Alien Diplomacy

within the political structure, and they have a strong lobbyist working for them. They’re here to stay unless they screw up very badly and publicly.”
    “Lucky us. So, Titan has the bigwigs?”
    Oliver nodded. “And some key properties, all the monuments, and so forth.”
    “Then who’s protecting the regular people?”
    “Supposedly there are enough police officers on the streets to do an adequate job.” Oliver didn’t sound like he agreed with this statement. After what had just happened to us with little to no police interest, I agreed with the sentiment. “However, that does mean there are fewer officers handling traffic duty right now.”
    “At least we’re not on the bus. Speaking of which, let’s at least have some tunes while we sit.”
    Kyle dutifully turned on the music, and “How You Like Me Now?” from The Heavy came on.
    “I’d like it better if we were moving,” Len muttered.
    Due to the vagaries and joys of the current traffic jam, our other limo was next to us. Len motioned for them to go ahead as we all funneled into the one lane. We weren’t the only limos in this jam—there were a lot of them, mostly black, but some white and even some other gray ones.
    Things unsnarled, resnarled, and unsnarled again. I lost track of where our other limo was. There were several gray ones nearby. I counted. There were a lot of gray limos. In fact, we were now a little fleet of gray limos.
    I looked closer. Centaurion Division’s limos didn’t look very different from any other limos out there, at least on the outside. Limo windows were tinted like every other limo, so it was close to impossible to see in. Drivers would be humans, and I certainly didn’t know every human driver we had. But I also found it hard to believe that anyone, even Jeff, had decided we needed a fleet of limos to get home.
    Len cursed. “We need to turn, but no one’s letting us over.”
    Sure enough, we were in the middle of the group, like our own little mobile pod of gray whales. Only we didn’t belong in the pod.
    “Boys? I think evasive maneuvers are going to become a necessity.” No sooner had I said this than I saw the windows of the limos next to us roll down. “Kyle! Hit the laser shield button!”
    I hoped he’d been told where it was, because the guns pointed at us started firing.



CHAPTER 15
    I T HAD BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I’d actually been inside a laser shield, and now here I’d gotten to do it twice in one day. Not that I was complaining.
    Actually, what I was doing was shielding Jamie. But, fortunately, Kyle had found the button in time, and we were treated to the interesting sight of watching bullets ricochet. The sound was different—a sort of deep pinging combined with a weird boing at the end. I decided I liked it a lot better than the sound bullets made when they hit people I cared about.
    “Kitty, sit down!” Len sounded pissed, not that I could blame him. “I’m going to ram through. Keep the baby in her seat.”
    I sat and rebuckled. “I’m not so sure—” I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to do this, but Len floored it and proved that concern to be a moot point. We slammed into the car ahead of us, but the impact didn’t feel like too much. A-C technology had a lot of advantages, and every A-C vehicle had a lot of cool, high-tech after-market stuff in it. Which begged the question of how someone had managed to rig our former limo. However, I didn’t have time to ponder that one at this precise time—I was focused on not getting whiplash.
    “You sure they’re all unfriendlies?” Pierre asked, with a lot more calm in his tone than I’d have expected.
    “Don’t care,” Len snarled.
    “I don’t think American Centaurion would be firing on their own people,” Oliver said. He sounded fairly calm, too.
    Kyle was on his phone barking something to someone, and Len was snarling but driving really well, if I defined that to mean wewere going to totally win this demolition derby. Even Jamie seemed to be handling this like a trooper. Leaving me to act like a normal person. Always the way.
    Of course, screaming wouldn’t help anyone and would probably scare Jamie. So I went for my other standby—running my mouth. “So, Mister Joel Oliver, with all your contacts, you didn’t spot yourself as the assassination target du jour?”
    “I’m with you,” he pointed out as we rammed the car next to us.
    My phone chose this moment to ring. I managed to grab my purse as we