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

by Schroeder, Dave

  Hiram handed the first guard a ten dollar bill.

  “Get something for yourself, too. Good job apprehending this character, even if he’s lost, not a spy.”

  “Thanks,” said Larry. “Eternal vigilance is the price of security.”

  “Liberty,” said Hiram.

  “Whatever,” said Larry.

  I was pushed along more underground corridors then led up a flight of stairs that emptied into the main lobby of the building. I saw three signs painted on the walls, like back in Zwilniki’s VIGorish Labs complex. They read Warehouse, Fabrication and Offices, and weren’t much help. We stood next to the reception desk and waited for Larry’s car to drive up.

  The guard at the reception desk, Annette Winston, from Anniston, Alabama, was bored. She was flipping through a copy of Galaxy magazine—the GaFTA tabloid, not the revived SF mag—and I was able to read a few lines of the visitor’s sign-in log. The only entry for today was someone named Agnes Spelman from Factor-E-Flor. Agnes Scott and Spelman were two highly regarded women’s colleges in Atlanta, which meant I may have just learned the current alias of the woman I knew as Columbia Brown. I’d have to pass that news on to Lieutenant Lee.

  When Larry’s car arrived he was polite and not too rough about getting me into the back seat. On the five mile drive I was worried about the impact an arrest for trespassing would have on my business and on the place where I’d be spending the night. My apartment was highly preferable to the hospitality of the Douglas County Jail. I also wondered what had happened to my wallet and my phone. When we pulled up to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Lithia Springs Precinct Office in Austell, a surprise was waiting for me.

  Lieutenant Lee’s Capitol Police cruiser was parked outside and my friend was standing beside it. He was wearing his Smokey the Bear hat, which made him extra-intimidating. When Larry arrived and got me out of the back of his car, Martin came over and introduced himself, then cut to the chase.

  “I’ll take him,” said Martin. “He’s an escaped mental patient and we’ve been looking for him.”

  I gave Martin a “thanks a lot” look. He kept his poker face.

  Larry replied. “I don’t know. My boss said I had to turn him in for trespassing.”

  “Did you hear him, man?” said the lieutenant. “He talks like a crazy person.”

  Martin looked at me. I looked at Larry and recited half a poem at him in Elvish.

  “I guess you’re right about that,” said Larry. “And what my boss don’t know won’t hurt him. He’s your problem now.”

  Larry shook Martin’s hand, got into his car, and headed for the Golden Arches.

  “Thanks,” I said, turning around and extending my zip-tied hands.

  Martin cut my bonds with a Swiss Army Knife. I rubbed my wrists. I didn’t like being arrested, even if it was by private security and didn’t really count.

  “No problem,” said Martin. “But you owe me.”

  “Another breakfast?” I said.

  “Maybe some other time. Information.”

  “Glad to share,” I said, “but I don’t know much.”

  “I figured that,” said Martin, “but I expect they know more.”

  Chit had moved back to my free shoulder and the two of us stared as my van pulled around a corner and parked next to Martin’s cruiser.

  “Holy sh…” said my little buddy, her compound eyes spinning.

  “Hop in,” said my phone, using my van’s larger speakers. It popped both doors open. “I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  Martin and Chit and I got into my van. It made sense for us all to get a briefing on the way back to Atlanta, so Martin sent his cruiser ahead of us to wait for him near my apartment. Once we’d buckled up and started back to the city, my phone explained what it had been up to.

  “When you were surprised by the man with the shotgun,” said my phone, “I held on to your belt and moved behind you. I wanted to stay out sight.”

  “Smart,” I said.

  “I heard you pretend to be Finnish, so I pulled your wallet out of your back pocket and held on to it. I knew it could be used to prove your real identity and screw things up.”

  My phone flipped my wallet into my hands and I returned it to its usual location. I trust my phone enough that I didn’t check the balance on my credit cards first. It wouldn’t have been polite. Besides, my phone was my credit cards, for most transactions. I nodded my thanks and encouraged the resourceful device to continue.

  “I rappelled down the back of your pants, walked around behind Larry, and flipped up to attach myself to the back of his belt. I looked like any other piece of his equipment.”

  “And while you were doing that, you were also calling me and letting me know Jack had been captured,” said Lieutenant Lee. “Good job multitasking.”

  My phone looked proud and happy. A big yellow smiley face covered its screen.

  “Way to go!” I said, and meant it. That was the second day in a row my electronic friend had saved me.

  “Thanks,” said my phone. “While you were being interrogated, I dropped off Larry’s belt when he walked through the lobby on the way to the restroom.”

  “Okay,” I said, with a tone that meant, “Tell me more.”

  “Then I crawled around under the reception desk and tapped all the security camera feeds in the building.”

  “You what?” I said. A grin spread across my face. I picked up my phone and kissed it right on its smiley.

  “Um. Um. Um,” said my phone, not sure how to deal with this atypical public display of affection.

  Martin broke in to give the disconcerted unit time to recover.

  “I headed this way as soon as I heard you were captured,” he said. “Then I got a text directing me to the Sheriff’s office, not the O’Sullivan Fabrication building. I got there just in time, apparently.”

  “Thanks for keeping me out of jail.”

  “The night is still young,” said my friend.

  “Now about those security camera videos…” I said to my phone.

  “Yeah,” said Chit, waving her antennae wildly. “What did ya see?”

  “What’s in the warehouse?” said Martin.

  “You know, don’t you, Jack,” stated my phone.

  “Robots?” I said, tentatively.

  “Robots,” said my phone. “Four more heavily armed giant robots, just like the one from WT&F.”

  “Now we know what,” I said.

  Martin cut in, “But we don’t know…”

  “Why?” said Chit.

  “And not just robots,” teased my phone.

  “What else?” I said.

  “There are two other parts of the facility that I find puzzling.”

  “Tell us,” I said.

  “Both are underground.”

  My phone was dragging things out for dramatic effect. I let it have its fun and waved my hand in a “go on” motion.

  “One is a Biosafety Level-4 lab. The cameras show half a dozen lab techs in pressure suits working on some sort of purple-colored cultures.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  “And the other?”

  “Another complex with airlocks and high bio-security. There’s a large room where twenty Pyrs are putting together round metal shells the size of grapefruits and loading them with vials of lavender liquid.”

  “Prisoner Pyrs assembling spheres?” I said.

  Martin gave me a dirty look. I had a bad feeling about this.

  “What makes you think they’re prisoners?” he said.

  “The place is built like a prison. There must be a reason.”

  “Are the Pyrs chained to their workstations?” asked Martin.

  “No,” said my phone. “But
the assembly room and adjacent living quarters are locked and heavily guarded.”

  “They’re not chained, so they’re probably not prisoners,” said the lieutenant.

  “Have you ever tried to chain a Pyr?” said Chit.

  “That’s right,” I said. “What do you chain? Their tentacles? They can extrude and reabsorb them at will. How do you restrain a Pyr when you arrest one?”

  Martin looked appropriately contrite.

  “It doesn’t happen very often,” he said. “Pyrs are usually law abiding, but when we do arrest one we put them in a locked room. I forgot I once sent a rookie in to handcuff a Pyr prisoner who was being transferred to another holding facility. The whole precinct got a laugh out of watching him try.”

  “Proving my point,” I said.

  “You think it’s a biological warfare facility?” said Martin.

  I nodded.

  “And the spheres are delivery systems.”

  I nodded again.

  “Why Pyrs?”

  “Were the lab techs human?” I asked my phone.

  “As best I could tell under their protective suits.”

  I stroked my chin and offered a possible explanation.

  “Maybe Pyrs are immune to whatever biological agent they’re refining in the lab.”

  “Could be,” said Martin. “I’ll need to tell my superiors about this—and the governor.”

  “And the CDC,” said my phone.

  “But first,” I said, “I think we need to talk to Tomáso.”

  Chapter 13

  “A zombie apocalypse isn’t the most jovial situation.”

  — Danai Gurira

  “When were you going to tell me about the giant robot at WT&F?” said Tomáso in a basso voice so low it made Darth Vader sound like a tenor.

  “Ummm...” I said.

  Martin came to my rescue.

  “Jack wanted to invite you to breakfast at Waffle House after he took the robot to Zwilniki’s hangar, but there wasn’t room.”

  “Roger Joe-Bob Bacon’s place?” said Tomáso. “You could have conferenced me in.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “After almost falling to my death earlier that morning, I guess it skipped my mind.”

  “Don’t let it happen again,” said the Dauushan, looking stern.

  I felt like a child being sent to bed without any supper. Then he smiled, showing teeth the size of teacups.

  “Gotcha.”

  I let out my breath in a sigh of relief. Tomáso’s approval meant a lot to me. I glared at him for form’s sake, then smiled myself.

  Ninety minutes after we’d left the parking lot at the Sheriff’s office, Martin, Chit and I finished updating Tomáso and Shepherd on what we’d learned. They didn’t look shocked. Tomáso made a call, like he had right after we’d started our briefing, and the rest of us took a short break. I didn’t like the look on Tomáso’s face.

  Martin and I were sitting in comfortable chairs on either side of a small round table on the upper level of Tomáso’s study. The raised section was there to put shorter species closer to eye level with Tomáso, who was somewhere between seventeen and twenty feet tall. I hadn’t measured—I was afraid it would make me feel even smaller than I already felt when I was around him. Chit was sitting on an upside down old-fashioned glass on the table, holding a ceramic thimble full of something whose fumes smelled like lemon-scented paint thinner. My phone was leaning back against Chit’s glass. It had extruded arms, legs, and a simulated head from its mutacase and had adopted a relaxed but attentive pose. Shepherd, who had been meeting with Tomáso when we’d arrived, was in his usual shadowed spot in a far corner, nearly invisible.

  I had a Diet Starbuzz, Martin had a Coke, and Shepherd had a concerned expression on his face.

  “You’d better tell them,” said the Pâkk.

  “Yes,” said Tomáso, “considering they’ve fallen into the thick of it on their own.”

  “Start at the beginning,” said Shepherd.

  Tomáso sighed.

  “Fifteen thousand years ago…”

  “Say what?” I said.

  “Shut up and listen,” said Chit, taking a sip from her thimble.

  “Where was I?” said Tomáso.

  “Let me try,” said Shepherd. “How much do you know about the Pâkk-Tigrammath War?”

  “The ancient myth cycle?” said Martin. “Like the Iliad?”

  “The P-T War was no myth,” said the Pâkk. “It was real, and almost destroyed more than a dozen sentient species.”

  This was sounding familiar. I remembered what Poly had told me at second breakfast yesterday when she’d shared what her adviser had told her about the conflict.

  “Mine included,” said Tomáso. “We were attacked by both sides. So many and so much was destroyed.”

  Tomáso rubbed his top eye with one of his sub-trunks and went on.

  “The P-T War ended an earlier version of the Galactic Free Trade Association and left many planets isolated—apprehensive about invasion, or contagion, or both—for three millennia.”

  “No Seldon Plan?” I said.

  “Don’t be a smart ass,” said Chit. “Close your trap and learn something.”

  I drew two fingers across my mouth to zip my lips and kept quiet. My elders were talking.

  “No psychohistory, no First or hidden Second Foundation, no Mule,” said Tomáso, “just fear and chaos. The Pâkk-Tigrammath War was a conflict to see which species would rule the galaxy.”

  “They fought like cats and dogs,” muttered Chit.

  “It ended in a Pyrrhic victory for both sides,” said Shepherd. “Afterward, the Tigrammaths transformed themselves from Romulans into Vulcans. They renounced their savage natures and cultivated serenity, meditating on the billions of sentient lives lost in the war.”

  The Pâkk shook his head back and forth, slowly, as if remembering tales of atrocities from ancient battles. He continued.

  “My own people split in two. The Long Pâkk had learned the lesson that the way of the warrior must be tempered by the ways of the wise. The Short Pâkk still honored our oldest warrior traditions, but were encouraged to redirect their aggression inward, into intra-Pâkk clan competitions and tests of courage, not outward against other species.”

  “Fifteen thousand years ago,” said Tomáso, “the Dauushans were the key to galactic conquest, just as they are today.”

  “Huh?” said Martin. He was trying to think it through.

  “Then, as now, my species was known for our skill in fabrication. We were, and are, the preeminent makers, not just in quality, but quantity.”

  “Dauush makes, the galaxy takes,” said Chit.

  “Any species that conquers Dauush,” said Shepherd, “would be able to produce unstoppable quantities of ships, weapons, and matériel.”

  “And my people make excellent combatants,” said Tomáso. “A Dauushan in battle armor is larger than most Terran tanks, and twice as dangerous.”

  “I can see that,” I said, remembering how I’d felt when Tomáso had picked me up and squeezed me after I’d “rescued” Spike six weeks ago.

  “Dauushans are formidable,” said Martin, making a simple, self-evident statement.

  “True,” said Shepherd. “The species that controls Dauushan productive capacity and commands Dauushans’ loyalty…”

  “Rules the galaxy,” I said.

  “Give the kid a cigar,” said Chit.

  My phone spoke.

  “Excuse me,” it said, “but how does this tie to O’Sullivan Fabrication’s biohazard lab and their captive Pyrs?”

  “Good question,” said Tomáso. “During the P-T War, both species—unknown to each other—approached a group of brilliant Nicósn s
cientists. Senior Pâkk and Tigrammath leaders insisted the scientists expand on their published research and redirect it toward developing a bio-agent with very special properties.”

  “The lavender liquid,” said my phone. The eyes in its simulated head went wide.

  “Yes,” said Shepherd.

  “What did it do?”

  “It made anyone infected follow their controllers’ commands,” said Tomáso.

  I stood up and walked over to confront Shepherd. I was probably shouting.

  “They made a virus to create an army of zombie slaves?”

  “It wasn’t exactly a virus,” said Chit. “More like a bio-cybernetic nanoparticle.”

  I ignored her.

  “An army of Dauushan zombie slaves,” said Tomáso.

  “Though it also affects other species,” said Chit, having far too much fun with a subject this serious.

  “And the beings infected aren’t zombies, exactly,” said Tomáso. “They still have their original will and judgment, but following their controllers’ instructions stimulates their pleasure centers. After a few hours of obedience, they’re addicted.”

  Insidious and highly effective, I thought.

  “What was this bug called?”

  “The Compliant Plague,” said Shepherd, softly.

  I whistled, slowly, and shook my head from side to side. It was a lot to take in.

  I looked at Shepherd.

  “Who won?”

  “The galaxy,” answered Tomáso, when the Pâkk didn’t. “The Nicósn scientists, supported by Pâkk and Tigrammath forces, conducted a test. A single, isolated island on Dauush was infected—just a hundred thousand of my people. Half were controlled by Pâkk, half by Tigrammaths. It was a place for leisure, not production, so it didn’t have any of our high volume 3D printers. They were fighting with knives, clubs and spears.”

  Tomáso made a curious set of gestures with his trunks—some sort of ritual, I assumed. It reminded me of hand motions used to ward off the evil eye.

  “Each side used Dauushans as its Janissaries, its elite slave soldiers,” said Shepherd.