Alien Research

CHAPTER 10

FOR THE FIRST TIME, Horn seemed uncomfortable. “I really don’t think that’s necessary.” He didn’t sound cool or suave—he sounded defensive.

“You’re on American Centaurion soil, and, news flash, I’m the highest ranking American Centaurion on premises. Here, I outrank even the Pontifex.” Noted that Reader, aka the Head of Field for Centaurion Division, and therefore the only person who could outrank me in the Embassy, wasn’t on premises. Figured Gower and Chuckie had told him to stay home for a reason. Revised my opinion on why Chuckie was calling Horn “sir.”

“I’m not challenging your authority,” Horn said. “I just see no need to prove that I am who everyone here knows I am.”

“Sucks to be you, because I’m saying that you’re going to be proven to be one hundred percent human, or I’m calling in the National Guard, which in our case, means you’re going to be handled with extreme prejudice by Centaurion Division.”

“It’s a non-intrusive test,” Raj said calmly. The tension in the room ratcheted down. Troubadours, they had a lot more power than the empaths and imageers wanted to admit. “Our staff physician performs it routinely on our personnel, or friends,” he nodded toward Chuckie, “who tend to travel in the more dangerous circles. Think of it as an odd custom and a formality that will allow American Centaurion to fully accept you and your new position.”

White nodded. “I’ve taken the liberty of asking Doctor Hernandez to join us and perform the test while we’re all here. He’ll be with us shortly.”

Horn didn’t look much happier. “You won’t have to remove your suit jacket, let alone any other piece of clothing,” Jeff said gently. “No one here will be seeing anything you don’t want them to see.”

Horn visibly relaxed. “If it’s truly non-intrusive,” he said, but he still didn’t seem comfortable or even close to in control of the situation. Looked at my phone and scrolled through his bio again, a little slower this time.

Tito arrived, quick introductions were made, and then he pulled out what looked like one of the wands security used at airports to do the closer body frisks, only with a lot more blinking lights on it. A-Cs seemed to take a lot of their design cues from human airports, God alone knew why.

While Tito slowly ran the Organic Validation Sensor over every part of Horn, I looked for possible reasons for why Horn had gone from Smooth Dude In Charge to Freaked Out Paranoid.

Found it, and suddenly felt kind of bad. “Oh.” Looked over at Horn. “Sorry. I get why this just freaked you out. But, honestly, you’re freaking me out, too. We’ve been fooled before, and you were manipulating us. Next time, don’t play games with us, and we won’t put you into a situation that makes you feel emotionally unstable.”

“Mind telling us what you’re talking around?” Christopher asked.

“Once Tito’s given us the okay or the shoot-to-kill signal.”

Horn managed a weak chuckle. “I’m certainly hoping I get the okay.”

“You do,” Tito said. “Anyone else I need to check while I’m up here?”

“No, I think we’re good, unless everyone else wants to be wanded to show solidarity with Vander.”

“I’d like proof we should be feeling that solidarity,” White said. “Under the circumstances, that is.”

“That’s fair.” Horn looked around the room. “Actually, the Ambassador is right. I was manipulating you. I know some of you, but not most, and I’ve heard stories. I wanted to see what you’d come up with when faced with a situation all of you wanted to avoid.”

“Nice,” Jeff said, sarcasm meter starting to rise. “However, as Kitty said, we prefer people actually telling us what they want, instead of trying to play us.”

Horn shot him a quick smile. “I understand.”

“You want to explain why asking to be proven to be a human instead of an android worried you?” Amy asked. “Or should we have Kitty do it?”

Horn grimaced. “It’s not for the reasons you think.”

He was going to pussyfoot. I hadn’t had enough Coke to feel like letting him. “He doesn’t want to take his clothes off.” Everyone stared at me. “Seriously, it’s in his profile on the government websites, at least, it is if you read between the lines. A drunk driver caused a horrific several-car crash about twenty-five years ago, which included Vander and his family. He lost his wife and young children, but he was a hero, because he dragged every single person out of their cars, many of which were on fire, his included. He’s the reason anyone lived through the accident.”

Horn looked down. “I have burns over seventy-five percent of my body,” he said in a low voice. “Miraculously, not my head, face, or hands.”

“The drunk driver lived. That you didn’t murder him with those unburned hands is more of a shock to me than the fact that you took damage. But I think I speak for all of us in the room—those scars aren’t going to look hideous to any of us. They’re going to look like medals of honor.”

“Thank you.” Horn cleared his throat. “The drunk driver spent ten years in prison. When he got out, he drowned himself in a bathtub full of vodka. He paid his price.” He sighed. “And the next thing I’m sure Kitty is going to mention is that I’ve spent a lot of time with the research arm of Gaultier Enterprises, looking for a better cure for burn victims. That’s my cause, understandably. But it means I have links into Gaultier.”

“So do we,” Chuckie said, nodding toward Amy. “That doesn’t mean we’re the bad guys, and I think it may be safe to say the same for you.” He looked at me. “And before you ask and berate me, yes, I knew all this. And,” he grinned, “let’s also just say that Vander wasn’t the only person manipulating this situation and let it go at that.”

“Oh, Secret Agent Man, you move in sneaky, mysterious ways.”

“He does,” Jeff said, sounding slightly pissed off. “But I’d like to know why.”

McMillan shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious, Jeff? Charles wanted everyone’s cards on the table, Vander’s in particular. He has a very effective weapon in your wife that he knows how to use.”

“Thanks, I think.” I was a weapon?

Chuckie laughed. “She’s like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, but with a different kind of crazy.”

“Wow, the compliments keep on coming.” Had to admit, Chuckie was probably right. “So, before anyone else chimes in on my special kind of crazy, let’s get back to the real situation at hand. We don’t want a congressional investigation, and, Vander, I really don’t think you do, either. So, what is it you want us to do? Trust me when I say that we’re a lot more willing and effective when we know what the actual goal is than if we’re flailing around in the dark.”

Horn nodded. “I’m willing to believe it. Fine. What I want, and I believe you all want as well, is to get to who’s really running things, the bad things, at Gaultier, YatesCorp, and what’s becoming the new Titan. The latest narcotic is what I believe is going to be the tip of a terrifying iceberg.”

“And you want us to melt that sucker down so the good ship USA doesn’t turn into the Titanic, right?”

“Right.” Horn laughed. “I like how you think.”

“Someone has to,” Christopher muttered.

I was going to tell Christopher that I’d hurt him later, when my phone rang. It was Buchanan. “Excuse me a moment.” Got up and stepped away. “Hey, Malcolm, what’s up?”

“Missus Chief, I remember something.”

“Good, good. Memories are great and all that. Why are you calling me about them?”

He made the exasperation sound. I got that a lot from Jeff and Chuckie; nice to know Buchanan had joined that team. “I mean I remember something from when I was drugged.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll take the ‘duh’ on that one.” The drug Buchanan had been hit with was experimental for long-range space flight. It put the body and brain into suspended animation, and also slowed the aging process.

The downside to it was that the drug’s recipient would have memory loss of the thirty minutes prior to the drug’s injection, give or take. Memory loss of the time after the injection, when the subject was slipping into suspended animation, was also a given. Since Buchanan was our only known human test subject, we didn’t have a lot to go on beyond this, though Dulce and NASA Base had been working on it these past six months.

“What do you remember?”

“I’m pretty sure Colonel Hamlin is alive, or was the last time I saw him.”