Cloud Rebel (R-D #3)(66)
The President is destroying his chances for the next election, Ilya pointed out when I explained about the lack of information and cooperation from the White House.
If he were completely sane, he might be worried about that now, I responded. As it is, I think we whizzed by that stop long ago. He was worried once, but I think he's sunk too far into revenge and self-preservation at this point. You know, I miss the good old days when all I had to worry about was Becker shoving me into the mud.
I should have killed him for that, Ilya said. I wanted to.
Well, he and all his clone buddies are dead. Not our problem now, I said.
True. We merely have a much larger, more troubling set of problems.
Yeah. Look, I need to call Auggie. Let me know how things progress.
I will. I miss you, Cabbage.
I miss you, too.
*
Notes—Colonel Hunter
"He said I wasn't welcome on American soil," Corinne said. "This tile was made in China." I watched as she pointed to the floor of my office. Instead of calling me, she'd come herself—and Valegar with her.
I didn't blame her for leaving James in Italy, where he was guarded by a watchful Bekzi. She was right all along—Bekzi deserved all the medals I could throw at him for staying the course and keeping people safe.
"I'm not surprised the tile is Chinese," I sighed. "The President is delusional," I added.
"I know."
"I don't know what to do about it," I said. "We're supposed to hand him an action plan in a meeting this afternoon. Matt and I worked ours out together, but the others," I shrugged. "So far, only the Coast Guard has really done anything useful."
"Look, if they have a way to transport that stuff around that doesn't involve the usual methods," she said, "then even going house to house, looking for terror cells won't help. They can pick a spot, land there, release their drones and zip out again. Easy."
"Cori, please don't muck up my plan with your confounded relevance and common sense," I muttered. "The President doesn't want to hear about extraterrestrial involvement. He wants this to have originated here—on this planet."
"Because he has no way to combat the unknown," Valegar offered. "He has also alienated anyone who could help with it."
"You and Corinne." My words were flat. They sounded dead, even to my own ears.
"Auggie—we're at a tipping point," Corinne warned. "If a few more things go wrong, then everything could be destroyed."
Somehow, I got the idea that she wasn't just talking about Earth anymore. She was talking about everything everything.
Yes, I'd fallen into the two-word, repetitive explanation category. It did nothing to improve my mood—or increase the effectiveness of the proposal Matt and I had put together for the President.
"Auggie, it doesn't matter," Corinne said. "Just—do the best you can, okay? We have things to do, so let's hope that the nut-jobs behind this aren't ready to attack the U.S. yet. I'm worried they may have something worse up their sleeve."
"Cori, you can't get much worse than this," I smacked a hand on my desk.
"Colonel Hunter, I assume you understand how foolish that statement could become," Valegar warned. "We will keep in touch."
I stared—for a long time—at the empty space where he and Corinne had stood, giving me a warning that the apocalypse was about to happen.
Some people would be disappointed that zombies didn't appear to be involved.
Frankly, I was grateful we didn't have rotting corpses to combat while we dealt with everything else.
*
Corinne
"Val, what is the weight of everything in the universe?" I asked.
"All of them?" he countered.
"Never mind," I waved a hand. "I merely wanted to know how much we were carrying around, that's all."
"Dearest, let us concentrate on the immediate problem. We can discuss weights and measures at a later time."
"What was it Auggie said about relevance and common sense?"
"It applies," he nodded. "Shall we begin our search again for Director Keef?"
"I should have sent his snaky ass back to Wyyld when I had the chance," I muttered. "We wouldn't be hunting him now if I had."
"We cannot always foresee when things will take an errant turn," he advised. "We are hunting him now—to save him. This is more than any other Larentii has been allowed to do since the beginning."
*
Personal Record
Lendill Schaff
Norian attempted to fight our kidnappers every time he was allowed to wake. As a result, he was covered in cuts and bruises, and likely still had internal damage from the pistol blast that sleeping hadn't cured.
I watched as his head lolled toward me now; we sat against a rough wall in a hunting cabin—that's how the Lyristolyi referred to it, anyway. "They won't kill us here," I hissed as he blinked at me.
I was surprised he could still open his eyes; the bruising around them was so severe. "They don't want anyone hunting them after this, you can count on it," I added. "We'll die elsewhere, or at least that's their plan. Stop fighting, get your strength back and we'll get out of this mess eventually."