The Last Holidays

by Grover Young

  They could've just dropped a swarm of nano-machines on our small planet and had them disassemble the whole joint, lock stock and barrel. Then, they only had to rebuild it into whatever they liked. I suppose we should be grateful for whatever reason that prevented them from doing that. The Nano-tech bombardment thing was bad enough.

  However, the point here was... Mr. Alien had three flattened ostrich-egg shaped objects, morphers that looked an awful lot like the single example we'd managed to recover. It'd had been drained to almost uselessness, but still had been a treasure trove of information about how the Aliens' tech worked. Of course, we'd studied the hell out of it.

  I had that really bad feeling the movies talk about, even as I tried to talk myself out of it. He couldn't be the real thing, and besides, what possible reason would one of our invaders have for visiting a night club of all places on Halloween?

  Well for one, he wouldn't have to bother with a disguise tonight with everyone else in costume, my traitor brain answered. Additionally, all of their contact with us has been second hand, through video conferences. Maybe, if one wanted to study us first hand, this would be the perfect opportunity. After all, he might not get a second chance with humans being on the 'endangered' list.

  It was also worrying about considering that, if this joker was real, just how close he was to McDill AFB. It was one of our major command centers, which would make security shit bricks if my paranoia was correct. Our unfriendly Visitors had a habit of hitting places that unduly annoyed them with kinetic orbital bombardments.

  Just to be sure I looked around to make certain there was only one of them. Not that it mattered all that much. By dropping their robots from space, they could have a company sized element on the ground in minutes. That was assuming they didn't have stealth units already dirt-side. Although less heavily armed and armored, those things were hard as hell to detect entering the atmosphere.

  Logic suggested they were more difficult to build or perhaps some other limitation since we saw so few of them. Normally, when we did they were in groups of six, the number of fingers including the two opposable thumbs of our bellicose Guests.

  Immediately, I began trying to see his damn hands. He could have gloves on to make it look like he had an extra thumb, but even animatronics could only do so much. However, with the lousy lighting I couldn't even see his hands, much less make out how many fingers he had.

  “Earth to Craig!” Sheila laughed at my preoccupation, “Are you alright?”

  “I'm fine. Paranoid, but fine.” My eyes never left him.

  She followed my gaze.

  “Nice costume, even if it is in bad taste,” Sheila replied, but then stopped as she realized what I just said. “You can't seriously mean you think he might be the real thing!”

  Janet and Libby were chatting among themselves and didn't seem to notice what we were talking about. That was good. I didn't want to start a needless panic.

  “That's why I'm calling myself paranoid,” smiling, it never reached my eyes. Both my parents and my brother had died when our Visitors had dropped their 'bots on the Savannah River Site where the USA had once refined materials for nuclear weapons.

  Her face paled as she noticed all the same details I had, but I'd thought of something else.

  “If that is a costume,” She said low, just for me, “he certainly went to a lot of trouble to get the details right.”

  “I have to wonder why he's standing where he is.” Sighing, my bad feelings were pegging the meter, “It's not the best place to see the dance floor or the stage when the costume contest begins. That's not what I would expect from someone who put so much effort into a costume so he could win. You would think he would want to be seen.”

  “No, it's not.” Sheila followed my reasoning, “We picked this table because it has more privacy than most and is near the emergency exit.”

  “And he is in a good place to watch me,” I added, calmly.

  “Your Skins!” Enlightenment dawned on her like it had with me.

  “If he is the real thing, he could be picking up on them and my Q-Box, too.” My mouth was dry, but my taste for warm beer had long deserted me.

  “So,what do we do?” Sheila asked looking about at the packed club, “If something happens here, it'd be bad.”

  “I know.” This could turn into a bloodbath if Mr. Alien's morphers were real. A plasma burner would turn this place into a blazing charnel house.

  “Nothing,” I breathed out slowly, “anything we do might spook him, and that would be a bad thing. He wouldn't be here all by himself simply to crush, kill and destroy. He was also already present when I arrived, so he's not here for me, despite how he's watching us. It's possible he's their version of a xeno-anthropologist or something using Halloween as a chance to study us up close.

  “With McDill so close?” She spoke my own thoughts, “There's a whole lot of other places a lot less sensitive and safer if that was what he wanted. That is if he's a Tweety.”

  “Hey!” Dave, our Jar-head, back from the john, butted in, “what are you two so serious about? I thought we were here to party!”

  Sheila's glance at me said she agreed that he was seriously inebriated.

  “I always wanted to know,” he stated, drunkenly ignoring our unspoken communications, “why do you guys call yourself Pantheon? I get the whole 'like the Greek heroes and gods' thing, but couldn't you guys come up with anything better?”

  “Well,” I smiled, although personally I agreed with him, but like a lot of things I wasn't consulted, “nobody liked the Super-Friends, and Avengers had already been taken. Besides, no one messes with Disney's lawyers.”

  “Blood suckers!” He shot back. After being married four times, he had a very poor opinion of lawyers.

  “You called?” Paul asked, in a bad Bela Lugosi imitation while holding his cape up in mock menace.

  Dave glared at our vampire and turned back to his drink. He really wasn't this bad normally, but he was very drunk.

  “Hey, look!” Sheila nudged me.

  A Mentat from the last 'Dune' remake was approaching our Visitor. His makeup was very credible, and the huge bushy eyebrows only accented his surprised and shocked expression.

  I think we were just as astounded since they appeared to know each other. Okay by this point we had convinced ourselves we had the real thing as our Halloween Guest of dubious honor.

  “Maybe it is just a very clever costume,” Sheila voiced her doubts again.

  The idea of a collaborator, a traitor to the human race, made my stomach churn. However, there was something else about the Mentat that nagged me. It took me a second, because I knew him from somewhere.

  “The Away Team,” his face finally clicked. They were kind of a joke since their job was to build psychological profiles of the Aliens. The whole Intel shop called them the Away Team or the First Contact Team making fun of their nearly impossible mission of figuring out how Aliens think. Not that our job of predicting their military action was any easier, but we did have a few successes.

  However, if anyone at McDill had direct contact with our Visitors, it would be someone from there.

  “It could still be a costume,” Sheila said, without any conviction.

  “Huh, guys,” Paul interrupted, “I don't think that's a disguise.”

  “How so?” I asked him curious, playing devil's advocate, “They're only two guys at a party, right?”

  “Feet,” he inclined his head at their subject of interest's lower extremities.

  As one, Sheila and I stared into the so very hard to see shadows. As difficult as it was to make out, the long split toes were visible. Perhaps there was a way to fake an effect that looked like that, but damn if I knew what it was.

  “How did you know?” Sheila asked Paul, beating me to the punch.

  “That detail has never been released to the public,” he replied, “No one knew until we got lucky and nailed that one Tweety. There wasn't much left to autopsy, but one foot was mo
re or less in one piece. We don't even know which foot it was, but my… did they analyze the living crap out of it.”

  “So at the very least, someone has broken security, releasing classified information,” Sheila was wearing her official Staff Sergeant hat, “and at the worst, we have an active incursion.”

  “That sounds about right,” I agreed, trying to see some way out of this mess, “Might I suggest sending the rest of our group out for reinforcements while we keep our objective under observation?”

  She looked at our group. Sure they were well lubricated, but they were also sharp people. Janet was looking scared, and Libby wasn't a lot better, although I was pretty sure I could credit the alcohol with that. Seeing how she'd been hanging with Dave, it was a miracle she could still walk.

  “That sounds like a plan to me,” Sheila handed Paul her keys, “Don't you dare wreck it!” she warned. With all the industrial production going to the war effort, replacing or even repairing a civvy vehicle was nearly impossible these days, much less her pride and joy.

  “Tell them your token Pantheon guy ID'ed the suspect,” I sighed. If this fell through and it was really a human somehow in that getup, then the rest of them would be covered, “I'm in the doghouse already. If we're wrong, you won't get splashed by the fallout.”

  “Feel free to mention the feet thing too,” I added, “I'm not trying to take your credit, Paul. That was a good call. I'm just trying to cover you guys.”

  “I know,” he grinned at me, “Try not to start the festivities before we get back. You Pantheon guys have a rep for being crazy!”

  “Why do you think I'm here on a medical?” I returned his grin, “I was too sane!”

  That got a nervous laugh out of them. They knew the score. These days, signing up for Special Forces was the same as the short list for very risky missions. On the other hand, I saw it as a desperate chance to not end up on the same list as the Dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger. Now, if only I could keep from freaking out long enough, I could charge the enemy guns in a glorious but final testimonial that we would not go calmly into the night.

  “I think I'm ready for a little action,” Paul waggled his brows at Janet, “You ready to find some privacy?”

  Some of her nervousness disappeared as she understood that was to be their excuse for leaving early.

  “How about you drop these two back at the base?” Sheila nodded at Dave and Libby, “I think they've had a little too much celebration.”

  Dave was so out of it, I don't think he was very aware of what was going on, but Libby caught on.

  “Come on lover,” she teased him, “we got places to go.”

  “We do?” He slurred. It was a good thing he was enhanced or otherwise he'd be on his way to a hospital for alcohol poisoning, given how much he'd drank.

  “Yes, we do.” She helped him up.

  We ended up helping take him to the door and waiting as Paul brought Sheila's car around. Her Caddie was one of the last Deville’s the company produced and she babied it like it was her own child.

  “Okay,” she sighed, “the messengers are on their way. All we have to do now is wait for the cavalry.”

  “And hope nothing goes wrong,” I added, hoping our Visitor would be long gone before any 'reinforcements' arrived.

  “Ditto!” She grabbed my hand as we headed back into the warmth.

  Taking a deep breath, I took off my oversized sweater and gave it to her. Shivering, Sheila gratefully accepted as she tried to get warm again.

  That of course left me in my fully exposed uniform that was in its default color of black. Pockets were impractical for Skins since that would compromise how the protection worked, but the lack was filled by what everyone called our Batman's belts. It was just a wide belt with pouches to make up for that lack as well as holding my Q-Box, but for me it only served to highlight my round tubby shape. Taking my gloves from a pouch, I put them on leaving off only the hood hidden in the collar.

  As embarrassing as it was, the overweight guy was in uniform. I had lost an enormous amount of fat from around my middle since all of this had begun, but no matter how much I'd improved, Skins showed each and every flaw in marvelous detail. In truth, I'd been the oldest candidate accepted by Project Prometheus and that was only because they really didn't expect me to manifest. Perhaps because it was the first mass test and they were curious about the effect on someone older. I'd once held a high security clearance and had kept my nose clean since then. That'd been good enough.

  The facade of the Parthenon's classic Greek Doric architecture was the unit patch of the Pantheon Teams and rode on my shoulder. The other insignia were all adapted from regular military informs to fit on Skins.

  Two big differences were one, instead of a regular name tag, a stylized gold and blue kingfisher was upon my upper right breast, Halcyon. Two, on my left breast where you usually found qualification badges such as 'jump' wings or the Combat Infantryman Badge, was a circular device with a hand holding stylized flames, Prometheus.

  Halcyon, my code name, wasn't a perfect match for the facts, but that was the moniker that had gotten approved by the convoluted military bureaucratic and political deal brokering. What this all did was make me appear even more ridiculous because of just how little I looked anything like a elite lean and mean soldier.

  “Well, that wasn't hard,” Sheila had kept my hand as we looked for our quarry.

  “Nope,” I replied, wondering at the irony again.

  The Mentat and Visitor had moved to the very table we'd recently vacated. In the somewhat better light, I was certain that, one, Tweety was a real live alien invader, and two, he was here specifiably to meet with the Mentat.

  “You know,” Sheila did her best to channel her inner secret agent despite her Tinkerbell outfit, “I don't think Mr. Bushy-Eyebrows was expecting his friend to show up tonight.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” Moving around I tried to get a good view as well without being painfully obvious I was watching them, “You know if anyone has a direct line to them, it's the Away Team. Not that it’s done us much good, since they're still dropping kinetic strikes and robots on our asses, but talk is taking place.”

  “You're thinking this Tweety may have decided to pull a surprise on his First Contact Team pen pal?” Sheila asked, pulling my sweater down so low it nearly made a skirt for her.

  “Yeah,” nodding, I thought over my idea looking for errors, “perhaps this is relatively innocent.”

  “As innocent as meeting a representative of an alien race that wants to kick us off of our own planet can be,” Sheila smiled, at the irony.

  It was nice that I wasn't the only one that was being smacked around by fate's debatable sense of wit and humor.

  “You know, there are those who fear that they have a worse fate in mind for us.” Giving her a grim smile, I explained, “If they just wanted to kill us off, they have had the chance. Just their kinetic bombardments have brought on a nuclear winter, and unless someone pulls one hell of a rabbit out of their ass, there are going to be a whole lot less people around this time next year.”

  I didn't mention the mass starvation that would be the cause. We both knew the score and didn't want or need to talk about it.

  “So slaves or some kind of lobotomized servants?” her nose winkled in distaste. Sheila lived through the difficult Civil Rights years, and even if she wasn't a minority, she had strong feelings about it.

  “That's where some of the theories go.” I nodded, “Others are saying that the reason they haven't wiped us out yet is that they want us to fight back and advance our tech level to nearer theirs. They do appear to be strangely selective as to what they destroy and what they leave alone. Look at how most the large cities haven't been touched. Why do the work when we can do it for them? After they finish us off, all they have to do is move in.”

  “That's a depressing thought,” She winced, “However, that isn't going to stop me from kicking their feathered butts back where they c
ame from.”

  “I'm almost of two minds about this,” I thought out loud, “If one of them is getting closer to understanding us, then that might be a good thing. On the other hand, it could be bad too if they get better at knowing how to hurt us.”

  “That is an idea,” She replied, “This one has proved himself a maverick just by being here. Like you said, that could be good or bad. There is no way to be sure.

  “You know,” she changed the subject, “that we're going to catch hell no matter what happens? Some will say you needed to press your Q-thingie button and beat the snot out of him the moment you saw him.”

  “I know,” I nodded, “This just might be the ticket that gets me sent on that suicide mission I've been expecting. However, the last time we knowingly took on a Visitor personally, it took a complete Pantheon Team plus an entire armor brigade. That Alien foot from Paul's autopsy cost the lives of three-quarters of that Team, and for all practical purposes destroyed that Army unit.”

  The causalities from that alone ran into the hundreds if not the thousands. The enemy robots and drones were deadly effective. Those soldiers had given their all so that the Pantheon Team could have their shot.

  What the enemy forces didn't kill, the kinetic strike afterward finished. Our adversaries didn't like to lose and had learned the hard way it was a bad idea to let us get our grimy monkey-boy paws on any of their tech. Of course, that only made us a lot better at not getting caught.

  “I will bet that, at the very least, he has a security detail of stealth robots nearby.” Sighing, I couldn't help but look at all the happy oblivious people and wonder how many were going to be alive by this time tomorrow, “His morphers give him the tools to cut me into little tiny bits, and I'm essentially untrained since I freak out every time I try and change.”

  “What about all that martial arts stuff you've been taking?” She asked, moving closer.

  “I know that the other me,” explaining helped distract me from how she made me feel, “is very strong, so I'm doing my best to play to that strength, pardon the pun. Power arts like karate and boxing help me learn how to focus my attacks and how to throw a proper punch. If you can get close enough, their hand to hand programming isn't that good, and you can kick some serious 'bot tin butt.”