Alien vs. Alien

this was all part of LaRue’s plan. She’d been the brains of Operation Confusion—the massive number of distractions that had been doing their evil double duty were classic LaRue. And when they’d escaped in the FTL spaceship they’d conned Alexander out of, they’d gone out of Christopher’s range, meaning far, far away. Who knew what, or whom, they’d found to help them?
    Ronaldo was part Yates and, as we’d determined, he was Serene’s older brother, meaning his mother was an A-C, too. But Yates had been a player of the highest order, so there could be a ton of his kids, most likely hybrids, out here. They could be organized—after all, the Al Dejahl organization was back in action.
    Yates was also one of the few who’d managed to remain in control of his human side once he’d joined with the Mephistopheles parasite. Meaning Ronaldo probably had that ability, too. For all I knew, White, Lucinda, and Gladys might have it, as well. They were all Yates’ offspring, after all. But whether or not this meant Ronaldo had joined with the parasites or just knew how to control them, I didn’t know. But only someone with experience in controlling them somehow would be able to use them as a strike force.
    “What about ACE?” Naomi asked quietly. “He’s connected us to Alpha Four before, and that means of communication has been trusted.”
    “This is why he’s been distracted. He can’t help us—he’s already torn.” And ACE had told me as much. ACE was going to guard the Dome. Or die trying. That statement had a lot more impact now that I knew what was coming. “We can’t rely on ACE for this. He’s protecting the only area of the world he can.”
    I took the leap, but I took it silently—ACE was protecting what the invaders were after. We were making it easier on him by moving all the goals into one place, but that meant we were focusing more firepower at ACE, too.
    Operation Assassination had been a good trial run, but I knew that Reader and Tim were still too untried for the magnitude of what was coming. So was I. We needed the guys who’d managed enemy attacks for over a decade and knew how to do it in their sleep. We also needed the guy who’d likely planned for this eventuality. The bad guys knew it, too, which was why Jeff and Chuckie had been kidnapped.
    “How did Valentino get here?” Buchanan asked. “Without anyone noticing, I mean.”
    “Tino! Tino! Tino!”
    “Yes, Bellie. Seriously, MJO, shut her up. Anyway, Clarence used a gate of some kind. They’re using something like that to move as fast as they are through space. The Alpha Centauri system has faster-than-light travel and they use it, but they also use gate technology to move even faster.”
    “Something else works that fast,” Tito said.
    “True.” Nothing moved you faster than ACE, and I knew that was what Tito meant—he and I had been part of the team that had taken the Time Warp Express over to Alpha Four during Operation Invasion, after all. “You think they figured out how to reengage their mini-ACE?” I asked him.
    “I think it’s a really strong likelihood, yeah. They could have sent Clarence here that way, too, which would mean we’d be unlikely to notice.”
    “And we weren’t looking for Clarence,” Naomi said.
    “We were supposed to be,” Whitereplied.
    “But why didn’t ACE say something?” Abigail asked.
    My conversation with ACE came back to me. “Because whatever it is they’ve got is also sentient and is trying to, I think, confuse ACE, turn him against us, something along those lines. At a higher level than we can understand. And ACE warning us goes against his ‘observe and don’t affect’ programming.”
    “From what I’ve heard, ACE struggles with the decision every time he helps us,” Tito added.
    “True enough. Look, we have to get these pictures to Christopher. We need to stop flying blind.”
    White nodded. “I agree. I’ll take the pictures to him.”
    “I need you here. Can’t we just calibrate and toss them through the gate?”
    “It’s not a secure method,” White admitted.
    “And I say again, I can’t let them leave our control.” Franklin neither looked nor sounded happy. I couldn’t blame him. “It sounds like it would be wiser for us to have him come here, in part because I’m sure we could use his help.”
    “We can’t risk Christopher. Period. Right now, he’s the most important person on Earth. At least, if we want to have an Earth