I stormed over to a stunned, yellowing Chamblin. “What the froccing froc is going on here?”
I said it at top volume too. No need for lip-reading.
My students gasped.
Chamblin gave me a blank look. I didn’t buy it. Before I could grab him by the vest and demand answers like some primitive Human in a twenty-first century movie flick, Clarice burst onto the bridge from the front entry. She aimed a needlepoint laser our way, and Chamblin tackled me to the ground.
A brilliant beam pinged off the metal wall behind us, narrowly missing the heads of several children when it ricocheted into the holofield.
“Hit the deck!” Lovey yelled.
Amid screeches and screams, everyone except Doodie fell to the ground and covered their heads, though what their poor little hands could do against a needlepoint laser was beyond me. Lem and Lon, as orange as I’d ever seen them, spread their bodies around as many of the children as they could. Would it be enough? Two adult Zhie couldn’t cover twenty, no, nineteen, no eighteen, no seventeen...
Oh my Unicom, how had I lost three of my kids today?
Doodie rolled behind the pilot’s chair and whipped a laser from an inner pocket in his jacket. No longer the dopey tour guide, his rangy body bristled with anger.
“Drop it, Phantasm. Our forces are already on their way,” he snarled.
Clarice pointed the gun at the huddled mass of children and slithered into their midst. A few kids started crying, as well as Lem or Lon, one. An ugly smile transformed Clarice’s soft features into an evil mask.
“I don’t think they’ll shoot into a room full of your young. Give me access to the lab and nobody gets hurt.”
“That’s my student Clarice,” I hissed at Chamblin, who’d dragged me behind a bulky machine. “You have some major explaining to do, mister.”
My stern teacher-voice might have affected him five minutes ago. But now? He had the audacity to be in complete control of himself, and he wasn’t a bit orange. Or violet. “It’s her body, but we’re ninety-eight percent sure a Phantasm inhabits it.”
“Ya think?” Phantasms loved to hitch a ride in Human and Zhie bodies. It was how they did their best work, but a third grader? Really?
“Ninety-nine percent sure.” His arm wrapped me securely as his breath tickled the hair on the back of my neck. I felt a hard lump against my hip and glanced down in shock. I’d heard that danger turned some people on, but wasn’t this too dangerous? I mean, he was handsome and we’d gotten chummy in the lift and he’d saved my life, but...
He pulled the lump—a small pistol—out of his uniform pocket.
Tour guide, my heiney.
“What does a Phantasm want with my kids, Chamblin? Why is she on Space Station Freedom? What lab is she talking about?”
Still holding me, he said, “That’s all classified.”
“Where’s Geiger? Is he all right?”
“What’s going on out there?” Petunia yelled. We heard a strange gurgling noise. She opened the door and peered onto the bridge.
Clarice reacted instantly, whipping off a shot in Petunia’s direction. Her aim was lousy. The beam glanced off the “No Children” sign straight into the pilot’s chair and burned a hole through the cheap plastic.
Doodie uttered a pained groan.
Petunia slammed the door shut.
Chamblin shoved me further behind the bulky machine and extended his pistol around the corner.
“Any minute now you’ll be surrounded by our best agents, Phantasm,” he warned. “Give up now and maybe we’ll let you live.”
“I’m surrounded by helpless children. Poor, stupid children.” Clarice cackled in a way that was distinctly unchildlike. “What are you gonna do, kill them all to get to me?”
“Don’t kill us, Clarice,” Lovey begged. “I’m sorry I broke your buzz comm last week.”
Clarice grabbed him by his stubbly brown hair and yanked him up onto his knees. “Let’s start with this one—I never liked him anyway.”
We heard the gurgling noise again. Geiger ran out of the still-open door, followed by several large Zhie females in Galaxy Prime military uniforms.
“Get back here, you little creep,” one bellowed.
“Hold it right there!” Clarice shrieked, but Geiger’s momentum carried him straight into her and Lovey. They toppled into the huddled children.
“Pileup!” Lovey hollered.
All the children, my children, leapt onto the squirming Clarice and knocked her gun across the floor. Petunia burst out of the bathroom and landed on the top of the heap. Lem and Lon danced around the edges of the pileup, alternately reaching for children and snatching their hands back as if afraid a finger might get bitten off.
I scrambled up and rushed toward the children, but Chamblin caught me halfway. The Zhie soldiers grabbed Clarice out of the squirming heap and shocked her with a silver bar.
Her slender Human form shimmered. A nauseating gurgle of steam issued from her mouth, coagulating into the loathsome blob of a Phantasm. Another soldier activated a trigger on a shock bar. Part of the holofield above us flashed down, settled around the Phantasm, and wrapped it into tight package.
Two of the Zhie dragged the struggling Phantasm off the bridge while the children heckled it gleefully.
Clarice fainted, looking a bit worse for the wear.
“Clarice, are you alive?” Geiger dropped to his knees beside the girl and clasped her hand. “Talk to me.”
Doodie had wrapped his bleeding arm in a piece of khaki and knelt beside Geiger to check Clarice’s vitals. “She’ll be fine, son. She’ll be completely back to normal after a few days.” To the Zhie soldiers, he said, “Tell her parentals to contact us at this buzz and we’ll have them sign a release. This child was injured in defense of Galaxy Prime and might go up for commendation.”
“What about me?” Geiger asked.
One of the remaining Zhie females secured Geiger to her side by his hair, dragging him away from Clarice. “You’re not getting anything except a ride straight to your commune, you little thug, and they’d better not let you off until you’ve learned some respect.”
He batted helplessly at the large woman. “Ow, watch the braids.”
“He’s an IPSSE student. You don’t have a release to do that,” I said. “Give him to me.” I took Geiger’s hand and turned to Chamblin. “Would somebody please tell me what’s going on here?”
“Take the children to the Admiral’s dining hall for debriefing and snacks,” Chamblin told the soldiers. Now that the threat had been removed, his color didn’t fluctuate at all.
“Good snacks, not that green pasty crap,” Petunia said.
Chamblin ignored her. “Contact their parentals too. We’ll need release forms for every one of them. Standard pay-out.” The large women hustled everyone except me, Geiger and the unconscious Clarice out of the room. Lem and Lon followed happily, leering at the bountiful examples of female flesh.
“They have a secret lab down there,” Geiger informed me, earning himself a glare from our tour guides. “I went through a portable cross point and there I was, on a white stage in this whammo lab with a bunch of government apes staring at me like I was the Phantasm.”
“Geiger, you know points are fixed,” I chided him. “There is no such thing—”
Beside me, Chamblin cleared his throat. “Actually, Miss James, there is. That’s what this installation was designed to research. We didn’t think our enemies would search for a restricted government lab beneath a planetside amusement complex.”
“So that’s what Clarice’s leech was after.” I shuddered to think what Phantasms would do with portable cross points. “Does this have anything to do with why you kept touching my kids and wiping your hands inside your vest?”
“You noticed that?” Chamblin asked.
I shot him my “Do you think I’m a moron? Give it up, buster” teacher look.
“I figured you were pervy,” Geiger said.
I smiled.
Chamblin greened up a smidge before opening his maroon vest to display a thin, flexible device that looked like a scanner. “DNA tests confirm the presence of a Phantasm in another body once that Phantasm has inhabited it long enough.”
“Which means the Phantasm has been inside Clarice how long?” I’d only noticed her out of character behavior today.
“We don’t know.” Doodie waved a scanner over Clarice and frowned at the read-out. “We never managed to test this particular student, but the residue is nominal. Probably no more than a couple days.”
“There have to be twenty groups here today. Do you always scan for Phantasm infestation?” No wonder space station attendance was in such decline.
Chamblin answered. “That’s classified.”
I sighed and tapped my foot.
“I can tell you this,” he conceded. “We have been on high alert since our associates on the frontier found out a week ago the Phantasms might have stumbled across the location of the lab. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. Locking down the whole station would be suspicious, and we wanted to lure it in. Neutralize the threat. We first scanned your group in the shuttle ride. It confirmed the presence of a Phantasm, or at least recent contact with one.”
“You couldn’t take care of it then?” I asked, remembering how jumpy Chamblin had been after the shuttle simulation.
“Unfortunately, no. Room and archway scans aren’t specific enough, and we needed actual DNA to figure out which body it had invaded. At first I suspected this guy here.” Chamblin indicated Geiger, watching the conversation with a degree of focus I wished he’d apply to his schoolwork. “He was into everything, sneaking around, asking all sorts of nosey questions. Just what a Phantasm might do.”
Clarice, as I recalled, had asked me most of her questions. Had held my hand most of the day. Hadn’t tried to sneak anywhere until the end. How much had the Phantasm suspected?
“I suppose you couldn’t be obvious or you might alert the Phantasm,” I offered, giving them some benefit of the doubt.
Chamblin nodded. “Correct. It’s hard to collect DNA without a release form, and the Phantasm would know that. If it had figured out what we were up to, it could have body hopped or endangered you and the children.”
“I’d say the children and I were pretty endangered, there at the end.” I crossed my arms. These government goofballs weren’t anywhere near as clever as they thought they were. “Are you sure the delay wasn’t more about keeping your cover intact?”
“I was only in danger of losing my hair,” Geiger said.
Chamblin stared at me for a long moment, more calm than I would be if I’d nearly bumbled into handing a Phantasm the ability to create portable cross points. “Don’t underestimate our concern for your safety, Miss James.”
His irises swirled purple for the briefest moment and back to brown.
He could purple up at me all he wanted. I wasn’t impressed by either of his so-called jobs. “This does explain why you both stink as tour guides. Have you had any experience at all with groups of kids?”
“Hey, I like kids,” Doodie protested. “Some of my best friends have kids.”
“I’ll take your recommendation under advisement,” Chamblin said. “You’re the expert. I wouldn’t be surprised if you hear from us again regarding a consulting position.” His lips twitched into an almost-smirk. Lucky for him he kept it off his face, because I was not in the mood to be patronized. Not after what could have happened to my class.
“No thanks. I’ve already got a job.”
Chamblin smiled. It wasn’t a smirk, so I didn’t kick him in the kneecap. “I know. And I’ll be in touch, Hazel.”
So he knew my first name. Big whoop. He couldn’t intimidate me with his governmental knowledge and unreasonably attractive smile. For a few years, I’d taught middle school. That’s right, middle school. In New Texas.
“Perv,” Geiger muttered.
“We understand you’re upset, Miss James.” Doodie rose, cradling Clarice’s slight body in his arms. “The Phantasms are a menace, but we do have means to protect our civilian populace.”
“You’ll pardon me if I don’t feel reassured.” Though Doodie had spoken, I directed my comments at Chamblin. “You’re the same people who cloaked a dangerous laboratory with the trappings of an educational museum where civilian children visit on a daily basis. Who don’t have the sense to lock your secret doors.”
“It was locked,” Doodie said. “I don’t know how he got it open.”
Geiger wiggled his fingers, all twelve of them. “Wooooo. Magic.”
I gestured at the ceiling, where the fancy holofield still hovered. “How long has the lab been here, anyway? A year?”
“Classified,” Chamblin and Doodie said at the same time.
I’d been double-teamed by sterner authority figures than these two. “I should call the media, I really should. The public needs to know.”
“Will we be on the tube?” Geiger asked. “Whammo!”
“No need for that,” Chamblin said soothingly. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement. Now or later, your choice.”
“You expect me to condone this? Ever? This whole setup is irresponsible. Anyone who didn’t have their head so far up Unicom’s...” I stopped myself. I ought not say what I truly thought with Geiger listening, so I rephrased. “You put everyone here in danger by trying to catch the Phantasm this way. My students could have been hurt. Or killed.”
“Whammo,” Geiger said again.
Chamblin shifted his weight to his heels. “None of this should have happened. The strategy has worked in other locations. We isolated you in the shielded sector when we realized our original approach wasn’t working.”
“You’ve done this before?” I glared at the Zhie agent, though I doubted he was personally responsible for the government’s idiocy. Even so, I might never take my kids on a field trip again. “Where?”
His color slipped into peach, but his expression revealed nothing—certainly not whether the Museum of Soil and Water Conservation was a cover for a top secret holding facility for intergalactic criminals. “We can’t tell you that. But we’ve never had trouble with a child being curious about a plain, uninteresting door right beside one marked ‘No Children Allowed’.”
“Because children never go anywhere they aren’t supposed to go.” I shook my head, saddened by the ignorance here. “They always do as they are told. They never open doors that aren’t part of the tour.”
Chamblin lowered his chin and glared back at me, like this was somehow my fault. So much for all that purpling up he’d done. “Nobody did until your group, Miss James.”
“Is that so?” I was done with this conversation. Geiger was gripping my hand and Clarice was unconscious and all the parentals would be showing up soon, frantic and confused. My first concern was my students and their needs.
I’d take on the Galaxy Prime government later. Maybe during summer vacation.
“I take it you don’t find that fact surprising.” A smirk finally found its way onto Chamblin’s face, and I didn’t appreciate it at all. “I wonder why?”
“What can I say, Chamblin?” I shrugged. “They’re the third graders from Hell.”
Then I took Geiger by the hand, and we walked to the Admiral’s dining hall for some very, very good snacks.
~ * ~
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