Chapter 155 4-7: Baggage Handling

As I watched the retreating TSA agents, it suddenly occurred to me that I needed to ask at least one of them a few questions.

“Excuse me,” I said. “But I need one of you back here.”

The TSA agents were making their way through the airport as fast as their legs would carry them. Like they didn’t want to stop and talk with me for some reason.

I couldn’t imagine why a normal wouldn’t want to talk to me. I also wasn’t going to let them get away with trying to get away from me. Luckily, it didn’t look like many of them were holding themselves to the exacting fitness standards the federal government no doubt required for someone in such an important security position.

“Get back here!” I shouted.

I fired off an anti-Newtonian bubble, and the rest of the crowd had the good sense to get the hell out of the way the moment I pointed my wrist blaster.

That didn’t help the fat TSA agent who had his back to me. The bubble hit him. One moment he was moving as fast as his stubby legs would carry him, every day was leg day when you weighed as much as that guy after all, and the next he was frozen.

I walked over and stared at him. He was frozen, but that didn’t mean his hearing was busted.

“Listen to me and listen good,” I said. “I’m going to let you out of this thing, and you’re welcome to run if you want to. First you need to tell me how the hell to get to baggage handling though.”

I let the anti-Newtonian field fall. The guy stared at me for a long moment, then he barreled into the crowd again. Damn it.

“Does anyone else know how to get to the baggage area?” I asked.

Unfortunately there was no one around who knew. That or they weren’t interested in sticking around long enough to tell me what they knew.

I sighed.

“If I may, Mistress?” CORVAC asked.

“What?” I growled.

“I believe you would be able to simply find the aliens by using your radiation detector. There is no need for all this subterfuge,” he said.

“Yeah, but the subterfuge and not getting caught is the fun part,” I said. “Catching aliens driving around in cats is the easy part.”

“Yes, but you have already been caught which means your real life stealth game is over,” CORVAC said. “So perhaps it is time to get down to business before those cats are able to put their plan into motion?”

“You take the fun out of everything,” I said. “But you have a point.”

I floated up, and suddenly even more people were trying their best to get the hell away from me. This part of the airport was nice and open with a vaulted ceiling that provided enough room for several heroes to have a battle. I’d read something from the architect saying he’d done that so people on the ground would be able to escape if any battles broke out overhead.

That meant more people were able to see me when I floated up, and they were taking one look at Night Terror and deciding they didn’t want to be anywhere near a place where I was doing my business.

Usually that was a good idea, but I turned and flew in the direction of the fleeing crowd in this case. Usually I would’ve studied the airport and grabbed a schematic to figure out what I was doing, but this whole possessed cat situation was happening so fast that I was forced to improvise.

I flew out to the baggage claim area and picked one that didn’t have people bunched up around it waiting for their bags to come down. I flew through one of the entrances and acted out every kid’s fantasy of climbing that fucker and seeing what was going on over on the other side.

I was greeted by a series of conveyer belts, and a few workers who looked surprised to see someone busting through the baggage claim exit. Their irritation faded as they realized it was Night Terror busting through and not some kid causing trouble.

Someone ran to the wall and hit a button. Immediately all the conveyors stopped, and red lights started to flash as all the workers in the room turned and ran for the exits.

Damn. Not the reaction I was hoping for. This would be a hell of a lot easier if I could just ask a few questions or get someone to work with me to ground whatever flight these cats were trying to get onto.

If they got onto a plane they could get out into the world. If they started spreading past Starlight City it was going to make this job way more difficult.

Not impossible. A bunch of alien worms were not going to succeed where so many other wannabe alien invaders had failed, but it would make it more difficult for sure.

I guess stopping the baggage claim was a good first step though. I pulled my detector off my belt and held it up. I smiled as I saw a bunch of dots accompanied by a beeping noise I’d ripped straight from Aliens because it seemed appropriate given what I was hunting.

“All right you fuckers,” I growled. “Time to go on a bug hunt.”

“A bug hunt, Mistress?” CORVAC asked. “Are you quoting one of your entertainments again?”

“Only one of the greatest works to ever be made about hunting down aliens, CORVAC,” I said.

“Right,” he said with a sigh. “I assumed that was what you were doing since these creatures are more parasitic worms than proper bugs.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, tuning him out as I scanned the room.

“Not to mention the term bug is very inelegant for attempting to describe a species. Insect would be more appropriate if you were talking about what people commonly refer to as…”

I flipped the mute button. That was something I’d added when we started working together again. It was nice having CORVAC around, but there were times when it was convenient to be able to mute him. Especially when he was questioning human motivations and idiosyncrasies.

The screen showed several blips that I fed into my heads up display. I couldn’t see the cat carriers since they were blocked by other bits of luggage, but they were in here.

“Here kitty, kitty kitty!” I called out, amplifying my voice so they could hear me. “If you come out and tell me why you’re here trying to get on that plane I promise I’ll kill you quickly!”

“That is going to reassure them, I am sure,” CORVAC said.

“I mean I already know what they’re doing. Parasites traveling to another city? Pretty obvious there, but…” I trailed off. Frowned. “Damn it, CORVAC. How did you get through that mute?”

“The same way I was able to worm my way back into your systems without you knowing the last time you tried to kill me,” he said.

I sighed. There really was no getting around this jerk sometimes.

“The kitties aren’t coming out to play,” I growled.

“Can you blame them considering you just threatened to kill them?” CORVAC asked.

“They’re supposed to be playing nice, damn it,” I said. “Time to make a point.”

I raised my wrist blaster. It made a nice ominous hum, and I fired off a couple of shots. Several of the conveyer belts went up with delightful explosions.

This time the reaction was immediate. Several cats flew out, but I frowned as I realized they weren’t trying to escape like I would’ve expected. No, I would’ve said they were doing the cat equivalent of parkour, but weren’t those idiots who did parkour really doing the hairless monkey equivalent of something cats did effortlessly on a daily basis?

The point is they were jumping from luggage to luggage, and they were coming right at me. Not to mention they were moving fast. They also looked a little larger than your typical housecat. That was a new wrinkle.

“Damn it,” I growled.

One of the cats flew at me with its claws outstretched. I raised my wrist blaster more out of habit than anything else, then stopped. I’d been on the verge of vaporizing the thing, but the poor cat who’d been taken over by this alien parasite didn’t deserve that.

Instead I ducked to the side and the cat kept flying through the air. If it was possible for a cat to look surprised, then that one certainly did.

Not that it did me any good. No sooner had I escaped from the one cat than there were two others that were on me clawing. 

A day ago I wouldn’t have worried, but now it was a worry considering the way that other asshole cat had managed to claw my suit.

I did a little spin. The fuckers held on for a moment, those claws really were dangerous, but they eventually went flying. They landed on their feet too, because of course they did. Cats.

“Are you having trouble, Mistress?” CORVAC asked.

I caught a distinct note of sarcasm in his voice. I wanted to go to one of his backup locations and blow something up. I liked to think he felt a little tickle every time I did that, even if he had his consciousness spread out in several undisclosed locations around the world.

“I could do without the color commentary,” I said.

“Are you certain, Mistress?” CORVAC asked. “Because it wouldn’t be much trouble for me to transport you some catnip.”

“I said shut up, CORVAC,” I growled, wondering how there’d ever been a time when I missed this asshole.

“I could even raid one of the local pet stores with some drones and send you some toys if you’d like. Maybe some of those fishing poles with a toy at the end? I know we’ve been trying to find a use for the drone swarm and…”

I landed and tuned out CORVAC. He couldn’t break through me tuning him out.

The cats were regrouping and moving in around me. I imagined this was sort of what it must’ve felt like for ancient ancestors who found themselves surrounded by lions, or a lion’s nearest evolutionary equivalent depending on how far back we were going.

The big difference being these were house cats. They shouldn’t have been a worry at all, but I’d already seen that they could punch far above their weight class and I was not looking forward to fighting all of them. More appeared on conveyor belts and jumped towards me.

“Perhaps a laser pointer, Mistress?”

Then it hit me just what a genius CORVAC was.

“I can’t believe you,” I said.

“I apologize, Mistress,” he said. “I will be quiet now.”

“No,” I said. “You’re a fucking genius!”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“No time to explain,” I said, holding up my wrist blaster and dialing it back.

It was a classic conundrum. I needed to get rid of these fuckers, but at the same time I didn’t want to actually hurt the cute little kitties coming at me.

I know. That’s not a very villainous thing to be thinking. What the fuck ever.

It all came down to something I’d learned about the parasites. The whole reason I was using Fat Louie to trap the fuckers long enough to interrogate them. They always took on some personality aspect of the cats they were inhabiting.

I really hoped this worked.

“Time to rock and roll,” I said.

One of the cats leaned back on its haunches as though it was getting ready to launch at me. I fired my wrist blaster. A beam shot out, which was something I tried to avoid since beams were a little too accurate and difficult to walk to a target.

Walking your slower than light shots into a target took longer, sure, but you couldn’t beat the intimidation factor.

The beam split into several smaller beams tracing patterns on the floor. I called this the party pattern, and honestly I have no excuse for having this setting on my wrist blaster other than I saw a machine doing something like this at a mall once, back when malls were still a thing, and thought it looked pretty cool.

Hey, I was all about having a little bit of fun in between trying to take over the world.

The beam hit the floor and went flying. It wasn’t powerful enough to cause damage, but it was coming from my wrist blaster which meant it was more powerful than your typical laser pointer. We’re talking “don’t look directly into the trap” levels of powerful.

The reaction in my enemies was immediate. Sure a couple of them were able to overcome the cat instincts, but not all of them. Several of the cats immediately dropped their war against yours truly and dove into the never ending war against the red dot that all cats had been fighting ever since commercial laser pointers became a thing.

I grinned.

“CORVAC,” I said. “I think this fight just went to a beautiful absurd new level.”