Alien vs. Alien

basically never gotten along, but there are a few things I know about him—and the number one thing is that he would never do anything to hurt Kitty.
    “And maybe you all don’t remember Paris, but I sure do. There is no way he’s in charge of anything going on against Centaurion Division. All the bad guys wanted to kill him in even more horrible ways than they wanted to kill everyone else, and they weren’t exactly shy about beating the crap out of him. He was closer to dying than any of the other guys when we were captive. I don’t buy that even anyone as smart as Chuck is would want to be about three seconds from dying, no matter how much he might have expected Kitty and Richard to come save the day.
    “The people who were friends and allies of my father’s aren’t taking direction from Chuck. They’d rather die. And no matter how sneaky all of you think he is, there’s no way he’s that good a liar. At least, no lie Chuck’s ever tried to pass has fooled me.” She looked at him. “Starting with the ‘Kitty and I are just best friends’ line you tried passing to me in ninth grade.”
    Jeff grunted and Amy rolled her eyes again. “Jeff, seriously, Kitty’s missed you a lot this past month, but I have to be honest when I say I haven’t missed your jealousy crap one little bit. Chuck’s over her romantically, catch the obvious clues, will you?”
    “You’re in a mood,” Christopher finally got out.
    “People trying to kill me and everyone else while pinning it on a really easy, obvious, and yet so clearly innocent target pisses me off. Kitty and I aren’t
all
that different, you know.”
    width="2em"> Everyone else was still basically stunned into silence. “What Ames said. So, um, let’s fish Sandra the Android out of the swamp, assign some teams to fix the buildings, and get Malcolm and Richard to medical while we regroup and try to figure out what the hell is going on.”
    “Let’s do what Kitty the Android Killer says,” Reader said. “I want our flock out of Dodge as soon as possible.” He patted Chuckie on his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, Paul and I agree with Amy and Kitty—it’s not you, but someone sure wants us to think it is.”
    “Who?” Chuckie asked.
    I snorted. “Pick a target, we’re spoilt for choice.”
    Reader sighed. “Just like always.”

    Yi

CHAPTER 13

    “S O, DO WE DRIVE OR TAKE A GATE?” I asked.
    All of Alpha and Airborne snorted. Jeff and Chuckie looked resigned. Christopher came through, though, and hit me with Patented Glare #3. I truly felt it was his favorite. “Alpha and Airborne didn’t arrive via floater gate to get to you more quickly. They used a floater because they had to—you destroyed the main hub apparatus for all of the gates at NASA Base while you were breaking down walls, floors and ceilings.”
    “Bummer.”
    Christopher switched to Glare #4 as Jeff rubbed the back of his neck, Chuckie rubbed his forehead, the flyboys grinned, and Tim, Reader, and Gower gave me a variation of the “why me?” look.
    “Hey, sometimes the buildings in Metropolis get trashed while Superman’s protecting the world from Darkseid and Lex Luthor. It happens. I didn’t do it intentionally.” Well, not with malice aforethought. “So it’s a good thing we drove, right?”
    “Nice spin,” Chuckie said. “Do you want me to stay?” he asked Reader.
    “No. Get out of here along with the rest of our demolition crew,” Reader said. “We’ll call you if we need you to flash the badge, but right now, anyone who was down on that floor isn’t popular with NASA.”
    “No time to stop and feed the ’gators?”
    Jeff picked me up. “You seem tired, baby,” he said as he strode off quickly, the rest of our team following.
    I waved to the guys who were staying behind. The flyboys waved with enthusiasm, the others not so much. Oh well. Surely they wouldn’t be mad at me for too long. Not forever, hopefully.
    Jeff sighed. “No one’s mad at you. Not very much, anyway. It’s just an expensive, awkward situation to be in.”
    “I thought we in Centaurion Division didn’t care about money.”
    “We don’t mind spending it. But wasting it’s another story.”
    p>wiNow I felt bad. It wasn’t like I’d given the destruction of the base a lot of thought. My destructive thoughts had been focused solely on Sandra. The destruction or at least stoppage of a dangerous android had to count for something,