Alien vs. Alien

mother’s ever done to put herself between her child and something horrible.
    While I did this, my mind shared that it had a few questions. Was this really Jamie or another Peregrine? If it was Jamie, how did she get here? And how in the world was she standing up on her own?
    Jeff stepped in front of us, Christopher blocked us from the rear. I cringed. And Jamie pulled away from me a little, so that she could look up at the sky. And she kept her hands up.
    After a second or two, I realized that we were all still alive and unsmooshed. Looked up to see the flying saucer just hanging in the air above us. Everything and everyone around us was still fighting, but they were avoiding us, as if our little area was repelling them. Other than the Peregrines, who, to a bird, gathered around us, cooing.
    Thought about all the times Jamie had done something she’d heard me say and chose my words carefully.
    “It would be nice if the big, round, metal space ship were to be put down, very carefully, so that it didn’t hurt anyone or anything on the ground.”
    Sure enough, the flying saucer sailed slowly and landed, bottom side down, balanced on the reflecting pool.
    “What a good girl you are.” I hugged her. “Mommy loves you so much. And look at my big girl, standing up all by herself!” And so early, too. She’d be walking sooner than average, but then she wasn’t an average baby. I snuggled her, and she giggled at me.
    “Ah, Kitty? Could we maybe be sure we’re going to survive this before you go into full on Mommy Mode?”
    “Uncle Christopher’s just a little jumpy, Jamie-Kat. Let’s make him feel better. Why don’t you, Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Christopher, and all our wonderful Peregrine birdies all get away from where we are right now and go where it’s a little safer?”
    The Power Cube had moved us faster and more smoothly than a gate ever had. We moved the same way now. One moment, we were in the middle of Fighting Fugly Stew, the next we were on the top of the Lincoln Memorial steps.
    I stood up, holding Jamie in my arms. She reached for Jeff, who took her and cuddled her. “My Jamie-Kat is such a good girl,” he said as he gave her lots of Daddy Kisses, and she giggled happily.
    “How is she doing all this?” Christopher asked me quietly. He sounded a little freaked out.
    “No idea. Just glad she can.”
    Supersoldiers surrounded the downed Z’porrah ship, but no one came out of it. Which was probably good, seeing as there were still superbeings loose, and the rest of the supersoldiers, assisted by the androids, were fighting them and/or taking the hits the Z’porrah were still sending toward us.
    “We’re going to need to bring in artillery to get rid of the superbeings,” Jeff said. “Before they destroy all the supersoldiers and we have even more superbeings.”
    “We could call Stryker’s team and tell them to have the supersoldiers stand down,” Christopher said. “But I’m not sure that we want them stopping, because some of the supersoldiers are destroying the superbeings.”
    “I think we need to stop the Z’porrah ships from blowing us all up first.”
    The Lincoln Memorial was set up so that you could, from the top, see everything across the Mall. So we had a good view of what happened next.
    More spaceships appeared.
    It was another armada. Only these ships weren’t flying saucers. Some looked like big cat’s paws, some like big dog heads, some like giant lizards with wings. These were accompanied by three ships that screamed “I’m an Imperial Battle Cruiser from
Star Wars
” only with extra bells and whistles.
    Our friends were here, and Earth wasn’t standing alone any more.
    The Z’porrah ships were a little slow to react to the new arrivals, which gave our allies a chance to blast some of them out of the air without trying too hard.
    However, that didn’t last long. All the Z’porrah ships stopped firing at targets on the ground and focused on those in the air. The Feliniad, Canus Majorian, and Reptilian ships fired back.
    The sun was beginning to set, but you couldn’t tell because there was so much light in the sky. The Z’porrah ships could fire from various points around their saucer. The Feliniad, Canus Majorian, and Reptilian ships couldn’t, but apparently they made up for this inability with stronger firepower. Both sides seemed equally matched in terms of flying agility, other than the Alpha Four Battle Cruisers, which were just as unwieldy as you’d