Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2)

by Schroeder, Dave

  Enough maudlin musing. I had enough time to hit the gym and was overdue for a modest workout. I put on a Mulbiri Tech t-shirt, shorts and a pair of cross-trainers, shoved my phone in a pocket along with some ear buds and left my apartment.

  The humanoid gym in the Ad Astra complex was in the basement of one of the buildings in the opposite direction from Tomáso and Terrhi’s place. I hadn’t been there in far too long. Ruby, the receptionist, checked me in.

  “Where have you been, Jack?” she said. “Are you okay? I heard you’d been shot.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, smiling. Ruby was a grandmotherly kangaroo-shaped alien with a face like a raccoon and long, dexterous fingers. Her species came from the planet Marsul, where they brewed great beer, or so I’d been told. It was supposed be something about the hops. Ruby didn’t need a chair. She was resting on her large hind feet and leaning back on her tail, knitting and entertaining several grandchildren in her commodious pouch. It was a great part-time job for a retiree—much better than being a Walmart greeter.

  “That leg doesn’t look fine,” she said, pointing at my dinosaur claw scar. I’ve got to be more diligent in applying Vitamin E.

  “You should see the other guy,” I said, taking pride in the fact that the other guy, a virtual reality dinosaur, was dead—or at least deactivated. That reminded me of Columbia Brown, the person who’d shot me. I’d have to ask Martin about the status of the search for her after we grilled Jean-Jacques. My ribs started aching just thinking about her still being at large.

  “Take it slow,” said Ruby. “And don’t be a stranger.”

  “I will,” I said. “And I won’t.”

  I stuck in my wireless ear buds, cranked up a Queen play list in honor of Terrhi’s mom, and headed for one of the humanoid treadmills to warm up. I started out slow, at a steady walking pace, then gradually increased the speed until I was jogging, then running. Maybe I wasn’t in such bad shape after all? To make things more interesting, I instructed the Orishen-made treadmill to start throwing obstacles at me as I ran. Simulated rocks, logs and fire-ant mounds appeared and tested my ability to dodge or leap over them. After a few minutes, and a few near misses, I shifted the treadmill into cool down mode and thought about what station to try next. Strength training, I decided.

  Much of the strength training equipment is Orishen. It’s able to adapt to the needs of multiple species. That makes it very important to specify your species when you login to a given machine. For example, Ruby could leg press a compact car, even at her age. I hit a wrong key when I typed in my identifier and tried to do a Pâkk strength routine, then got so discouraged I switched to free weights. I stationed myself over near the Musa workout area where I could watch the tiny mouse-sized aliens lifting barbells the size of babies’ rattles. That did my ego a lot of good, until I realized that the Musans were hoisting five times their body weight. For me to do that, I’d have to lift Terrhi over my head.

  I gave up on strength training—my heart wasn’t in it—and thought I’d play a little pickup basketball, just for fun. Unfortunately, the court was filled with Tigrammaths. I had no interest in playing against seven foot tall opponents with cat-like vertical leaps. I decided to head back home and soak in my spa tub instead. Ruby smiled at me when I left. I wasn’t sure if she was pleased I took it easy or thought I was a wimp for leaving so soon, but maybe I’m projecting.

  It was still cool on the walk back to my apartment, but I could tell the day was going to be a hot one. Summer starts early in Atlanta. The parklike, tree-filled Ad Astra courtyard was mostly quiet, though I could hear the sounds of something small and quick scurrying through the foliage that paralleled my path. “Squirrels,” I thought. “Where’s Spike when I need him?”

  My soak was brief, but delightful, and the high intensity massaging Chinese Gunpowder variant I selected as my shower program afterwards helped me come close to having a healthy mind in a healthy body.

  I enjoyed a bowl of quadrotriticale flakes with milk and a few more slices of ripe Dauushan mega-banana for breakfast. Then I cleaned up my dishes and was ready to face the day.

  I was even ready to face Jean-Jacques Bonhomme, the CEO of WT&F, especially since this time I didn’t have to do the heavy lifting. Truth be told, I liked confronting J-J. There was something about his straightforwardly avaricious attitude that made it fun to bait him. But this wouldn’t be my show.

  Maybe Martin would let me play good cop to his bad cop this morning. Whatever happened, I hoped J-J wouldn’t take out his frustrations on Mike. Poly and I both wanted him on the Xenotech Support team as soon as we got our hiring plans figured out, but in the meantime, J-J could make his life miserable.

  While it was more entertaining to think about making Jean-Jacques squirm, it was eight-fifteen and time to get moving, since Martin and I had planned to meet at nine. I grabbed my backpack tool bag, summoned my van and headed for a rendezvous with destiny, or at least with Lieutenant Lee.

  Chapter 9

  “There is hardly anything in the world that someone

  cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper…”

  — attributed to John Ruskin

  On my way to WT&F my phone spoke up and announced I had a call from Mike.

  “Put him through,” I said.

  “Jack…” he said. I cut him off.

  “These early morning calls are getting to be a habit.”

  “No witty banter, please, Jack. I’m worried.”

  “About?”

  “Jean-Jacques.”

  “Why? What’s up with him?”

  “He’s acting weird.”

  “How?”

  “He arrived at eight, called me into his office, and didn’t scream at me.”

  “In early and no screaming. That is weird. What did he do?” I said.

  “He asked me what happened yesterday morning, so I told him. He just sat calmly and didn’t react.”

  “No shouting? No threats? No promising to fire you?”

  “No. He said ‘Thank you, Mr. Goodman,’ and asked me if I thought you’d be coming to talk to him. When I told him you were planning to stop by this morning with Lieutenant Lee, he just nodded and told me to go back to the production floor. It was like someone had snatched his body and replaced him with a pod person or something.”

  “That certainly doesn’t sound like the Jean-Jacques we know and love,” I said, keeping most of the cynicism out of my voice. “I would have been happier if our visit could have stayed a surprise. Jean-Jacques doesn’t react well to surprises and it keeps him off balance.”

  “From what I could tell,” said Mike, “he’s so far off balance right now, he’s close to falling over. When I left his office, I turned around and saw him wipe sweat off his forehead.”

  J-J typically liked to make other people sweat.

  “He looked scared, Jack. Really scared.”

  Jean-Jacques was tough. He was a blue-collar Québécois kid from a rough neighborhood in Montreal who had moved to an even rougher neighborhood in Hoboken, New Jersey, and pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. I could stop him from running over me, but not many other people could. If Jean-Jacques was scared, it must be serious.

  “Thanks for the heads up, Mike,” I said. “Please pass the word to J-J that Lieutenant Lee and I will be stopping by at nine.”

  “Will do,” said Mike. “Keep me posted.”

  “I will,” I said. “Kirk out.”

  My phone made the Star Trek communicator sound, the way it always did when I said “Kirk out.” The familiar chirp always made me smile.

  * * * * *

  Martin and I met in the WT&F parking lot. I slid my van in beside his Capitol Police cruiser, got out, and crossed to stand next to him. I gave Martin a recap of my conversation with Mike.

 
“J-J’s frightened?” said Martin. “That’s a new one. What scares a barracuda?”

  “A shark,” I said. “Probably a big one.”

  One of the not-Poly receptionists was on the front desk at WT&F. She saw Martin’s uniform and didn’t bother handing us visitor’s badges. Come to think of it, WT&F didn’t do visitor’s badges. I’d have to talk to J-J about that—some other time. CiCi, the night security guard with pink, purple, and lime green accented hair, was standing with Mike in the far corner of the lobby. Their heads were close together and they looked like they were sharing a moment, so I didn’t say anything. Mike looked over CiCi’s shoulder, caught my eye and sent me a concerned glance. I nodded and kept moving.

  Martin and I rode the elevator up one floor and walked down to the executive wing. The second floor had new carpet and new cubicles for the regular workers. No signs of the rabbots’ depredations from six weeks ago remained. I was pleased that the carpet and cubicles were of slightly better quality than they had been earlier. I’d been adamant that J-J should upgrade the furnishings for his employees with some of the insurance payout. Jean-Jacques was not an enlightened CEO, so I’m glad I’d insisted.

  The ugly, patronizing “Go Team” motivational posters on the walls had been replaced by a system of flat screen frames showing fine art that rotated through artistic periods on a weekly basis. Now it was showing Cubists, and the distorted, unreal images seemed appropriate for the strange new world of a frightened Jean-Jacques Bonhomme.

  When Martin and I passed through the heavy wooden doors separating regular employee territory from executive country it was clear that some of the rabbot infestation settlement money had also been used to upgrade WT&F’s already opulent executive wing. In particular, a large oil painting of Jean-Jacques in a business suit, looking regal and a good deal taller than he was in real life, hung on the wainscoted wall outside his office. J-J’s assistant, a harried, ash-blonde woman with the paranoid look of a mouse living next to a rattlesnake, waved us in.

  “He’s expecting you,” she said. Then she scurried off down the hall as if to get out of range of whatever was going to happen.

  Martin and I looked at each other.

  “It’s your show,” I said.

  “Feel free to help,” said Martin.

  I pushed open J-J’s office door and walked in behind the lieutenant. There was a beautiful new oriental rug on the floor. Jean-Jacques rose to meet us and came out from behind his desk.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” said the penny-pinching CEO.

  He stuck out his hand. Martin ignored it.

  “Lieutenant Martin Lee, Georgia Capitol Police,” said my friend.

  I looked at J-J and gave him my biggest grin. After what happened the last time we’d met here, J-J didn’t find my expression reassuring.

  “Jack,” he said, nodding to acknowledge my presence. He sat down on the raised chair behind his desk. “Have a seat, gentlemen. Can I get you any refreshments?”

  “No,” said Martin.

  Both of us were nearly a foot taller than J-J. Martin remained standing, his official police tablet and stylus in his hands. He let his height and Samuel L. Jackson I-don’t-take-any-crap demeanor work their intimidating magic. I was playing good cop, so I sat on the arm of one of the guest chairs.

  “Tell us about the client who placed the rush order on Sunday, Mr. Bonhomme.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “A woman called me while I was in New York,” said J-J. “She offered me a lot of money if I could handle a rush order.”

  “What were you doing in New York?” said the lieutenant.

  Jean-Jacques looked embarrassed, as if his tough guy mask was slipping.

  “I was visiting my mother.”

  J-J had a mother? Who’d have thought it?

  “It was her birthday and I took her to a matinée on Broadway, then dinner at Sardi’s.”

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  Martin gave me a sharp look as if to say, “What does it matter what show they went to?”

  “The revival of Cats.”

  Maybe J-J wasn’t such a good son after all. For me, watching Cats is like listening to two and a half hours of chalk screeching on a blackboard, but your mileage may vary. Maybe his mother liked T. S. Elliot, or Andrew Lloyd Webber, or, you know, cats.

  “How much money is ‘a lot,’ Mr. Bonhomme?” said Martin.

  J-J looked down at his hands, reluctant to answer.

  “Mr. Bonhomme?”

  J-J kept his head down and whispered.

  “Eight hundred thousand galcreds.”

  I kept my face neutral, but whistled inside my brain. That was enough to tempt a much stronger man. The client could have probably convinced Jean-Jacques to take the job for half, or even a quarter of that.

  “What can you tell us about the woman who contacted you, Mr. Bonhomme?” said the lieutenant.

  “She was just a voice on the phone,” said J-J, shifting his gaze from side to side.

  “She didn’t give her name?”

  “No, she said she was calling on behalf of her boss, Mr. Duke Vanderbilt.”

  I’d heard that name before. It was an obvious pseudonym, like Cornell, Penn and Princeton, three of Anthony Zwilniki’s henchman, only using well-known southern schools instead of members of the Ivy League.

  “What did this woman sound like?” said Martin.

  “Cold. Hard. All business.”

  Jean-Jacques looked left and right, then at me, then at the lieutenant.

  “Kind of like you, officer.”

  “Do you mean she sounded African-American?”

  “Well, sort of,” said J-J, “though more like Jamaican.”

  A cold, hard voice from the Caribbean. I thought I knew where this was headed and I didn’t like it.

  “Did she mention the name of her company?” said Martin.

  “It was the same one from before.”

  J-J couldn’t look me—or Lieutenant Lee—in the eye.

  “From before?” I said.

  “You know,” said J-J. “Factor-E-Flor.”

  I looked at Martin. He knew I’d dealt with Factor-E-Flor’s handiwork earlier. They were the small company, registered in the Cayman Islands, that had provided the doctored plans for the one hundred thousand pink robot rabbots WT&F had 3D printed six weeks ago. The rabbots had been connected to a drug production operation that Martin and Tomáso and I had helped shut down. They were owned by the James K. Polk Group, which was a subsidiary of the mysterious EUA Corporation. And according to Poly’s research, Factor-E-Flor’s owner of record was—Duke Vanderbilt.

  Jean-Jacques was looking even more overwrought. I thought Martin’s interrogation was going quite well. I was filing his technique away in my memory for future reference.

  “What, precisely, did this woman ask you to do?” he said.

  “Print up a job for her boss.”

  “Did she tell you what WT&F would be printing?”

  “Some sort of large-scale construction equipment,” she said.

  “Did you have any prior knowledge that her order was actually for a well-armed two-hundred-and-fifty-foot combat robot?”

  “No,” said J-J. He sounded as depressed as he would have been if he’d been forced to sit through a dozen back-to-back performances of Cats… but I may be projecting.

  “Let’s walk through the time line,” said Martin. “You got a call on Sunday…”

  “After dinner,” said Jean-Jacques. “It was around seven. We’d gone back to my mother’s apartment and she’d gone to bed early. I was checking email.”

  “And you called Mike Goodman after you talked to the woman?”

  “That’s right. I think it was close to
seven-thirty.”

  “You asked Mike to come in and work overnight on her rush job?”

  “Yes. I promised him a bonus for the extra work.”

  Sure he did. I spoke up.

  “How did the woman get the production plans to you?”

  “I gave her a link to our corporate cloud LoxBox account.”

  I restrained myself from slapping my forehead with my palm and quoting Homer Simpson. I’d bet a dinner at the Teleport Inn that J-J had given the mystery woman his admin link to LoxBox, the de facto standard business app for exchanging large files, not a secure, single-use upload link. I’d have to spend hours reviewing the files on WT&F’s LoxBox folders to confirm none of them had been compromised. Later.

  “Was that the last time you heard from her?” said Martin.

  The blood drained from Jean-Jacques’ face. He looked as white as cheese curds.

  “No,” said J-J. “She called back at noon yesterday. She hadn’t received her order and told me that I had twenty-four hours to complete delivery.”

  “Was that all she said?”

  Jean-Jacques shook his head back and forth slowly.

  “No,” he said. “She also said if I didn’t produce her order on time I’d be very, very sorry.”

  Martin nearly dropped his stylus and I stood up quickly to keep from falling off the arm of my chair.

  “A death threat?” asked Martin.

  “It sounded like one to me,” said J-J. “I have a ticket to Dauush on a star liner that takes off at eleven. I’m leaving for Hartsfield as soon as we’re done. I’m going to check out used 3D printers while I’m there, so I can write the trip off as a business expense.”