“Hey boss,” one of them said when she walked in.
“Hey Mike,” she said, looking at the TV, “I just saw that, flew right over it on the way here.”
“Guy on the TV says they’re attacking several cities all over the world. They move in, kill anything that tries to stop them, and then they surround the city. So far, there hasn’t been any message or anything.”
“There’s a group of them heading here too,” she said, “I just saw them a few minutes ago, not far from the city.”
“What you figure this is?”
“Damn aliens trying to take over the world, just like Walter warned me.”
“Walter warned you about this?”
“Yeah, said the guy who gave me my powers is behind it.”
“What you gonna do?”
“That’s just the rub, Mike. What do I do? I’m no hero. Hell, you know the life I’ve led, but these dudes are attacking our planet. It’s not like something you can remain neutral about.”
“You think there’s anything you can do about it?”
“Well, I don’t have these powers for nothing.”
Mike walked into the basement room of Mixon’s warehouse and only found Salazar staring at a computer.
“Where’s your boss?” he asked Salazar.
“Mike...the other Mike, said she left a couple hours ago. Something about another armored car.”
“And you don’t know where she went?”
“No. I just got here. Mike just said she took off in a bit of a hurry and said something about an armored car. She has a habit of bringing those things in here and emptying the cash, as if she needs any more money.”
“If you see her, let her know I want to have a word with her.”
Mike went into Mixon’s office to sit down and wait, only to find Jack waiting there for him.
“Hi Mike, I was hoping you’d stop by.”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I don’t know. We might have a problem.”
“What problem could we have at this point?”
“It might be nothing, but several fighters tried to interfere with our operations. I staged a small diversion in space and it held them back for a while, but they showed up and tried to take down our drop ships. Luckily the gunships were too strong for them and most of them were destroyed.”
“It sounds like you dealt with the problem.”
“The fighters looked like Versk fighters.”
“Versk? We haven’t had any problems with the Versk in over a hundred years.”
“That girl was a Versk.”
“And she’s dead.”
“Well, she stashed some fighters somewhere and now there are people who know how to fly them. They don’t appear to be a match for our gunships, but we don’t know what else she might have hidden away on this planet, or if there are more people to man them.”
“Do we have any idea where she might have hidden them?”
“We have an idea. Most of their fighters were destroyed, but the gunships in England tagged one of them and let it go. I tracked it to a location not far from here. Here is the location,” he said, handing him a small chip, “Try to get some intel on the location and see what might be going on there. If at all possible, put a stop to it. And you might want to take this.”
He handed him a small pistol.
“What good is this going to do me?”
“If Walter is there, it will disable him for a while. It will kill or wound a normal human. If you can eliminate the threat, that would be best. If not, report back to me and we’ll divert a couple units there to take them out. Either way, we must not take any chances. We’re too close. Most of the cities are surrounded. All that awaits are the remaining cities in this country and then we can make our demands.”
“Okay, I’ll head out there and scope things out. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Mixon found the mechanized infantry units a couple miles closer to the city than when she had seen them before and the gunships were still flying close overhead. She made a quick assessment of the numbers and figured the infantry had to be close to a hundred thousand with five hundred of those imposing looking gunships.
“I don’t figure they counted on facing someone like me,” she said to herself as she flew toward them, “Maybe Walter will show up. The two of us should be able to make quick work of these.”
She flew toward the nearest formation and found that indeed she could make quick work of them. She was among them swinging both fists and disabling each with one punch, knocking the heads clear off most or reducing others to a quivering mass of twisted metal. She hardly took notice of the humans inside each suit. She had taken out over a hundred when one of the gunships turned a turret toward her and opened fire. She never saw the shot coming until she felt a sharp kick and was thrown back two hundred yards, knocked cold.
Walter was flying five hundred feet above, looking for a weakness, when he observed this. Not even hesitating, he flew up higher and then came down with as much speed as he could manage, scooped Mixon up, and darted back up into the sky before the gunships could fire on him. He was back at the house a minute later, walking in and laying her down on a couch on the side of the large conference room.
“Is that who I think it is?” Franklin asked.
“Yep, in the flesh,” Walter replied.
“Why’d you bring her here? She needs to go to jail.”
“Yeah, and the jail won’t be able to hold her once she wakes up. She was trying to help. We can figure out her fate when this is all over.”
“Do you really think she’s going to try to help us?”
“That’s what it looked like out there. We’ll just have to have a talk with her when she wakes up. How long was I out when they hit me with that thing?”
“A couple hours at least. Man, I don’t like this, but
