Terrhi was laughing. “This is fun Uncle Jack.”
I decided it wasn’t the time to give her a lecture about the importance of compassion for fellow sentients.
I was surprised Spike hadn’t joined us yet. Maybe he hadn’t seen us. I knew he’d want to be with Terrhi. Then I felt a pressure behind my knees that forced them to the ground.
“Spike!” I said, without turning.
“Not Spike,” said Anthony Zwilniki. He had used one of his feet to push me down. The barrel of some sort of weapon was digging into the back of my head.
“Leave him alone!” shouted Terrhi. She started toward Zwilniki.
“Stay where you are or you’ll be cleaning Jack’s brains off the floor.” Terrhi froze.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“I checked the security cameras and saw Cornell shoot you in the torso without much effect. I won’t make that mistake.”
Terrhi whimpered. My brain froze.
“Stand in front of us,” said Zwilniki, motioning with his chin.
“Okay,” said Terrhi, moving slowly and sounding like a scared little girl instead of a warrior princess.
“Don’t hurt her.”
“I don’t plan to. She’s my insurance policy. You, on the other hand, have no such guarantee.” He pressed the barrel of his weapon into my scalp hard enough that I was sure it would leave a circular bruise.
“It’s over, Zwilniki.”
“Not yet. He who fights and runs away may live to fight another day.” He jabbed his weapon again for emphasis. “Both of you. Start walking.”
It was clear where he wanted us to go. There was a open path to the hovercar used to kidnap Terrhi, except for rabbots, and they scattered in front of my avoidance field. I could hear Poly shooting more prickly seed pods with the auto-cannon and more soldiers’ protests as they stepped on them. With all the booms from the cannon and screams from the troops the chaos level was high enough that Zwilniki stood a good chance of making his escape.
Terrhi got to the hovercar and meekly walked up the short ramp to the open central passenger section. Zwilniki pushed me up the ramp as well, but I tripped on the top just as it entered the vehicle and fell to my knees. I sensed a rush of air behind me and heard a deep growl, then Zwilniki was screaming. Spike was on top of him, his jaws around Zwilniki’s right hand.
“Spike!” cried Terrhi. I could hear her relief in that single syllable.
“Good cat!” I said. I took out Cornell’s stun phone and pressed it to Zwilniki’s center of mass. “Let him go, Spike.” The big cat opened his jaws and an ugly looking pistol fell to the hanger floor. Spike had shown restraint. Zwilniki’s wrist was bleeding but not severed. I triggered the stun phone and watched him fall, his muscles wracked with spasms like a stable full of charlie horses. Then he went limp and his eyes rolled up in his head. Zwilniki was no longer a threat.
Terrhi and I hugged each other and I scritched Spike under his jaw the way he liked.
“Thanks, buddy,” I said. “Nice save.” I interpreted the look he gave me as the Dauushan feline version of “Don’t mention it.”
It was time for the last two phases of the plan. I deactivated the rabbots with my phone then called Lieutenant Lee.
“Operation Cavalry—make it so.”
“Will do, Jack. How’s the girl? What’s it like in there?”
“Terrhi’s fine. It’s chaotic, but you won’t encounter much resistance.”
“Glad to hear it,” said the lieutenant. He was outside the giant rolling doors at the front of the hanger with a hundred state-level police officers and half a brigade from the Georgia National Guard.
“The side door’s open and I think the main door controls are near it,” I said. “You won’t need explosives to get in.”
“Great.” I detected a note of disappointment in his voice. He would have enjoyed blowing things up.
“Tell your team to watch out for prickly seed pods and pink goo,” I said. “I’ll notify my special hazmat team and they’ll be here to clean it up, but your folks do not want to step on them or in it, respectively.”
“I’ll pass the word. Nice job, Jack.”
“Thanks. Jack out.”
I called Shepherd. I felt privileged to have his number. It was probably a burner phone.
“Operation Chartreuse—make it so.”
“I’m already here, Jack,” said Shepherd. The wolf-like, bear-like Pâkk was near the loading dock bay where Poly and Spike and Tomáso had made their entrance. He was driving a large all-terrain vehicle with a 500 gallon tank filled with something green in back. Shepherd held the ATV’s wheel with one hand and a spray wand in the other, expertly maneuvering close to concentrations of pods and goo and neutralizing them with jets of sweet smelling chartreuse liquid. The affected soldiers seemed grateful and slumped in place, recuperating.
A shadow fell over me. Something was blocking out the light from the congruency-powered bulbs overhead. I looked up. It was Tomáso. Poly slid down his center trunk and the big Dauushan gently lowered her the rest of the way to the floor. She raced over and hugged me. It was the kind of hug I could really get used to.
“I’m so glad to see you,” said Poly. She looked over my shoulder. “You, too, Terrhi. I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Thanks, Aunt Poly.”
Poly wasn’t done with me. She kept hugging me and was positively gleeful. “It worked! It worked! It worked!”
“It sure did,” I said, “And you and Tomáso were wonderful. Your idea was terrific. It broke Zwilniki’s troops’ morale.”
“Thanks, Jack.” Before she could bury her head against my neck I thought I saw her blushing.
I whispered “I love you” softly in her ear and felt her cheek get even warmer. She whispered something back. I couldn’t hear her clearly since she was talking into my neck, but I think it was the reply I’d hoped for. When we broke the embrace she noticed the gash on my leg.
“What happened to you?” she said.
“Dinosaur injury.”
She initially gave me a reproving look that I translated as “If you’re not going to give me a serious answer…” but then it changed into a concerned smile. I looked down so she wouldn’t see me grinning. Her eyes followed mine.
“What happened to Tony Zed,” she said, indicating the stunned body on the floor next to the hovercar.
“Spike. Zwilniki tried to kidnap Terrhi and me again and Spike stopped him. Then I stunned him.”
As if on cue Zwilniki started to moan.
“He’s coming around.” I used my Spike’s tooth knife to cut some safety harnesses from the hovercar and tied Zed’s hands and feet together. Then I shoved my knife into the side of the hovercar and looped his hands over it so he was half-standing, bent back over the rounded housing of one of the rotors. Tomáso looked down at the captive man. I was surprised Zwilniki psyche didn’t collapse, stunned again, from the force of Tomáso’s glare.
“You miserable excuse for a Nicósn flat worm,” said Tomáso. “You stinking pile of ubercow dung… you thieving black-hearted, child-poaching son of a…”
“That reminds me,” I said, “Zwilniki was poaching signals from the state capitol and using them to fund this fiasco.”
“Say what?” Lieutenant Lee had opened the main door and had come over to join us. We shook hands.
“He told me he’d borrowed a lot of money for the ships and troops and was counting on the revenue stream from selling pirated sessions of the Georgia House and Senate to pay back the loans.”
“We can’t have him profiting from stolen signals,” said the lieutenant. He took a proprietary interest in anything affecting the capitol building.
“I think I can address that short term until the state’s auditors have time to dig into it,” I said.
“How?” asked Lieutenant Lee.
I made another phone call and was greeted by a song.
“Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every ra
inbow, ’til you find your dream!”
“Hi Droopy,” I said.
“Hi Jack! How’s tricks?” The Khaloenian disembodied brain and ecommerce validation server was now every bit as manic as he’d been depressed.
“I’m doing great, but I need your help.”
“What can I do?”
“We’ve just caught a real jerk who kidnapped a little girl and found out he was also illegally pirating video feeds from the Georgia legislature,” I said. “Could you check your network of fellow validation servers and freeze those funds, please? I have a police officer here with me to confirm the legitimacy of the request.”
“I don’t need confirmation to do something for you, Jack. You’re my friend!”
While not as bad as having Droopy depressed I could see that several more support sessions would be needed in the future to help him find a stable equilibrium. I looked at Lieutenant Lee and the officer winked at my breach of ecommerce protocol. Something for another day.
“Accessing… searching… found… frozen!” said the Khaloenian.
“Thanks so much! And be sure to check out Stephen Sondheim.”
“Gee, Jack, I will! Ciao for now!” Droopy signed off. Would I have to call him Perky now?
Zwilniki moaned again, then groaned. “My money!”
“It wasn’t yours to being with,” I said. “Lieutenant, do you want to do the honors. I love hearing the words.”
“Glad to. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say…” I’d heard the Miranda warning a thousand times on TV but never in person. I hope no one ever has cause to say them to me.
The lieutenant formally took Tony Zed into custody and two officers carried him to a police car at the front of the hanger. I clicked a thank you to Chit, put my arm around Poly, looked down at Terrhi and Spike, looked up at Tomáso, looked over at Lieutenant Lee and smiled. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy, but this one was doing pretty well. Then I saw Shepherd, still driving his ATV and spraying green goo. He waved. I laughed.
“It looks like that’s it. All that’s left is the cleanup.”
Chapter 33
“It’s all over but the shouting.” ― Charles James Apperley
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how much of a personal pain cleaning things up would be. It was just past 6:00 o’clock and I had hoped that Chit and Poly and I could hop in my van and make our exit with a minimum of fuss. Chit could go back to watching rebroadcasts of California senate deliberations in her bottle and Poly and I could head to my apartment to pick up where we’d left off the previous evening. Alas, it was “not to be,” to quote Hamlet out of context.
Lieutenant Lee wanted statements from Poly, Chit, Mike and me. He also wanted copies of all the evidence of Zwilniki’s wrongdoing I’d gathered with my phone. I’m sure he wanted statements from Tomáso, Terrhi and Shepherd as well, but he had to tread carefully because of GaFTA-mandated immunity for diplomatic personnel. It was interesting to hear that Shepherd was a third undersecretary for cultural affairs from Akkhêntók, one of the more moderate Long Pâkk planets. I had a suspicion cultural affairs weren’t the secretive Pâkk’s primary portfolio.
The best part of wrapping things up was that Poly and I had managed to avoid the media. Most people were celebrating First Contact Day and enjoying family feasts featuring new foods and intoxicants brought to Earth from across the galaxy. News organizations had skeleton staffs and Atlanta’s mayor and chief of police, along with the governor and the local leaders of the FBI and DHS, had executed a masterful bit of misdirection. Thank you, Shepherd, for whatever favors you had to call in to pull that off. The quid pro quo was that those officials would get the credit for the rescue. Selected reporters would be invited to the scene once the mercenaries were hauled away and the hanger sanitized. Mike had already recalled the rabbots to their containers and sent the truck drivers back to return the rabbots to my friend at KudzooKrew.com. He had also picked up the small number of rabbots damaged by the soldiers and had stowed them in green plastic trash bags while Poly and I were giving our statements. Late arrivals, firefighters on loan from Hartsfield Port in bright red pumpers, were spraying down the interior of the hanger to wash away seed pod goo and Shepherd’s chartreuse counteracting liquid. I’d asked my phone to trigger the Orishen ships’ transformation from casinos back to innocuous surplus freighters almost an hour ago and they’d all returned to their original form.
Lieutenant Lee and his team from the Capitol Police and Georgia State Patrol would get a lot of the credit for saving Terrhi. The FBI, Homeland Security and the Atlanta P.D. would get a share as well. A team with one representative from each of those organizations had picked up Cornell, Penn and Princeton from their cage deep below VLHQ. Zwilniki would get the blame for everything and there would be no mention of the Earth First Militants, a private army, troop transports, and plans to invade Dauush. Nobody wanted word of that sort of galactic-level incident to get around. The soldiers in Zwilniki’s army would be given a choice between volunteering to join work crews expanding sub-surface habitats on Luna for three years or face closed trials and much longer prison sentences. They were being held in their hotel rooms under guard until transport to the Moon could be arranged. Tomáso had briefed Terrhi on what to say when the pre-selected talking heads and camera crews arrived. She was a quick study and would charm techs, producers and reporters alike. One of the firefighters brought over a six-pack of Starbuzz. Poly and I thanked her and each took a can. I must have been dehydrated—it tasted wonderful. I was finally starting to unwind. Mike and Chit and Poly and I were just waiting for Lieutenant Lee to give us an all-clear signal to confirm he had everything he needed from us so we could get on the road.
I spotted Shepherd in what passed for a dark spot in the brightly lit hanger, underneath one of the freighters. The middle aged man wearing sunglasses and a dark suit I’d seen Shepherd talking with earlier was walking away. The Pâkk looked at me and nodded. I excused myself from Poly and went to talk to the third undersecretary for cultural affairs. Poly headed toward Terrhi, Tomáso and Spike. When I stood next to Shepherd in the shadows I extended my hand. We shook.
“Thanks for all your help,” I said.
“You’re welcome.” The Pâkk raised an eyebrow. “You’ve impressed me. You’re every bit as good as I’d heard.”
“Uh, thanks? Heard from whom?”
“A old friend of mine. Good judge of character.”
“I’m glad I could raise myself in your estimation given that the first time we met I was naked and curled up in a ball in extreme pain.”
“That wasn’t the first time we met,” said Shepherd.
“It wasn’t? When was that? You’re someone I think I’d remember.”
“It was a long time ago, Jack. Don’t worry about it. Suffice it to say that I definitely remember meeting you.”
This mystery wrapped in an enigma stuff was getting old.
“Be that way,” I said. I resolved to find out everything I could about Shepherd. I didn’t like being in the dark.
Shepherd didn’t say anything. I remembered I had another topic to discuss with him.
“I know you’re bugging my apartment. I want you to stop.”
“You have my word that I am not bugging your apartment.”
“You’re not?”
“Of course not. I’m sharing Tomáso’s feed.”
Now it was my turn not to say anything. Shepherd continued.
“I’ll speak to Tomáso about deactivating his feed as well. You and Poly need your privacy.”
I shook my head back and forth, slowly. Good. Nothing rattled. It wasn’t just a juvenile Dauushan princess interested in my love life, but a Long Pâkk spook as well?
“Err… thank you?” Shepherd nodded respectfully and the corner of his mouth moved up for a millisecond.
“Despite what I negotiated with Terran politicians and law enforcement to hide your involvement I expect the government of Dau
ush will be very generous in showing its appreciation for your efforts, and Poly’s, in saving the Crown Princess and heading off an invasion fleet.”
“I didn’t do any of it for money,” I said. “Terrhi and Tomáso are my friends.”
“I hope I can also be your friend, and Poly’s.”
I smiled and nodded. “Of course.”
“Whatever your motives, it is my understanding that a substantial sum will be deposited in your personal account soon.” The Pâkk tugged the fur on his chin thoughtfully. “Tomáso told me to tell you that you and Poly should consider it a goodwill investment in Xenotech Support Corporation, if you’d prefer. The sum could be placed in your corporate account instead, to help you grow your business.”
I thought about it. I wouldn’t take money for rescuing Terrhi, but as an informal investment in XSC I could probably rationalize it and I expected that Poly could, too. I’d have to confirm that.
“I’ll talk to my partner about it,” I said. Shepherd went on.
“Of course, you could also allocate a portion of the sum to your personal account to help pay for such items as an engagement ring, a wedding and a honeymoon. I have Long Pâkk discretionary funds that could also be used for such a purpose.”
“Wait a second. You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“Says the man who offered Poly fifty percent of his company the day after he met her.”
He was right. Everything in my life involving Poly was moving fast. Or not fast enough, she might say. I’d get there. I still had to figure out who else could be bugging my apartment if it wasn’t Shepherd. A small voice in my head said “You could get a hotel room…” I liked that small voice.
Xenotech Rising: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 1) Page 31