Xenotech What Happens: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 3)

by Dave Schroeder

  “I’ll tell you when you’re less likely to be captured and interrogated.”

  “Just watch yourself about being captured, Jack,” said my friend. “I know what sort of chances you take.”

  “Keep us posted if Cornell leaves his hotel,” I said.

  “Roger Wilco, over and out,” said Chit.

  I heard a rustling sound before the connection was cut, then Chit’s voice.

  “Hey, borsum nuts!”

  Now I knew that my little friend might be bored, but she wouldn’t go hungry.

  “Shepherd. Martin. Are your resources ready for action?” I asked.

  “My security service contacts say they’re ready on short notice,” said the Pâkk.

  “Same with the Nevada Highway Patrol,” said Martin.

  “Don’t forget the Royal Drop Marines!” added Terrhi.

  With more than a hundred eighteen-ton Dauushan paratroopers ready to arrive from orbit, we probably didn’t need help from Shepherd or Martin’s teams, but it doesn’t hurt to be doubly prepared. Overkill is a good thing in this context.

  “I’m going to check out a hunch about where they’re holding the CEOs,” I said. “It’s time for a bit of reconnaissance.”

  “Not without me you’re not,” said Poly.

  I thought about it for all of three milliseconds.

  “Great,” I said, pleased to be back together with Poly for an adventure.

  “You can fill me in on what you were up to before you got to the hotel,” said Poly.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “I was almost at the end of my rope when you called.”

  Before Poly could react to my comment there was a knock at the door. She looked through the peephole and let Dulce in.

  “You did say a thousand in cash, didn’t you?” asked the temporary employment service owner and fill-in cocktail waitress.

  “Of course,” said my partner. “You earned it.”

  Poly pulled ten hundred-galcred bills from inside the neckline of her white, wrap-around blouse and counted them out for Dulce.

  “Thanks,” said Dulce. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

  She let herself out and Jean-Jacques barged into the room through the open door.

  “Well?” he said, when the door had closed.

  “Well, what?” I said.

  The best way to handle J-J’s offensiveness was with a good defense.

  “Did I earn immunity from prosecution?” asked the WT&F CEO, looking at Martin.

  “I will recommend not pressing charges for building the giant combat robot,” said the lieutenant, putting on his severe don’t mess with me police officer’s face.

  “Thank you!” said Jean-Jacques. “Is it okay if I keep trying to win the rest of Cornell’s money?”

  “Don’t press your luck,” said Martin.

  J-J’s face fell and he left the room. My bet was that he was heading straight for the hotel’s casino.

  Terrhi came over to stand between Poly and me and wrapped us in her sub-trunks.

  “Don’t leave, Uncle Jack. Stay with me, Aunt Poly. What can you do this late at night?”

  “Nighttime is the best time to poke around where we’re going,” I said, “and you have to tell Spike a bedtime story.”

  “Shepherd and Martin can take you back to your hotel,” said Poly, “and Lohrri or Naddéo can give you something to help you sleep and drive away bad dreams.”

  “Like Aunt Chit takes?” asked Terrhi.

  “Not exactly,” said Poly. “Yours will taste better.”

  “Good,” said Terrhi. “Let’s go!”

  She collected Shepherd and Martin and the unlikely representatives of three different galactic species left the hotel room and headed for the elevators, holding hands and trunks.

  “Alone at last,” said Poly.

  “In a hotel room.”

  “With no distractions.”

  “Except finding Terrhi’s parents,” I said.

  “Plus Nettie, Lizzie and A.J.’s parents,” said Poly.

  “And a reasonable percentage of the CEOs of the top galactic tech companies,” I added, sighing.

  “Damn,” said Poly.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Then, with a firm understanding of relative priorities, I kissed her.

  Chapter 29

  “Knowledge is power.”

  — Francis Bacon

  “Unless you’re planning on using the bed in this room, get your hand out of my blouse,” said Poly.

  “I was just checking for more hundred galcred bills.”

  “I’m fresh out. Time to go.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “You’ve got no idea of how much fun I can be,” said Poly.

  The two of us broke our clinch and reluctantly stopped teasing each other, at least for the present.

  “How do we get where we’re going?” asked Poly, readjusting the folds of her wrap-around top.

  “We can take the blimp moored at the balcony of our suite,” I said.

  “Walk back to the hotel?”

  “With the heavy traffic on the Strip it’s probably the fastest way to get there.”

  “And the exercise will channel my mind in different directions,” said Poly.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s an added benefit.”

  Unfortunately, walking several blocks along the Las Vegas Strip at night was not a good way to reduce a person’s libido. There were sex workers from several species advertising their charms, people passing out handbills for strip clubs that were definitely not just clubs on the Strip, and street performers with acts that were definitely R-rated and pushing NC-17. Poly and I held hands and made the best time we could navigating around the attractive nuisances. I spent a lot of time thinking about icebergs—the real kind, not the metaphorical ones. I didn’t know how Poly handled the distractions, though from the way she kissed me on the short elevator ride up to our suite, my guess is whatever she was doing didn’t work very well.

  “Tell you what,” I said when we got to the top. “Let’s take separate cold showers and change into our ninja outfits.”

  Poly reluctantly agreed and we took our showers and changed into all black outfits—making sure our protective Orishen pupa silk shirts were in place underneath.

  Did I mention that Poly looks incredibly sexy in skin tight black ensembles? Was it time for me to dump a glass of cold water on my head? Or maybe just slide a few ice cubes down my pants?

  Focus, Jack, focus.

  I put my backpack tool bag on my shoulders and took Poly’s hand. Then I escorted her past the king-sized bed in our suite’s master bedroom and led her out to the balcony.

  “Milady’s carriage awaits,” I said, opening the door to the blimp’s gondola.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she answered, alighting easily despite the way the airship bobbed in the wind.

  We took the two front seats. Poly spared a glance to note the bungee cord behind me.

  “Is that the rope you were at the end of?”

  “Uh huh,” I said, smiling.

  “Back to our previous destination?” asked my phone.

  “Yes,” I said. “Make it so.”

  My phone passed electronic orders to the dirigible’s minimally intelligent autopilot. I heard small clunks as the electromagnets on the mooring ropes disengaged. We rose to a few hundred feet above the penthouse and set a southeasterly course.

  Between affectionate distractions—the front seats on the rental airship weren’t repositionable, so things couldn’t get too interesting—I told Poly what had happened when I’d followed Sally. I put up with several clucks and head shakes as Poly bemoaned my tendency to trust w
omen too much. I agreed, but this time, at least, I’d survived without psychological damage.

  “Where are we going?” asked Poly.

  “Back to Hoover Dam.”

  “You want to go bungee jumping again?”

  “No. I think that’s where the CEOs are being held.”

  “Really? Are there warehouses near the dam?”

  “I don’t think they’re near the dam,” I said, smiling enigmatically. “I think they’re in the dam, sort of.”

  “Sort of?” asked Poly.

  “My phone told me the dam is filled with tunnels.”

  “They’d have to be pretty big tunnels to hold Dauushans.”

  “Maybe the tunnels are bigger closer to the bottom?”

  “Maybe they’re in one of the power generation stations,” said my phone.

  “Say what?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “Directly below the face of the dam,” it said.

  An overhead view appeared on its screen and I could clearly see two long narrow buildings directly downstream from the dam on either side of the Colorado River. Dozens of power lines led from the station on the Arizona side, feeding small communities of hydroelectric power enthusiasts.

  “They shut down all the turbines on the Nevada side and sent them off to science museums five or six years ago,” my phone continued. “That means there’s plenty of space to put the CEOs, including Tōdons and Dauushans.”

  It showed us pictures of rows of spinning turbines, obviously taken on the Arizona side or on the Nevada side before its power generation station was decommissioned.

  “Hmmmm…” I said.

  “Hmmmm?” asked Poly.

  “Or maybe hum,” I said. “Terrhi said something about a hum and a whoosh being connected to where the kidnap victims are being held. Maybe the generators are the hum and the river is the whoosh?”

  “I like that theory,” said Poly. “Look! There it is!

  I told the rental blimp to stop and hover.

  Below, I could see the congruency-powered floodlights shining on the dam’s massive concave face. The pair of rectangular power generation stations at its base and flanking the river were largely in shadow. They extended out from the dam like the front paws of a colossal concrete lion.

  The one on the far side, in Arizona, had lights shining in a few narrow windows, but the equivalent plant on the Nevada side was dark.

  “How do we get in there?” I asked my phone.

  “The usual way, according to a tourist guide, is to go to the visitors’ center and take an elevator down sixty stories,” it answered.

  “Is there access from the roof of the Nevada station?”

  “No idea,” said my phone. “They took the detailed drawings off the internet after 9-11 and never put them back once the dam’s strategic value declined. There’s nothing available on Galnet.”

  “Right,” I said. “I guess there’s no substitute for direct observation.”

  “Whoopee,” said Poly, with near zero enthusiasm. “Crawling around on a guano covered roof in the dark is not my idea of fun.”

  “Come on! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “Closer to my brain than my gonads,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  I sat back, waiting to be enlightened. Poly took my phone out of my hand and addressed it.

  “Can you give me a hand, please?” she said.

  My phone extended a pair of arm-shaped pseudopods and began clapping their ends together.

  “Stop that,” said Poly, trying to hide a smile. She didn’t want to encourage it.

  “How can this unit be of service, ma’am?” asked my phone.

  “My name is Poly, not ma’am,” she said, “and you can create a fictional on-line identity for me. Something like Dam Fine Woman or Dam Sell in Dis Dress.”

  “Done,” said my phone.

  “Identify forums frequented by retirees in Henderson and Boulder City and ask if anyone knows how to get into the Nevada-side power station without taking the dam’s elevator.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, giving Poly a hug.

  “Three informative responses, nine invitations for a date, and twenty-four requests for naked photos,” said my phone.

  Poly shook her head. Galnet, as always, was an unbalanced amalgam of altruism and assholes.

  “So how do we get in?” I asked.

  “Correlating answers and discarding people obviously making it up, there’s a large rolling door on the downstream wall that they’d used for moving the turbines out, plus a standard door to the left of the big one and three skylight access hatches evenly spaced along the roof,” my phone noted.

  “What do you recommend?” asked Poly.

  “Check things out through one of the skylights,” said my phone, “then use the human door if it makes sense. If it doesn’t, you can lower the bungee cord through the skylight and slide down that way.”

  “You have a very smart phone,” said Poly, handing it back to me.

  “Don’t feed its ego,” I said, laughing. “Its head is big enough already.”

  My phone extruded a tiny head and began to inflate it until it was bigger than a golf ball. The head, which had a caricature of my face, grew even bigger, then popped, splitting down the middle and reintegrating with my phone’s mutacase.

  Poly laughed, too, and then both of us applied dark camouflage makeup from my backpack tool kit on our faces and hands.

  “Can you control the airship’s autopilot remotely?” I asked.

  “Within a few hundred feet, anyway,” answered my phone.

  “Great,” I said. “That means you can stick with me.”

  My phone stood on my knee and bowed, as much as its case architecture would allow. Then it extruded an arm and saluted.

  I wasn’t sure if I was being respected or mocked but knew my phone would have my back.

  “I’ll tie off the bungee cord,” I said. “See if you can spot the middle skylight.”

  “Got it,” said Polly. “Surprise, surprise, it’s in the center of the building.”

  “Right,” I said.

  I grabbed the loosely coiled bungee cord from the seat behind me and looped it over my right arm, then extended the near end of my seatbelt and grasped it tightly with my left hand. I opened the gondola door and leaned out, tying the uncut end of the cord around a u-shaped steel handle just outside. Once I got the cord partially tied, I released the seatbelt and quickly used both hands to secure the knot.

  “Take us down and hover above…”

  “…the center of the roof. Right,” said my phone.

  My phone hopped up to my belt and instructed the airship to move down to within a few feet of the building. The bungee cord coiled softly next to the skylight and I realized I could have tied it off while standing on the roof, not leaning out the gondola door from a couple of hundred feet up. I’d have to be smarter going forward. Poly stepped to the roof first and steadied me as I joined her.

  The lock on the side of the skylight was a simple padlock and no problem at all for my mutakey. From this side, it looked like someone had coated the inside of the skylight with a thick layer of black paint. I slid the padlock off and found a small can of WD-40 near the bottom of my backpack tool bag. I carefully put a few drops of the penetrating oil on the skylight’s hinges, then returned to the edge where the lock had been. Poly was kneeling to my right and I joined her in that position, putting two hands on the skylight’s frame.

  “Ready?” I said softly.

  Poly nodded.

  I lifted gently and was surprised when a flood of bright light came out, pushing back the dark.

  “What the…?” said Poly.

  We
leaned forward to see what was going on inside the power station.

  Neither of us could believe what we saw.

  Chapter 30

  “There’s a party goin’ on right here…”

  — Kool and the Gang

  I closed the frame and looked at Poly. She looked at me. We both shrugged our shoulders and made expressions that could best be interpreted as WTF?

  “Did you see what I saw?” I whispered.

  “I’m not sure,” said Poly. “Let’s look again.”

  I lifted the skylight’s frame a second time and noticed my phone climb off my belt and peek over the edge along with us.

  “Are you getting this on video?” I said.

  “Recording,” it answered.

  A minute passed.

  “Close it, please,” said Poly. “I need to think about this.”

  “Me, too.”

  I let the frame sink down and block the light from below. I felt like my skull had been walloped by a careless Tōdon’s stray appendage.

  I barely noticed my phone scuttling back out of the way on a dozen pseudopods.

  “I don’t trust my own eyes,” I said to the resourceful communicator. “Please tell us what you recorded.”

  “More than a hundred CEOs and other corporate leaders or planetary dignitaries in formal business dress seem to be enjoying a cocktail party with a lavish buffet,” it answered. “Nearly every sentient has a glass of champagne or species-appropriate celebratory intoxicant.”

  “Did you recognize any of them?” asked Poly.

  “Terrhi’s parents and bodyguard. Janet Yu. Anthony Obi, senior. George Crispos—GalCon Systems’ CEO, Roger Joe-Bob Bacon. Scott Winfield and Josephine Johnson from Chapultepec & Castle. The CEO of IBM-EMC, the Managing Director of CiscoSiemens, and the Chairman of JPMorgan Chase, to start,” it said. “Do you need more names? It would be no trouble to run a facial recognition-driven database search.”