“Right,” I said. “Got it.”
Even in the dim light from two out of three small moons I could see which building was green. It was the only one around that wasn’t some shade of gray. Rosalind pulled a black backpack out of her shopping bag and transferred the rest of the items in the bag into the backpack. Then we began to edge our way along the intervening buildings.
Rosalind was focused on our forward path, but spoke softly over her shoulder. “You’ve got the remote to summon the van?”
I nodded.
“Jack. Do you have the remote?”
Note to self—nodding doesn’t work well when the person asking the question isn’t facing you. I continued to be a slow learner and held up the small plastic fob that would guide the van to us when I issued the appropriate command. Then I remembered to say something.
“I’ve got it,” I whispered.
“Good,” said Rosalind. “Give it to me.”
I reached a hand over her shoulder and gave it to her.
“Now put on your mask,” she said. “We don’t want them to know who we are.”
“Won’t they already suspect you’re responsible when your brother escapes?”
“Yes, but this way, they won’t know who you are. These people are bad news. You don’t want them coming after you. It wouldn’t be healthy.”
I postponed telling Rosalind that it didn’t matter—I’d walk through a cage filled with hungry Orishen nymphs for her. I had her back no matter how ruthless our opponents. Expressions of devotion could come later. I put on my black nylon mask and she did the same. Rosalind still looked beautiful even when dressed like a burglar—or a bank robber.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“You’re the distraction,” said Rosalind. “I need you to get the attention of the exterior guards.”
She pointed in the direction of the square ramp leading up to the top of the jade green ziggurat and I could spot at least half a dozen seven-foot praying mantis-shaped Orishen nymph guards standing watch at various levels. There’d be more on the sides I couldn’t see.
“How am I supposed to distract them?”
Rosalind pulled four long bundles of tiny firecrackers from her backpack. They were the kind used at Orishen festivals and made lots of noise. She spoke softly as she handed me the bundles.
“Make your best way to the northeast corner of the warehouse and set these off. I’ll take advantage of the guards’ confusion to climb the ramp on the southwest side.”
“Okay,” I said, clutching the bundles and mentally mapping out my route around a couple of blocks to approach the northeast corner without being seen.
“When the firecrackers go off, I’ll make my move,” said Rosalind, moving away and melting into the shadows.
I started to follow my planned route then remembered something important and turned around.
“Rosalind!” I whispered urgently.
She didn’t respond. I took a few steps in the direction she’d taken and tried again.
“Rosalind!”
Still no answer. I whispered louder.
“ROSALIND!”
One of the guards on the southwest corner turned and looked my way. Nymphs didn’t see well at night, so I froze, thought invisible ninja warrior thoughts, and hoped the guard had recently looked at her phone so her night vision was compromised. Wait. Was the guard carrying a molasses chill-field sweetener rifle? Crap. One good shot from that and I’d be frozen in my tracks for an hour. Then a hand went over my mouth and I was roughly pulled into a deep patch of shadow. I felt lips near my ear.
“Jack!” said Rosalind in a quiet, almost menacing tone. “Are you trying to get us both killed?”
“Mmmrmphnish,” I said. It’s hard to talk with a hand over your mouth. The hand was not very tenderly removed.
“I don’t have any matches.”
“Oh, for…”
Rosalind bit off what she was going to say.
“And where do you want me to meet you so I can help you on the inside?”
* * * * *
Poly laughed.
“You still didn’t get it,” she chortled.
“What can I say—I was besotted.”
“I expect that Rosalind set you straight,” said Poly.
“Not at that point. She told me to set off the firecrackers, avoid capture, and stay near the van.”
“What about the matches?” asked Poly.
“I was an idiot. The firecrackers had crushable triggers. If I’d read the instructions on the packages I would have known that all I had to do was squeeze a small nodule to trigger a thirty-second fuse.”
“There’s no substitute for reading the manual,” said Poly.
“Very true,” I said. “I learned a lot from Rosalind.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Poly.
“Okay, okay, enough already,” I said, kissing her again.
“Then what happened?”
“Then Rosalind left me and I circled two blocks north and two blocks east,” I said. “I made my way up three levels of ramps on the building across from the green warehouse, then tossed a lit bundle of fireworks down onto the street. I pressed myself flat against the ramp where I was perched to avoid being seen by the guards. A dozen of them came running to check out the noise.”
“They fell for it?” asked Poly.
“Yeah,” I said, “and so did I.”
“What do you mean?”
“After the guards had returned to their posts I had a chance to take a good look at the green warehouse. There was a back-lit sign above the ground floor entrance in the middle of the north side,” I said. “Mulbiri Precious Gem and Bullion Repository.”
“Ouch,” said Poly.
“Uh huh,” I said. “I was helping Rosalind knock off the local equivalent of Fort Knox.”
Chapter 12
“I have become rather like King Midas, except that
everything turns not into gold but into a circus.”
— Albert Einstein
“Fort Knox?” asked Poly. “At least that explains all the guards.”
“Right. It also explains why I went in after Rosalind.”
“You what?”
“I went in after her. At the time, I thought she must have misremembered the correct building.”
“I wish I’d known you then,” said Poly. “I had a bridge in New York I was trying to unload…”
“Don’t rub it in. I tossed down another bundle of firecrackers along the north side. While the guards were distracted, I crossed the street half a block away and climbed up the east side of the Repository. An ornamental caryatid sculpture of a centilegger adult Orishen on the outside of the building provided convenient handholds.”
“Wasn’t there a guard on that side?” asked Poly.
“There was, but he was focused on the north side. I came up behind him and squirted dishwashing liquid on one of his spiracles. It affected him like tear gas. While he was confused, I took his sweetener rifle and knocked him out with the butt. I didn’t crack his chitin, but knew he’d be unconscious for hours.
“Why didn’t you just shoot him with the sweetener?”
“I didn’t want any of the other guards nearby to hear me.”
When you fire them, molasses chill field rifles make a sound like saying the word sweet while inhaling. That’s one of the reasons they’re called sweeteners. Firing the weapon would have drawn the attention of every guard within earshot.
“Makes sense,” said Poly. She nodded for me to go on.
“I unclipped the guard’s ID badge from his vest and wiped my pocket handkerchief along his forearms and manipulator digits several times to pick up his scent. Then I looked for a door and
found one forty feet farther up the external spiral ramp. A camera mounted in the ceiling above the door was easy to circumvent with another squirt of dishwashing liquid on its lens. I swiped the guard’s card on the door’s card reader, then stuck my handkerchief up to an olfactory scanner. Both passed muster and I was inside the ziggurat. As soon as I’d closed the door, a loud noise like a ratchet combined with chalk scraping on a blackboard came from a speaker above my head. Drat! They knew I was here.”
“Before you got this far, you could have just walked away and summoned an autocab,” said Poly.
“If I’d been thinking with my brain, instead of lower down, that would have been the wise thing to do. What I did, however, was start running down the internal ramp. When I got to a corner I positioned myself on the floor with just my eyes and the muzzle of my rifle showing. I sweetened six guard nymphs and a centilegger adult who were charging down the corridor to intercept me. They made a large pile near my corner. After several minutes, no more guards appeared, so I stood up and made my way deeper inside the ziggurat until I heard signs of conflict.”
Sooo-eeeeet! Sooo-eeeet!
“I could hear grunts and thumps and other sounds indicating a struggle along with the sweetener blasts. Then I heard Rosalind’s voice saying several words that were decidedly unladylike.”
“So you dashed in to rescue her,” said Poly.
“I noticed you didn’t phrase that in the form of a question.”
“This isn’t Jeopardy and you should expect me to know you pretty well by now, partner. It was a statement, not a question, you gallant goof.”
“And an accurate one, I’m sorry to say.”
“What did you come rushing into?”
“Five guards—three nymphs and two ten-foot centileggers—in a small antechamber were trying to stop Rosalind from opening a door. She had the mutakey out, but the guards’ attacks didn’t give her any time to focus on the lock. Rosalind was squirting dishwashing liquid at the guards with one hand while trying to work the mutakey with the other.”
“What did you do?” asked Poly.
“It was too tight to risk using my sweetener, so I put the rifle over my shoulder and grabbed my squeeze bottle. I hit the three nymphs with soap in their spiracles from behind, then sprayed the floor under the centileggers with dishwashing liquid, like Rosalind had advised. Unfortunately, the adult-form Orishens didn’t lose their footing. We were all packed so tightly in the room that there wasn’t anywhere for them to go if they had. The adults were reaching for Rosalind, so I improvised and jumped on the back of the nearest one.”
“Brave,” said Poly, “but foolhardy.”
“Lucky,” I said, “but effective. My weight pushed the adult’s normally well-protected spiracles down into the dishwashing liquid I’d squirted on the floor earlier and the fight went out of him.” Or her. It’s hard to tell gender with adult Orishens.
“I tried the same trick on the other adult and soon that one was out of commission, too, releasing sad soap bubbles from beneath its carapace. Centilegger adults aren’t easy to defeat.”
“Did Rosalind thank you properly for the rescue?”
“No,” I said. “She opened the door, stepped through it, and let it close behind her.”
“Don’t you just hate when that happens,” teased Poly.
“Shut up, darling.”
“Yes, dear,” she smiled. “Then what?”
“I repeated my trick with one of the guards’ ID badges and scent signature to open the door, then followed Rosalind.”
“While all this was going on, did you ever stop and think about what you were doing?” asked Poly. “You know, like breaking into a secure government repository, committing multiple assaults, and being an accessory to grand theft?”
“At the time, no. I was just trying to save Rosalind.”
“Save her? You were her patsy.”
“I don’t know about that. She wanted me to stay by the van.”
“Okay. Just a witless, unwitting accomplice. Keep going.”
“I went through the door and saw that corridors went left, right and straight ahead. I couldn’t see anything to indicate which way Rosalind had gone. Luckily, after being on Orish for a year and a half, my sense of smell had grown more acute. I took a few steps in each direction and inhaled deeply, letting air into my nostrils. Then I detected her scent. She’d gone straight.”
“Would that she had.”
“Had what?”
“Gone straight.”
“Things didn’t work out that way, unfortunately. I made my way along the corridor and saw two nymph guards slumped on the floor, which confirmed my olfactory identification. I could hear echoes from a long way off—Sooo-eeeeet! Sooo-eeeet!—and started running. The slope of the corridor got steeper so I accelerated involuntarily. I lost control, tripped over a sweetened nymph, and did a forward roll into a vault room. Rosalind was crouching by the oversized vault door, fiddling with the mutakey.”
“Did you think her brother was in the vault?”
“No, I was beginning to realize that my mental picture of Rosalind didn’t correspond with reality.”
“Slow learner.”
“I told you that already.”
“What did you say when you came out of your forward roll?”
I smiled. “Honey, I’m home!”
Poly laughed. “Then what happened?”
“Rosalind turned around. She looked at me like I was a puppy who’d just made a mess on the floor.”
“Sit down, shut up, and stay out of my way, Jack,” she barked.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Finally,” said Poly.
I glared at her, turning the glare into a grin after a beat.
“Then I got distracted. An angry guard nymph ran down the slope into the room and tried to chop me into stir-fry sized bits with the sharpened edges of his forearms. I blocked with my sweetener and danced around the room with the nymph chasing me, moving as fast as a teppanyaki chef slicing shrimp.”
“How did you get out of that one?”
“Luck, again,” I said. “Rosalind had left her backpack on the floor. The nymph tripped over it and I dropped my rifle and squirted its spiracles with dishwashing liquid while it was trying to get up.”
“Good for you,” said Poly. “What was Rosalind doing?”
“She had just finished opening the door to the vault.”
“How did she show her appreciation for you dealing with the guard?”
“By picking up her sweetener rifle and pointing it at my center of mass.”
“Poor baby,” said Poly. “The last of your romantic illusions was shattered.”
“Yes,” I said. “I may be a slow learner, but I do figure things out eventually. Before Rosalind could pull the trigger I threw a half-full bottle of dishwashing liquid at her, hard. It caught her in the middle of her forehead and she went down, temporarily stunned.”
“Yay!” said Poly.
“I found a roll of duct tape in her backpack and used it to secure her hands and feet.”
“Double yay!”
“There’s more,” I said. “Rosalind tried to bribe me, telling me she’d cut me in on half of the hundred million galcreds in precious gems in the vault.”
“What was your response?”
“I put a five-inch strip of duct tape over her mouth.”
Poly gave me a high five.
“Then what?” she asked.
“First, I closed the vault door. Then I picked up the mutakey and put it in my pocket. It would help me remember not to be so gullible in the future. I also took Rosalind’s backpack—it looked like it would come in handy—and waved to her as I left the room, saying ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’
Rosalind made a noise like ‘Mmmrmphnish’ though the duct tape, which I took to mean ‘Jack, you son of a…’”
“Bitch,” said Poly.
“I’m shocked, shocked...”
“Shut up, Jack.”
Poly kissed me, so I was glad to stop talking for a few minutes. When we came up for air, Poly looked at me tenderly.
“That was about what I expected,” she said, “and it explains a lot. You and I both had to deal with someone we loved betraying us.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “Though you weren’t anywhere near as naive as I was.”
“That’s debatable,” said Poly. “But it was clear you loved Rosalind with all your heart from the moment you saw her.”
“And she ripped it out of my chest and stomped on it.”
“Don’t start turning this into a country and western song,” said Poly. “I can see why your memories of Rosalind are so painful—and why I need to be patient with you.”
“Not for much longer, I hope. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?”
“Of course!”
I took a deep breath and finished my ignominious tale.
“Getting out was easier than I expected. Orishens have a lot to learn about physical security. Between the two of us, Rosalind and I had incapacitated a large percentage of their forces already. I got out of the Repository without needing to freeze any more inside guards, but still had to deal with the guard-nymphs on the roof. Before I left the building, I cannibalized a pair of sweetener rifles to make a couple of proximity-triggered chill-field mines. I planted the mines near my exit route outside, then used the last two bundles of firecrackers to get half the exterior guards’ attention. When they chased me, they were caught by the mines and chilled in place. After that, I made a clean escape back to the van.”
“When I got there, I had a new problem—I didn’t have the fob I needed to unlock and control the vehicle. Crap. A motley collection of the Orishen equivalent of cinder blocks was scattered nearby, so I stood one on end, sat down, and thought about what to do next. I put my sweetener on the ground, slid Rosalind’s backpack off my shoulder, and imitated Rodan’s most famous sculpture.
Xenotech What Happens: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 3) Page 10