Alien in the Family

mattered. Once we were all relocated to Caliente Base, I’d had to pass a law that they were not allowed to try to meet Stephen Hawking—they would have killed him with love, and I figured we still needed his brain.
    Martini was finally getting a word in edgewise. “Great, Mom. Thanks. Can I please talk to Dad again? National emergency and all that. Yes, I really do think it’s more important than the seating arrangements. Yes, more important than the two families meeting. Trust me, that’s going to seem like nothing shortly.”
    We were trying to figure out just how to have our families meet. My parents and my Uncle Mort, the career, high-ranking Marine, all knew the truth about Centaurion Division. And they were the only ones in my entire extended family who did. Since my mother was a former Catholic and my father was Jewish, we were already getting the whole mass versus temple questions coming. I hadn’t figured out how to explain that we were going to end up doing neither. I’d done a ton of research into Earth religions to find the one with the closest ceremony to what our A-Cs performed. So far, not a lot of luck.
    It appeared Martini had his father on the phone again. “Dad, cutting to the chase here. Do we still have relatives alive on the home world and would they actually think about coming to my wedding?”
    He sat up, then he sat back, then he stood up and stepped away from the table. This was never a good sign. I looked at Christopher. He pulled out his phone and dialed. “Dad? Sorry, but we need you here, right now. Thanks.” He nodded to me. “He’ll be here shortly, just needs to dress and get to a gate.”
    Martini was still on the phone, and I could see his whole body was tensed. Chuckie could, too. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’m willing to buy that Martini had no idea of what giving you that thing would do.”
    I felt myself relax a bit. “He wouldn’t do something to put me in danger, let alone the entire world. He’s spent his whole life protecting it.”
    Chuckie patted my hand. “I know. But I had to be sure.”
    “You don’t think he’s faking it?”
    “I see his sarcastic ways are rubbing off on you.” Chuckie leaned next to me and spoke softly in my ear, so no one else could hear. “I know they can’t lie. I’ve seen him angry before, more than you, probably. I’ve also seen him scared. And he’s both.”
    I gave him a dirty look and leaned next to his ear. “You make it sound as though Jeff wets himself or something. He’s not scared often, if at all.”
    Chuckie laughed, then did the ear thing again. “I love this, but you’re going to get in trouble when he’s off the phone. And I didn’t mean it as an insult. Like most of us, he gets scared. But he shows it like, well, I show it, or White shows it—by getting angry, going into an authority mode, and so on.” He laughed softly again. “I’m not insinuating your man’s a wimp, Kitty. If he were, I’d be running Centaurion already.”
    I was going to ask him what that meant when Richard White entered the room. He’d used hyperspeed to get dressed and over here, which was sort of a relief. He took a look around. “What’s going on?”
    Martini looked at me over his shoulder. “Tell him.” Then he went back to his phone call.
    I took a deep breath. “We have unexpected company coming.”
    White looked at the necklace. “Oh, my God.”

CHAPTER 4

    WHEN THE HEAD OF AN ENTIRE religious organization says that, any calm left in the room goes running to hide under the covers.
    White sat down in the only open chair, which happened to be the one Martini had vacated. It didn’t appear to be an issue—Martini was still on the phone with his father, and I got the impression it was going from bad to worse.
    “You want to explain this? Keeping in mind we have both the C.I.A. and the P.T.C.U. represented in the room?” White looked shaken enough I felt it necessary to remind him he wasn’t with family only.
    He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
    “Neither can we. Not that we know what ‘it’ is, but we’re willing to bet we won’t believe it, either.”
    White looked at Chuckie. “Were there lights somewhere?”
    “Funny you should ask.” Chuckie explained the light patterns, both physical and timewise, and where they were located. “What about those mountain ranges is significant?”
    “Nothing, they’re just close and in the right formation.” White had his head leaning in