Alien Education

by Gini Koch

  “Meaning they’re going on a covert ops mission or similar, which is no surprise. Paul, it would be great if they were here, but I think we have to roll without them.”

  “I’ve advised Director Reynolds,” Kyle said. “He’s remaining in D.C. to ensure that if we need more support than the Science Center can provide that nothing mucks up the works.”

  “Good. Is he advising my mother?”

  “Yes, already done. Same thing. She’s staying in D.C. and has P.T.C.U. agents all over Sidwell, just in case. She’s ready to send in a strike team or teams if we need them.”

  The Turleens were in a defensive formation, but nearer to the school than to the busses. Having worked with them in a danger situation before, I could attest to the fact that they were hard to hit and canny as hell. If we were going to have some kind of battle, I was happy the Turleens were here and on our side.

  Jeff got off the phone. “We can’t risk taking down the shields right now. Christopher, Buchanan, Siler, Wruck, Kevin, and the flyboys are over at the Science Center. Abigail and Mahin went to Sidwell, just in case this is a ploy to have us distracted so someone can grab Jamie. We’re going to send missiles at those busses and those Fem-Bots as soon as I give the order, and then the others can mop up.”

  My music changed to “Stop Drop and Roll” by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. “Wait!”

  Everyone stared at me. “Why?” Jeff asked. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted us to do?”

  Tried to figure out Algar’s clue, and I had to do it fast, since saying “my song says to stop” would only earn me a lot of problems, potentially including an extended stay in a mental hospital. My music switched again, this time to ZZ Top’s “Waitin’ for the Bus.” Looked at the busses. “There’s something wrong. They’re lined up too neatly, the Fem-Bots aren’t doing anything, there’s zero aggression going on from their side. Something’s wrong and I think that means they want us to fire first. So, just . . . don’t fire yet.”

  Everyone started to talk at me. Other than Mossy. He shook his head, grabbed my hand, and leapt up into the air. As we rose up, he flipped me onto his shell and then pulled his head and limbs inside as the Turleens did when they were flying. “Hang on,” he called to me. He had to shout since everyone else was yelling at us and Jeff was bellowing for me to get down. Hoped White and Gower would get him calmed down—we didn’t want to have to replace all the glass this soon.

  Dug into my purse. “Goggles, goggles, my kingdom for goggles.” My hand hit a pair and I pulled them out. “You’re the best, thank you so much.” Got the goggles on as we breached the shield. Flipped myself onto Mossy’s shell in the way I’d learned to do during Operation Immigration—as if I was riding a sports bike.

  Mossy flew us past the other Turleens and to the busses. Couldn’t speak for him, but I was keeping a very sharp lookout for projectiles and the like.

  But nothing came at us.

  “I don’t see any weapons,” Mossy said. As always, wasn’t sure how I could hear any Turleen when they were inside their shell and I was on their back, but I could and that was all that mattered.

  “Me either.” My music changed to “Look Away” by Hootie & the Blowfish. Considered this. “Let’s do a fast perimeter sweep.”

  Mossy didn’t reply, but we zoomed off. The school was gigantic—big enough to house at least half of the aliens that had come to Earth, maybe all of them. Sure, it was supposed to be for education, but the A-Cs were big on fail-safes.

  We did a full sweep at top speed. When we got back to where we’d started, the busses and Fem-Bots were still in their weird Mexican standoff position. “Let’s check the Science Center.”

  We did. Spotted nothing untoward, but did note that the busses and Fem-Bots were plenty close to the Science Center. Closer to the school, yes, but still, facing both buildings, in that sense. And therefore able to spot people leaving one building to get to the other.

  “What now?” Mossy asked.

  “Slow it down and let’s check the school’s perimeter again.”

  We went back to where we’d started—everything was the same and no one was making a move. My phone rang. Happily, my earbuds allowed me to answer almost hands-free. “Turleen Airways, where you’re never fully dressed without a smile and a shell. How may we assist you today?”

  Jeff sighed. “Why? That’s the only question I’m asking. Why are you two out there, flying around like you’re having a fun afternoon jaunt?”

  “Because this screams setup, and it also screams trap, and there aren’t enough Turleens around to carry Gadhavi with us.”

  “Why would you want him and not me?” Jeff sounded a little hurt.

  “Because you’re the most important man in the country if not the world. And I’d take Gadhavi because this particular weird standoff is probably bothering him like it’s bothering me and Mossy.”

  “Yeah, it is. Hang on. What?” Heard voices in the background. “Your newest boyfriend says that this reminds him strongly of the Trojan Horse. He says to search carefully.”

  “Will do. Keep the trigger fingers on the missiles, just don’t send them until I say, okay?”

  “When have I argued with your command decisions?”

  “Wow, do we have the time? Though, honestly, probably not as often as I’ve argued with yours.”

  “Thanks for making my point. Be careful, baby. I don’t care about bad press. I care about you getting hurt or worse.”

  “Right back atcha, Jeff. Now, hang up. I need to concentrate and, despite how easy I make it look, riding a Turleen is a little challenging.”

  “You make it look great, and sexy, too,” Jeff purred. His sexy purr. Yeah, I was definitely coming back safe and sound if I had anything to say about it.

  “I’m always grateful you know what motivates me.” He laughed and hung up. My music came back on, but now “Seek & Destroy” by Metallica was on. Not that I’d needed the hint, but still, confirmation was always nice.

  Mossy and I had been flying along the wall where Jeff and the others were, and keeping low—not so low that someone could grab us, but low enough that we could see the ground and groundcover easily.

  This close, there was a lot more than I’d been able to note from above. Lots of various forms of desert and river rock, all done in what I was fairly sure were Feng Shui patterns. Many cacti. Lots of small bushes. Many palo verde trees and others in the same family. Desert wild flowers. And no one and nothing of note otherwise.

  The building was a bit different from human buildings. The outer walls of the ground floor had no windows at all. The next two levels were all dark tinted glass, and whoever had gotten the tinting job for those busses had also scored the contract for the Intergalactic School, because the tint was easily as dark if not darker. Had no idea if it was as dark on the inside, since I hadn’t gone through anything in the upper levels other than an elevator and the roof.

  However, what there were on the first floor were doors. They looked sturdy and like they locked from the inside, which was good. No visible locks I could spot, and no door handles, which was also good. But there were plenty of them. Tried to count but gave up and went with “lots” as my definitive number. None looked disturbed or like someone had tried to bash in, but we were too high up for me to tell if someone had tried to pull the doors open from the outside via unconventional means.

  The side was long. I was fairly sure it was a mile if it was an inch. Flying on Mossy made it a lot easier to traverse and much faster than any method save hyperspeed, but anyone in shape and with the ability to run distance would have no issues running around the outside of this beast. And Field agents were required to be able to run fifty miles without issue. So the size wasn’t a concern, in that sense.

  But by the time we turned the corner for the next side I could barely see the busses. Meaning that anything could be going on and unl
ess every single person was alerted, it was likely that no one would even notice. No one on the first floor could see out and no one on the second and third floors or the roof would have reason to look down. And even if they did, in a building this huge, Security wouldn’t sound an all-hands alarm unless they knew for sure there was a full-facility problem.

  Considered this. We’d had a lot of airborne beings patrolling. But we’d pulled them in the moment the busses had been spotted, and all the Turleens had gone to that side. So the only people guarding the other four sides of the behemoth were now gone. Gadhavi was right—this was starting to smell like the biggest bait and switch around.

  “We need to be prepared to find someone or a small group of someones trying to break in,” I told Mossy. “I’m betting they’ll be on the next side, by the way.”

  “Why? The side, I mean. I agree with you on the fact that our enemies have focused us all on what looks like the threat in front of us and I expect to find out the real threat is behind us.”

  “I’m just spitballing here, but the side farthest from where we all were would be my guess. And they’d know because the press was filming, meaning they could just look at the view behind Jeff and determine which side of the building he was on.”

  “Why would we have missed them before?”

  Had been considering this. “We were higher up, going a lot faster, and they know to look for patrols. We don’t know to look where they are. There are a lot of hiding places—most of the foliage was put in as mature plants. Makes it prettier but gives many more hiding places.”

  We found no one on this side. Rounded the next corner. Nothing nearby. We continued on. And were rewarded about halfway along this side. If rewarded was the right word. Because it was hard to feel like spotting one of the doors slightly ajar was one for the win column.

  Mossy landed and we went to investigate. The door opened easily. The outside had a couple of circular markings on it. The inner doors had had a long bar lock, had being the operative word. The bar was shattered. “I think they used a strong suction device, like you’d use to hold a heavy glass window, to pull this door open.”

  “They?”

  “Could be more than one, yeah. But the Bots are strong. So could just be one.” My music changed to “Problem Girl” by Rob Thomas. “Figure it’s just one, though.”

  “One would be harder to spot,” Mossy agreed. “Think this was left open for others to use?”

  “Certain of it, yeah. I mean, there are hundreds of Lizzie-Bots out there. It would be safe to assume that some could get past us.”

  “Will they need to even bother is the question.” Mossy pointed to the words on the inside of the door we’d just opened.

  Emergency Exit—Operations Section.

  CHAPTER 55

  WE STEPPED INSIDE. No one was there, which wasn’t a surprise. Assumed whoever had broken in had moved into position the moment the aerial support left the area. Fem-Bots were fast as well as strong, and this one would have been coming from the direction of one of the tiny towns on the main highway that was more of a place to get gas than anything else. It was far away, but not for a well-made robot. And one person running wouldn’t raise much dust.

  We were in a short hallway. Went to the opposite door. Opened it carefully—there was a lot of equipment in there. Saw no people, but then again, we weren’t far in and, based on what I could see ahead, we were in the back of this room.

  “What now?” Mossy asked softly. “If we’re assuming that it’s another Fem-Bot that looks like Lizzie, then all she would have to do is slip out of this room and she’d have the run of the entire complex.”

  “She won’t be wearing a badge.”

  “So what? She’s your ward. All she has to say is that she got separated from you and lost her badge somehow. They’ll give her another one and send her on her way.”

  “To do God knows what, yeah.” My music changed to “A Girl Like You” by The Smithereens. “Or, it could be worse. The Fem-Bot could be one that looks like me.”

  Mossy and I exchanged the “we’re so screwed” look. “We need to alert the others,” he said.

  “And tell them what? We’re infiltrated but we’re going to have to evacuate a two-square-mile complex and then see if we can spot the robot imitating me? By the time we do that, whatever the Bot Army has planned will be put into action and likely completed.”

  “Well, I’m out of ideas.” Mossy looked around. “How is it that no alarms have gone off? An emergency exit was ripped open from the outside. Shouldn’t something have triggered?”

  “Yeah, it should have.” Checked the area nearest these others doors. “There. It’s an emergency box. All they’d have to do was find it and shut it off. Done quickly enough, it would appear to be a glitch and potentially be ignored, if it was even noticed.”

  We used hyperspeed to check the entire room. No one and nothing looked amiss, not that I was a great judge of that one way or the other. Looked through the far door—it opened up to a main walkway. We closed the door and looked at each other. “Time to call Jeff, isn’t it?”

  “Past time.” Mossy definitely had a sarcasm knob.

  Hit Jeff’s speed dial. “Yes, yes, you were right.”

  “I was right about what?” Jeff asked.

  “Oh, probably a lot of things.” Told him about what we’d found and what we suspected.

  “I’m releasing the missiles,” he said when I was done with one of my shorter Recap Girl updates. “So hang on.” Heard him give the go order. “Okay, Kitty, you two—”

  But before Jeff could tell me anything else, heard a lot of shouting and a couple screams and then a big explosion. The phone went dead.

  “Hurry! Something’s wrong!” We ran outside, I jumped on Mossy’s back, and we raced off, this time at top speed. Was really glad I hadn’t bothered to take the goggles off when we were inside.

  As we sped around the next corner I could see the Science Center in the distance. Therefore, I could see a bomb explode just above it, having, I was pretty sure, just hit the shield. “What the hell? Did those busses look weaponized to you?”

  “No idea, we didn’t search them closely.”

  Around the next corner. Fortunately, we were flying low—a missile zoomed over our heads with what looked like most if not all of the Turleens on patrol following right after. “The busses have missile launchers?” My music turned back on, this time playing “Reflection” by Tool.

  We reached the side we’d started at in time to watch a missile head from Dulce right for the busses, bounce off of something we couldn’t see, and ricochet back toward the school. It hit, near to where we were, and the force knocked Mossy to the ground.

  Scrambled to my feet and was relieved to see Mossy do the same. “Why are they still firing?” he shouted as another missile fired from Dulce.

  “No idea.” Knew how to find out, though. Pulled out my phone and hit his number on speed dial.

  “Madam First Lady, we’re a little busy,” William said.

  “Dude, you’re busy blowing up our own buildings. What gives?”

  “We were told to fire seven missiles, one for each bus. We programmed two to fire at once, then the rest of them to fire ten seconds apart. But I can’t stop them—the first two were aimed at the busses on the outer ends. Those bounced back and one hit the school’s shield, but the other ricocheted into us. Our shield held, but we felt shockwaves. We’re offline and can’t stop anything. We’ll be back online quickly once the missiles are done firing, but we have two more to go.”

  No sooner mentioned than another fired. This one ricocheted back into the Science Center. “William . . . I think that missile just took out the shielding on the Science Center.” Looked at the school. We were very close to it. Ran over and touched the wall. “And it’s already down on the School, at least in the area where I am.” Which w
as where the busses were.

  “Then you have five seconds before the last missile launches.”

  Didn’t stop to question or tell Mossy what I was doing. Just took off at the fastest hyperspeed I could manage and headed for the busses. It was easy enough to get through the Lizzie-Bot Battalion—they weren’t paying any attention to me. Instead they’d split into two groups. One heading for the school, the other for the Science Center.

  Reached the busses. Didn’t try to go in between them—this close I could see the faint shimmer of whatever was being used to reflect the missiles back. Instead, ran around toward the leftmost bus, turned when I saw where the shimmer stopped, then ran inside. I had about two seconds to find the off switch. Pity I had no idea where it was.

  “I need a bomb!” Reached into my purse. There was a bomb, right on top. Slammed it onto the driver’s seat, hit the button, and ran like hell out of the bus. Slammed into Mossy. Grabbed him and kept running.

  Heard the explosion. Then heard another, bigger one. Kept going until I was sure we were out of range, then turned around. The bus I’d been in had blown up. Couldn’t tell if that had created a chain reaction or not, but the other busses were blown up as well and I saw no missile heading anywhere else.

  Got a look at the Lizzie-Bots. Most of them were at the buildings, and they were climbing up the walls. Not like a person would, but like a spider would, or, rather, like a creepy Bot manifestation of a spider would—upper arms and thighs going straight out from the bodies, knees and elbows bent, hands and feet flat against the wall, head tilted back so that it was straight up in a position that no human would want to hold for long.

  Time to make another call. Thankfully he answered. “Kitty, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, Len, so far. Is Jeff alright? Our call went dead.”

  “Joseph and Rob tackled him when the missile was heading straight for us. He lost his hold on his phone and then I think it got trampled while the rest of us were running away. But Jeff’s fine. None of us are hurt.”