Alien in the Family

rest of my flyboys always went into Supreme Military Mode whenever we were dealing with anyone outside Centaurion Division. No one in Centaurion liked having to deal with the C.I.A.’s ET Division. Except me. I didn’t mind if we were dealing with Chuckie, but only if we were dealing with him.
    Chuckie reached into his coat pocket and pulled out some goggles. “You might want to put these on.” He handed them to me and tossed a pair each to Martini and Reader.
    I put them on, which, of course, required me to let go of Martini’s hand. Chuckie smoothly took the opportunity to take my arm as soon as the goggles were on. “You’ll want to pay close attention, Kitty.”
    “Why me? I mean, over everyone else?” I was trying not to give off any kind of emotion other than professional interest. Being betrothed to the most powerful empath on Earth had a lot of advantages. But Chuckie had become an in-person part of my life again on a much more consistent basis starting when Martini and I had been in a very rough patch. I define “rough patch” to mean he was drugged out of his mind by an alienhating conspiracy, and said conspirators almost murdered me in a truly horrible way. We were supposedly past all that, but since Chuckie had proposed during this time, and I’d considered it, Martini was never happy when Chuckie was around.
    Chuckie sighed. “You’ll see.”
    Martini was on my other side and took my other hand. I held his hand tightly, but I could feel how angry he was. “Reynolds, you want to loosen your grip on her?”
    “No. Though you should hold on tighter as well.” Chuckie reached out, grabbed Reader’s arm, and pulled him over. “Hang on.”
    “Um, why?”
    No sooner were those words out of my mouth, than we found out why.

CHAPTER 2

    THE SHOCK WAVES HIT, and the sky lit up. Animas, Hatchet, and Chiricahua Peaks formed a very shallow triangle in the southern parts of Arizona and New Mexico. But this area was a hotbed of alien activity—most landings happened here, both intentional and of the crash-landing kind. No one knew why. I just figured aliens were attracted to mountainous desert areas. Martini said they were attracted to me, but I didn’t really believe him.
    If the parasitic superbeings the A-Cs had originally been sent to Earth to deal with kept to this area, too, our lives would be a lot simpler. Sadly, they landed all over the world, but they still seemed to prefer the United States in terms of overall percentage of attacks. The U.S. was the immigration country of choice even for alien jellyfish things that turned humans into scary monsters. It made you proud, really.
    But what we were seeing didn’t resemble a parasite or a superbeing in any way. The lights were a bizarre pattern, but we were high enough up that we could see them clearly. Geometric shapes, interesting and different, but not Earthly. And yet, they were vaguely familiar.
    Walkies were crackling. “Jeff, what do you see?” Christopher was shouting.
    “Same as you, I’d bet,” Martini said.
    “Is Kitty okay? I can’t raise her!” This from Tim.
    “She’s fine. Jeff’s got one hand, Reynolds has the other,” Reader replied.
    “Nice,” Jerry said sarcastically. “And thanks to the C.I.A. for the heads-up on this one.”
    “You all okay?” Martini asked, his voice crisp, annoyed, and all business. He went into Commander Mode a lot around Chuckie, but always when any of us were in real or perceived danger.
    Everyone was confirmed to be still standing on terra firma and seeing a pretty laser light show. “All we need is Pink Floyd playing in the background.”
    “You’ve got it on your iPod, I’m sure,” Chuckie said. “You have everything.”
    “True.” Chuckie did know me very well. Martini hated that, as well.
    “How often is this happening?” Martini asked.
    “It’s a pattern. It showed up once last year. We investigated—nothing. Would have pulled Centaurion in, but you were dealing with the Mephistopheles situation.” Or, as I called it, my introduction to my new life, since this was how I’d joined up as a Centaurion agent. I also called it Operation Fugly, which caused universal wincing whenever I said it aloud. No idea why—my names for things were always a lot more realistic than those the various government divisions came up with.
    “You could have mentioned it when that was over,” Martini said, sarcasm heading to full.
    “We could have, but we had other pressing issues.