Alien vs. Alien

my best bud forever, as near as I can tell. Plus I have all those nifty A-C skills I backward inherited from my daughter. So, wither danger goest, so goest I, or something like that.
    Besides, superpowers or no, the classics—hairspray, a well-stocked iPod, and a Glock .23—never go out of style. It’s my own style, sure, but it works for me.
    So when the next set of fugly aliens tries to come and ask, “What’s the frequency, Kitty?” don’t worry. It might look like the end of the world as we know it, but the bad guys won’t feel fine.

    Yi

CHAPTER 1

    M Y PHONE RANG AT 11 A.M. Sadly, it was a number I knew. Also sadly, it wasn’t a number I liked. But even more sadly, it was a number I had to answer.
    I heaved a sigh, hit pause on my iPod—right in the middle of the Foo Fighters’ “Monkey Wrench”—and put on my Bright and Cheerful Diplomat Voice. “Hello, Senator Armstrong. How are you today?”
    Senator Vincent Armstrong was the senior senator from Florida and had come onto my radar during what I called Operation Confusion and most everyone else called “the time the bad guys tried to steal my baby in the first days she was born, while they also tried to kill the rest of us.” Our lives were nothing if not exciting.
    “I’m wonderful, Ambassador Martini. I was wondering if you might be able to visit my offices today.”
    I’d become the co-head of the American Centaurion Diplomatic Corps in the aftermath of Operation Confusion. The big test had been six weeks ago, though, when Operation Assassination had gone down at the President’s Ball. I represented well, at least, in terms of keeping everyone alive and reasonably unscathed. The less said about the state of my clothing after the event the better, though.
    Normally, Armstrong asking for a visit would mean we were both in Washington, D.C. However, currently we were both in Florida. He was in Miami, and I was nearish to the Kennedy Space Center, at what I called Martini Manor and what a stranger to the complex would call Beverly Hills, East.
    “Oh, gosh, no. Tied up all day with home stuff.” I wasn’t. We had no plans at all. But even with no plans, a visit with Armstrong was high on my To Don’t list.
    “Not able to leave the house at all?” His voice oozed concern, but I knew he was faking it.
    “Nope. Jamie’s not up to it. Trapped all day, really,” I replied cheerfully. This wasn’t totally a lie, though Jamie was having a great day today. However, Armstrong had been asking for this meeting for several weeks. And I’d been dodging with different, so far extremely successful, excuses for just as long.
    “Well, then, I’m pleased I took the initiative.”
    That boded. “Excuse me?”
    “I had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to come to me, again, so, Mohammed will have to come to the mountain.”
    I decided not to mention that he was both comparing himself to one religion’s revered prophet while managing to insult me religiously three ways at the same time. I was fairly sure he knew exactly what he was saying and that it had been said to get a rise out of me.
    “How sweet of you. What day were you planning to visit?” I asked so I could plan to be elsougewhere.
    “Oh, today, Ambassador. I should reach your location within thirty minutes.”
    It figured. I ran through all my options very quickly. They seemed quite limited. Armstrong had cornered me well—I’d confirmed I wasn’t going anywhere, and there was no way I could officially tell him to drop dead without causing yet another diplomatic incident.
    I went for the Cheerful Diplomat voice again. “Wonderful. Guess I’d better go make myself look presentable.”
    “I’ve never seen you as anything less than presentable, Ambassador.”
    This was a flat out lie, but I decided not to call him on it. “Great, see you shortly.”
    I hung up, cursed quietly, silently told Dave Grohl I’d have to get back to his awesome band later, then ran like hell for where I was fairly sure the rest of the team was.
    I ran at human normal, which four and a half months ago would have been my only option. However, I wasn’t fully human any more. I’d scored some A-C powers due to giving birth to a hybrid baby whose father had been given Surcenthumain, or what I liked to think of as the Superpowers Drug. So I could have used hyperspeed to zip through the house in a second flat.
    Only, I was still having serious issues with control. Slamming into walls wasn’t fun, and