Cool

Getting to the president undetected back home would have been almost impossible. The Secret Service tended to aggressively recruit thinkers, to the point that the Protectorate was a poor second choice. They tended to pay better, and the benefits were much better than most other government employees.

Furthermore, the White House had had almost thirty years to buy every piece of Tinkertech they could to detect any threat; not just using infrared but other exotic detectors along with the top computer technology tinkers could make.

The Secret Service hired parahumans too. No one knew exactly what powers they had, but there were all sorts of rumors. No one knew who the parahumans were, although there had to be tinkers to help maintain the tinkertech.

I couldn't be sure of exactly what sort of defenses this white house had. Not only did they not have tinkertech, but they were fourteen years behind my world.

The computers on Alucard's world had been absolutely ancient, and I suspected that this world wouldn't be much better. That meant that there would be real human eyes on monitors, along with a few automated systems.

I sent my eyes forward; I was standing a few blocks away in an alley in a bad part of town, waiting for my eyes to reach their destination.

I suspected that they weren't really in this dimension, which was why they were generally intangible; the alien forcefield must be partially in the other dimension for it to affect them.

Shadow Stalker's power probably worked in a similar way.

The arcane eyes didn't give off any heat that I could detect with my hands, and other than being visible they didn't seem to interact with this universe much at all.

I sent the eyes as high as I could; humans tended not to look up. I could have sent them through the grass on the lawn, but that would mean sending them across the street, and human eyes were attracted to motion.

There were agents on the roof with sniper rifles. They were focused outward, though, so I just had to wait until no one was looking back to send the eyes plummeting at sixty miles an hour downward and through the roof.

I was essentially blind inside the walls, so I had to slow down and move forward until only the front part of the eyes were peeking through the ceiling.

With eight eyes, it didn't take long to move through the White House. It was smaller than I'd thought, and a lot more crowded.

I had the newspaper out in my hand, and I checked the people against the picture in the newspaper. It was kind of grainy, but I suspected that the President would be surrounded by Secret Service Agents, and that he would be getting a lot of respect from the people around him, whether he deserved it or not.

The paper called him weak for preferring compromise over conflict. He was supposedly a war hero, though so maybe he just didn't want to send men to die unless it had to be done.

There.

He was in the oval office, on the telephone with someone. I didn't have sound with my eyes, and I still hadn't learned to lip read, but I really didn't need to.

He was almost undoubtedly talking about the alien ships, and there were a number of people in the room with him, presumably some kind of advisors.

There were multiple secret service agents in the room; I'd have to deal with them first, or someone was likely to be shot. I'd hate to make that kind of first impression.

Blinking into the room, I moved.

I could see the bulges under the coats of the agents, so I simply inventoried the coat of the first agent and then his gun in holster.

I'd inventoried three sets of coats and guns by the time the agents began to react, but it was still negligible for me to disarm the other two and to lock the door.

They tried to attack me physically, to dogpile me, but I blinked next to the president, and they froze.

"Mr. President," I said. "My name is Taylor Hebert, and I am here to warn you about the aliens."

The agents were shouting into their microphones. I released some of my glass, next to the door, and I began to alter it so that it was a buttress against the people trying to break the door down.

"I've got abilities that aren't normal," I said. "And I used those abilities to infiltrate an alien ship. I learned that they are planning an attack in the next twenty-four hours. They may have detected me, however, and that might make them move their timeline up."

President Whitmore froze, and he lifted his hand to the secret service agents.

"Stand down," he said. Turning to me he said, "How can you do what you do?"

"I'm from another universe," I said. "Where people developed powers thirty years ago; nobody knows why. I essentially copy powers, which is why I have so many. One of those powers lets me jump from world to world."

"As an invasion?" one of the men, a general demanded.

"For more powers to copy," I said. "And to find places to hide from my enemies and because it's fun."

The general frowned.

"The aliens are telepathic," I said. "And I copied that to get information from one of their technicians. I'd like to share that information with you."

Everyone in the room seemed to think that was a bad idea.

"She might be able to control you," one man said. "If she can do all this…she could compromise you."

"If I wanted to control him, I'd have appeared in his bedroom while he was asleep and nobody would know about it," I said. "Which would be much smarter than appearing in front of his…advisors…whatever the hell you all are."

"She could mind control all of us!" a man said. He looked like an anxious sort.

"If I could do that, you wouldn't be arguing with me," I said. "Everything I said would seem totally believable, and like a good idea."

"What do you want to show me?" the President asked.

"What I saw in the alien's mind," I said. "It convinced me, and it will convince you."

Before anyone could object, he nodded.

"It doesn't look like anyone could stop you from doing what you want," he said. "So, go ahead."

I touched his hand, and we both froze.

While I was feeding him the information I'd seen in the aliens' head, I looked inside him, trying to get a look at what kind of man I was dealing with.

Was he corrupt? Did he take bribes, was he cheating on his wife, or was he abusing his power? Everything I'd seen from officials in my homeworld suggested that even the best of them had an agenda, and most of them were petty if not downright evil.

I felt shocked with what I found.

President Whitmore was a good man.

He wasn't weak because he was afraid; he attempted compromise because he knew exactly what the cost of war was. He'd had friends die, and he'd fought in some Middle Eastern war that hadn't happened in my world.

He was self-sacrificing and brave. He reminded me of my father, before grief and the sheer weight of responsibility had worn him down into a shadow of his former self.

President Whitmore was pale when I finished.

"Show the general," he said.

He pointed out three other people, presumably people responsible for military strategy for me to show as well.

I looked into their minds as well, and while none of them were nearly as good as the president, all of them would have been saints compared to the people in any Earth Bet government.

"What can you do to help us?" one of the generals asked. "If you are right, the only way we'll be able to attack is when they are ready to fire, and they'll have fighters that we won't be able to affect because they are protected."

Their attitudes had changed after viewing what I'd shown them. I could still see doubt on the faces of the other advisors, the ones I had not shown.

"I don't have unlimited power," I said. "I have an extradimensional space where I can put objects of up to four tons each. I have a certain amount of ability with technology, although the aliens are beyond what I can manage; my technology is maybe a hundred years better than yours, and the aliens are at least that much beyond me, if not more."

"You managed to get inside and abduct one," the general said.

"I could show you the body, but I'd ruin the carpet," I said. "I can give it to your researchers, but we don't have time to do a lot. My interference may have put their timetable up, so I don't know when they will start destroying cities."

I paused.

"They have a larger mothership behind the moon," I said. "Which you all saw. I could maybe destroy that if I had the right weapons, and it would stop projecting power to the other ships, but there's a major problem with that."

"The ships would crash, and they are all over major cities. Millions of people would die." President Whitmore said.

"If we do nothing, they will move on to other cities," the general said. "It may be a necessary sacrifice for the survival of the rest of the species."

One of the secret service agents spoke. He looked less dignified without his coat or gun.

"We need to get the president out of the city," he said. "If you would allow it, ma'am."

I nodded.

Blinking over to the glass, I inventoried it.

The door slammed open, with people with guns pointing at me.

"Stand down," President Whitmore said. "I need you to contact the First Lady, and get her to a secure site."

The agent nodded and spoke into his communicator in low tones. I could hear everything he said.

"You'll come with us," the President said.

"I need to know what you want me to do," I said. I hesitated. "I'm afraid of what I might have to do, and I'm not strong enough to stop them."

"She comes with us," the President said.

I found myself being rushed toward a presidential helicopter. I received a pair of earphones.

We were headed for Air Force One, apparently, and so were the rest of his advisors, although they were taking a slower route.

It seemed to take forever to get there; that was likely because I'd gotten so used to flying places that even normal delays were making me impatient.

It took even longer for the plane to take off. We were waiting for all sorts of people, apparently the ones who were considered important, and the plane wasn't under the alien ship, so the president was considered temporarily safe.

"We could alert people," the president was saying, "Start an evacuation."

"That might encourage the aliens to move their timetable up," the general said. "Clearly they've been monitoring our communications."

"If we don't evacuate, people are dead anyway," the president said. "Either because the aliens destroy the cities, or they just land on them."

We were in sliding down the runway.

"I've never actually been on a plane," I said, looking out the window. Air Force One was a lot fancier than I would have thought, probably because it was new and the White house was a couple of hundred years old.

"You can fly, right?"

"Sixty miles an hour," I said dismissively. "It's barely a power, except for being fun."

"Start the evacuation order in Washington DC, New York and Las Angeles," the president said. "Have the ships ready to intercept and inform them of the vulnerabilities."

"We'll lose a lot of them to the fighters," the general said.

"If we don't destroy the ships, they'll hit Chicago and Houston, Miami and everywhere else," the president said.

The general gestured for an aide, and the man stepped out of the room.

We were in a conference room on the plane.

"What can you do to help us?" the general asked me again.

"I can kill everyone in a 900-foot diameter by one-hundred-foot-high circle if they've got bones. The aliens do have bones."

"That would seem useful," the general said after a moment of silence in the room.

"I only infiltrated one hallway on the outer hull of the ship. I don't know anything more about the interior layout than I told you. It's possible that the interior of the ship is hollow; if it's not, I would need to use that power like 780,000 times to clear the whole ship, and presumably they'd be running away from me. It'd take me most of a day to clear the ship and by then they'd likely self-destruct or something."

"Destroy the scientists and pilots," the general said.

"They're a hive mind. They all have the same skills," I said. "Any individual is slot table into anybody else's role."

Everyone was silent, and the mood in the room was gloomy.

"I could always infect them with a zombie virus," I said. "I have some, but I don't know if it would even infect them, and if it does it might spread to the human population. It's a bad option; in less than 24 hours back home, there were more than four thousand people infected in a city of…maybe two hundred thousand?"

Brockton Bay had started with three hundred fifty thousand people, but after everything that had happened, I had no idea how many people were left.

"Are you sure they would just drop on top of the cities?" one man asked.

I frowned.

I had some knowledge of aerodynamics, both from my vehicle specialty and its associated piloting skills, and from my extraplanetary specialty.

"They'll tend to skew to the side," I said. "But not enough to save the cities. At best they'll hit the suburbs to one side."

"If your ability reaches through the force shields," the general said, "then maybe you can destroy their fighters, leaving a gap for our pilots to get through."

I nodded.

"The ideal thing would be for me to destroy their main weapons while leaving the ships intact. That would leave them relying on their fighters and ground troops to attack, which might make for a protracted ground war, but would spare a lot of people."

"Could you do that?" the President asked.

"I'd need a visual on every place the ships are hovering," I said. "And I'd need to infiltrate each place undetected. Until I see the main weapons myself, I won't know how much it will take to destroy them."

"Use telepathy?" an unknown aide asked.

I shook my head.

"I'm not even sure that I got away with it the last time," I said. "But I suspect they'll react more quickly the next time I try to go into their minds."

"Infiltrate the ship in Washington," the President said. "The ships all look identical, so there's a chance that they use a standardized design."

"They are a hive mind," I said. "maybe they aren't very creative?"

"If you can find out what we need to destroy their main weapon, then you might be able to disable their fighters before they can come and attack," the president said.

I nodded.

"I'll do my best," I said. "But how will I know where to find you."

The president glanced at his aides.

I'd been given a tour of the plane while the president had been briefed about some things; apparently, I hadn't been meant to know.

"We're going to Area 51," he said. He scowled. "Apparently they've known about the aliens since the Roswell crash fifty years ago."

"Where is it?" I asked.

They gave me its location in relationship to Las Vegas. It was a military base, so I should be able to find it from the air.

"I'll do what I can," I said. I hesitated. "It might be impossible to do this"

"I won't believe that until it happens," he said.

Nodding, I blinked away.

It felt good to have a mission that didn't involve murder. This was going to save lives.

Working with people who were well meaning and at least minimally competent was encouraging too. I'd become used to the corruption back home, and I had been starting to feel that there was no one in authority in the world who could be trusted.

I liked what I'd seen of these people, and I would do what I could to help them.

Blinking back into the skies of Washington DC, I saw that the roads were crowded as people tried to escape the city. There were too many people and too few streets, and in their panic, people had crashed creating more congestion.

I blinked to several crashed vehicles, inventorying them and healing the people inside. It took me only a couple of minutes as I moved so quickly that the people I left behind were sitting on the side of the road dazed and confused about what had happened.

Traffic began moving again more smoothly despite drivers' incredulity about what had happened.

Jumping to a spot below the ship, I jumped to the surface of the ship and I cling there with wall crawling while I sent eyes inside the ship to get a good look at the main weapon.

I'd see what I could find out about the weapon, reach an estimate of what it took to destroy them without destroying the ship as a whole, and then I'd get back to report to the president.

If I could destroy all thirty-six main weapons and at least some of the fighter ships, then we might be able to spare the capital cities.

Maybe I'd even be able to acquire a ship of my own.

I imagined Piggot's face if I flew over Brockton Bay in a destroyer.

That'd be cool.