Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2)
Page 40
I was about to try something, but didn’t have to. Chit came flitting in from overhead and landed on Ms. Smith’s nose, singing I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General in a loud, braying voice that certainly wouldn’t have passed an audition for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. Chit buzzed her wings in front of Ms. Smith’s eyes to provide added distraction.
While the executive assistant was confused, Poly stepped between her two pistols and slammed the heel of her right hand into the center of Ms. Smith’s chin. Smith’s teeth snapped together and the woman toppled to the ground like a tree knocked over by a falling giant robot.
“That was impressive, Sis,” said Pomy.
“Thanks,” said Poly, rubbing her hand.
The machine gun operator in the hovercar above us shot off a couple of rounds to get us to back off from Ms. Smith and the immobilized Columbia Brown. We did. It’s not wise to argue with a machine gun. To accent the point, a chunk of brick blown off the side of one of the nearby academic buildings by a bullet whacked me in the sternum, nearly knocking me over. My pupa silk shirt went rigid, but it would likely leave one heck of a bruise.
Tomáso and Diágo must not have been feeling wise. In a move so fast I had difficulty following it, Diágo knelt, then Tomáso climbed on his back. The Queen’s consort stood on his back legs, and stretched out to his maximum height. He extended his trunks far enough to grab the far side of the giant, donut-shaped hovercar. Then he jerked down hard and flipped the machine gun operator, the pilot, and the two other men aboard out of the vehicle. Lorrhi and Naddéo plucked the sailing men out of the air and set them none to gently on the ground. The hovercar regained its equilibrium and remained floating above us.
I handed Poly and Pomy some zip ties and we bound the men’s wrists. Poly had the honor of binding Ms. Sleeping Beauty Smith, collecting her two pistols in the process. She gave one to her sister. I kept the one from Columbia Brown.
“Way to go, guys,” I said, complimenting Tomáso and Diágo. “Think you could toss me up there?”
By way of an answer, Tomáso grabbed me around the waist and threw me thirty feet into the air, up and over the side of the hovercar. I landed in the large open cargo space in the center and took the controls. Then I found a flat spot not far away and set the craft down. That accomplished, I shut the craft off and returned to the rest of the group. I hadn’t even noticed my sore ribs when Tomáso had grabbed me. It must be all the adrenaline.
Mike and Martin arrived next. Martin and two City of Atlanta police officers took charge of the prisoners and their weapons. Columbia Brown looked like she would have been much happier if our positions had been reversed.
“What do you think we should do with her?” said Martin.
I reached in my backpack tool bag and pulled out the sleepy gas sphere.
“Here,” I said. “Put her in a sealed room and throw this in after her.”
“Is it… ?” said Martin.
“Yes,” I said. “The real Compliant Plague. Just be the first one to give her a command and she’ll tell you anything.”
Columbia Brown looked worried. I knew that if she had developed the real Compliant Plague she wouldn’t have hesitated to use it. Martin might find interrogating his prisoner a lot easier if Columbia Brown thought her alternative was being a plague victim. Martin and his law enforcement colleagues led the prisoners away. It sounded like my friend was humming Jailhouse Rock as he prodded Columbia Brown along with her own pistol.
While Martin and I had been talking, emergency response personnel arrived on the scene. They gave Queen Sherrhi an injection of something that woke her up. I hoped it wasn’t a grajja derivative. Tomáso and Terrhi hugged the Queen Matriarch and made happy Dauushan family noises. Diágo and the royal guards just looked relieved. Spike gave me an affectionate head butt and let me scritch him behind the ears before he returned to Terrhi.
Then Mistress Marigold found us. She was still in her academic robes and enticed the pair of Dree clones to approach her with drugged balls of ground meat, just like I had done on the seventh floor of MF&P’s headquarters. Moments later, she put the sleepy plants in a sealed basket and took Poly and me aside for a quick conversation.
“I used extracts from plants native to Dree’s homeworld and created a vaccine that should work for both the Compliant and Complacent versions of the bio-cybernetic nanoparticles.”
“That was fast,” I said.
“Nicósn biosciences have come a long way in fifteen thousand years.”
“Tomáso will be happy about your vaccine,” said Poly.
“I should hope so,” said Mistress Marigold. “The Compliant plague is a terrible weapon and has no place in the Galactic Free Trade Association.”
“I’m with you on that.”
“The Dauushans will manufacture the vaccine in large quantities,” said Mistress Marigold. “I’ll arrange the licensing details with Tomáso.”
“And you’ll be revered as a medical miracle worker on Dauush as well as Terra.”
Mistress Marigold’s deep red Nicósn complexion got even deeper.
“Do come by and play with Dree when you get a chance,” she said. “She’s quite fond of you.”
“I will,” I said, “but not soon. I’m planning to be out of town for a while.”
Mistress Marigold smiled like she knew entirely too much about what I was thinking.
Then Shuvvath came up and I congratulated him on a job well done. The panels he’d installed around the stage had helped prevent the spheres from landing there. I’d buy them and he could help me repurpose the panels so that Y. Y. Knott’s carnival could transform another ride, or even two. It was the least I could do, given how helpful the imagination stations had been.
While I was talking to Shuvvath, CiCi appeared, saw Mike, and gave him a kiss worthy of the couple in Times Square after the end of World War II. When they came up for air, CiCi told me Hither needed the Jetsons’ cars back soon, so they could be reattached to their ride before the carnival opened. That shouldn’t be a problem.
We made quite a sight as we walked back to the Quadrangle—five adult Dauushans, a juvenile, a tri-sabertooth, five humans, an Orishen nymph, and a Nicósn with a pair of carnivorous plant clones. A light spring breeze had dissipated the remaining lavender mist, so we weren’t going to be taking any unscheduled naps.
There were lots of recumbent bodies on the lawn of the Quad. It looked like the morning after an all-day and all-night drinking party. Folding chairs were scattered in every direction and none of them were upright. Perry, Barbara, and several volunteers had been close to the stage and avoided the mist. They were helping spectators injured in the chaos, assisting EMTs and other emergency medical personnel.
We were lucky. There weren’t any fatalities or even serious injuries, except for a broken arm sustained by an associate dean who’d jumped off the stage instead of using the stairs. Bruno the Strongman had gotten his Jetsons’ flying car stuck in one of the larger trees in the Quadrangle, but Hither and her Uncle Richard had gotten his ship free without much trouble. A few spectators were treated for bruises and scrapes, but we were lucky things hadn’t been worse.
After Poly and Pomy and I had thanked Chit for her help, she’d gone back in her bottle. Chit said it was to watch her programs, but I think she needed a rest after all the excitement. I think we all did.
Chapter 43
“There cannot be a crisis next week.
My schedule is already full.”
— Henry A. Kissinger
Poly and I sat on the edge of the stage while I looked at my imagination station. I was sorry Hither would have to take it back to the carnival in half an hour. It was a sweet ride. Poly was cuddled up against me, tucked under my right arm. She’d finally taken off her mortarboard. Somehow, through all the excitement, I’d
kept my straw boater. Pomy sat on the wing of my imagination station a few feet away, smiling at us. Her station was parked close by, under a maple tree.
“Is it like this all the time?” said Pomy, kicking her legs back and forth like a kid on a swing.
“So far,” said Poly.
“Hey,” I said, grinning. “The last time things got this crazy was six weeks ago.”
“The last time things got this crazy,” said Poly, “was yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
I’d forgotten about the explosion at Factor-E-Flor.
“What are you going to do about the two robots standing next to the Carlos?” asked Pomy.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Send them back to Zwilniki’s hangar?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Pomy.
She shared it with Poly and me. We both laughed, Poly nearly doubled over.
I asked my phone to help with the remote reconfiguration. In a few minutes, the two robots had turned themselves into two-hundred-and-fifty-foot copies of the Colossus of Rhodes and the giant statue of Rameses II in Luxor.
“Perfect,” said Pomy. “Let’s see the Met and the British Museum match that.”
I rubbed Poly’s back until she regained her composure. She was still grinning.
Maybe this would put us back in the good graces of Emory’s administration after knocking over so many trees?
“Now all we need to do is find Agnes Spelman,” I said.
Then I saw someone waving at me from the roof of the Carlos Museum on the far side of the Quad. No, it was two people. Could it be Kori Liddell-Scott and Urradu? The silhouettes didn’t look right for them. I held up my phone and asked it to magnify. It was Shepherd. In one hand, he was holding Agnes Spelman up by her collar, and in the other he held a tranquilizer dart rifle. Poly saw him, too, and Pomy came around to see why we were laughing. That was one more loose end covered.
I waved back at Shepherd. He was either one tough Pâkk or one good actor.
“Would you take my imagination station up to fetch Shepherd?” I asked Pomy, pointing behind her. “I’ll slave it to yours.”
“Glad to,” she said.
Pomy took off and Poly and I had a moment alone.
“Any other loose ends you can think of?” I said.
“Plenty,” said Poly, “but none I want to worry about now. Mom and Dad can take an autocab back to the hotel.”
“And Martin can handle interrogating Brown, Smith and Spelman.”
“True,” said Poly. “Along with Penn and Princeton.”
I waved my free hand out across Quadrangle.
“Our new employees look like they’re good at their jobs.”
“What are their jobs?”
“Whatever we need them to be.” I said. “They can handle it.”
“Works for me,” she said. “Let’s find somewhere else to be.”
“You don’t want to stick around and attend a rescheduled graduation ceremony?”
“I’ll be perfectly happy to pick up my diploma at the Registrar’s office,” said Poly.
“Want to pick it up now?”
“It can wait,” she said. “I hope to have other plans.”
She snuggled in closer and squeezed my hand.
“Oh,” I said, “In that case, where do you want to go on our romantic week away?”
I pulled up my list on my phone. Poly extracted her smaller phone from somewhere under her robes and did the same. On the count of three we held our screens together. Then we laughed.
We’d both selected the same destination as our number one choice. It wasn’t all that romantic, but it was a perfect place for a couple of tech nerds.
GALTEX, the Galactic Technology Exposition, was next week.
Las Vegas, here we come.
Further Adventures
Please visit
www.XenotechSupport.com
for more details about
the universe of Xenotech Support
and the Galactic Free Trade Association
Jack & Poly’s adventures will continue in
Xenotech What Happens
Sign up for the Xenotech Support mailing list
on the web site to get advance notice of publication.
Find out what really happened
on First Contact Day when Earth
was invited to join the
Galactic Free Trade Association in
Xenotech
The Man Who Sold the Earth
available for Kindle on Amazon.com
Dedication
To my Muse...
I couldn’t do this without you.
Copyright © 2015 by Paul David Schroeder
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Dan Paulson
Image of Spiral Galaxy M74
courtesy of NASA, ESA and the
Space Telescope Science Institute
ISBN 13: 978-0-692-54988-9
Spiral Arm Press
1725 Carlington Court
Grayson, GA 30017
www.spiralarmpress.com
About the Author
Dave Schroeder is a former Chief Information Officer who’s done his share of tech support. He’s served as Chief Technology Officer for a Bay Area dotcom and led the ecommerce division of a major Internet consulting company. He also wrote the book, lyrics and music for Softwear.com, a musical comedy produced off-off-Broadway. Dave lives in suburban Atlanta where he enjoys writing and voice acting with the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company.