Alien vs. Alien

not to share his nickname.
    “Geekwad?” Tito asked. “Really?” Never mind. Tito figured it out.
    Ravi glared at him. “It’s a fine name where I come from. Particularly when pronounced properly.”
    “Tito, now isn’t the time. Besides, his real nickname is Ravi the Geek, like Jimmy the Greek, only less flattering.”
    “That’s not how I like to be introduced,” Ravi said sulkily. “And I prefer my name pronounced properly.”
    “Oh, please. Like you haven’t heard that one as often as I’ve heard the ‘Hottie from Hot Town’ jokes? Let it pass. Last but in no way least, meet Omega Red, aka Yuri Stanislav. Yuri wears his sunglasses at night because he’s legally blind. So, really, they should have named him Daredevil, but he’s Russian, so, you know, had to go with the fitting code name and all. Killer with the audio cryptology among other pursuits.”
    “You know all these guys but had no idea of what your parents did for a living?” Buchanan asked. I could tell he was trying not to crack up.
    “Chuck could never keep a secret from you,” Stryker fumed. Sadly, I knew this to be untrue, since Chuckie had figured out what my parents really did when we were in high school and hadn’t shared. But I chose not to mention it.
    “Why do you have a parrot and a huge peacock with you?” Ravi asked.
    “They’d better not crap all over our equipment,” Big George added.
    Bruno cooed. Bellie mercifully remained silent. “They seem pleasant,” Omega Red shared.
    “I don’t like birds,” Henry said quietly. “They scare me. Just a little,” he added a touch too defensively.
    “Whatever,” Stryker snapped. “It’s Kitty. Be happy she didn’t bring her dogs.”
    “One party, Eddy, that’s all. One party when I had to dogsit and you and Chuckie insisted I had to attend. They didn’t break that much, anyway.”
    “They destroyed my entire collection of Happy Meal collectibles.” Stryker sounded as though he’d had a collection of Ming vases on his shelf, not a bunch of kiddie toys.
    “Not my fault they were covered with hamburger smell. Or that you left them just lying around.”
    “They were up on a shelf that was at head height.”
    “Give the bitterness a rest, Eddy, it was a decade ago. The people with me work with me in some capacity. In my current job, as Ambassador for American Centaurion.”
    I did a really fast first name intro of everyone with me. The fact that I had a lot of people with me registered at this point. This many people had probably never been in Hacker Central at one time, ever. Good, it’d be something for Hacker International to remember, a red-letter day sort of thing.
    I had to figure Bruno had shown himself to one and all because they were trustworthy. Either that or Bruno wasn’t a good judge of character. I chose to go with the former.
    “Now, charming introductions over. Your new boss of less than a week and the good senator from Florida may want a more thorough review of your skills, but we don’t have time right now. Two of the most important men in my life have been kidnapped with clear intent to do serious harm, and we have what appears to be the biggest alien armada ever on a direct course for little old Earth. As Chuckie likes to say, you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem. So get to work.”
    The hackers all looked at each other. “Doing what, exactly, Kitty?” Stryker asked finally.
    I sighed. “Dude, seriously. Colonel Franklin has the huge Encyclopedia Centaurion in his office. In it, it lists that when we have lost the head of the C.I.A.’s Extra-Terrestrial Division, also known as Chuckie, we are to, against all logic and common sense, come to Stryker Dane for the save. So, save.”
    “I need a protocol,” Stryker said. I got the feeling he wasn’t being contrary.
    “A protocol?”
    He gave me a look I was familiar with. The “you’re giving me orders why?” look. “A protocol, a code phrase, something to indicate that I should trust you.”
    “I know what they are. But it’s me, Kitty, remember? Known you almost as long as I’ve known Chuckie?”
    Stryker shrugged. “You could turn on Chuck, be mind controlled, be a robot. I have to know I can trust you.”
    I’d managed to keep the anger and fear somewhat at bay. But every minute we wasted was a minute I could bet Jeff and Chuckie were suffering in some horrifying way. And my baby was in both the safest and most dangerous place right