Page 31 of The Planetary Systems Preservation Committee Decided We Needed a Nanny

I shrug. “I’m just making a logical deduction,” I deadpan.

Bee laughs, shaking her head. “You’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.”

“Don’t tell Lora that. He might take you literally.” I shudder at the thought of what he might do to get my eyes back to their normal color.

Bee cackles and points to the screen, where Lora appears to be looking directly at me with concern.

“She did not mean that literally!” I exclaim, not sure if he’s actually looking at me, but I’m not taking any chances.

Lora blinks at me through the screen, and redirects his attention back to his work.

I glare at Bee, willing her hair to ignite for a tenth of a millisecond just to worry her. (I wouldn’t want to ruin her beautiful hair for real.) “You’re gonna get yours, you know that, right?”

Bee tosses an olive up and catches it in her mouth. “I believe in karma, but I’m an emergency medical aid worker. My karma is so far into the black, I get to do whatever the hell I want when I’m off work as long as I’m not undoing what I did while working.”

I hate that I agree with her, but I would never tell her that unless I was speaking to someone in defense of her. We stand united in the face of our antagonists, but when it’s just us alone? We’re fighting besties. “Karma doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to claim you’re in the black for doing your literal job. You get contribution credits for your work. That’s your karma, bitch.”

Bee’s eyes narrow and one of them twitches. “I may just return all my contribution credits. I want the karma points.”

I let out a deep, dark chuckle. “Good luck with that.”

The image on the screen suddenly jogs like the camera projecting the image is being moved, and then there’s a flash that looks like a fiery explosion before the entire screen goes black.

Fear chokes me. Every muscle in my body tenses. My brain goes completely blank except for one word on repeat. Lora, Lora, Lora…

A boom shakes the apartment, and Bee jumps to her feet, tossing her plate onto my coffee table as she dashes for the balcony. I stare at the TV, willing it to come back online with Lora’s face. Bee’s voice pierces through the sudden freeze that’s keeping me in place. It’s a noise, not words. Just a loud, shocked, horrified noise. Fear tastes coppery in my mouth, and I swallow the excess saliva suddenly choking me.

I turn toward the sound of Bee’s despair, tearing my eyes away from the blank TV screen.

She’s staring up at the dark sky, face alight from what looks like a huge fire.

I scramble to my feet and run out there with her, following her stare up to the sky on fire. One of the alien ships is raining through the upper atmosphere in a billion blazing pieces. That’s the second one they’ve lost. That’s the one Lora was on.

Whatever noise came from Bee, the cry that escapes me is a thousand times worse.

Suddenly I’m jerked off my feet, my life torn away from me as I find myself in the arms of my alien. All the breath escapes me all at once, and then the emotional overwhelm comes out in an angry shout. “What the fuck?!”

Lora nuzzles me. “We are all alive. No deaths. It’s a mirage. No one was on that ship. It is not real. It is just an illusion. I apologize. I could not communicate with you what was about to happen. I must leave again. We are almost done with this campaign.”

Before I can even release a relieved breath, he’s gone again, and it’s me and Bee on the balcony, staring up at the hallucination of an exploded ship.

“What the fuck?” Bee and I repeat in unison.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The absolute chaos that erupts as soon as Lora disappears is almost incomprehensible. The skies fill with tiny ships coming through the atmosphere, and then the real explosions begin. At first it looks like debris from the fake exploded ship is taking out a few of the tiny ships raining down, but as more and more of them explode and those little explosions take out some of the others, it becomes apparent that the ScaryDarkAlienVampires have hidden sky mines up there and they are taking out the InvasiveParasiticBodySnatchers. It’s kind of ingenious and sadly beautiful because it looks like a million little meteors burning up on entry.

Bee’s monotone interrupts our staring. “It’s a meteor shower made of death.”

She’s not wrong. “They chose the wrong planet to invade,” I remind her. “They were warned.”

She nods, turning her face away from the small blazes in the sky. “I still can’t watch it anymore. I’m glad Lora’s ok, but this is carnage I don’t want to watch.”

I agree, turning with her to go back to the living room. The TV is back on the only channel that works, and Lora is there again, working in conjunction with the rest of the leadership team to turn the invasive force back and force them to retreat.

Under the image is the total number of deaths and casualties, and the number for the enemy is closing in on a billion. The humans have suffered another ten casualties since the explosion, but our alien nannies haven’t gone up in number, which is good as far as I’m concerned.

A little ticker at the top begins to scroll with a message from our defenders: The main force of the InvasiveParasiticBodySnatchers has been eliminated. Survivors are retreating. This species does not fight wars of attrition.