But not a human. Every nerve of mine pulsed and readied me for the attack. Not yet comprehending what I suspected, I waited for a moment before daring to say, “You’re one of them. An alien.”
CHAPTER 31
FELIX, WHY WOULD YOU say that?” Gilbert tilted his weapon. “It’s the blaster, isn’t it? Well, I knew better than to use bullets against you.” He leveled the gun. “Step out here where I can get a good look at you.”
“Nothing doing,” I replied. “You want a look, you come back here.” When he came close, I would hypnotize him.
A wave of brash determination pulsed through his aura. He stepped into the trailer vault. His finger started to compress the trigger.
With vampire quickness, I jumped to the right.
A bolt of blue light shot from the muzzle of the blaster. The bolt struck the armored wall behind me and splattered white droplets of molten steel.
I had Gilbert by the throat while his blaster still pointed uselessly at where I had been. His eyeglasses clattered to the floor.
“What-? How?” he stammered as he sank to his knees. His aura blazed with fear and emitted spikes of terror that writhed like tentacles. The cabbage odor spewed from him. “Okay. Stay calm.” He lowered the blaster and pulled his finger from the trigger. “Let’s talk.”
I motioned to the glowing spot on the wall where his blaster had struck. “You call that talking? Drop the gun.”
The blaster fell from his hand. “I don’t mean to cause trouble.”
“A little late for that. Is that weapon proof of peaceful intentions?” I tightened my claws around his windpipe.
“Self-protection. Every species has that right.”
I kicked the blaster and sent it skidding into the far end of the vault.
“Careful.” He spoke in a rasped whisper. “That thing’s expensive, and I’m signed for it.”
“The only reason I won’t kill you is that I need questions answered.” I stared into his eyes. No effect. He was definitely not human.
This imposter had said nothing about his yellow aura. Or my orange one. He couldn’t see them. He didn’t know. I kept this advantage to myself. I knelt over him and cradled his neck in my talons as I read his aura. I loosened my grip slightly, but he knew that I could decapitate him in an instant.
“What happened to the real Gilbert Odin?”
The muscles in the imposter’s throat convulsed as he tried gulping. Finally he managed to say, “He was abducted years ago.”
“Then why are you here? To abduct me? To abduct others?”
“No. To safeguard the surveillance vessel, the UFO.”
“Safeguard from whom?”
The radio clipped to his shoulder suddenly cackled with traffic. “Hawk Vanguard. Hawk Vanguard. This is Eagle Team. What’s your situation? Over.”
The imposter raised his hand and motioned to the radio. “Please, they’re calling me. I don’t answer, they’ll assume the worst and open fire.”
I released my grip and let the imposter go. He withdrew, coughed and clutched his throat. After a moment, he unsnapped his microphone and spoke. “Eagle Team, Hawk Vanguard here.” The imposter gave me a conspiratorial glance. “Negative on the intruder.”
“Why are you here alone?” I asked.
“Believe it or not, I’m playing the hero. It pays extra.” He clipped the microphone back on his shoulder harness and massaged his neck. He found his glasses and put them back on.
“You asked who I safeguard the UFO from?” The alien imposter motioned out the trailer, back toward the security force. “From the humans. Normally when there is an incident like this, rescue teams retrieve the ship and cleanse the crash site. In Roswell, your government seized the surveillance vessel and occupants before we could react.”
“We?”
The imposter pointed toward the sky. “The Galactic Union.”
“There are more of you?”
The imposter rose to his feet and leaned against the wall. “Many more. It’s a galactic union.”
“Where is Gilbert?”
The imposter’s aura flashed nervously. “Your friend Gilbert Odin didn’t take the zero-point flux well.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You mean Gilbert’s dead?”
The imposter sighed. “It happens. He passed away soon after the, uh, abduction. Really, we meant him no harm.”
“If you’re an alien, how come you don’t look like the stiff in the box?”
The imposter laughed. He sounded like Gilbert. “One of those stiffs-good way to put it. Careless assholes would be more accurate. They knew Earth was off-limits. No, I’m not one of them. I’m from a different species, one closer to yours. Human.”
“I’m not human. Not anymore.”
“My apologies, Felix. I’d resent the slur, too. Humanoid, then.”
“You swear pretty good for an extraterrestrial,” I said.
“I watch a lot of cable television.”
The imposter’s radio cackled again. A wave of anxiety pulsed through his aura. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Let me worry about that,” I replied. “You were chosen to replace Gilbert because you most resembled him?”
“Not completely. It took some minor cosmetic surgery, replacing my stalk eyes with these,” he touched his eye sockets, “removing my sucker toes, rearranging my genitals, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds painful.”
“It’s a living.”
“You might want to work on that cabbage stink,” I said.
“Huh?” He lifted an arm and sniffed. “My genome profile could need tweaking. That bad?”
“Trust me. You got a name-beside Gilbert Odin, I mean?”
“My original name is hard to pronounce unless you have a trifurcated speaking passage.”
I remembered Gilbert Odin’s, rather the imposter’s, denials when I first brought proof that it was the red mercury that had caused the nymphomania. My jaw tightened and the bitterness of my anger rose into my throat. “You lied to me.”
The imposter’s aura lowered into a sizzle. “Sorry.”
I splayed my fingers so that he could better appreciate my talons. “You knew all along. About the nymphomania. The UFO. I brought you Dr. Wong’s diary and you said it was a hoax. Why?”
He looked over his shoulder. The lights of the security force became brighter as they neared us. The imposter’s aura sizzled with nervousness. “We don’t have time for long discussions. The Eagle Team gets here and finds us like this, then my cover is blown.”
“They don’t know you’re an alien?”
“As far as DOE is concerned, I’m Gilbert Odin, GS-15.”
“Why the lie?”
“Like I said, to safeguard the UFO.”
“Safeguard how? The government’s torn apart the UFO. They’ve certainly dissected the crew.”
“I keep tabs on what’s learned.”
“Why not announce your presence to the planet?”
His radio called again. He answered, “Eagle Team, still negative on the intruder. What’s your ETA?”
“Hawk Vanguard, give us five mikes.”
The imposter rubbed the microphone nervously. “You got five minutes, Felix.”
“Keep talking.”
“We can’t announce ourselves because we’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “That’s the complication. Otherwise we would’ve intervened a long time ago. Earth is under quarantine. Humans are much too violent and dangerous of a species.”
“Why would our government keep the UFO a secret?”
“Fear mostly. Of us. Of mass panic. They used Project Redlight to spread disinformation and debunk the existence of UFOs, aliens”-the imposter made quotation marks in the air-“creatures like me. It then became more expedient to stick to the lie than admit the truth. That’s what all governments do best.”
“Even the Galactic Union?”