Alien in Chief (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

“M
OMMY,
why is that car floating?”

For most mothers, the answer would be “special effects” or “just watch the movie, honey.” For me, it required a different explanation.

“Ah, Jamie, well . . . I think it's because your little brother, um, wants it to. Charlie? Charlie, honey, put the car down, please. Now.”

Thankfully, the car in question was one of the toy cars that my son was far too young to play with. That didn't stop him from wanting them, however. And, because he wanted them, well . . . Charlie took them. By making them come to him.

In the past years I've gone through so many changes that you'd think change would be commonplace, something I didn't even think twice about.

You'd be wrong.

Becoming an alien superbeing exterminator? Handled like a boss. Becoming the Ambassador for an alien principality? So four years ago. Being the wife of a still-unwilling but going to do his best for his people and country politician? Got it covered. Finding that the Mastermind of the majority of our problems on Earth was a good friend? Still plotting the revenge. Swapping places with another me and visiting another universe? Check. Averting a whole solar system's civil war? Double check.

But none of these changes prepared me for my biggest battle.

Being the mother of two.

Two alien hybrid children with, oh, shall we say, unusual abilities. Don't get me wrong—I love my kids. They're great and, frankly, I have tons of help, a super supportive husband, totally there parents and in-laws, and a plethora of Secret Service agents following us everywhere. I mean, I have no right to complain at all.

I just have to say that, sometimes it felt like averting an alien civil war was a lot easier than parenting. Times like right now, for instance.

My daughter Jamie of course knew why the toy car was floating. She was just asking so that she could point out that her little brother was doing something I didn't want him to in a way that might mean she wasn't a tattletale.

Of course, since Charlie's birth six months ago, we'd actually needed Jamie's tattling, because Charlie's very unusual talent had manifested at birth.

Being the family of the current Vice President of the United States meant that we were under microscopic scrutiny. Seeing as my husband, Jeff, was also an alien whose parents and family were originally from Alpha Four of the Alpha Centauri system meant we were under scrutiny at subatomic levels.

The A-Cs, as they called themselves on Earth, were religious refugees when they came in the 1960s. And they'd integrated into the world, sort of, and stayed hidden, almost completely, as citizens of the United States first and the world second. Now, thanks to a just-barely-foiled alien invasion from four years ago, the entire world knew that aliens were real, and that the best looking ones in the galaxy had chosen to live with us.

Perks aside, our A-Cs were here to protect and serve. Could not say the same for at least half of the alien races out there we'd encountered so far.

The A-Cs had two hearts and, as such, this gave them faster regeneration, hyperspeed, and super-strength. Some of them also had special talents, like Jeff, who was the strongest empath in, most likely, the galaxy. Besides the empaths, there were imageers, who could manipulate any images, static or live or whatever, dream readers, and troubadours, who were the actors and public speakers of the bunch.

All female hybrid children, of which we still didn't have all that many, were especially talented, with skills far surpassing the A-C norm. But before now, no hybrid boys had exhibited exceptional talent. They'd gotten normal talents, or none at all—the only exceptions were those children who were the progeny of Ronald Yates. For whatever reason, the newest crop of male hybrid kids were all talented in some ways, but nothing like Charlie. Because until now, telekinesis hadn't been an A-C trait.

I'd gotten pregnant on a world where telepathy and telekinesis were normal, though, which was the only explanation we had had for Charlie's abilities. Psychic osmosis? I'm at a point where nothing surprises me, so yeah, maybe.

You'd think that, with all the other things the A-Cs could do, Charlie being telekinetic would be no big to anyone in the A-C community.

And you would be wrong.

The car was still floating, and now it had company. “Charlie, put the cars down, please and thank you.” He grinned at me—he totally had his father's smile—and yet the cars continued to fly away from the other kids in the American Centaurion Embassy School and Daycare Center and fly right to Charlie. “All the cars down, please, Charlie. Now.”

Counted to ten. Listened to the music while I did so—my rule was that music needed to be happening as much as possible wherever I was, inside the Embassy and in whatever car I was in in particular.

Other people's rules were that the music in the daycare
center couldn't be hard rock or be loaded with suggestive lyrics because others were far more into censorship and keeping cool things from kids than I was.

But I still managed to get good music of all eras piped in for the little ones, because the term “hard rock” was subjective and complex lyrics helped young minds to grow and learn. Jethro Tull had just finished “War Child” and Paul McCartney and Wings were now singing “Children, Children.” And cars were still flying. It was time to channel my mother.

“Charles Maxwell Martini, you return those cars and put them right down this instant, young man.”

No more grinning from my son, but the cars zoomed back to the kids who'd been playing with them and landed nicely. One for the win column.

Denise Lewis, whose husband was my mother's right-hand man in the Presidential Terrorism Control Unit and our Embassy's Defense Attaché, smiled at me. “Good job, Kitty.”

Managed not to say that Jamie hadn't been this much work. She had been, she'd just been different.

Was saved from having to respond in any way by Kyle Constantine and Len Parker sticking their heads in. I'd met them in Vegas when they were still playing football for USC and they'd helped me out in a big way. They could have both gone pro, but instead they joined the C.I.A. right after they graduated. Len had been assigned as my driver and Kyle as my bodyguard, and both had done a great job.

But right before some of us took a trip to the Alpha Centauri system to avert a variety of civil wars, evil plots, and yet another alien invasion, Kyle had been put in charge of the Second Best Lady's Cause.

Actually, I still had no idea what my official title was as the wife of the VP. No one around seemed to know, or care. I'd searched the papers for clues, but stories written about me tended to focus on all the madness that surrounded us
on a daily basis, with adjectives tending more toward “outspoken,” “blunt,” and “trigger-happy.”

Anyway, a politician who'd been aligned with all of our enemies during the presidential campaign that had put Senator Vincent Armstrong into the White House, dragging Jeff along kicking and screaming, had somehow managed to become our ally. The slipperiness of political bedfellows and changing alliances never ceased to amaze me. It truly made fighting alien invasions, mad super-geniuses, and crazed megalomaniacs seem like such clean work.

“Kitty, Gideon Cleary's here,” Kyle said. Speaking of the devil I'd just been thinking about. “We need to brainstorm the next ad campaign.”

Mommy Time was over. Time to get back in the saddle and handle grown-up things.

“And,” Len added, “we have news, too. News you're not going to like.”

CHAPTER 2

H
UGGED AND KISSED JAMIE
and Charlie, handed Charlie to Denise, petted all our animals—of which we had so many, both Earth and alien, we'd all lost count—grabbed my purse, and headed out.

Once we got out of the daycare center even better music was playing. I kept us tuned to the Aerosmith Channel, and while other bands were allowed and even encouraged, my rule was at least one song from my Bad Boys from Boston for every ten on the playlist.

“What's going on?” I asked as “Back in the Saddle” was, possibly prophetically, playing softly in the background and we got on the elevator and headed down for the meeting. “New issues with The Cause?”

The Cause was protecting campus co-eds from being attacked and raped. When we'd met, Kyle had been drunk and suggested that I might like to get to know half of the Trojan football team intimately. Len had stopped that—well, Len and Harlie.

Harlie was a Poof, aka the best wedding gift ever. Poofs were alien animals that looked a lot like tiny, fluffy kittens with no visible ears or tails, but with shiny black button eyes. They were fluffy balls on tiny legs and paws and I and everyone else loved them. They were also incredibly great protection because they could go Jeff-sized with tons of
razor sharp teeth when danger threatened, so they were wonderful personal protection bundles of cuteness.

Supposedly they were pets for the Alpha Four Royal Family only—which I'd somehow married into—but the Poofs were androgynous and mated whenever a royal wedding loomed. Supposedly.

In reality, the Poofs were Black Hole Universe animals, and apparently our Poofs had decided to go forth and multiply. We had tons of Poofs, and more seemed to show up with a lot of regularity.

In the Poofs' world, if you named it, it was yours. And the Poofs made the call as to what they considered a name—and therefore who they considered their “owner”—so a lot of people had scored Poofs simply because they'd said something like, “Look at that, how adorable is that?” Which is how one of our friends, Representative Nathalie Gagnon-Brewer had gotten a Poof. She called hers Dora for short.

Harlie had gone large and in charge way back when and scared Kyle straight, and to prove it, totally without my even knowing, Kyle had started a Take Back the Night program while he and Len were still at USC, which created a service where anyone on campus could call to get a security escort back to wherever they called home, and led info sessions to teach girls how to avoid date rape situations and how to get out of them safely.

Many colleges had these programs, but Kyle's had been particularly effective, in part because he'd gotten all the jocks involved in a positive way. He'd been one of the representatives for USC's sports program's preventative counseling service, which worked with athletes to keep them from becoming the kind of men who thought women were playthings made to be dominated. He'd been, from all Len said, quite intense about it.

All this had made him the man for the job when Cleary had come to us asking for support with putting a similar program in place in all the colleges and universities in
Florida, where he was still governor. He'd also suggested it as my Cause, and I honestly had no objection.

Cleary had thought up The Cause, however, because he was intimately involved in a scandal that we had, so far, managed to keep under wraps.

“No, not an issue with The Cause,” Kyle replied. “Though I'm sure that's the reason we'll all give for why he's here. We think we have a hit on Stephanie.”

“Really?” Think of the scandal and it appeared. Or something like that. Maybe I still had some telepathic resonance from Operation Civil War. Or maybe Charlie had done a mother-and-child feedback with me like Jamie had and I just wasn't fully aware of it yet. “How confirmed of a hit?”

“We're not sure,” Len said, as the elevator opened and we headed off for one of the smaller salons. “Governor Cleary didn't want to tell us a lot without you in the room.”

“For a guy whose state isn't next to the Beltway, he's sure up here a lot.”

“He's going to run for President again,” Len said. “We all know it. He's keeping his ties tight. Can't blame him for that.”

“I can guarantee he wants to activate Clarence, though,” Kyle added. “So if you still want to tell him no, you'd better call Jeff.”

“Why?”

“Because Mister Reynolds sounds like he's on Cleary's side,” Len said. “Not sure why.”

Speaking of one of my son's namesakes and my best friend since ninth grade. “Chuckie's here? When did he get here?” Normally I knew when he or Jeff were coming to or in the Embassy during the work day. I pulled my phone out and sent a “get home now, please and thank you” text to my husband. It sounded like the boys were right and we were going to need him here sooner as opposed to later.

Chuckie was the head of the C.I.A.'s Extra-Terrestrial Division and, thanks to what we brought back from
Operation Civil War, the Golden Boy of the Agency. Which meant that he had even more enemies within the Agency than he had had before.

Chuckie lived in the Embassy now, because his apartments kept getting trashed by people trying to kill him. And his emotional state hadn't been stable since we'd gotten back from Operation Civil War, because of the horrible things that had happened to him out there, and the fact that the guy he'd thought was his best friend had turned out to be the Mastermind and therefore the guy directly responsible for the death of his wife. Crap like that can affect a person for some reason.

“He came with the governor,” Len answered as we reached the salon and the music changed to Mötley Crüe's “Chicks = Trouble.” “And they came in with Mister Buchanan. And they were all vetted by the Secret Service.”

We had a lot of Secret Service agents with us, more than the VP normally got. Because of me. Oh well, I was keeping people employed. Go me, creating jobs. We had less Secret Service tailing us inside the Embassy because we were in one of the most secure buildings we could be, and because we had other internal protection.

Malcolm Buchanan had been assigned by my mother to be my personal shadow and bodyguard when we'd first come to D.C. And there wasn't a day I wasn't grateful for Mom's prescience. I insisted Buchanan had Dr. Strange powers because he came and went like the wind and if the man didn't want you to see him, you didn't see him.

I saw him now, though. He was standing at the back of the room, clearly on guard, leaning against the wall in a way that I knew meant he could propel himself wherever he wanted, instantly. The boys moved to similar positions within the room.

Chuckie and Cleary were sitting, and they both looked rather stressed and grim. So, it was going to be that kind of meeting. Oh goody.

“Missus Chief,” Buchanan said with a small smile. “In case you haven't already guessed . . . we have a problem.”

“I took the leap, Malcolm. Chuckie, Gideon, why so serious?”

“Someone just tried to kill me,” Cleary said, voice shaking. “And I'm pretty sure it was Stephanie.”