Guardian Alien: a sci-fi alien romance (OtherWorldly Men Book 1) Page 11

  A wave of dizziness overtook him once more. This time his vision took longer to recover. After the whine in his ears subsided, a faint whistle remained. He didn’t like this, not in the least. A simple act such as floating the dog had taxed his systems. No matter. He had his weapons. He didn’t need his biotech to operate those.

  He turned on his gauntlet and did another search. Nothing. No sign of the man. Unfamiliar frustration sparked inside him. The thrill of a difficult hunt was one thing, but taking this long to locate his prey was entirely another. This, he didn’t like.

  He turned in a circle. Where had Caydinn disappeared to? Energy traces confirmed he’d been inside the dwelling. As recently as last night. But the REEF was too late in coming here. Once again, his target had slipped out of his hands.

  This mission must not fail. For one, failure was personally abhorrent. It would be even more so to those who’d hired him. And with his crashed ship too damaged to fly, at the completion of his mission he would have called for a covert pickup. But who would come retrieve a REEF who could not kill? If he failed here, he failed utterly: his trip to Earth became one-way, and his life became meaningless.

  Failure was no more an option than it ever was, but he felt a sweat break over him realizing how much more hung in the balance than the mere completion of a kill.

  He must find Caydinn.

  The REEF cast a sharp gaze around the room. He saw in the polished surface of a table a hard face. A cold face. It told him that he didn’t belong in this inviting, comfortable dwelling. As it should be. A REEF-O1A was not designed for domestic use.

  Beneath the table, almost out of sight, missed, was a stained yellow shoe lying on its side. It stopped him. He angled his head for a closer look.

  A piercing bark assaulted his eardrums. The dog protested its flight. But the REEF’s attention remained on the footwear. The shoe was identical in every way to the one found abandoned at the marketplace the night he had pursued and had failed to catch his target.

  He ran a DNA sample through his scanner. In .08 seconds, he had a result. Senator Jana Margaret Jasper. Finally, a break. Where the woman was, Caydinn was. This, the REEF knew in his gut, that human part of him that often gave information with as much accuracy if not more than his bioengineering.

  He saved the woman’s profile. As was the case with all Earth leaders, every fact was in the databank, at his fingertips. Fingertips itching to pull the trigger that would terminate Prime-Major Caydinn and free the both of them, although in different ways, from this gods-forsaken world.

  The next morning, everyone gathered for breakfast around the big table. Sunshine streamed through the windows. Just as they were ready to clear the plates, Jana’s phone rang.

  “Las Vegas area code,” she said. Quelling a rush of adrenaline, she answered, putting the call on speakerphone so everyone could hear. “Hello, sir. This is Senator Jana Jasper—”

  “Good morning, Jana! Chet Mahoney here. Yes, I got your message and Patrick’s.” The general sounded jovial. “Tell my friend Jake, long time no hear!”

  “He’s listening in, in fact. Sir, in light of this national emergency, I will get right to the point.” It was a worldwide emergency, but the general was a very patriotic man. The U.S.A. was a good place to start. “We need to talk. Better yet, I need you to listen. A high-ranking officer in an extraterrestrial space force has come to warn us. Earth is under attack. An alien fleet is on the way. To stop the invaders, he needs access to Area 51. The alien ship that’s stored there, the Roswell saucer, can be jury-rigged to repel the invasion. He knows how.”

  “There is no alien ship at Area 51, senator. There never was.”

  Jana bit her lip. They didn’t call him Baloney Mahoney for nothing. Cavin sat hunched over with his hands laced together and his index fingers pressed to his lips. His expression was dark, worried.

  She pressed on. “I have proof there is, sir.”

  “Proof or not, there’s no alien ship parked at Area 51.”

  “Bullshit!” Grandpa’s face was increasingly pink and in danger of turning red.

  “Your pressure,” Mama warned.

  “Jake is that you?” Mahoney’s voice rang out. “Is this some kind of practical joke?”

  “No joke. See, this young man is,” Grandpa’s gaze tracked to Cavin then to Jana, then he frowned, “loyal to my granddaughter. At great personal risk he came here to warn her—to warn all of us—that his people plan to invade Earth.”

  “Jake, who is he? A stranger. A con artist. Sounds like he’s taking advantage of an old man—a man who was always too much of an idealist for his own good.”

  “Idealist? Not this time, Mahoney. Not this time.” Grandpa wheeled closer, bellowing, “All those years you told me there was no alien spacecraft at Groom Lake you were mighty convincing. Hell, I even believed you, Chet! Now, after what I’ve seen and heard, I know you’re a goddamn liar.”

  Jana threw her face in her hands.

  Mahoney laughed heartily. “Let me guess—you also believe an alien landed in your backyard.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do!”

  “An alien who says he left a ship here in 1947, and now he wants it back.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, sir,” Jana interrupted. “It’s ours to keep, a scout ship—a throwaway. Our contact just needs to hack into it. As hard as it is to believe, space invaders are on the way, sir. But our extraterrestrial visitor, a damn hero if you ask me, knows how to rig that ship you’re hiding there at Dreamland to repel them. He has a plan. We don’t have much time. You need to get with the current leadership and get him clearance inside. Colonel Thomas Connick, right? I’ve left him messages—no reply.”

  But the two old men were still bickering. “There is no alien ship at Area 51,” Mahoney insisted. “There never was. I didn’t lie to you about that.”

  “There you go again.” Grandpa shook his head. “They didn’t call you Baloney Mahoney for nothing. Your own people gave you the name! Your fellow soldiers.”

  “Grandpa,” Jana hissed and pressed her finger to her lips. She couldn’t bear any more of Cavin’s building frustration over the general’s dismissive attitude, or the back and forth between the two octogenarians.

  Cavin pushed to his feet, glowering out the window, his arms folded. She knew he was burning to join the conversation, but they needed to protect him for as long as possible—his appearance, his voice, none of it could get out . . . until they were ready to reveal him.

  Jana took a breath. “This is no con job, General Mahoney. No one is trying to fool you, my family, or me. I understand that this is difficult to believe, but our alien savior is for real. I’ve seen his spaceship. I’ve seen his weapons and computers. I trust what he says is true.”

  “You’ve seen a spacecraft—an alien spacecraft?”

  “I’ve been inside it.”

  A beat of silence, then, “Hmmph.”

  “Give me a chance to prove my contact is who he says he is. I have a sample of his DNA. I can send it by courier to Washington through my father, and let it bog down in bureaucracy”—and potentially endangering Cavin, making him the target of government agents—“or I can send it to you. I’d rather send it to you. You know why. Have it analyzed, sir. You still have contacts who can do that for you, I assume?”

  “Do what?”

  The general’s tone had changed slightly. She could sense his curiosity. Yet despite that, he didn’t veer from his denial. He was good, no getting around that.

  “The evidence is on its way,” she said. “You’ll have it in the morning. Look at the results and then tell me there’s no spacecraft at Area 51.”

  “This is no spacecraft there, Jana. I’m sorry to say. That’s an urban legend. One we never could kill.”

  She sighed. Baloney. “You’re the founding father of the place. The original commander. If anyone knows what’s there, and what’s still there, it’s you, sir. If you say there’s no spaceship, I have no choic
e but to believe you. However, if you know where we might find such a ship, I sure would appreciate you telling me. Blindfold us and bring us there, for all we care. We need access to that craft—and fast.”

  He doesn’t believe me.

  She’d been here before.

  “General Mahoney.” She steadied herself. “My grandfather always said that our duty to others comes before our own interests and ambition, and there’s no greater calling than to serve our fellow men and women. He told me never to forget that. Never forget I’m a Jasper. And I won’t—especially now. I’m staking my reputation on this claim, my family’s reputation.” Or what was left of their reputation. “If sounding the alarm means the end of my career, so be it. That’s how strongly I feel about the accuracy of this information and the legitimacy of this threat. Earth is in grave danger.” She was beginning to feel like Paul Revere, warning of a British attack. One if by Jupiter. Two if by Mars. “Thankfully, we have a very special extraterrestrial hero to help us prevail. I want to save our planet. I—we—can’t do that without your help. Without it, sir, without your unique insider knowledge, we will fail. We’ll lose our future, our very identity. Are you with us—can we count on you? General Mahoney, give us access to the Roswell ship.”

  Silence—on the phone and in the breakfast room as everyone waited to hear what the general would say.

  “I wish I could help,” Mahoney said. “I truly do.”

  Grandpa snarled. “Chet, I wish I could see your face when you open that envelope tomorrow morning. It might jog your worthless memory about that goddamn ship.”

  Amusement played around Jared’s mouth as Jana ended the call. “That kind of diplomacy work much for you in office, Grandpa?” he asked.

  The old man simply growled and wheeled out of the room.

  Jana stared at the phone in her hand. She’d put everything she had into her plea for Mahoney’s help, her whole heart, and it may not have been enough. Then she turned to Jared and nodded. He grabbed the packet with the saliva sample and strode out of the room. An irreversible step: Cavin’s DNA was on the way.

  “I will come with you,” Cavin said when Jana prepared for her commute to the capitol. It was the last work day before Easter recess. By afternoon, most capitol staffers would leave to spend time with family. “It will only be a half day. I will work on my ship later.”

  He slid into the passenger seat as she dug in her purse for her key.

  He thrust his gauntlet at the ignition. The truck started. “With me, you don’t need keys.”

  “It’s tough keeping track of all your special features. Do you have a user’s manual?”

  “No. I would prefer to instruct you, hands-on and in person.”

  Instantly, heat simmered between them. “Cavin,” she warned. “That’s not helping—”

  “You must resist me, I know.” He folded his arms over his chest. “It is not helping me, either. I will behave.”

  “Two triple venti vanilla lattes, please,” Jana said into a microphone as they rolled through a Starbucks drive through on the way. She could feel Cavin warily scanning the order-taker, the patrons inside the coffee shop, and the other cars. The experience seemed to overwhelm him. The only explanation she had was that it was so far removed from any of his life experiences. It would be like her going back to the thirteenth century and shopping for bread and mead outside the castle walls. Yet, when the assassin was shooting at Cavin, or cars were exploding, he was icy-cool, the epitome of calm.

  When she offered her card to pay, Cavin stopped her, thrusting a rolled wad of hundreds at the man. “Cavin, no,” she said under her breath.

  Too late, judging by the order-taker’s rounded eyes. “I can’t break hundreds,” he said.

  Cavin seemed insulted on her behalf. “Is our money not good enough at this establishment?”

  “The problem is that it’s too much. He can’t make change. They don’t have enough cash. Mostly we pay using credit cards.”

  “Where did you get this money?”

  “I accessed the currency machine the same way I started the cars.”

  “Ah. It gave you hundreds? Not twenties?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t question it.”

  It made Jana wonder if he’d emptied a Brink’s truck by mistake. “I hope you used your photo-blocking technology when you took out the money. ATMs have cameras that record the transaction.”

  “I did. There is no way of tracing the withdrawal to me.”

  Withdrawal? He meant robbery. Car stealing, evading police, forging IDs, reckless driving and now bank robbing. Where would it end? I don’t want to know. On the other hand, arguing over little things like robbing ATMs when the fate of the entire world hung in the balance was pretty much stupid.

  Cavin took a sip of coffee. He made a gurgling noise, cast a panicked glance around. Then he opened the door and spat a mouthful of coffee into the bushes. “What is this, Jana?” he demanded.

  “A latte. Coffee mixed with steamed milk and some vanilla syrup. You don’t like it?”

  He grimaced. “It tastes like swamp water. Sweetened swamp water.”

  She tasted his coffee. “It tastes fine.”

  He shuddered. “With all due respect to your Earth customs and cuisine, Jana, but I cannot bear to even smell it.”

  She remembered now that he hadn’t drunk coffee at breakfast. “What do you drink in the mornings to wake up?”

  “I don’t have the words to translate, but it’s hot, thick and salty. Made from a root. A little bitter if aged. I have missed it these past few days.”

  Chinese hot and sour soup only thicker and stronger was the first thing that jumped into her mind. But for breakfast? “Ugh!”

  He smiled. “Now you see my problem with your coffee.”

  He gave one last shudder and turned his watchful eyes to the road.

  As she drove up the entrance ramp to the highway, she drank another slug of coffee. The vanilla did taste cloyingly sweet. Probably straight vodka would have gone down better. “I’m little worried about Grandpa’s health. I know we’re doing the right things for the right reasons, but there’s a tremendous amount of pressure to not do anything that will raise his pressure.” She gave a tense shrug and massaged the back of her neck.

  Cavin removed her hand from her neck and took over, massaging her neck and shoulders as she drove. His thumb pressed and rotated, working out the kinks in her muscles. She almost moaned it felt so good.

  “It’s a heavy weight you carry on your shoulders as a member of your family,” he said.

  “It is, sometimes…” He’d made the observation seemingly without effort. He got it. He got her. “But I was groomed for politics from birth. In my family’s view, every Jasper is a public servant, politico or no. Our duty to others comes before our own interests and ambition. It’s been drilled it into each one of us. The last time I rebelled was that summer we met. When you disappeared, I looked for you every night for two weeks—after dark. Even after Grandpa had told me not to.”

  Since then, she could be proud of her accomplishments, but every single one of them was achieved with acute awareness of her public image, how others saw her. “That last night I saw you, when we were kids, Grandpa scolded me for not being responsible. It was seared into me. I never forgot.”

  “But you tried to find me nonetheless,” he said.

  “Of course, I did.”

  “So, you can and do rebel when necessary. Like me, you choose your battles. What’s important for you to fight, you do.”

  “What is this, a job interview for a save-the-world sidekick?”

  “I’ve already made my selection. And not for a sidekick. For an equal partner.” Cavin’s hand slid over hers, squeezing it. “Your grandfather is fiercely protective of you and, I think, you are just as protective of him.”

  “I’d do anything for that old man.” When she turned back to Cavin, his green eyes were dark and troubled. He skimmed a hand over her hair, as if not wan
ting to mess her carefully styled chignon. She glanced sideways. “What?”

  “There is another option. I go to your leadership. Alone. I don’t involve you—or your family.”

  Dread formed an ice-cold ball in her stomach. “Absolutely not.”

  “I can access the base without permission. I will locate the ship and activate it.”

  “And then what? You’ll be arrested—or shot on the spot. No, Cavin.”

  He set his jaw in a stubborn angle she saw rarely but that she was sure those who’d served with Prime-Major Caydinn over the years had glimpsed often.

  “I’m going with you. Even if this witch hunt blows up and complicates getting people to believe you, because everything I say is suspect, the alternative is unthinkable. I will not place you at risk.”

  His voice gentled. “It seems you are as protective of me as you are your grandfather.”

  She didn’t argue. Both men had shaped her life. She couldn’t contemplate living without either one of them. “We’re here,” she said as she pulled into parking space far from the garage and its security cameras and scanners.

  It was only for a short time, but the thought of leaving Cavin alone in Capitol Park worried her. But the thought of trying to get him through security and X-ray, not to mention a dozen policemen, was worse.

  Acres of lush lawn and trees surrounded the gold-domed capitol building. It was a beautiful place to be. The morning was chilly and damp, but the sky was already blue. It would be a pretty spring day. Jana wished she could enjoy it. But what was the loss of one spring day if it meant the continuation of spring days for humanity for a long time to come? In her mind, there was no argument.

  “Explain the layout of this place,” Cavin said, scanning the exterior of the building with his miss-nothing gaze.

  “There are three elevator banks, and they go to all floors. The one over there on the south side is for senators only. There’s another on the north side for the assembly members. But everyone usually uses these central elevators because of convenience. The governor’s office is on the first floor. My office is on the third floor. Okay, I have to go. I want you to act like a tourist.”