by Laer Carroll
When asked about the actions in which she had been involved she answered them as frankly as she could without revealing her secret advantages. She was talking, in a sense, to fellow professionals. It was always a bore talking to people who did not know one end of a gun from the other.
At 11:00 there went a call to lunch. Sasha, Stryker, and a few others went through the line in the nearest base cafeteria and sat at a round table in one corner.
Sasha took the first sip of a drink and continued an interrupted conversation. "All of the actions I've been involved in I had the advantage of surprise— "
"Yeah, like those bandits down at that tropical fashion shoot. Who expects a gorgeous babe in a bikini to be dangerous?" There was a lot of laughter around the table.
"—and those bank robbers had no training I could tell. They thought all they had to do was wave guns around, not know how to use them. The people you face, on the other hand, HAVE had training. And maybe experience. They may know the ground. I don't envy you your job."
A tough-looking black woman said, "If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing." There was chorus of agreements around the table.
"Maybe that's my problem nowadays. I'm looking for something hard to do."
The black woman said, "The Olympics weren't hard?"
"The thirteen years leading up to it were hard. But by the time I got there it was easy. Too easy."
The black woman raised her eyebrows.
A muscular blond man said, "Canaro doesn't strike me as a bragger. You saw the video. As soon as that kidnapper said 'Kill the kid' they were all dead men."
So the Bluebird AirBus that day HAD been taking videos of events on the ground. And they weren't available outside Bluebird.
"So now you sell your tits and twat." The black woman wasn't trying to be offensive. She was trying to understand.
"Hey," said the blond. "Anyone can sell their tits and twat. As you should know. But to do it with style... Now that takes talent."
The black woman said, "As if you'd know style if it bit you on the ass."
Sasha laughed and dug into her meal, only half listening to the conversation around her.
Half past noon the word went out that it was time to embark. The troops with whom Sasha had become friends said Goodbye to her and went off to load their gear and themselves onto a large paramag aerial troop transport. She trailed them out.
Some time in the last hour or two the troop carrier had positioned itself a hundred feet or so outside Hangar 51. It looked much like a commercial needle-nosed supersonic air liner but with stubby delta wings. It had a cargo ramp at the rear, opened out and its trailing end resting on the concrete parking lot.
Some of the troops split off from the main group and began driving several cargo pallets up the ramp, then several kinds of paramag vehicles. One of them looked like a small tank, several like flying snowmobiles.
Those last looked interesting. She'd have to look into getting some flying time on them.
The last of the troops loaded on sections of floor with airline seats mounted on them. They clamped the flooring into position with a few flicks of switches and the troops filed on and took seats.
"Now it's your turn. Just drive up and park there." Colonel Storm Cloud came up beside her, pointing. "You can get out and walk around when the pilot lets you know it's OK."
"Fine. I'll see you around. Now just resign yourself. You're getting a hug."
Storm Cloud made a face but stood still while Sasha gave him a brief hug.
Aboard the aircraft her air car settled into the familiar lock-down wheel wells bolted to the floor of the troop carrier. From the dashboard came a voice.
"This is Captain Wilson. Looks like you're all secured, Ms. Canaro, but someone will be by shortly to double-check. Just relax. We'll be on profile in about thirty minutes and you can get out, walk around, go to the bathroom."
"Thank you."
A few minutes later a co-pilot or perhaps flight attendant dressed in light-blue coveralls came to her car. She checked that the wheels were indeed locked in place, gave Sasha a thumbs up, and went away.
It was a few more minutes when another voice came from the dashboard speakers. "This is Lieutenant Sevigny. Better be all strapped in, people. This thing is going like a bat out Hell as soon as we get to cruising height. Lifting—now."
Sasha felt her body sink into her seat. The troop carrier was taking off fast. Shortly everything tilted back slightly. She hoped someone was monitoring all that equipment and the seats in front of her. At the very rear of the carrier she would get the full impact of any disastrously loose equipment.
Luckily she was distracted when her dashboard screen came alight. Normally it showed a representation of the air traffic all about her or the belly camera view when landing. Now it showed a map of the New York metro area below her, which could be flipped to a video view by tapping a menu item. Superimposed over it was a familiar purple flight path. It was pointing almost due west. In moments the carrier was over the middle of New Jersey.
"Sevigny again. If you have your seat viewscreen in front of you you'll see we're well on our way. We're at 35,000 feet and still climbing. Hold still for another twenty minutes and we'll let you clowns out of your seats."
A fine horizontal white line flicked on pointing to the purple vertical line on the map. At the end of the line were three numbers. The top number was rapidly increasing. It showed that the carrier was going several hundred miles an hour already. As she watched it exceeded 700, which meant they were traveling faster than the speed of sound at ground level. But sound traveled faster as one got higher, so the carrier was still not creating a sonic boom behind it.
The speed number climbed rapidly past 1000 then 2000 miles per hour and stabilized at 3000 miles per hour. This was twice the speed of modern supersonic liners.
Underneath the speed number was another showing their height. She watched it climb past 50,000 feet and level off at 100,000 feet. This was about twenty miles. Here they were at the edge of space. If the carrier hull sprung a leak everyone aboard without an oxygen mask would quickly die.
Sasha was glad she was inside her air car. It was sealed and pressurized above 1000 feet. She decided she would just stay put for the entire trip. She reclined her seat and dozed.
Forty minutes or so later Sasha was pulled out of her idleness by a voice.
"OK, people, Sevigny here again. We're beginning to descend to the L. A. area to let off our celebrity. This will take about twenty minutes."
For that time Sasha watched with shapechanger-induced calm. It would be only a few minutes before she met her family again. It had been almost a year, last Thanksgiving, when she had seen them face-to-face rather over a video link.
Finally a blue-coveralled Lt. Sevigny, or so she guessed, came and unlocked her air-car wheels. Sasha waved at the woman, lifted the car on its paramag ground effect, rotated in place to view the slowly lowering ramp at the back of the carrier, and floated sedately down and out onto concrete. A follow-me pickup truck led her a moderately serpentine path amid ordinary small planes and service vehicles to a hangar rented in the Orange County Airport for her several-weeks stay in California .
Just outside the open door of the hangar a crowd waited, her family and friends and about a dozen reporters and photographers. She waved at them as she steered the air car into the hangar, found her marked parking spot, rotated the air car so that it pointed toward the door, and brought it down to a landing.
Eagerly she opened the car door and almost leaped out of the car to be engulfed in the hugs of her family. There were her mother and father, looking absurdly young to Sasha, her oldest sister Silvana, sleek and fashionable in a white dress patterned in black polka dots, and Gia at thirteen with blossoming boobs and hips in jeans and tee shirt.
Only Brandon was missing. She'd see him in a month's time at Thanksgiving.
And here were the Twins. Rocio: short, curvy, and dark. Tina: tall, blond, and ele
gant. They were starting their third year in college but bombarded her with questions as exuberantly as always.
Sasha did not try to answer any questions, so fast did they succeed each. Her mother soon broke up the inquisition-fest by clapping her hand.
"You'll have time later for all this. Now Sasha has to answer a few questions from these reporters."
But it was the photographers who got first dibs on Sasha. The photos included her in front of her air car with her parents on each side of her, her mother in a sleek white dress and heels and her father in his artist's uniform of ripped jeans and stained tee-shirt over moccasins. Her with her two sisters and then with her two friends on each side, then all six clustered around her. Finally Sasha reprised her exit from the air car, a more dignified performance with her now-famous smile firmly in place.
The reporters were given a strict ten-minutes-only session with Sasha. She answered the usual. "How do you feel about seeing your family?" "Wonderful. I'm very blessed." And so on.
Her mother had stayed close by and brought the questions to a halt at the exact second. Not that there was much need for strictness. Sasha had long gotten into the minimum choreography needed to deliver reporters' required sound bites.
The rest of her family and friends were inside looking at the air car. Her father viewed it from his artist's sculptural sensibility, proclaiming it excellent art. Her sisters and friends all wanted to know when she would take them flying.
"Tomorrow," Sasha said, laughing. "We'll have all day Sunday for that."
That was the cue for a couple of airport officials to approach her. The one in a business suit wanted her to sign some papers. The one in stained grey coveralls wanted permission to begin recharging the superbattery.
Sasha unlocked the charge port for the latter. "When it's done charging just unplug. It will lock itself then. And don't try to open the doors. Let it alone after charging. This thing is alarmed a dozen ways. Anybody setting it off will have to deal with Bluebird security. And, if they are very unlucky, with me."
She gave the two airport men a very unconvincing smile.
With that she began to haul luggage out of the back seat of her car and its trunk. She had so much help they almost got in each other's way.
Six other people and Sasha fit snugly into the family van, she in the third seat with the Twins, her sisters in the second seat, and her parents in front, her father driving.
Rocio said, "Jesus, you were scary at the end there, Sash. Have you been practicing looking scary? "
"Years of it. Watching Mamí ."
At that her mother glanced back with a faint smile. Everyone in the van knew it was the simple truth. Her mother the district attorney had been known as the Shark for good reason. And being in corporate law for many years since then had not dimmed her reputation.
Sasha's old room had been turned into a den. A very comfortable folding bed had been brought out of storage for her to sleep on. She, her sisters, and the Twins helped her put away her clothing and other possessions.
Silvana especially loved her dress-up clothing. At one point she clasped to her bosom with one hand the light-blue dress Sasha would be wearing that evening. She slid her other hand down her front.
"It's amazing what the Italian cloth designers can do. This looks like it has sequins all over it but it feels smooth as silk."
Gia had another concern, though she had been as interested in Sasha's very expensive designer clothing as anyone there.
"Sash, do you ever...have bad dreams about killing those men?"
Sasha came over to the bed and sat beside Gia. She imitated her youngest sister by clasping her hands in her lap. Turned so Gia and everyone else could hear her she answered.
"No. Papí might lecture me, but no. And I'll tell you why."
Everyone was still, listening.
"The first one had a fully automatic weapon. If he pulled the trigger and held it down 30 or 40 bullets would have come from it. On a street full of people of all ages. The only chance I had to keep that from happening was to shoot him in the brain. Hoping a last-second twitch would not cause the gun to shoot.
"The second one had just told another kidnapper to 'do her'. He meant the girl they had kidnapped. She was just a year older than you are now.
"One of the kidnappers complained about not being let to 'have fun' with the girl before killing her."
She took a deep breath. "Men think they are oh-so-practical. And maybe a lot are. But I think we women are the practical ones. We can have children, and most of us will bring them up. Some of us alone, without a man like Papí to help them. We have to be practical. And if that means killing someone we will do that."
Gia's small hands covered Sasha's for several moments before she sat up straighter.
"I think I met a boy who's re-responsible. He's a grade higher than me."
Tall blond Twin Tina turned from the closet she had just finished putting to rights. "I think I know him. I dated his older brother Fred. He's another good man. Like your father. And Brandon."
Switching gear instantly Gia said, "When are you going to let me fly your air car?"
Deja vu! Sasha laughed. "When you are eighteen. And have an air-car driver's license."
The afternoon went agreeably, everyone in the rear-yard patio in lawn chairs and cool drinks catching up with Sasha and vice versa. At 6:00 Sasha's father excused himself and entered the kitchen. For the next hour and a half enticing scents sometimes carried out to the yard. He was very close to a gourmet cook and had been preparing a treat all day for "his girls. "
At 7:30 everyone settled down to dinner. It was indeed special, with several of Sasha's favorite dishes. She ate big helpings, her father, mother and Gianna moderately, and Silvana and the Twins only a bit. The latter three would be going with Sasha tonight to the air-car gala in Hollywood.
After dinner was a bit of a madhouse, with four bathrooms in use to make the gala goers beautiful. Sasha was finished first even though she had to wear some authentic make-up and hose. There could be few shapechanger shortcuts with three intimates for company.
It was a fifteen-minute drive in the family van to the airport where Sasha and her companions got into the air car. Los Angeles Metro air control gave them a flight path and an OK. Soon the air car was rising rapidly and traveling at 1500 feet. Orange County was brilliant under and around and before them as they drove northwest.
Below most of the way their path followed the Golden State Freeway then the Hollywood Freeway. At the end the aerial path, straight all the way so far, made a fish-hook to the left and there below them was the one-block section of Hollywood Boulevard blocked off for her.
Sasha brought the air car carefully down, monitoring the autopilot every inch of the way, fully in slow time.
The street was a blaze of light, crowds held back from the air car. As it settled onto its wheels Sasha triggered the passenger side door. It slid back all the way, exposing both the front and the back seats.
First out onto the red carpet, as planned, was Silvana. She was an forest princess in warm green and gold, verdant green heels on her feet, her platinum hair a silky fall. Greeting her was Anna Prince, clad in something which looked like it was all silvery chain mail. Sasha saw that her sister was outwardly calm, though she read a fluttery heart beat. Silvana was every inch their mother's daughter, seemingly invincible. Sasha felt pride warm her insides.
The Twins exited. Curvy Rocio was all in red, her dark brown curls gleaming about her shoulders and bosom. Tall elegant Tina was a Valkyrie in gleaming white which caressed her body. The Twins shook Prince's hand almost as composedly as Silvana had.
Then it was Sasha's turn. She was a bit eclipsed by the air car until she rounded its front and approach Anna Prince. She was a vision in sequined sky blue with a gold belt and gold heels, her skin barely touched with gold, her hair curly red gold.
She hugged Prince. "Hello, Anna. I wondered if you'd make it." The woman was like a ceramic statue
everywhere Sasha touched. This was the first time she had done more than shake hands with the billionaire, and the hug deepened the mystery of what Prince was.
"The night of your greatest triumph? Wouldn't miss it for anything."
"I gather you and my sister and friends have introduced yourselves."
"Indeed. Impressive entourage you have."
Eye to eye Sasha laughed at Prince. "Knowing them I'm part of THEIR entourage."
"Then let's all be one big entourage and KILL this crowd."
Prince gathered Sasha into a side-by-side hug with an arm around her waist and her sister Silvana lightly hugged to Prince's other side. Sasha slung the strap of her handbag over her shoulder and pulled Rocio to her free side and Rocio brought Tina to her's. Almost in lock step the five woman walked up the red carpet into the magnificent old hotel where its historic red-and-gold ballroom awaited them .
That night Sasha met dozens of celebrities and power people from the entertainment industry. She was given a card from so many that they filled her tiny handbag. A dozen movie offers were made to her, a dozen action and romantic leads obliquely (or not so obliquely) propositioned her, two of them women.
Anna Prince disappeared soon. Then the Twins were swept away. Sasha and Silvana collected two sets of satellites but stayed within sight of each other.
Everyone chatted, flirted, sipped drinks, and pretended to snack. Sasha did not pretend. Her super-efficient body was always ready to take up additional stores for the times when super-effective action was needed and the stores would be burned.
Near midnight Sasha sought out the Twins. The two had their satellites and had kept within sight of each other. Sasha made sure they were both OK and had taxi fare home, then said Goodnight. Silvana and she went out into the night air, cries to Stay! following after.
"Whew!" Silvana breathed in the chill night air. "That was an experience!"
The crowds around the air car were gone. Two security guards stood nearby, chatting, keeping a look-out in opposite directions. A couple leaving a movie, perhaps, slowed to eye the air car with interest. A single man was taking amateur photos. He ambled away.