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Chapter 109 – Christmas PresentsAlex’s burn was way better by Christmas Eve, even if her mom and Shar were still fussing over it. Annie fussed, too, when she flew home for Christmas and found out Alex got blasted by a laser beam guy who could burn holes right through people. Annie took the bed in the guest bedroom, even though Alex and Shar both said they’d be happy to sleep on the floor so Annie could have her old bed and be in the room with them. Annie also wanted to see Alex in every cosplay costume in the guest bedroom closet and also the Homecoming Queen dress, so they had fun doing that.
Alex was pretty sure from the wrinkles in the dress that Shar had already tried on the Homecoming Queen dress a couple of times, and had just ‘forgotten’ to tell Alex.
And Annie had brought home some copies of one of the Boston papers, because someone had leaked news about the NID’s secret project to unmask Terawatt, and they had pictures of some of the people who were being investigated as possible Terawatt identities. One of them was a guy who had a femininely-shaped lower face, but was a stocky guy with a big pot belly. And one of them was a forty-year-old unemployed mom who really looked a lot like she could be Terawatt if you only looked at her mouth and jaw and chest, and since the story broke, she’d gotten a job as a Terawatt impersonator, doing mall store openings and stuff like that. Alex and Annie and Shar had a lot of fun looking at the pictures of the ‘Terawatt’ possibles and laughing at how not-Terawatt-ish most of them were. Alex figured Willow and Jack were really behind the news leak, but then when they Skyped, Willow said it was probably someone in the FBI or the DIA who was really mad at the NID.
On Christmas morning, Shar was up way earlier than normal. It was like her internal clock got re-set to ‘Santa came!’ even though she knew there was no such thing as Santa Claus. It was really not fair that Shar had been through so many horrible, disillusioning moments in her life, and she wasn’t even nine yet.
Alex let Shar open one present, but then Shar had to help Alex make breakfast and stay quiet until everyone else got up. But Annie was still on East Coast time, and their mom and dad normally got up early for work, so everyone was up by seven.
Shar was almost too distracted to eat breakfast, even though Alex made pancakes and had them staying warm in the Dutch oven which was in the regular oven so it would stay hot. Most of the pancakes were ordinary buttermilk pancakes, but Shar’s were special chocolate chip pancakes shaped like bunny rabbits, which really just meant you put the pancake batter down in three little circles like you were making a snowman, and then poured bunny ears to go on top of the smallest circle and you added a tiny dot of batter at the base of the bottom circle for a bunny tail. Jack would probably put a couple of extra chocolate chips over by the bunny’s tail like it pooped on the plate. Alex didn’t think her mom would find that funny.
Then everyone took their coffee or juice or milk into the living room and took turns opening presents, while Shar ran around handing out the gifts to open when she wasn’t manically ripping the paper off her gifts to see what she got. Alex was filming everything with her GoPro, and Annie was writing down who gave what present to who for writing thank-you notes later, and their dad was picking up all the trash and putting it in a trash bag, and their mom was picking up the recycling. And also the stuff to re-use, like some of the bows on the presents, and some of the boxes that could get used for presents next year. And Shar had a lot more gifts than anyone else, because she had plenty of presents from everyone else in the room, and presents from grandma and grandpa and Aunt Ashley, and presents from Jack and Willow and Hanna and Riley and Sergeant Scott. Alex figured Willow gave Shar the most presents, but it was hard getting Willow not to be all excited about stuff, and she figured Willow had probably been buying a present here and there for Shar since September. And most of them were wrapped with Hanukah paper that was blue with menorahs, so Willow had probably justified buying eight more gifts for Shar by telling herself she needed one for each night of Hanukah.
On the other hand, Alex had no idea that Mattel made a Barbie’s Office set with Barbie-sized computers and desks, so now Terawatt Barbie’s friend really could be a computer hacker. Shar was so excited she had to put the whole set together before she could open another present.
Alex was glad her presents were all really useful. She figured that was a sign she was getting really old. But new socks, and a really pretty coat for when she was in Washington, D.C. next winter, and some gorgeous low-heeled leather knee-boots, and a big box of chocolates, and a package of candied fruits, and a huge package of chocolate-covered nuts, and several gift certificates for a dozen doughnuts each at Gloria’s, and a bunch of great stuff like that. Willow sent her some cool science fiction books, and Jack sent her a book on how lobbyists worked in Washington, so Terawatt would be ready for creepy lobbyist tricks in future. Shar had made her a bunch of chocolate-covered pretzels for a Christmas present, and they were really good. She and Shar ate almost all of them before they were done opening presents. Then, after everything was cleaned up, Shar spent a few hours playing Terawatt Barbie and Sidekick Skipper and Tera-hacker Willow fight badguys, with Willow in her ‘office’ at her computers telling Barbie and Skipper stuff to do to the badguy, which was a giant mutant green Petey Johnson monster which looked suspiciously like a Christmas tree.
Around lunchtime, Auntie Willow and Uncle Jack and Jack’s son Charlie called to wish everyone a merry Christmas and ask Shar how she liked her presents. Shar babbled on and on about how much she liked her new Barbie equipment and her new DVDs and her new games, until Jack asked if she wasn’t really related to Auntie Willow, because she was sounding like she’d been practicing the whole Willow-babble thing.
Then Jack and Willow chased Jack’s son Charlie off their end of the connection and had Alex go somewhere by herself. Shar was showing Annie her Barbies in the bedroom, so Alex went in the home office and shut the door. “What’s up?”
Jack said, “We had some FYIs that are a tad sensitive. And Willow’s still mad at me because you got hurt.”
“Oh, you! Behave!”
Then they simultaneously went for the Austin Powers imitation. “Oh, be-ha-ive!”
Alex complained, “One of you is being a very bad influence on the other one.”
Jack insisted, “And clearly it couldn’t be me, because I’m a colonel in the Air Force.”
Willow added, “Graham’s team got the fun job of interviewing the evil supervillains. One of ’em has pneumonia from inhaling too much pool water —”
“Oh, crud!” Alex cringed.
Jack instantly said, “Don’t beat yourself up about this. These were four very bad people before they even got superpowers, which is why Atron hired them. All you did was toss ’em in the pool. Anybody else would have had to go with deadly force first thing. And supervillains who already destroyed Coast Guard boats and fully-armed Vipers? You don’t stand there and say ‘drop your weapons and surrender, Count Naughty!’ You shoot them. With everything you’re packing. And those Vipers shot them with everything they were packing, and it didn’t do any good.”
Willow exclaimed, “Yeah! And every single one of ’em wanted to squeal on Atron if it would get them any sort of plea bargain. Even if nobody needs any more testimony against Atron, and all four of these creeps are going down for a bunch of counts of murder one and assault on a federal officer and attempted murder, and about a hundred other charges.”
Alex asked, “But why did they do that stupid ‘blow up everything for twenty miles’ thing on their way to the mansion?”
Willow said, “Atron asked for it. She said she wanted to make a point, probably about not being stoppable when she wanted something. The goons were okay with it, because she told them it would show they couldn’t be stopped either, and they could jack up their fees.”
Jack added, “They’re in a Mexican drug cartel, and they do hits for hire. Real sweethearts. Atron hired them ahead of time and then arranged a meet, and she handed off the stuff to the woman when they passed in the Mexico City airport. Two liters of GC-161, to be split four ways, and four vials of ‘accelerant’, which apparently jazzes up the GC-161 effects. Bill Lee figures it’s something Atron invented while she was doing that dose-antidote-dose routine on herself to get those powers, but he has no idea what the new chemical is, because the possibles he worked up are all seriously toxic. We didn’t find any traces of anything like an accelerant when we took apart her Bakersfield lab, so we don’t know what it could be. We’ve got all four of ’em on antidote now. But if Atron made that drop in Mexico City on the day Azure Crush fought Vic Cready and then fled, that means she set up a city-wide disaster in Paradise Valley just to make it easier for her to flee the country.”
Willow said, “She may have taken a private plane to Mexico City, because Jack’s people already checked every commercial flight that left the U.S. and went to Mexico City that day. Nada. And we can’t find any sign of her departure out of Mexico City. Okay, the Mexico City airport doesn’t have security cams everywhere like we do, and they don’t go through all the security checks for jet passengers like we do, and Atron could have just puddled into the hold of a jet and skipped the whole check-in dealie anyway. But we’re pretty sure she’s out of the country now, and on the loose who knows where. By now, she could be anywhere.”
Jack took over. “If Azure Crush hadn’t pissed Atron off, Atron would have sicked these guys on Cready instead. Or maybe Alex Mack. But she definitely hired these perps well before she kidnapped Cready and Baker and told them to go wreck Paradise Valley and then ice you when you showed up to save the day. So she had these creeps all prepped until they got a phone call telling them who to go hit, and how. My guess is Atron was planning on clearing up loose ends in case Terawatt put Baker or Cready in the hospital or in a jail cell, or else they put Terawatt in the hospital. Apparently, since then the Fiesta Four have been playing with their powers by killing rival drug cartel members and getting paid really well for it.”
The Fiesta Four? Sometimes Jack was so weird.
Alex said, “Well, they did seem to have some teamwork stuff worked out, but they definitely didn’t care about protecting the teammates, or even not blasting them by accident if they were in the way.”
Jack told her, “A three-way split always gets you more money than a four-way split. So adios Fiesta Four, and viva la Terrible Trio.”
Alex didn’t say so, but Jack’s Spanish pronunciation was really pretty awful.
Then Willow said, “Okay, Jack, leave the room. It’s time for girl talk.”
Jack got up, but before he left, he snapped, “Okay, but under no circumstances are you allowed to talk about wearing that Christmas lingerie!”
Once Alex heard the door close behind Jack, she asked, “This isn’t really gonna be about that lingerie is it? Because … you know.”
Willow meekly said, “No, it’s not that. I need your advice really bad. Jack gave me some awesome gifts, but then he gave me a private gift, this really small gift, and that’s the problem … It came in this little box that opens up, and it goes on a finger, and it has a diamond on it …”
“Oh, my gosh!” Alex squealed. “He gave you an engagement ring? That’s so great!”
But Willow sounded really unhappy. “I want to take it, but I just don’t know, and Libby was totally not helpful because she said to go ahead and take the ring and not give it back and then later on decide if I want to go through with the whole deal, because YES I want to go through with the whole thing, but it’s too soon, because the books I was reading said you need to live together for at least four months before you go to the engagement part so you know you’re really compatible and you’re not gonna end up getting divorced in six weeks like a Hollywood celeb.”
Alex couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Willow! You’re reading bad books! Jack’s not a twenty-something slacker who smokes pot and lives in his parents’ basement, he’s a grown man who already knows how being married works! And you’re not some crazy party girl who still isn’t sure if she wants to stop getting hammered every night!”
Willow whimpered, “But I think I’m a bad girlfriend, because in the airport magazine shop they had dirty magazines, too, and … I bought the Azure Crush one! And I looked at all the pictures and I didn’t even read the articles! And I had really dirty thoughts! I’m a creepy, horny bad girlfriend and Jack shouldn’t trust me!”
Alex carefully asked, “What did Jack say when you told him?” Because Alex figured there was no way Willow was going to be able to not tell Jack in excruciating detail with ten minutes of intense Willow-babbling and maybe a lot of crying, too.
Willow pouted. “He thought it was cute, especially that I was so embarrassed. So he told me Graham and Jo and you went to talk to Azure Crush at the mansion, and she has a friend named Didi who’s super-stacked and blonde and totally bi, and I should start out small with Didi. Or Megan Fox. It was not funny! I mean … Okay, it was a little funny the way he said it.”
Alex griped, “Didi pretty much hit on me, Graham, and Jo, all in about two minutes. And I’m pretty sure she’s had sex with at least one of the other centerfolds, and at least one of the security guys. I think you could get her in the sack just by walking up to her and saying ‘hey sailor, new in town?’ Or just offering to buy her a nice dinner first. She’s not exactly playing hard to get. With anybody. I think her definition of ‘potential sex partner’ is ‘still breathing’.”
“Jack said Graham told him that if there was a picture dictionary for grown-ups, Didi would be the picture next to the word ‘easy’. And he said Jo really doesn’t like it when people figure she must be a lez just because she’s super good at being Soldier Girl.”
Alex admitted, “Well, Didi didn’t exactly say she thought Jo was gay. Just that she thought Jo was smoking hot, but too rigid to bother hitting on. And she was ogling Sergeant Carlson pretty hard, too, but she didn’t get a chance to go hit over and on him.”
Willow confessed, “I met Sergeant Carlson, and if you like your men to be the Conan the Barbarian type, he’s pretty much it, except he’s not a dumb jock, and he’s handsomer than Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Alex insisted, “Well, look, you’ve got to talk to Jack about this, because he wouldn’t buy you a ring unless he’s majorly serious about you.”
Willow moaned, “But there’s like a jillion things we probably can’t even work out! I mean, we’re not the same religion, and I’d want to get married in a synagogue by a rabbi, and most rabbis won’t marry you if your spouse-to-be isn’t Jewish, because it’s this whole cultural assimilation thing where Judaism keeps losing the children of the marriage to other religions, and Jack’s totally Christian, and I want kids but Jack’s already done the child-raising bit, and I want my kids to be Jewish and Jack won’t, and where would we live, because neither of our places is anywhere near big enough, and it’s not like Jack can move, and I love my house, and Jack thinks cosplay is goofy, and I put together a list of all the things we won’t be able to decide on, and it’s long. Really long.”
Alex took a deep breath. “Okay, talk to him about the list. Maybe you need to work that stuff out first. But maybe you should let him put that ring on your finger and just agree that you two have to work all these things out first before you can get married.”
“You think that’s okay?” Willow asked in a small voice.
“Yeah. I do. I think you and Jack can work out anything, if you just sit down and talk it out, and if someone gets mad about one thing, then change topics and come back to it later when you’re both happier.”
“Thanks so much, you’re the best friend ever, Alex!”
Alex really hoped she was being the best friend ever, and not the idiot friend who gets you to do something incredibly stupid that you regret for the rest of your life. Like that embarrassing tat that Robyn had on her butt now that she was saving up to get laser tattoo removal on, all because she and Christa and Mari had too much to drink one night even if they weren’t supposed to be drinking alcohol and they were all underage, and Mari thought they should all get tats from her brother who was learning to be a tattoo artist, so Robyn had a mega-embarrassing tat on her butt that didn’t even look decent because Mari’s brother was not a great artist or even a good speller. And Robyn said it hurt to sit on it for like days, and her mom had a cow about it.
Alex just said, “Merry Christmas, Willow.”
“And Happy Hanukah to you!”
* * *
Alex went and talked to her dad and Annie about possibilities for a GC-161 ‘accelerant’, and they both had some ideas, even if her dad was worried they could be really unsafe for whoever got experimented on. And Annie figured there were some other things you could try if you didn’t care if it killed the person in a matter of weeks or months. Alex pretty much figured that idea had ‘Danielle Atron’ written all over it.
About an hour later, Alex got another call on her tPhone. She flew out of the kitchen and into the home office. “Terawatt here.”
Jack said happily, “Hey, Tera, thanks a heap! I have no idea what you told Burn, but she’s wearing a ring now.”
Alex burst out in a huge grin. “That’s really, really great. Congratulations. But you two have a ton of stuff to work out before you even get anywhere near the ‘planning a wedding’ part, and Willow’s the kind of person who’s gonna need to have a firm answer on all this stuff beforehand. And expect a ginormous list of wedding decisions you’re not gonna be able to duck out of.”
Jack said, “I have noticed that my girlfriend is Willow Rosenberg, not Miss Laid-back Hippie of 1968. We’ll talk stuff out.”
Alex sure hoped so, but she knew some high school couples who couldn’t even decide on what toppings to order on their pizza.
Oh. Pizza toppings. That was probably yet another thing Willow had on that list. Jack probably liked pepperoni and sausage and hamburger and bacon and Canadian bacon, maybe even all at the same time, while Willow would probably want a veggie pizza. At least Willow didn’t keep kosher, which probably made things even harder. Okay, Alex didn’t even know all the rules for keeping kosher, but she knew you weren’t supposed to eat bacon and there was something about shrimp and maybe something about cheeseburgers, so she should probably ask Mina about that someday.
Alex thought about all that kind of stuff the whole way over to Ray’s house. She had a Christmas gift for Ray, and she knew he had one for her. So they exchanged gifts at his house and then necked in front of the tree until she needed to go home and help with dinner.
And Shar had eaten so much Christmas candy from her Christmas stocking that she was bouncing off the walls and was totally not interested in eating pot roast and broccoli salad. When Alex’s mom said the salad was raw broccoli with some golden raisins and chopped red onions and chopped bacon and a mayonnaise dressing, Alex had pretty much thought ‘bleh’ but there wasn’t too much mayo, and it was really, really good. Alex had like four helpings. And when Shar tried it, she ended up eating two helpings. Alex’s mom was thrilled, because getting kids to eat broccoli was like trying to get cats to wear baby clothes. Not that Alex knew anything about that. And the scratches she and Nicole got that time in second grade were totally not from trying to dress Nicole’s kitties Miss Merry Graytiger and Miss Berry Blacktiger in the old baby dresses Nicole’s little sister had outgrown.
* * *
There were two school basketball games right after Christmas, and Alex went to both. Ray was terrific in both games, and they won both of them pretty easily. Alex was so proud of him! Ray took her out to a New Year’s Eve party at Louis’ house and they had a great time, and Alex just didn’t drink the punch after Ray spotted Jackson spiking it with Everclear. Because Everclear? Mega-ick.
And on New Year’s Day, Jack called to ask if Alex and Shar would come down to Roswell to try out something Dr. Lee’s science guys were trying to invent.
Alex told her mom, who then had like a fifteen-minute mom-chat with Jack until she was convinced Jack just wanted Shar to try out a fancy gadget, and he wasn’t planning on letting Shar anywhere near a battlefield.
But her mom wasn’t the most trusting person in the world when it came to other people who might not be taking care of her family. So, when the Cessna landed at Camp Atron a few hours later, there were three people waiting to board, instead of two. That was a bit of a problem, because Jack was already on the plane with Riley and Sergeant Scott and Sergeant Walters. And it was a six-person jet. So Alex had to stay silvery for the entire flight. But her mom was not going to let Jack do insane stuff with Shar. Or to Shar.
Alex knew that Jack could have just kept her mom from being allowed on the base in the first place. Or he could have had her mom held until the Cessna took off. Or he could have canceled the whole thing. But he told the base to let her mom come out to the tarmac, and he let her mom fly down to the Roswell base with them, and he was even nice about it. Even if he had seven people in a six-seat Cessna, which only worked because one of them was stuck having to puddle in her gym bag in the overhead compartment the whole way there.
Once they got to the Roswell base and got off the plane, Alex’s mom hugged her, even if Alex was in her Terawatt uniform for security reasons. And her mom apologized for making her be an unhappy puddle for over an hour and a half, but insisted, “I’m sorry, but I can’t just let people I don’t know use Shar like some sort of guinea pig.”
Jack fumed, “Hey! I’m not some people you don’t know!”
And Alex insisted, “I trust Jack! I trust him with my life. And you know there’s no way in the world I’d let Shar get hurt!”
Riley tried to be the moderator. “Colonel, maybe it’s just as well. Things will probably go smoother in future if Mrs. Mack knows what we do, and knows she can trust us … a bit more than she does right now.”
Jack scowled. “Well, maybe.” He still pointed at Alex’s mom and glared, “But next year, you are getting lumps of coal in your stocking!”
And her mom turned really red, because Jack and Willow had bought her a really nice necklace for Christmas. Even though the note said it was half for Hanukah, too.
So Alex’s mom was feeling really guilty while Riley and Graham showed them their quarters, which was like a really nice motel room with two queen-sized beds and a nice bathroom and a little kitchenette. And there was a huge fruit basket from Graham on the kitchenette counter, and a lot of Diet Coke in the little fridge. Along with a whole gallon of chocolate milk, because that was Shar’s favorite.
They took twenty minutes to hang up their clothes and pull the fruit basket apart and eat a bunch of the candy in the bottom. Riley helped, even if he wouldn’t eat any of their candy and had an apple out of the basket instead. Then Graham drove them over to the two-story building Alex had been in before. They took the stairs up to the second floor, and they went into this big room that was set up like a fancy laboratory out of a movie.
Lieutenant Marshall shook Alex’s hand and welcomed her, so Alex introduced everyone. “This is Lieutenant Marshall, who’s a really top-notch bio-scientist on top of being a naval officer, and he’s the guy who figured out all about the giant clam monsters in like ten minutes. This is Pyre, and this is … our chaperone who was kind of suspicious about what the colonel was up to.”
Her mom shook Lieutenant Marshall’s hand and said, “Call me Barb.”
He smiled. “I assume you’re the Teramom the colonel warned us about?”
She rolled her eyes. “Please, don’t call me ‘Teramom’. At least, not in front of Terawatt.”
Alex sort of figured she was lucky that was all Jack was calling her mom, since her mom was being a real pain, and Alex was totally capable of yelling at people who weren’t nice to Shar.
The lieutenant introduced them to three more scientists, and he showed them a little cartoon movie clip that looked like it was put together in fifteen minutes using Adobe Flash. It looked like a thin rectangle with little jets underneath it, then a girl stood on it and the rockets fired, then the girl flew around in the sky before landing it slowly like a lunar lander coming down on the moon.
He said, “We’ve been working on a design for Pyre, and this is just version 1.2. We’d like her to be in a safety harness and test this out, so we can see how it does on lift and stability, and then we’d know what we need to fix for version 2.0. I’m figuring we’ll need three or four iterations before we get to something stable enough that Pyre can do some test flights, which we’ll do in a different style of harness at a paratroop training site not too far from here, so she can fly up to a hundred fifty feet in the air while we have her on cords so she can’t crash and get hurt. Then she’ll have to practice takeoffs and landings and flight techniques until the colonel’s satisfied she’s safe enough to fly on her own. So this is step one, and we’re figuring she’ll be her own personal jet by the time she’s ten. Maybe eleven.”
Shar gushed, “Wow! This is cooler than firebending! Even if some of the firebenders can fly, too.”
Then Riley and the lieutenant drove them out to the first test area, which was outside. It looked like two fifty-foot towers over a hundred feet apart. Each tower was like two fifty-foot poles fifty feet apart so the walkway across the top made it into a square, with lots of bracing inside it and behind it. There were thick cords going from the ground, up over the tops of the towers, and then down to a harness on the ground halfway in between the towers. And next to the harness was … a snowboard?
The lieutenant walked them over to the snowboard-thing. Close up, it really looked like a metallic-painted snowboard set on a row of big #5 tin cans. Alex wondered out loud, “A snowboard on tomato cans?”
He said, “A metal and ablative plastic snowboard analogue, on top of six rockets. Each one of them will eventually hold a very special type of solid rocket fuel that isn’t useful for most rockets, because it won’t provide thrust unless there’s a continuous heat source. But that makes it perfect for Pyre. Today, we just want Pyre to try firing it, and we’ll only have fuel in the outer two rockets. If she manages to get it to launch, we’ve got her on these cords, so she’ll be safe. But we’ll be able to see where it fails on launch capability, and where it lacks stability, and then we’ll see what we need to fix. If things go really well, we’ll try some wind tunnel tests tomorrow, and if not, we’ll fly you home and work out the bugs so we can try again in a few months. But safety first.” He looked down at Shar and smiled. “Is that okay with you?”
Shar nervously asked, “Can A–… I mean, Terawatt fly alongside me and grab me if things go bad?”
He nodded. “Sure, but she won’t need to. We’ll have you on these leaders, so you’ll be extra-safe. Okay?”
“It’ll be okay. I’ll be right with you during the tests,” Alex said as reassuringly as she could.
He explained, “And we have a special suit for Pyre to wear. She’ll be like a test pilot in it. Or a superheroine.”
Shar piped up, “I already have a superheroine costume! I made it myself!”
But the suit they had for Pyre was a lot better than a leotard and some tights. It was a silvery, fireproof coverall and a matching motorcycle helmet in the right size, and both had a ton of sensors on the inside and outside so they could monitor Shar and also the stresses on the suit. Alex was really hoping there weren’t going to be any ‘stresses’ on the suit.
They strapped the harness on Shar over her silver suit. It was like the harnesses acrobats wore while they practiced trapeze acts. In fact, the whole thing including the towers reminded Alex of a thing for practicing trapeze acts, not counting the cameras and monitors they had all over the place, including underneath the clear plastic ‘floor’ the snowboard was on.
Shar stepped on the snowboard and stuck her feet in the shoeclamps, which snapped closed when she stomped her heels down. Alex was already in her Terawatt uniform, and she was hovering in front of Shar. Airmen were at the corners of the two towers, ready to pull on the cords to keep Shar from being able to fall more than a few yards.
Then Lieutenant Marshall stood behind a clear plastic wall and said, “Okay, Pyre, this is test number one. Try to just light the rocket fuel in the two outside cans at the same time. Start small, and slowly increase the amount of heat energy you’re applying to the rockets, until they start lifting you up. Keep your legs stiff as it lifts. If it gets wobbly, just stop applying heat. The fuel will go out right away, and we’ll catch you. So if it gets wobbly, just stop. If it feels like you’re too high, just stop. If you think anything’s going wrong, just stop. If you get scared, just stop. Okay?”
Shar insisted, “I won’t get scared!” Then she glanced over at Alex and whispered, “You’ll be right here with me, right?”
“Right.”
Shar made two little fists and stuck her arms straight up in the air. Then she yelled, “YOU STAY! I GO! NO FOLLOWING!”
The two outer cans under the snowboard were suddenly on fire. Flame was pouring out from around their bases. Then more fire.
The whole snowboard slowly lifted into the air, with jets of flame firing down to the ground. First it was only moving a few inches a second. Then it moved about half a foot a second. Then it lifted upward about two feet a second.
Alex kept flying alongside Shar, but as long as Shar was completely still and in her Iron Giant pose, everything was working. The four guys off to the sides were taking in the slack on the harness cords, and Shar was doing great.
Alex finally said, “Shar, ease off a little bit, you’re almost out of room.” Because Shar was a little higher than the tops of the towers by then. Alex was ready to grab Shar in a TK grip as soon as anything went wrong, but it would be way better if Shar didn’t need any help.
Shar backed off a little, and the snowboard slowly sank down until it was about forty feet up.
Alex said, “Okay, you’re doing amazing. Can you get it so you’re just hovering?”
“I … dunno. I’ll try.”
Shar gave it a little more heat, and it rose. She backed off, and it sank. It took her about half a dozen tries before she was just hovering in mid-air. Like a real superheroine. Alex wanted to just fly over and hug her to pieces.
Alex grinned. “Okay, you’re doing totally great, now just ease off a little, and let it drift down to the ground.”
“I can do that. I think.”
And the snowboard sank, about half a foot every second, until it thunked onto the plastic flooring again. Everyone burst into cheers and applause.
Shar looked around excitedly and whooped. Alex used her TK to snap open the snowboard’s shoeclamps, and Shar jumped off. Alex had to use her TK to hold the snowboard in place, because it wanted to scoot out from under Shar’s jump, and Shar would have done a faceplant instead.
Shar ran over and gave Alex’s mom a huge hug, and then when Alex flew over, Shar gave her a huge hug, and then Shar even gave Riley a huge hug.
Lieutenant Marshall said, “This is excellent! We weren’t anticipating being at this stage until probably the PyreJet 3.4 or 3.5. Why don’t you change Pyre out of that test outfit, and we’ll go back to the lab to look at some film footage and test results. Okay?”
Shar jumped up and down, “I flew! I really flew! I flew like Terawatt! And I wasn’t scared even a teensy bit!”
Okay, Alex had watched Shar’s face the whole time, so she knew that last part was a huge fib. But she wasn’t going to say so.
After Shar changed back to normal clothes, Riley drove them back to the building. Alex’s mom frowned. “It still looked really dangerous. And how’s anyone supposed to steer something like that?”
Riley explained, “Well, ma’am, Pyre has a big advantage over the rest of us. She can just heat up the rockets however she wants. When they’ve got all six cans loaded, she can fire the center four for full acceleration, and then just tweak the outer two to provide right-and-left steering Then she can control tilting forward or backward just by leaning her body forward or backward a little bit. But it’ll take some getting used to, and she’ll probably come up with her own techniques as she gets used to the rig.”
Alex’s mom worried, “How fast is it supposed to go, anyway?”
Riley said, “I don’t know that, ma’am. I think that’s going to depend on a number of factors, including the fuel they end up with, the nozzle system, the aerodynamics of the board and the flight-suit and the helmet, and most of all, the pilot. But it definitely should be able to go fast enough to keep up with Terawatt, even if it’s unlikely to be anywhere near as maneuverable as a pure telekinetic flight package.”
“We may also try adaptations where Pyre has hand units that will provide steering,” Lieutenant Marshall said. “We have a lot of ideas, and we have plenty of time, but we have only one pilot. And she’s only eight.”
“Eight and THREE QUARTERS!” Shar insisted.
Alex asked, “Is it going to be like those Flyboards I saw that shoot water out of a snowboard thing so you can fly around over the ocean?”
Lieutenant Marshall said, “I think that’s where Bill got the idea. I think he took his kids flyboarding for vacation, and he figured out a rocket fuel that would work for Pyre. But don’t tell anyone. He likes having everyone think he’s the serious, stuffy guy.”
Alex snarked, “I figured he couldn’t be too stuffy if he decided to go to work for Jack.”
Riley snorted with amusement, and Lieutenant Marshall tried hard not to laugh out loud.
Alex’s mom said, “If you were really stuffy, I would think working for Jack would be a real headache.”
Alex agreed, “As bad as if you were really casual, and you had to work for some guy who was stiff as a board and really cranky.”
Jack and Graham and Jo were waiting for them when they got to the ‘office’ building. So all of them including Shar crowded around the monitors while Lieutenant Marshall and his head researcher Dr. Ledbetter showed them the camera views and the monitoring results. Jack picked Shar up so she could see better, even though Alex was going to.
When they showed the part where Shar put her arms up and did the Iron Giant thing, Jack laughed really, really hard.
Afterward, they arranged to do some wind tunnel testing for the next day, and depending on how that went, maybe some jump tower testing at the paratrooper site a couple of hours away.
Then Alex changed back to normal clothes, and Graham had them over to his house for drinks and dinner. Alex had Diet Coke. Shar had a 7-Up and then chocolate milk. Alex’s mom had mineral water. Alex was watching to see what the SRI people drank. Jo and Jack and Graham each had a beer. Riley had a Dr. Pepper. Alex didn’t think that sounded like a tough Army Ranger. She figured he got a lot of teasing for that.
Then Graham grilled steaks and burgers on his grill, and they had some potato salad and a green salad and a fruit salad. And some blue jello, because Graham said it was a Colonel O’Neill requirement for a proper picnic. Alex had a steak, and then two big burgers after Graham said he got extras just for her.
Jack and Shar ate at least half of the jello, just between the two of them.
Over dessert, which was lots of ice cream, Jack said, “I don’t care how fast Dr. Lead-bottom —”
“Ledbetter, sir,” corrected Graham.
“— like I said, Leadbelly thinks he can move the training. My niece is not going higher than a jump tower without Terawatt hanging onto her the whole time, or else a base-jumping chute that she knows how to operate. And that means a lot of chute training first, because you know what they say about skydiving.”
Riley supplied, “Anybody can skydive. The trick is being able to do it a second time.”
Ouch. Alex watched as her mom winced a little.
Jack went on, “And when we’re doing the horizontal movement tests, I want Terawatt on patrol, too, and I want ultra-low-altitude tests we can do over a pond, so if she falls, she just gets wet, not pancaked.”
Alex’s mom just frowned and nodded.
Just before Riley drove Alex and her family back to their hotel room for the night, Jack took Alex aside in Graham’s back yard. He also had Riley and Graham, so Alex figured it was SRI stuff.
Jack said, “Alex, it looks like it may be a really good thing your mom came along, because she may need to babysit Pyre while you go on an op. We may have a Terawatt Code Red going on right this second, even if no one wants to say so. A guy I know in USPACOM …” He looked at the blank expression on Alex’s face and explained, “… the U.S. Pacific Command got wind of this and flagged me. They don’t know what’s going on. The Russians are pretending there’s nothing going on, and someone’s stonewalling Gates right now. I have no idea why, since this looks like it could be an SRI tasking, and they know how good we are at this. Anyway, I’m trying to get satellite imagery, or ground reports, or something. But it looks like there could be a problem that just happened on the west side of the Bering Sea with the Russian ports of Provideniya and Anadyr.”
Riley asked, “And has anything happened along the northern coast? Because we’ve been looking for signs of a Collective attack using that stolen sub. This could be it.”
Graham said, “If we didn’t know about The Collective, we would be completely screwed on intelligence evaluation.”
Jack nodded. “And as long as we play dumb, we’ve got intel they have no idea we know how to use.” He looked over at Alex and smiled. “Playing dumb is one of my best talents.”