by Chloe Garner
“There are peaceful species in the world who have never heard of guns,” Jesse said. There were footsteps outside and Cassie glowered, dark.
“First, they have sticks instead of guns, and second, they’re only peaceful because men with guns say that men like the Lumps and the Wob-wob can’t come take them over. If we don’t prove we can defend ourselves, they’re just going to keep coming.”
“Be more clever than that,” Jesse said. “You aren’t a Lump. Or a Wob-wob. You’re Palta. And you can do better.”
She swallowed.
“I’ll leave the humans alive,” she said, her tone very firm and very flat now. No more conversation. “But I’m not just Palta. And this is something I have to do.”
There was a long, stony moment between Cassie and Jesse, then Jesse nodded.
“All right, Major. Let’s get you out of the crossfire so the not just a Palta can do what she has to do.”
Troy frowned, but didn’t get any more time to consider before Jesse put his hand out onto Troy’s shoulder.
And then they were in his office on base in Kansas.
*********
Cassie closed her eyes, forming a core knowledge and awareness of everything in the building around her. The floor in Jesse’s cell didn’t resonate quite the same way as it did in hers, but she could count everyone out.
And the Wob-wob was upstairs.
She tapped her foot on the floor, listening to the acoustics of it, then nodded, putting the gun away and moving to the doorway, putting her hands on either side of the wall and tapping them. The men were talking to each other, but it had an odd behavior to it, a pause between talking and the next man answering, an odd volume. They were using hearing protection to make sure that she couldn’t interfere with them acoustically.
She shook her head.
They were going to keep coming after her until she killed them or removed their financial incentive to pursue her.
Which meant that that was the next step.
She looked at the ceiling, feeling around for how thick it was, and calculating the distance to the garage floor, then she jumped, landing a few feet away from the first SUV Troy had mentioned.
She drew her gun again, listening through the floor to the people moving around.
They could see her. The Lumps could. They wouldn’t know the whole story of what had happened, because they couldn’t see Troy, but the security equipment was human, and the video would see her.
The room to her far right radiated heat and energy; lots of equipment doing lots of work. Downstairs, a foreign terrestrial technician was still trying to get the generator up, a last-ditch effort to contain her that he was probably completely ignorant of.
Both Lumps were in the control room, but they were coming toward her at a run. The Wob-Wob was in the room at her far left, waiting to see what happened.
The problem with anti-matter guns wasn’t one of technology. Yeah, it was a couple of centuries past human technology, but once you got the hang of splitting matter from antimatter in a vacuum - and you got the hang of generating that much power - the challenge of the weaponry was one of mass. An anti-matter tank could have a weapons feed that would allow it to shoot constantly, but a gun this size had to eject mass at the rate that it was creating antimatter, and creating the mechanism to do that was hardly trivial. Depending on how good a job Violet had done at modifying Troy’s gun, it might be that Cassie would only get a shot a second, and it might be that she only got five or six shots total. The gun did have a shell-casing eject, and she could see that it was still functional, but there was so much mass of air between herself and the walls, the Lumps about to leave their control room.
She had to get rid of all of it, and fast enough that the resulting vacuum wouldn’t collapse and create a new wall to get through.
Cassie didn’t have to wonder how much experience Violet had with antimatter weaponry, though.
The male lump’s gun was anti-matter.
The only thing Cassie wondered was how good a mod job Violet had done.
Taking her shot while she had it, Cassie leveled the gun and pointed it at the wall, pulling the trigger.
Anti-lead tore through the air and a lead bullet popped out of the chamber, clattering onto the floor as Cassie pulled the trigger again, the second bullet making it all the way to the wall and eating some of the cement there before it exhausted itself. The third shot went through.
She could have wished for an antimatter beam rather than the individual shots, but it wasn’t going to exhaust itself, at least, so long as it maintained its energy link to whatever Violet was using to power it.
The Lumps came out of the office, leveling guns at her and shooting.
They were a lot further away, but they also had slightly larger guns, larger caliber bullets, as it were, and Cassie moved, getting more air between herself and the Lumps and less between herself and the Wob-wob.
She put another hole in the wall.
He opened the door, giving her a once-over look, then turned to the Lumps.
“Can you or can you not control this problem?” he asked. The man was mostly just a pair of legs. Cassie understood that they’d started existence as sea creatures, but they’d formed a protective mucus that let them survive in almost any atmosphere, so long as they went home often enough.
Bullets wouldn’t kill him, anti-matter or otherwise, and he knew it.
The Lumps kept shooting, and one of the bullets hit Cassie in the side, creating a void inside her that collapsed and bled, organs pierced.
It was going to take a lot more than that to kill her, but a handful of them could put her down enough to let them catch her. She had to be quick.
She took out the key block that Troy had been using. The mass wasn’t right. It was too big, for what Troy said it could do. Even adding a few more functions, it was too heavy.
She took a guess and sent it skipping across the cement floor toward the Wob-wob.
“Your Caladais says hello,” she said as the device opened at the Wob-wob’s feet, emitting a bright white light that Cassie recognized as simple background noise to the real payload of the box: a microwave explosion that cooked the Wob-wob’s protective slime instantaneously. It fell away in dry sheets and it appeared that he tried to trigger a jump, but the microwaves had damaged enough of his body that it didn’t work. Cassie couldn’t tell if it was because his electronics failed him under the massive barrage, or if it was that his muscle tissue was cooked.
Both might have been true.
Even at this distance, Cassie could feel the uniform damage throughout her body that was going to take days to repair.
The Wob-wob took a step, then buckled in a curling kind of motion toward the floor and landed, still.
He was suffocating.
That would be what would kill him.
She looked at the Lumps, then slowly walked across the warehouse floor, feeling the footsteps from down below as men changed their target. She didn’t have more than maybe a minute.
She shot the Wob-wob in the head three times with the anti-matter gun, then tucked it into her slacks, behind her back, and turned to face the Lumps. Both of them raised their guns, but they didn’t pull the trigger again.
“Not all Lumps are monsters,” she said. “You aren’t all mobsters or thieves or raiders. You have a son. Is this really what you want for him?”
She stopped moving, looking from one to the other of the Lumps.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “He got a second chance. Jesse let him go. I’m not giving him a third. But you two, I will give a second chance. Leave. Never, ever come back. Tell everyone you know who’s in the same business as yourselves what happened here. That Earth has not one but two Palta watching over it. Do better for your son. If you ever come back, he will be an orphan, and then he will be dead, because you know and I know that he wouldn’t let it go.”
She tipped her head forward.
“If it were just me, I’d k
ill you. But the man you tortured and held as leverage? He didn’t want you to die. You tell me if that’s mercy or weakness.”
She looked back at the Wob-wob’s body once more, then triggered a point-to-point transfer.
It was done.
*********
It was still dark outside.
He needed to call Bridgette.
He had no idea what he was going to tell her.
Jesse sat down on the couch in Troy’s office, turning on a lamp and stretching his arms across the back of the couch.
“Looked bad,” Troy said. “You okay?”
“I will be,” Jesse said. “You?”
Troy looked at his hands.
They were still.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
Jesse smiled.
“They replaced Donovan with a foreign terrestrial,” Troy said. “I think the general is dead.”
“Cassie’ll take care of it,” Jesse said, siding down into a slouch. “We found the bad guys. Everyone else is just taking orders.”
“I thought they would just kill you,” Troy said. “Major White is dead. Why did they let you live?” Troy asked. “I can’t see any upside to it.”
Jesse gave him a tired smile.
“Hubris. They wanted to use Cassie, and they wanted to use me against her. Thought they could. Palta are valuable. It happens a lot, that someone refuses to destroy us when it’s in their best interest.”
“Lucky,” Troy said, exhaustion settling hard on him as the adrenalin wore off.
“Downside is that everyone’s always after us to make us do stuff,” Jesse said. “You keep food in your desk?”
“Yes,” Troy said, “but this isn’t my desk.”
Jesse grinned.
“Things’ll start opening up soon,” he said. Troy nodded. Early morning was active, around base.
“You should probably take me back to my car,” Troy said. “I shouldn’t just leave it there, and people shouldn’t find out that you can do… this.”
“Cassie told me to take you someplace safe,” Jesse said. “This is the only place on the planet outside of my apartment, where I have a point-to-point return active.”
Troy frowned.
“You put defenses on my office?”
“Before I left,” Jesse said. “It’s not much, but it’s a warning when something goes wrong. Gives you a few seconds before they’re physically taking down your door.”
“They can track us?” Troy asked. Jesse nodded, rubbing his nose with his fingertips, then settling lower on the couch again.
“Yeah, but there are only two possible outcomes, from here. One, Cassie takes care of it and it’s done, and it doesn’t matter, or, two, they kill her and Earth becomes a Lump possession and the Wob-wob brings in people hiding from various authorities and gives them land grants.”
Troy was taken aback.
“What?”
Jesse sighed and nodded.
“Two outcomes.”
“Those are a long way apart,” Troy said.
“A Palta makes the big a difference,” Jesse said.
“I’d keep fighting them,” Troy said.
“You’d lose.”
“You’d keep fighting them,” Troy said. “So would Violet.”
“I can’t do it again,” Jesse said, leaving his hand across his eyes. “I can’t lose the only person I’ve got left and just… go on like nothing changed. If they kill her, I’ll leave, and I’m not going to leave Violet here on her own.”
Troy thought about this.
“Seriously?” he asked. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” Jesse said. “I would be sad. But I can’t do it again.”
Troy nodded.
“I wouldn’t forgive you, but I’d understand.”
“Are you being melodramatic again?” Cassie asked. Troy turned to look over his shoulder at her, and she winked.
“I’m tired, Cassie,” Jesse said. “I need food and rest.”
“I do, too,” Cassie said. “Microwaves will take the stuffing out of you.”
“Microwaves?” Jesse asked, then sat up. “That’s how she…? Wow.”
Troy heard Cassie grin.
“She’s amazing.”
“Blanks guys,” Troy said. “You’re leaving blanks.”
“They don’t matter,” Cassie said. “It’s over.”
“You killed the Lumps?” Troy asked. Jesse let his hand drop, sitting up to see her answer.
“They have a son,” Cassie said. “If they are parents at all, they’ll take him someplace and pick a new life. So long as it isn’t here, I don’t care, today.”
“You didn’t kill them,” Jesse said.
“The Wob-wob had to die,” Cassie said. “But… I don’t have to understand, but I’m willing to try your way, as far as it goes.”
Jesse smiled, laying his head back on the couch again.
“What are they going to find, when backup gets there?” Troy asked. “Andrews is sending men.”
“The FBI will be there in less than an hour,” Cassie said. “And they’re going to find a dead foreign terrestrial and a bunch of tech that they don’t have the slightest clue how to make sense of it.”
Troy shook his head.
“How are we going to explain all of this?” he asked.
Cassie scratched the back of her head.
“I’ll go back with you. Verify that the Lumps are gone. After that? I think it’s the next commander’s problem.”
“It was my job to clean up the mess,” Troy said. “It isn’t done, yet.”
She shook her head.
“It is. They just don’t know it, yet.”
“How?” Troy asked. “I’m still supposed to send foreign terrestrials home to die, this week.”
He was tired. It was showing.
“No,” Cassie said simply, going to lean against the wall and staring off into space. “Jesse and I will screen them and any one of them who wants to stay will be allowed to.”
Troy spun his chair to face her.
“How do you figure?”
“I’m not letting Violet go back into that,” she said. “And as long as I’m making a hole, I may as well bring some other people with me who deserve it.”
“Not an answer,” Troy said.
She looked at him, her gaze as tired as Jesse’s.
“You’re not okay,” he said, feeling bad for just being tired for lack of sleep. She shook her head.
“No, I’m not, but I will be. Same as him. We’re hard to kill.”
He stood.
“Sit,” he said. She laughed.
“No.”
“Tell him how you’re going to get everyone home safe, and then let’s go,” Jesse said.
“Go on, old man,” Cassie said. “I’ll catch up.”
He looked at her, then nodded.
“Come find me.”
“Always.”
He put his hand over his arm and he disappeared.
“You get used to being able to do that, don’t you?” Troy asked.
Cassie grinned and came to lean against the desk.
“Make the calls,” she said.
He frowned, then nodded.
Took out his phone.
Shifted against his Ghostbusters backpack.
“Can you get this thing off of me?”
She reached over, running a finger over the black metal on his shoulder, then nodded.
“Give me a second. It’s designed to be tricky, in case someone caught you.”
“Thank her for me,” Troy said.
“Thank her yourself,” Cassie said. “You’re going to be employing her, this time next month.”
He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t ask as the metal bits around his waist and across his shoulders let go. All at once, the whole thing fell into dozens of pieces, and he stood up, looking at the mess.
“Self-destruct,” he said, and she nodded.
“It’s a
brave new world out there. We have to figure out what the rules are going to be.”
He sighed and nodded, dialing Olivia first.
The phone rang three times before she answered.
“Troy,” she said, sounding sleepy.
“Everything’s fine,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I just wanted you to know.”
“Mmm,” she said. “Mmm-kay. Thank you.” There was a pause and he started to hang up. “Troy?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said again. He smiled.
“Sleep well. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Is morning,” she muttered, but the phone went dead in his hand and he smiled again. Dialed Bridgette.
“Major,” she said. “Report.”
“That sounded like an order,” he answered.
“It is,” she said, tart. He grinned.
“Lieutenant du Charme and Jesse are alive. Injured, but alive. We are all out of the building at the moment, but the Lieutenant and I are going to go back in to sweep for remaining resistance.”
“No, sir,” she said. “I have orders from Secretary Langer that you need to stand down until the FBI gets there.”
“There is at least one dead foreign terrestrial in that building,” Troy said. “And two more unaccounted for. The FBI is not equipped to deal with them, should they intend to put up additional fight.”
“Then lead them,” Bridgette said. “But wait for them.”
Troy looked at Cassie, who shrugged.
“Your orders, not mine,” she said.
He sighed.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Bridgette asked. “Okay. Do you need medical assistance?”
“No,” Troy said. “Cassie and Jesse can take care of themselves. When should the reinforcements be on site?”
“Ten minutes, maybe,” Bridgette said. He nodded.
“I’ll be waiting for them,” he said.
“You?” Bridgette asked.
“Yes, Captain,” Troy said. “Me.”
“Cassie’s going in on her own, isn’t she?” she asked.
“I have my orders,” he said.
She sighed.
“Tell her to be careful. Be a shame for something to go wrong after you managed to find her and get her out.”
He smiled.
“I’ll pass that along.”