Kitty Katt 11: Alien Separation (39 page)

C
LARENCE STARED AT ME.
Though I knew it wasn't the real Clarence. Him, I'd killed. As with Ronaldo 2.0, this Clarence didn't look totally right. Clearly the cloning equipment on this planet was much less refined than what they had going on back home. Go Earth Evil Geniuses.

This also indicated that whatever cloning process they used on the Ancient and/or Z'porrah home world that LaRue had used to make the Ronaldo who'd come back to Earth with her was exceptionally good, because that man had never looked off, as 2.0 and this version of Clarence did, and he'd been more powerful than his original.

“How did you catch me?” The Clarence Clone asked.

“I'm smarter than you. Who are you working for and when was the last time you checked in with them?”

He shot me a derisive look that I remembered. Hadn't missed it. “As if I'd tell you anything.”

“Ronnie, time to go to work, dude.”

“If I focus on him I can't stop the Horrors.”

Listened. “I hear slithering and such. Assume Clarence here woke them up screaming. We need his intel more, anyway. We can toss him to them as a snack once we're done.”

“Why would I tell you anything if you're just going to kill me?” The Clarence Clone sounded legitimately shocked.

“Because spies who don't answer questions are just dead weight. How long have you been on this planet?”

He looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean how many days, nights, weeks, months, or years have you been on Beta Eight? Or do you think you're on Earth?”

“No, I know I'm not on Earth. It's just a stupid question. I've been here forever.”

“Ronnie, seriously, some mind control on him, right now. I want him giving me the truth, and trust me, I will know if he's lying.”

“Then why do you need me?” 2.0 muttered.

Clarence's expression changed and became much more amiable. “What do you want to know?” he asked in a friendly tone. Either he and 2.0 had practiced this to lull us into some bizarre form of false security, or the mind control was working.

“How long have you been on this planet?” I asked nicely.

“Oh, forever. This is my home.”

“Where do you live?”

“In the little room way downstairs.”

Thought about it. “Do you mean the torturers' room, right off the dungeons?”

“Yes. No one goes there and I've made it very comfy.”

Well, good to know that 2.0 really wasn't torturing prisoners and such. Score one for us not killing him. So far.

“Do you have a wife?”

His brow crinkled. “I . . . think so? Maybe I don't. I don't know.” He gave a little laugh. “She's not here, is she?”

“No. How about kids? Remember having children?”

“Maybe? Not here, though, are they? I'm alone,” he added plaintively. “Ronaldo isn't allowed to be my friend.”

“Is that why you were playing games with him?”

The Clarence Clone nodded. “Can the animals stop hurting me?”

“Uh, sure. Ginger, Wilbur, let him up. Rahmi, Rhee, be ready to club him in case this is a ploy.” The animals and the princesses moved into guard positions.

The Clarence Clone sat up. “Thanks. I hurt.”

“Get used to them not caring,” 2.0 muttered.

“Ronnie, be a good boy and we'll care.”

“Who's she?” Reader asked, pointing to me.

The Clarence Clone squinted at me. Then he looked shocked. “Shealla?”

“Wow. Yes, that's right.” Maybe he was faking. But the Clarence I'd known hadn't ever been smooth enough to pretend to like me and he'd never, ever pretended to be impressed by me, either. “Clarence, have you been to the top of the All Seeing Mountain?”

“Yes. Everyone goes there. I like it there. I can see forever there.”

“Why does he sound so . . . young?” Abigail asked softly.

“I've told him we're his friends,” 2.0 replied in kind. “So he's not trying to sound tough.”

The timeline had been rushed due to our successfully surviving Operation Confusion. LaRue had to grab the almost dead Ronaldo and captured Clarence from Earth, go back to the Alpha Centauri system and activate the clones, then take off for the Z'porrah home world in a very short period of time.

Ronaldo's clone had clearly been farther along than Clarence's. Clarence had probably “earned” a clone somewhere during Operation Confusion, whereas Ronaldo was intimately involved in things earlier. But LaRue was out of time, so she'd activated him before the brain was advanced or downloaded or whatever. But it did pay to check.

“Clarence, do I have another name you know?”

“They call you Kitty,” he said, pointing to the others. “So that's your other name.”

“Yes, it is. Have we met before?”

“I . . . don't know. I want to say yes, but I think I just know you from the Mountain.” He looked at the others. “The Venida! I didn't realize it was you. And, the Leader of the Nihalani, too!” He sounded excited. As if he was meeting the Gods. Not as if he was chatting it up with family members he didn't care for. Not as if he was talking to people he knew. A-Cs in general couldn't lie to save their or anyone else's lives and in particular there was no way the Clarence we all knew could fake anything this well.

“Clarence, why are you here?” Abigail asked.

“To protect our interests.”

“Whose interests?” Abigail kept her voice relaxed.

“Ours.”

“Who is part of that? Part of ‘ours'?”

“I . . .” He took a deep breath. “Mine, Ronaldo's, and . . . hers.”

“Is she LaRue or Zenoca?” I asked.

“When is she coming home?” He sounded lost and hopeful.

“Not sure. What's her name?”

“She . . . said I don't get to know it yet. I'll get to know her name when she comes home.”

Interesting, in the typical bizarre bad guy way. “Okay. Why, if you're supposed to protect Ronaldo's interests, couldn't you tell him you were here?”

“She doesn't want us to corrupt.” He said this as if it was something he'd been told, not something he actually understood.

“Did you make anyone disappear?” Reader asked.

“No. When the others laid the traps I avoided them. I'm only supposed to make sure that Ronaldo behaves, I don't have to do anything with the others who are here.”

2.0 looked shocked. “Behave? What do you mean by that?”

“You're not allowed to make alliances, to let the other sentient creatures have a voice, to consult the Gods, or to let anyone else have this planet.” This was definitely said as if it were rote memorization.

“Why
not?
” 2.0 sounded outraged.

“Your role is not to lead but to be a figurehead, to hold the planet until she returns.” Again, rote memorization.

“Ah, Ronaldo is talking to the Gods right now,” Fancy pointed out, before 2.0 could say anything else.

The Clarence Clone nodded. “I don't know how to stop the Gods.”

“Well, that's a relief,” Reader said under his breath. “Clarence, who laid the traps?” he asked in a normal, friendly tone.

“I don't know them.”

“Can you describe them?” Fancy asked. “Tell us what they looked like?”

“Yes. They looked like—”

But before he could finish the sentence, we were rocked by an explosion that knocked everyone to the ground.

And then the building started to crumble.

Always the way.

“E
VERYONE,
link up!” Abigail shouted as we scrambled to our feet, which wasn't as easy as it sounded, since the building was still shaking like we were in a major earthquake. “Grab the animals, too!”

Reader was closest to Wilbur so he grabbed the chocho and I picked up Ginger. The princesses each grabbed one of The Clarence Clone's arms, and Fancy grabbed 2.0. Abigail held onto 2.0's other arm while the rest of us hooked up. Then she concentrated.

Before and especially during Operation Destruction, Abigail and Naomi had learned to use their talents to provide shields. They were the reason Washington, D.C. still had all the monuments and museums in the National Mall, as well as all the people who'd been able to take cover inside them.

But that effort had burned the power out of both sisters. Naomi had taken a terrifying amount of pure Surcenthumain in order to protect Chuckie and Jamie from the Mastermind, which was why and how she'd first gotten her talents back and then, about five minutes later, become so powerful that she became her own superconsciousness.

Abigail had been working to get her talent back, but it had been slow going, in part because she refused to try the drug and no one would have let her near it anyway. That is, before we were on Beta Eight it had been slow going.

On this oxygen-rich planet, however, apparently all the bells and whistles and a whole lot of other special luxury extras had been added onto Abigail's abilities.

A shimmering field went around us and, as stones started to crumble and fall, they bounced off. I'd been in a shield like this before, only it had taken both of the Gower Girls to create it. Wasn't in any mood to complain that Abigail seemed to be fine handling this on her own, however. I knew when not to look at a gift horse's butt.

“I need a destination!” She had to shout, the rumbling, creaking, crashing, and hysterical hissing was so loud. Apparently the snakipedes were getting crushed and, no surprise, not enjoying the experience. “We've only seen this castle since we got here, and not much of it.”

“Ronnie, have you seen more of this world than your castle?”

“Of course I have, I'm the king.”

“Super. Choose a safe location somewhere else in the world, preferably in Iceland, the white section, if you can manage it, or the Purple Land.”

“Ah, I haven't seen
all
of the world.”

“Fine, whatever. Choose someplace. Anyplace. Anywhere but here. Find the place, and show it to Abigail in her mind.”

“I can't mind control her.”

“No, you can't. But you can show her a picture.” The Ronaldo who'd come back to Earth had done that to Gladys—shown her places he wanted her to go. Time to see if this one had those skills, too.

“But—”

“Do it,” Abigail said. “I can't hold this shield forever.”

He nodded and closed his eyes. Abigail looked thoughtful, nodded, and then, suddenly, a sort of bubble went around us and we did the thing that I could only describe as time-warping.

We raced through the castle at hyperspeed, but without actually moving ourselves and as if the walls weren't there. Well, a lot of the walls
weren't
there anymore, but for those that were, we went through them like they were mist. Sailed over a part of Greenland, then up and up, until, there we were, at the top of the All Seeing Mountain.

The landing felt as if we'd always been standing right where we were now, which was inside the railings.

“Abby, nice to see you got your powers back and then some.”

She grinned. “I figured out how Sis did things and I've been working to learn how to do them myself.” Her smile faded. “I miss her every day, but I'm never not going to do my best to make her proud of me and carry on our work.” She looked at 2.0. “You did well. Thank you.”

He shook his head. “Thank
you
. What happened? What was that?”

“That was Abigail using her talents, like you use yours. What happened, however, was an attack. And, seriously, Ronnie, I ask you to get us out of danger and you take us to the point where we're closest to the attackers?”

Looked up and around. Sure enough, we had spaceships in the air. They weren't like any of the four kinds I recognized, meaning they were from a planet that had a high probability of being anti-Earth, or at least anti-Alpha Four, which, under the circumstances, was likely to be the same thing.

As was typical for this solar system, the spacecraft weren't bullet shaped. There were three, two hovering higher up and the one shooting up Beta Eight. They did have aerodynamic bodies that were elongated ovals. They also had what could only be described as wings, though they didn't resemble bird wings all that much, but were more rigid-looking and seemed like they could expand out or contract in, sort of like an accordion.

The ones floating higher up had their wings mostly contracted. The third, however, had its wings fully expanded. The craft fired out of the wings as well as out of the front of the oval, which ended in what I assumed was a command center bubble, looking like a crude head.

There were only these three crafts I could see, and only the one appeared to be firing on the castle. However, we were far enough from the Greenland area that I couldn't be sure, even though the height we were at should have given us a better vantage point. It would have, but buildings and such being blown up made a lot of smoke and dust and such and we were hella high up, meaning everything down below looked extremely tiny. Our location probably also made us really great targets, but no one was shooting at us at the moment. Didn't expect that to last.

“You wanted someplace safe. I didn't have a lot of choices—the area I know the best is the Horrors' Nesting Area. I just took a guess and figured you wouldn't want to go there.” 2.0 definitely had a sarcasm knob, and it was headed for eleven.

“No, you're right. I just wanted to get somewhere where we might have a hope of mustering up reinforcements or even fighting back. Not where we'd be the definition of sitting ducks.” Wondered if there were ducks in the ships, and if so, if Howard the Duck was amongst their number. I'd have a shot of getting Howard on our side, which was more than I expected for whoever was really up there raining fire down on a defenseless planet.

“Why not fight back from up here?” Rahmi asked. “We are much closer to the ship.”

Chose not to discuss the merits of a handful of humanoid beings attacking a big, nasty spaceship without a major weapon among them. Felt I deserved some kind of medal for my restraint.

“Think those are Alpha Five or Six spacecraft?” Reader asked, effectively changing the subject, for which I was grateful, and which I was sure he knew. “They didn't have the means when you and Jeff got married.”

“No bet. I mean, I think it's a safe bet that Alexander or the other spacefaring planets gave the others who wanted it spaceflight capabilities and help, because that's the sort of thing you do if you're trying to be a kind winner. And I'm also sure that we have Alphas Five and Six represented in the fight, I just don't know if things that look kind of like giant bats would represent either of those planets.”

“It is not the same as the ship that fell,” Fancy said. “That ship was more triangular.”

“Yeah, it was sort of stealth bomber-ish, now that you mention it. In a really geometric way.”

“Does that mean this ship is trying to kill any survivors of the crash?” Rahmi asked.

“Did any survivors fall onto the castle?” Wasn't sure if Rhee was being sarcastic to her older sister, but based on her tone and expression, she wasn't. The princesses didn't do sarcasm as a rule.

“I think all the parts fell into the ocean,” I said, lest I be wrong and a sister catfight was about to start. “But if they hit the land, they didn't hit the castle.”

Reader nodded. “We'd have felt them before this—the debris was hitting when we went underground.”

“So, we have possibly Alpha Five or Six down and also possibly Alpha Five or Six shooting at whoever is down. Think that either Alpha Seven and/or Beta Sixteen have joined the space race and they could be one of the two down here?”

“Considering we saw three distinct ship designs that we couldn't identify, it's a good bet, babe,” Reader replied. “But like you, I don't have any idea which planet has just destroyed the seat of power on this one, but we're out of time—the war's arrived.”