it’s not Ventura, it is Hollywood motherfucking Boulevard. It is the direction of the setting sun, and it is that way.” I pointed in the direction that the map’s application told me to go. It happened to be left. “Ticking clock. Please.”
I moved out first with PoLarr at my side and Aurora behind me. Nova covered Tempest, although our turquoise-skinned sniper insisted she was near enough to perfectly adept in her left arm as to make no d
ifference. Thomas and Olivia brought up the rear. We managed to make it past the wreckage of the coffee shop and were in front of the tacky souvenir shop next door when a previously unassuming SUV opened all of its doors at once and vomited out even more Skalle Furia.
Everyone cocked their guns in unison, and our eyes met the blank eye sockets of familiar alien skulls.
The wind whipping through the valley whistled an Enrico Morricone tune that resolved into a familiar woop-woop. It was the sound of the police.
Chapter Eleven
My numerous victories had given all of Earth’s police departments the kind of weapons and armor that only sci-fi writers could dream about, so I wasn’t that surprised to see that the Los Angeles Police Department’s officers looked exactly like Robocop. We were surrounded by exaggerated chrome breastplates, and rounded helmets with dark slitted visors, all emblazoned with the LAPD logo. Police cruisers hung like cherry-topped jelly beans in the sky, each attended by a swarm of drones bristling with camera lenses and gun barrels.
I’d had precious few positive experiences with cops over the years. As a long-haul trucker, I’d racked up more than a few speeding tickets, some decidedly deserved and some not, but the appearance of blue and red lights in my rearview mirror had always meant that I’d be even harder pressed to get my cargo in on time. Recently, I’d started to associate those familiar lights and sirens with the imminent confiscation of my precious, delicious donuts. Sex with Olivia didn’t count, because it hadn’t involved lights, sirens, and cuffs.
Yet.
But right now it was as welcome as the trumpet of a cavalry charge in the kind of movie where a white hat unironically indicates a good guy.
“Los Angeles Police! Drop your weapons!” boomed the Peter Weller-sounding voice over mounted loudspeakers.
The Skalle turned, almost as one, and a shot rang out. I didn’t see who pulled the trigger and I didn’t see who it might have hit, but it was the cue for all hell to break loose. The Skalle opened fire on the cops and spent cases rung off the ground like a wind chime dropping. At least they had stopped focusing on us.
The Robocops returned fire, and soon the street was a hail of bullets that no longer had anything to do with us. Nearly all the bullets were west to east, but stray bullets were already ricocheting off super-advanced alien alloys and chipping shards from blocks of old stone.
“Change of plans, we’re going south?” I shouted over the bullets. “Aurora, can you give us a quick shield until we get out of the line of fire?”
“Sure can, sugar.” Aurora flung up a purple shield in front of us and tossed another helping around a group of fanny-pack-laden tourists who had just wandered into the whole situation.
“Hey, is this a movie set?” one of them asked.
“It’s a real fucking shooting, get your asses out of the line of fire!” Thomas barked.
“You’re so gruff,” another one enthused. “Can I get a selfie with you?”
“Whatever that is, no.”
We Abbey Roaded across Hollywood Boulevard under Aurora’s dark matter force field and left the Skalle and cops to mow each other down. That particular batch of Skalle Furia was a problem for the boys, girls, and nonbinary individuals in blue, who would hopefully slow them down in time for us to get a head start to Nakatomi Plaza. I was definitely never going to call it by its real name, at least not to myself.
A cop car pulled into the road ahead of us and stopped at the intersection. The narrow side road was only two lanes wide, so the car pretty much blocked off the entire intersection.
Two cops got out of the car. One of them had a bunch of traffic cones under his arm. His head slowly rotated like a lazy owl’s as he placed traffic cones around the car. The other, shorter cop faced down the street and put his hand on his gun.
“Fuck, that’s the last thing we need,” Tempest muttered. “More cops.”
“There’s only two of them,” Aurora observed. “We may not be able to sneak past them, but we can sneak up on them and take them by surprise.”
“Can we move killing cops down to Plan B?” I asked.
“Or even down to Plan C or D, please,” Olivia said. “They’re just blocking off the street right now. We need to get past them as quickly and easily as possible. Guns should be our absolute last resort for these guys.”
“We’re not going to pass for civilians with all this hardware on us,” Thomas said.
“Oh, I know,” Olivia replied. “Leave it to me and follow my lead.” She holstered her shotgun and began to power-walk up the sidewalk.
I holstered my weapons and followed her up to the cops.
“Saw you coming from that shootout back there,” the shorter one said gruffly. “I’m going to need to see everyone’s ID.”
“We noticed that one of your party was injured in the fight,” the taller one said, in smooth and modulated tones that made me think he might actually have been an android. “Can we offer assistance? A ride to a medical facility?”
“Okay, fellas, this good-cop bad-cop routine is just sad. I’ve seen better from my little brother’s improv group.” Olivia casually fished around in her cleavage and produced her badge.
“Ohhh, uhhh badge?” One of the cops asked like an idiot. Even through his helmet, I could tell that the shorter cop was staring. I was staring, too.
“This is an undercover mission across jurisdictional lines,” Oliva continued. “Those were terrorists back there, and our cover has just been blown in a really bad way. If you’re going to help, get as many units as possible to Fox Plaza for a terrorist kidnapping and hostage situation, or get the fuck back in there and protect those tourists like you’re paid to do.”
“Um, um, yes ma’am,” stuttered the short cop. “C’mon, Daneel, let’s let these folks do their thing. We need to alert the Chief about the situation at Fox Plaza.”
“Should we not ask more detailed questions and take them into custody, partner Baley?” Daneel asked.
“Listen to the nice blue lady, buddy,” Baley said as he steered his partner away from us, but as soon as they had made it a few steps away, he glanced back over his shoulder for one last look at Olivia. “She knows what she’s talking about.”
“Okay, we have to get southwest to the Avenue of the Stars.” I checked the iPhone again after the cops had left. “It’s only seven miles. We can do this.”
“Through Los Angeles traffic?” Thomas asked skeptically.
“Won’t be a problem if we’re on foot.”
“This isn’t Falling Down, we can’t just walk across Los Angeles in time for--” Thomas broke himself off. “We need to hail a cab.”
“I was thinking we could get an Uber,” I said as I checked the iPhone’s apps. “Or a Lyft. Lyft’s already installed.” It even had an option for a flying or non-flying car, very deluxe.
“Can’t we just jack something?” Tempest scratched at her arm. It looked like it was already healing. “Or is that against anyone’s moral code at the moment?”
“We really don’t need to draw more police attention to what we’re doing instead of what the Skalle are doing,” Olivia said.
“I’m not hearing a no,” Tempest pointed out.
“So we ‘jack’ a vehicle, but we do it discreetly and in a way which will not draw police attention?” Nova asked.
“It can be done,” PoLarr said. “Find something parked, and either very fast or… oh, oh, yes. Perfect.”
“Nice catch,” I said as I followed her line of sight to an armored Garda truck.
“Occasionally your memories come in handy,” PoLarr admitted.
“Why don’t a couple of you ladies distract the driver?” Thomas suggested. “Everyone else, come with me around the back. Let’s crack this thing open.”
Aurora sauntered toward the front of the car. “Who wants to help me give ‘em a show?”
Nova linked her arm through Tempest’s. She positioned herself so that Tempest’s arm wound wasn’t even visible. They l
ooked like two Valley girls just out for a casual day of shopping together. I would have liked to watch them in action, but I had a plasma torch in my pocket that was calling the armored truck’s name.
Olivia and PoLarr stood between Thomas and the street with their backs to him. They looked casually bored, but I knew they were scanning the street for enemy combatants while shielding him from suspicion.
“Got your back,” I said. I handed my father the plasma torch. “I don’t know what you were planning on using to pop that truck open, but this might make it go faster. Want me to show you how it works?”
“Seems pretty intuitive,” Thomas replied and then flicked on the torch. A jet of white-hot plasma sprang forth. The paint didn’t even have time to blister before the metal melted away under the force of the torch’s fire. “Nice.” It only took a few seconds under his steady hand before the door swung open.
The truck was filled with stacks and stacks of rubber-banded dollar bills. It was the kind of sight that might have been too tempting to resist if I’d been a trucker back on Earth making just enough to pay for my Red Vines and Mr. Pibb, but now I was rich enough that I honestly didn’t care how much money I actually had. I leapt up into the truck, helped the ladies up, and extended a hand to Thomas.
“Thanks anyway, but I’m not that decrepit yet.” Thomas grinned and clambered in without my help.
“And we’re chopped liver?” PoLarr shot back.
“Nah, my kid’s just managed to absorb the concept of chivalry.”
Olivia gave him a strange look. “Horse handling? Is that translating right?”
“It’s ‘knights in shining armor’,” PoLarr explained. “Damsels in distress. The knights are...pretty much always men?”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Nova said. “Why would you restrict the warrior class to only one gender? It’s a waste of resources. People would come to resent their station.”
“Earth hasn’t had a great past with that,” I admitted. “But we’re getting better. Anyway, they’re not always men. There’s Brienne of Tarth.”