Alien vs. Alien

anyway. I kissed her again. “Be my good girl. Mommy loves you and will see you very soon.”
    Christopher took Jamie, I hugged them all again, then Buchanan and I went to the nearest gate, which, in the Dome, meant we walked a couple of feet. “American Centaurion Embassy for two, please.”
    The A-C working this gate nodded and calibrated. “I couldn’t help overhearing, Ambassador,” he said as he spun the dial. “Should we be prepared for some kind of attack?”
    “Honestly, I’m not sure. But being prepared is always a good idea.”
    He nodded. “I’ll check with Commander White.”
    “Do that,” Buchanan said as he took my arm and stepped us through the gate before I could mention that Christopher wasn’t a Commander any more.
    A few nauseating seconds later we exited in the Embassy’s basement. “It’s a good thing you had White stay there,” Buchanan said as I let my stomach settle.
    “Why so?”
    “I don’t know how happy your grunts are with the current chain of command.”
    “It’s been almost five months.”
    “Yeah. That’s not a lot of time to adjust to such a radical change.”
    “It wasn’t that radical. Everyone who moved into leadership positions had been increasing in rank for a while.”
    Buchanan shook his head. “I know you had a hell of a time with transition to your current roles. So did the people who replaced you. Think about what that said to the grunts.”
    “They all dealt with my addition just fine a couple years ago.”
    “Yes, but you were added into what they could rightly consider the human section. None of them can fly, so a human being in charge of the new Airborne Division made sense.”
    “The new position holders make sense.”
    “Not to them, I guarantee it. You took your two strongest agents and moved them to face positions. You said it yourself to White a few minutes ago. Crawford replacing you? Okay, I’m sure they’re okay with that. Reader replacing your husband, though? I’m sure they’re not happy about that at all. And then, you put Serene Dwyer in as White’s replacement
and
moved the two women you were just talking to into the slots Reader and Crawford had had? And this was right after the Pontifex retired, which was unprecedented, and put Gower in place.”
    “I realize some of the older generation are old-fashioned, but they do seem aware that women can vote and hold jobs and everything these days.”
    “It’s not that, and it’s not just the older generation. Their women
have
jobs, jobs they feel are vitally important. Their women do the brainwork. But they don’t normally go out, guns blazing. It’s one thing to intermarry. It’s another to have no choice.”
    “There are a lot of times you remind me of Jeff. This is one of them. Look, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
    “Pat yourself on the back for keeping White there. You heard the grunt who sent us through—he called him Commander. He wants White back in charge, and your husband too, I’m sure.”
    “Fantastic. Let’s get upstairs and you can share this with the man who actually orchestrated it all. I’m sure the former Pontifex will be happy to hear your doom and gloom take.”
    Buchanan shook his head again as we headed upstairs. “You hear but you don’t listen, you see but you don’t observe.”
    “Tell me, Holmes, how
do
you do it?”
    “Training, attention to detail, and awareness of the big picture.”
    “Noted. After this is over, I’ll take your class. I’m already signed up for one with Mister Joel Oliver. And as I said to him, your class has to be better than the Washington Wife class.”
    Buchanan sighed as we reached the first floor. “I learned all of this from your mother. You were raised with her, and I know she passed things along to you.”
    “Never draw to an inside straight was a biggie of hers.”
    “Now you’re just being b—”
    “Hey!”
    He grinned. “I was going to say ‘bratty.’ ”
    “Sure you were.”

    Yi

CHAPTER 48

    W HITE, ARMSTRONG, TITO, AND WALTER were waiting for us in the kitchen. Bellie was on a perch. I wasn’t a great judge of parrot expressions, but she didn’t look happy.
    She saw me and squawked. “Bellie misses Jeff!”
    “Yes, yes. Kitty misses Jeff, too. Busy times, Bellie, demand that we have to do our jobs.”
    “Security is job one!”
    “Duly noted, Bellie.”
    “That was one of Antony’s favorite sayings,” Armstrong said.
    “It’s sort of a cliché.”
    He shrugged.