Leon surveyed the terrain. The Kang appeared long gone, redeploying, no doubt, to sites that now mattered more. The scientists were actually starting to come out of the hangars, looking dazed and disoriented, but proudly toting their high-tech toys.
What looked to be a UFO—albeit a small one—flew overhead and landed. “I’m rather proud of this little toy,” Ariel said. “It can pass itself off as a run of the mill UFO, give off all the expected dazzling light effects, speed in and out at fabulous speeds, which is strangely what passes for flying under the radar in places like this.”
“Natty and Laney have a mobile theater of operations in that thing, I presume?” Leon asked, still staring at the rather sexy, slick, black disk that for the first time had him rethinking his 1965 Mustang as a conveyance.
Ariel looked damaged by the remark. “No need to be hurtful, sir.”
Leon smiled, taking that to mean, “But, of course.”
The ship landed, well, hovered real low, would be more accurate, and Natty beamed to where their little group huddle was taking place.
“Natty, it’s time to throw a shield over this entire planet,” Leon said. “You’re familiar with HAARP, in Alaska?”
“Yes, of course, allegedly the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. What they’ve really been trying to do is bolster the so-called planetary shield for some time. It might be good for knocking a few nukes out of the air, but for shielding us from asteroid bombardment? Fuhgeddaboudit. They’re hundreds of years away from anything like that…”
“Without your help,” Leon coaxed.
Natty frowned. “I’m not much on cold weather.”
There was a time when Leon would have to resist the urge to backhand him for remarks like that. Earth was lucky to not have been obliterated by now, and the perennial boy-man was genuinely more focused on being pushed out of his comfort-zone.
Leon took a beat and smiled. “I’m sure Alpha Unit can keep you good and toasty up there, while they help you with the project. You can fast-track the pace by downloading what support functions you can to them. Patent will be there to help you as well.”
“I will?” Patent said testily.
“The Alpha Unit cadets may not be able to handle crazy mad ideas as well as Patent can,” Leon continued addressing Natty. “And you’re going to need as many of those as you can get to come up with the answers I need in time. Alpha Unit likes things to be fairly consistent with the science they know, even if they have to invent new science on the fly.”
“Yeah, well, whoever and whatever can get me out of the arctic chill zone ASAP works for me,” Natty said. “But what will I do with the little woman in the airbus back there? She’s lost without me.”
Leon smiled, thinking, he’s lucky his wife Laney was not standing next to him to answer that one.
Natty dematerialized and Laney materialized where he was standing. “Forgive Natty. It’s not his fault I beamed him to the Alaskan tundra ahead of you—and perhaps a couple minutes ahead of Alpha Unit.”
Leon, Patent, and the rest of the crew stifled their smiles. She had no shortage of admirers among them, not the least for being able to babysit wonder boy without killing him, and no one was fooling themselves that her marriage was much beyond a babysitting job. “As to what I’ll do with myself, I’ll redeploy our mobile lab”—she craned to take in the “UFO” hovering behind her—“to the HAARP installation, just in case he needs me. I have some ideas for nanite biotech that we might be able to saturate the planetary shield with that can gobble up asteroids determined to fly into the net.
“He won’t need me full-time on that. So, I’ll continue working on making the Earth a little too unwelcoming for any more Kang troops on the ground at the same time.”
“Honestly, Laney, babysitting Natty is enough. The rest is just showing off,” Leon teased.
She smiled at him before beaming back to the UFO. It rose straight into the air on zero visible thrust, and then darted off at UFO-only speeds toward the HAARP installation. Leon craned to look for Patent, and realized she’d beamed him out with her. She’d left Leon with Satellite, Skyhawk, and Ariel in case he had further instructions for them. He didn’t, but they could handle their own transport to the HAARP compound by way of the Nautilus’s transporter.
Skyhawk shook his head slowly. “An energy shield that devours asteroids and any other arsenal on impact? Don’t think I don’t want in on that.”
“I’m sure you’ll leave your mark, Skyhawk, if you’re determined to,” Leon said. He thought about it further and decided he was wrong; he did have marching orders for the three musketeers.
“Unless you think I can goad you into tackling something far more difficult,” Leon said, squeezing Skyhawk’s shoulder. Leon smiled feebly.
“Omega Force Clone Team One should have a hack on the moon artifact soon, with the Nautilus’s and their Skyhawk’s help. With that hack in place and what that device can do, and with a galaxy of self-teleporting space habitats from the Dead Zone, we’ll be able to return the Earth to the Milky Way Galaxy where it belongs. And once I fill the Milky Way with the teleporting Dead Zone habitats, I’m going to want to take our act on the road.”
“Assuming all of that madness is even possible, sir, come again?”
“I want the entire Milky Way galaxy made mobile and teleportable.”
Skyhawk snorted. “You’re mad, even by my standards, hell, even by Patent’s.”
Leon noticed everyone was listening in more intently than normal, and the group huddle had tightened around him. Even the ever-impatient-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop Cassandra was hanging on Leon’s every word. “Unless I miss my guess, the Kang aren’t our real enemy, though they may believe us to be. They’re just one more civilization—albeit of galactic scale—that got swallowed up by The Collectors. I guess we can call them that.”
“All those galaxies I saw in the trans-galactic array that included the Kang…” Cassandra said. “I knew something didn’t fit! I could feel it. There was nothing tying those motley galactic civilizations together. Not even time and isolation could erase all the tracks of migrating across galactic boundaries.”
“If the artifact on the moon predates The Collectors,” Leon said, “it’s just possible that we may never know what it was originally designed for, just that The Collectors hacked it. And if we don’t counterhack it soon enough…”
“The Collectors will beam the Milky Way Galaxy back into their collection of galaxies,” Ariel replied.
“Very possibly into the Kang Dynasty galaxy by mistake,” Leon continued, “since there are enough Kang present on Earth now for them to think their presence here is part of a Kang breakaway attempt. If the moon artifact meant only to collect the earth and drop it adjacent to the Kang Dynasty…”
“Our hacking it,” Satellite continued filling in the blanks for himself, “will leave only the Kang life-sign readings that The Collectors can make any sense of. They haven’t had a chance to study us yet. And the latest cutting edge military tech on Earth will only confirm that the Kang have merely upped their war games with one another.”
“It might summon another walk through by whoever our museum curators are,” Leon said, “to inspect the strange Kang evolution after hundreds of thousands of years or more of stagnation, but probably not in time to do us much good.”
Skyhawk slapped his forehead. “Shit, planets colliding into one another on a galactic scale… a galaxy full of space habitats looking to get squished between them… and for good measure, the Kang bee nest worlds stirred into activity, madder than hell for having their bees nests’ whacked…”
“I see we’re on the same page now,” Leon said.
Cassandra cut in. “Why would The Collectors think the Milky Way Galaxy worlds were ever part of the Kang Dynasty? The Earth, maybe, if it’s saturated with Kang.”
“If Clone Team One Skyhawk’s hack is in place by then on the moon artifact, it will be attuned to the entire Milky Way Ga
laxy, not just the Earth. Unless The Collectors spot it, they’ll never know they’re beaming an entire galaxy back into the Kang Dynasty.” That quieted her, strangely, even as it set off more flares with the others.
“But if none of those galactic civilizations The Collectors have rounded up have ever been able to escape…” Satellite said, his voice quaking.
“We don’t know that,” Leon said. “The Dead Zone may be empty for reasons that Theseus and Theta Team will unearth for us eventually. Now that we know this isn’t one dynasty moving on after technology in one sector grows antiquated, we need some other rationale for why that galaxy is so empty. It may well be because those peoples escaped The Collectors.”
Skyhawk nodded. “Maybe that’s why The Collectors have that barrier field up now. They didn’t think anyone could truly escape them before, but…”
“One way or another, Skyhawk,” Leon explained, “if the Milky Way is absorbed the instant we get back to it with the Dead Zone tech owing to Kang infestation, back into The Collectors’ Menagerie of Galactic-civilizations, or if we can dodge the bullet, I need a mobile galaxy, that not even The Collectors can throw a net around. The Milky Way Galaxy will soon be renamed the Gypsy Galaxy, accordingly. And thanks to saturating it with Dead Zone tech, will be fully weaponized from the get go. An armada such as no one has ever seen, forever on the move.”
Skyhawk nodded. Smiling. “And I thought Patent was at the top of the food chain for crazy.”
“Why?” Cassandra asked Leon testily.
“You think now that I know there are galactic and transgalactic civilizations and empires out there, I’m not going to go investigate?” Leon said, his tone pointed. “We’ve seen what one can do to us when we get caught with our pants down.”
“You’ll just make us more vulnerable than ever,” she said. “Better we stay off their radar. They may be no more welcoming than The Collectors.”
“I’m going on the assumption they’re all hostile as hell until proven otherwise. But with the Gypsy Galaxy at our disposal—weaponized, no less—we’re a hell of an asset. And if we come to the party with something to offer, they might just have to negotiate.”
“The likelihood of us having anything they need…” Cassandra countered, her manner of speaking little different from her manner of fighting, harsh and brisk.
Leon pressed. “The Kang seem most curious to obtain bounty from the Earth that despite being a galactic empire, they don’t have. And so far, only the Dead Zone peoples have a TGC and TGE tracker that we know of—that we’re about to upgrade to scan across not just this universe, but across all universes. Oh, yeah, we’ll have plenty to negotiate with.”
“Even if that’s tech other TGCs and TGEs don’t have,” Cassandra countered, “they’ll just take it from us.”
“First they have to find that buried treasure in a galaxy full of worlds, with just as many artificial space habitats. I’m betting I can play hide-and-seek with them long enough to beam our Gypsy Galaxy the hell out of trouble, if need be, or to get them by the balls so they have to negotiate.”
“Sonny.” Cassandra sneezed the word out like she had just caught a cold. It was pretty clear she didn’t think highly of him, but maybe distaste for the man was not the same as disrespect for him. His network of spies and assassins were highly effective. Thus, Sonny and the people at his disposal demanded respect. Next to Leon, he might be the one person most likely to play David and Goliath games with TGCs and TGEs.
“So, just who are The Collectors?” Ariel asked.
“Let’s hope we never have to find out,” Leon replied. “For all we know, they’re just a TGE with a penchant for hostile takeovers of other galaxies, functioning with the same ethos of any corporation or group of all-powerful oligarchs we know of, with the same take what you want mentality.”
The heavy silence following that revelation was easily shattered all the same.
“Fine,” Cassandra said, “I’ll wait to kill you until I’m certain this psychotic break of yours isn’t in fact cloaked genius.”
Leon smiled. They all did. Even Cassandra.
“Is that a smile, Cassandra?” Leon asked.
“If you’re right about how all this is going to play out, it is. The Nautilus is hardly designed to hold the likes of me. I was meant to spread my wings far and wide.”
Leon smiled. “You mean wreak havoc across all eternity.”
“A girl can dream.”
They all laughed.
“One more thing,” Leon said. “These are just the Kang scouts. We had best prepare for full-on invasion of the Earth.”
That sobered the high-handed talk quickly enough.
ACT THREE
THE KANG DYNASTY INVADES EARTH
TWENTY-FOUR
EARTH
HARDING COUNTY
“I’ve hacked into Omega Force’s COMMS, again,” Hailey said, “despite their upping their game.”
Her father gave her the raised eyebrow routine. “How is that possible? You’re only half genius. You’re half moron—on your mother’s side.”
Her mother, in the backseat of the car making its way along the mountain road, whacked her husband, seated directly in front of her in the passenger seat, in the side of his head. The Belgian shepherd sprawled along the backseat next to Rose howled at him; he’d grown very protective of Rose in a short time.
“Mom, while I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t need him in any more of a debilitated state than he already is.” Finished craning her head to her mom in back, she panned her head forward to address her father. “I was looking for a way into NORAD, if you must know, as they keep an eye on military satellite communications for the planet. I was hoping to get lucky. It appears so was everyone else, the Kang—those would be the aliens currently invading our planet—Omega Force and Alpha Team.”
“Well?” Her father asked anxiously.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Hailey replied. “How are you coming along with your coping mechanisms?”
“Now that the self-driving car can drive through asteroid bombardments without batting an eye, thanks to my very fine psyops work, I am coming up a little short, to tell you the truth.”
Hailey shoved the dog’s command manual in his hands. “Memorize this and start teaching mom the dog’s commands. She could use an upgrade to her coping mechanisms too.”
“Nonsense.” Rose shifted her weight in the seat. “Just tell me how many points we get for killing each alien.”
Dillon sighed. “I’ll get to work on Dillon and Rose 2.0. Now, what exactly does my mind need extra shock-proofing from?”
“Omega Force is preparing to return Earth to the Milky Way Galaxy.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a stressor,” Dillon said, fingering the pages in the dog manual, all the same, as if another part of his brain was still very much on the defensive.
“They then plan,” Hailey continued, “to teleport the entire Milky Way Galaxy out of harm’s way, and to do that as often as necessary. They’re now calling it the Gypsy Galaxy, on account of its inherent homelessness. They’re going to propel it toward TGCs and TGEs—that would be transgalactic civilizations and transgalactic empires—to investigate them, and to find leverage to forestall future attacks such as the one we’re currently under.
“But that’s all assuming we can escape being teleported back into the transgalactic federation ruled by The Collectors, who collect up galaxies as trophies, sort of like museum curators.
“The only hitch with all this, well, I suppose there are lots of hitches, but the biggest one is that no one so far has managed to escape The Collectors. Certainly no civilization on a Galactic or pre-galactic level.”
Her father stared at her for the longest time.
She thought he might have slipped into a catatonic state.
Then he re-opened the manual with the dog commands and buried his face in it. “We won’t discuss this matter ever again.”
Hailey
groaned. But the groan got away from her, morphing into a primal scream. “Are you kidding me? Am I the only one thinking that the retirement village we left back there isn’t the happening zip code we should be looking to get into? I want aboard the Nautilus. Leon is going to need all the help he can get keeping an eye on the Gypsy Galaxy, especially with the likes of Sonny running about.”
Her father snorted without looking up from the manual, merely flipping the page. “That’ll be the day.”
“Yes, well, this is why scientific discoveries, even amid geniuses, tend to stop at age 25 when people just know too much about what is possible and what is not for their own good.” Hailey had aimed the dig at her father, but it just bounced off whatever reality-denying shields he’d thrown up around his mind.
Hailey, nonetheless, looked straight ahead and smiled.
“Why are you smiling? I forbid it.” Dillon, still neck deep in upgrading to Dillon 2.0, hadn’t taken his eyes off the manual; he was merely processing her smile in his peripheral vision.
“They have a boy my age aboard the Nautilus, currently beamed down to the planet, without permission. I plan to marry him. He’s a moron like mom. You gotta love the symmetry.”
The silence was deafening.
Her father, currently turned to stone, melted moments later, and turned the page in his dog manual.
“Have we had the birds and bees talk with her?” Rose asked from the back seat.
Hailey’s father answered without taking his eyes off his one link to reality. “She’s eleven, Rose.”
“She’s kind of in the zone,” Rose said, keeping an eye on her daughter adjusting her training bra via the rearview mirror. Hailey winced from the discomfort. Her nipples hurt.
“Pull over to the side of the road, please,” Hailey said to the car’s AI.
The car pulled over.
Hailey hopped out and pranced to the lip of the mountain road overlooking the valley and screamed as she clenched her fists and held her hands out—repeatedly. “It’s not enough that I have to endure the end of the world, I have to endure puberty too!” she shouted at the top of her lungs at God, and the sunset. “The humiliation, the indignity! It’s just too much.”
Moving Earth Page 20