Alien Tango

that made my stomach clench. My mother might want me looking at options, but I wasn’t really open to the idea. I hurried into the galley—I wanted a soda.
    “Coca-Colas.” I opened the fridge and there they were, any variety I might want, all frosty cold. I closed the door. “How about some Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper?” Opened the fridge again and, sure enough, now there was Dew and Dr Pepper there, as cold as if they’d been in there for hours.
    I played this game a bit more, choosing regional and hard to find soft drinks. Every single time, whatever it was I wanted showed up. The how of this drove me crazy, but Martini refused to give me the tiniest hint as to how this worked.
    I took a Cactus Cooler and closed the fridge. It worked the same for food, but I wasn’t all that hungry for some reason. We’d had a great dinner, but it was heading toward breakfast time. But no hunger pangs.
    I walked through the cabin, feeling like a stewardess on a redeye flight, what with everyone snoring. So I headed to the cockpit. To hear Reader arguing with someone over the radio.

CHAPTER 20
    “... I DON’T CARE. This situation’s escalated out of of control.” Reader sounded truly upset.
    Tim looked back as I came in. “Hey. You want to take the ’com, Commander?”
    Oh, it was that kind of situation.
    Reader nodded emphatically and Tim pulled off his headset and handed it to me. I cleared my throat and tried to flip myself into Major Military Mode. I wasn’t very good at it, but I made up for my lack of military-speak skills with a dogged determination to get what I wanted at any cost.
    “Hello, this is Commander Katt. Who am I speaking to?”
    “This is Karl Smith, head of Canaveral Ops. I’d like you and your team to return to Centaurion Home Base and not get involved, Commander, and I’d like confirmation of your return now.”
    I looked at Reader and gave him the “WTF?” signal. He rolled his eyes and shrugged, then went back to paying attention to flying.
    “I’m sorry, but why, exactly, are you now asking us to go home when you asked us to come out there in the first place?”
    “The request was not made by Canaveral Ops.” Smith sounded angry. I got the impression Martini, Sr., had broken some sort of protocol by contacting his son. I decided to support the A-C side of the house.
    “You know, Mr. Smith, I’d love to just turn around and go home, but we’ve already burned all this fuel, and it’s a bitch to explain to the guys in accounting.”
    Dead silence for a moment on the ’com. Tim, however, was snickering up a storm.
    “I beg your pardon? Who the hell do you think you are?”
    “I think I’m the head of Airborne for Centaurion Division. I also think I’m tightly connected to the P.T.C.U.”
    “This isn’t any of their concern.”
    “Oh, hell, yes, it is. Whatever’s going on there at Kennedy required Centaurion Division’s activation. I’m spitballing here, but I’ll wager we have a special visitor or two from outer space hanging about the Space Center. Which means both Centaurion and the P.T.C.U. are quite concerned.”
    Dead silence. Reader nodded his head and shifted his headset. “I wish you’d read the damn files. Yes, shuttle went up, shuttle got hit with something, shuttle landed back at the Space Center, something is in quarantine along with the astronauts.”
    I thought about this. “Mr. Smith?”
    “Yes?” I could tell his teeth were gritted.
    “It’s pretty unusual for a shuttle to land back at the Center, isn’t it?”
    “Unheard of.”
    “But that’s what’s happened, yes?”
    “Yes.” The word sounded dragged out of him.
    “Karl, may I call you Karl? Karl, has it occurred to you that the only beings on this planet potentially equipped to handle whatever the hell our shuttle brought home are in Centaurion Division?”
    “You may not call me Karl.”
    “Too late, Karl, already did. Now, answer the real question.”
    He sighed. “Your people are the best equipped, yes.” Your people. I wondered if Smith was anti-alien.
    “So, why don’t you want my people there?”
    There was a significant pause. “Go secure.”
    I looked at Reader. “We’re not secure?”
    Reader hit a couple of buttons. “Centaurion ’com secured.”
    Smith spoke, rapidly. “There’s more going on than this incident. There have been several attacks on Centaurion personnel in the past few days. Most of them avoided, but we have two A-Cs in critical here. I don’t