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

Chapter 2

“When you reach the top, that’s when the climb begins.”
— Michael Caine

“Hey, big guy, how’s it hangin’?” said Chit’s low-pitched voice an inch from my right ear.

I could hear her clearly even over the buzz from her wings. Chit was a Murm, a ladybug-shaped alien with a head the size of a dime and a body the size of a quarter. She was wearing a colorful inkjet printer paint job on her wing cases that looked like a miniature version of Monet’s Water Lilies. Chit has her feminine side—on rare occasions. I’d met her when I was in graduate school on Orish and she’d decided to hitch a ride with me back to Earth to see more of the galaxy.

“A little help would be appreciated.”

“No pro-bl
é
-mo.”

The two octovacs kept moving away from each other, further stretching my joints and tendons. My chest, still recovering from being shot, burned as my abs and costals started to separate. The dinosaur-inflicted scar on my leg hurt as much as it did when I’d first received it.

“Now would be good,” I said.

I heard a sound something like a Bronx cheer. Chit flitted.

I tilted my head back so I could see my little friend fly underneath the octovac holding my arms. She found an opening on the lower part of its central core and disappeared inside. A few seconds later, that octovac moved a foot forward and hung there, releasing the stress on my wrists and elbows. I came within a few inches of smacking my head on the building’s tar and gravel roof, but was left loosely suspended. My blood began pooling in my upper torso and points north.

“Thanks,” I said.

I heard another raspberry sound, amplified by the interior of the octovac’s central core, then Chit popped out of the hole she’d entered and repeated what she’d just done with the other chrome plated unit.

“What did you just do?” I asked.

“I put ’em in standby mode,” said Chit. “It’s just one switch on their primary circuit boards. They can’t be operated remotely now.”

“You’re a life saver!”

“It was easier than havin’ to deal wit’ Poly if you’d been drawn and quartered.”

It’s good to have a friend. Make that friends. I shouted toward the maintenance stairs.

“Mike, it’s safe to come out now!” Mike cracked the door and looked around warily. “Could you give me a hand?”

He opened the door the rest of the way and looked at me. I was six inches above the roof, held in place by tentacles from two octovacs. When the units went into standby mode they just hovered once they reached equilibrium.

“Umm, sure,” said Mike.

I think he was trying to keep from laughing.

He walked over and pushed the octovac holding my feet toward me until my lower body touched the gravel. Then he helped me unwind the tentacles from my wrists and ankles. I rubbed my extremities and slowly got up. I needed Mike’s support to get myself vertical.

“Now I understand why you didn’t want to go out to the loading dock.”

“Ten points for Capt’n Obvious,” said Chit, who was basking in the warmth of one of the red lights on top of an octovac.

“It was easier to show than to tell,” said Mike.

“Maybe for you,” I said, rubbing my wrists.

“Now what?” said Mike.

“Did you follow Rule #2 when you started fabbing the octovacs?”

Mike had been taught this lesson the hard way during the robot rabbit incident.

“Sure,” he said. “I printed six octovac controllers before queuing
up the octovacs themselves. I left the controllers on top of the Model-43’s operator’s console.”

“And the octovacs herded you off the production floor before you could grab one?”

“Uh huh.” Mike’s shoulders slumped. He looked like a puppy waiting to be kicked. Working for Jean-Jacques can do that to a person.

“It happens.” I patted him on the back reassuringly. “We’ll figure things out.”

Mike stood a little straighter after my encouragement. I was glad to see he hadn’t been completely beaten down by his abusive boss.

“If you say so,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Now there was a moderately upbeat, conditionally optimistic tone in his voice.

“Are the plans for the octovacs still available?”

“Sure,” said Mike, his face brightening. He could sense the gears turning in my brain. “They’re on the main server.”

I handed him my phone.

“Log my phone in and locate the octovac controller plans, please.”

Mike tapped keys and then handed my phone back. “Done.”

I addressed my phone. “Please simulate an octovac controller.”

“Programming now… simulation complete,” it said.

My phone is a sharp piece of circuitry.

“Chit, quit snoozing on top of that octovac and move your carapace. I need you to shift the command channel on these two units.”

“Whatta slave driver,” said Chit. “You’d think savin’ your life once t’day would be enough.”

“Please?”

“Okay, since you asked nicely.”

She opened her wing cases, stretched her wings, and flew underneath one of the octovacs to make the adjustments I’d requested. I had my doubts about the actual octovac controllers working on the rest of the shiny chrome spiders. I was betting that the black hats responsible for the bad fabrication plans had preset the octovacs to only follow remote commands
they
issued and ignore the standard controllers. To confirm that, I looked over the edge of the roof above the loading dock. Only my head was visible—I didn’t want more octovacs coming after me on the roof. I moved my phone to the ledge next to me.

“Shut down all the octovacs, please.”

My phone chirped and beeped as it sent out the shutdown signal. Thanks to the loading dock lights we could see the octovacs behind the WT&F office building clearly. None of them deactivated. My phone made a grumpy noise and sulked. That confirmed it. Only a factory reset would give me a chance of regaining control.

Three of the octovacs on the dock had just finished attaching the giant robot’s left kneecap. Half a dozen were skittering across the robot’s matte black surface, making final pre-operational adjustments. I crawled back out of line-of-sight from the loading dock and stood up near the maintenance stairs. Before I could think of what to do next I was distracted by Chit and her water lilies paint job hovering in front of my eyes.

“Command channels are shifted on these two, Jack.”

She pointed at the octovacs on the roof with a foreleg and gave me the new command channel settings.

“Thanks. Did you spot anything on the inside of the units about the code needed to perform a factory reset on these things?”

“Yeah. I saw a sticker with the first six characters but the rest are hidden under a circuit board.”

“Excellent. That will make a brute force search for the factory reset code much faster.”

Chit recited the part of the code she’d seen. Then she yawned, said she needed her beauty rest, and returned to her bottle.

My phone started trying out options. If we were lucky it would find the right sequence early in its search.

“The plans indicate the code length is twenty characters, so it will require thirty-two minutes and eight seconds to try all remaining reset codes,” said my phone, anticipating my next question.

“So, on average, about fifteen minutes?” I said.

“If we’re lucky,” said my phone.

“I don’t think we can wait that long,” said Mike.

He had taken up my previous vantage point looking down at the loading dock. I joined him. He was right. Time was running out. The giant robot was standing up. It was already on one knee. I heard lots of muffled clacks that sounded like it was booting its weapons systems and racking ammunition. This was not good.

“Take control of the two octovacs on the roof and have them carry me down to the loading dock,” I said.

My phone promptly complied, and in seconds I was hanging from a pair of octovac tentacles like a sack of L5 hydroponic potatoes. The pair of spiders descended quickly and reached ground level. I instructed them to drag me over to the robot and start hauling me up its nearest leg. They reached the knee that was still on the ground and jumped, carrying me with them to a spot halfway up the robot’s thigh where a missile launcher provided good hand holds. Other octovacs grooming and prepping the giant robot finally realized the two holding me were no longer part of the black hat team. They swarmed after me while my octovacs scrambled to carry me higher.

“How are you doing on figuring out that factory reset code?” I asked my phone.

“Still processing.”

Then the robot shifted from kneeling on one knee to standing upright. I went from dangling fifty feet in the air to a hundred feet in five, make that three, rapid heartbeats. I know it shouldn’t matter—a fall from either distance would kill me—but try telling that to my hind-brain.

I heard a low rumbling below me. The giant robot was warming up the rocket engines in its boots. I had a feeling I’d be a lot higher soon.

Five of the black hat octovacs were just inches below me, and I didn’t want to repeat the experience I’d had on the roof. I had my phone instruct one of my white hat octovacs to slow down the black hats while the other kept carrying me farther up the robot. One of the black hat unit’s tentacles grabbed my shoe and tugged, but my defender white hat vac took advantage of it being off balance to dislodge it and send it down into two other black hat vacs, slowing all three in a tangle of waving tentacles. My defender was locked in a multi-armed struggle with the remaining nearby black hat while the octovac holding me finally ascended all the way to the robot’s shoulder.

The rumbles were getting louder and the robot’s body was beginning to vibrate. It would lift off any second.

At my phone’s command my transport octovac headed for the base of the robot’s neck. It released me and I sent it back to support my defender octovac against the now untangled black hats. I stood on a small protrusion and held on to a convenient piece of tubing while I found my Orishen mutakey and opened the pilot’s hatch to the command center. Then my luck deserted me. A black hat octovac sprang out from a baffle above the hatch and knocked me off the robot. My arms tried to find a handhold but found only empty air as gravity tried its best to turn potential energy into kinetic energy. There were times when I wished I didn’t know so much about physics.

Chapter 3

“Flying is learning how to throw yourself
at the ground and miss.”
— Douglas Adams

At times like this I wished I’d included a parachute in my backpack tool bag. I moved into a skydiver’s pose with my arms and legs extended to increase wind resistance. The parking lot below was heading my way and I didn’t have enough time for my life to pass before my eyes. My brain was distracted by attempts to calculate my terminal velocity and the number of seconds I had left to live. It wasn’t a big number.

Then things really sucked. I felt a slight impact and heard the roar of an octovac’s vacuum sucking on my backpack. I was almost close enough to see ants crawling on the asphalt when my vertical fall changed into a parabolic arc and I soared up into the early morning sky. The straps on my backpack dug into my shoulders and stressed my recuperating ribcage, but I wasn’t complaining. I looked over my shoulder and saw an octovac—one of my white hat units—with broad lengths of fabric stretched between its extended tentacles.

“Octovacs have a hang-glider mode?”

“These units aren’t home vacuum cleaners, they’re construction ’bots,” said my phone. “The hang-glider feature was added after too many of them fell from upper stories.”

“Lucky me,” I said, pleased with my phone’s initiative.

“Lucky us,” said my phone. “It’s no fun getting restored from a backup.”

“At least you have that option. Can you get us back to the robot’s shoulders?”

“Already on it.”

My octovac rescuer rode the warm air currents vented by the WT&F building’s HVAC system. Soon it had me back at my perch outside the open hatch to the giant robot’s control room. I was glad the pursuing black hat vacs had lost interest when I’d fallen off.

The hatch was unguarded, except for the other white hat vac. I looked below and saw that all the black hat vacs were attached to spots on the robot’s legs and torso. They weren’t coming after me. Maybe they were waiting for new orders or just holding tight. Either way, I wasn’t going to look a gift equine in the mouth.

I jumped through the hatch, followed by my two white hat vacs. One of them sealed the hatch while I got my bearings. There were two large observation windows corresponding to the robot’s eyes. I could see that we were really high up. The robot was fully erect now—that is, it was standing—and I could identify the lights of Atlanta’s midtown skyscrapers. The robot was as tall as some of the buildings, which meant it was too big to play King Kong and climb them.

Then I felt a vibration like a Hollywood disaster movie earthquake, which answered my question about the black hat vacs. They were going along for the ride. I had just enough time to strap into the pilot’s chair before the sound from the robot’s boot rockets reached a crescendo and the giant took off.

We were heading west at a low altitude. I surveyed my surroundings. The command center was circular with two eye-shaped observation ports in front and lots of screens showing external camera views and the status of various systems. To the left of the pilot’s chair was a full-motion cyber-feedback rig. In front of me were dual Orishen and humanoid controls. I knew my way around both. The humanoid ones were easier for most people than the scent-activated Orishen controls, but a quick code review showed me that the Orishen version had deeper access to the robot’s operating system.

I used a portable scent-generator from my backpack tool bag and an Orishen-tech back door I’d discovered in graduate school, then assigned myself superuser administrative rights. Another user had already been defined and was directing the robot remotely. I tried to lock that user out, but he or she or it fought back hard. After a few seconds that seemed like hours, it was clear that the other operator was using human, not Orishen controls, so I was able to wrestle their admin rights away and cancel their access.

At some point, I needed to learn whatever I could about the person or group behind the robot. But that could wait. For now, I needed to get a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot robot out of sight to avoid potential panic and disruption to the already congested Atlanta rush hour.

Now that I had superuser privileges I could put on the full cybernetic feedback rig and guide the robot with my movements. I unbuckled my safety harness and stood up. Then I donned the encephalo-helmet, stepped into the leg sensors, and slid my arms into the arm harnesses. Once my limbs were all comfortably situated I tried a few experimental movements. I overbalanced a bit and started to fly erratically before getting the robot back into equilibrium. So long as I didn’t make any sudden moves, I was safe.

I called up a rear-facing monitor and zoomed in on WT&F’s headquarters. Mike was still visible on the roof at maximum magnification. I asked my phone to call him.

“Are you okay?” said Mike when we connected. “I’m glad you didn’t hit the pavement.”

“I’m pretty happy about that, too.”

My phone made a few supportive beeps.

“Who’s running that thing, you, or the secret robot masters?” asked Mike.

“Me,” I said. “I’ve got an idea. I’m going to try flying this thing down to the big VIGorish Labs hangar at Hartsfield Port.” The hangar was where I’d been shot last month. Fun place.

“That makes sense,” said Mike. I could hear his breathing slow to something like normal. Giant robots were terrifying, which is why I needed to get this one under wraps fast.

“Can you drive my van down there and pick me up?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll talk to J-J about taking the giant robot.”

“Great,” said Mike. “I’m glad you’ll be the one having that conversation, not me.”

I had the robot make a giant thumbs up sign, but was probably too far away for Mike to see it.

“No problem,” I said. “Since Jean-Jacques violated the terms of my contract, I’ll really enjoy our discussion.”

“Thanks,” said Mike. “I’ll get on the road.”

I ended the call and experimented to get the hang of the cybernetic controls, changing the robot’s course from west to south. The giant robot was flying smoothly, its congruency-powered engines drawing on near limitless stellar energy. I checked a monitor and saw that there were stealth baffles in its rocket boots so the robot didn’t look like a meteor or an errant spacecraft as I guided it over the center of Atlanta, heading for Hartsfield port. I made sure there weren’t any running lights activated and kept to an altitude high enough to miss any buildings and low enough to avoid any aircraft. I followed the Connector, the conjoined path of I-75 and I-85 through downtown that led to the port.

Flying with full-body cybernetic controls was exhilarating. It was so much fun I got cocky. I tried a Superman-style, both arms forward flight posture, then shifted to a one fist-forward Green Lantern-style. The robot’s body copied all my movements faithfully. I shouldn’t have tried getting fancy. Sticking my arms out hurt my ribs and I curled in on myself as the pain in my chest doubled me over. I was just able to recover fast enough to avoid smacking head first into the Varsity restaurant’s giant V-sign at North Avenue. After that, I gained some altitude and was much more conservative in my flying.

The autopilot was excellent, so I provided my destination coordinates and let it do the flying. Then I tried to decide which member of law enforcement I should call first.

Lieutenant Martin Lee of the Georgia Capitol Police was a friend. I knew he liked to work out early so he might be up. Shepherd, the Long Pâkk spymaster, would also be a good option. He knew lots of people in authority and was good at keeping things quiet. I didn’t know much about his sleep pattern, however, so I called Lieutenant Lee first. He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Jack,” he said. His voice was friendly but had a police officer’s authority.

“Sorry to wake you, Martin.”

“I was up. Just getting in some reps with free weights before my shift starts.”

“Great,” I said. “I need your help with parking a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot robot.”

“Could you say that again?”

“You heard it right the first time.”

“I guess I did. How can I help?”

“Are most of the Orishen freighters out of the VIGorish Labs hangar?”

“Yeah, there are only a couple of dozen of them left to be auctioned or held for evidence,” said the lieutenant. “That should leave enough space for parking a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot robot or two.”

“Can you send me the override code for the door lock?”

“I’ll do better than that,” he said. “My gym is two miles away. I’ll meet you there.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Breakfast’s on me,” he said, “on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to tell me
why
you need to park a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot robot.”

“Deal,” I said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

My phone spoke up as soon as my call with Lieutenant Lee was finished.

“Success!” it said.

“You’ve got the shutdown code?”

“Correct. Want me to test it?”

“It would probably be better to wait until we’re on the ground,” I said. “Octovacs falling out of the sky wouldn’t be a good thing.”

“Gliding out of the sky,” said my phone. “They have an automatic controlled descent mode.”

“Gliding,” I corrected. “And thanks for saving my life.”

“Glad to help,” said my phone. “Just keep it in mind.”

I landed, none too gently, and my phone reset the octovacs. Ten minutes later, just as the sun was starting to rise, Martin and I made sure that the robot was safely stored, flat on its back, in the hangar. There would have been room for two or three more the same size. It was a
big
hangar. My phone had the forty-eight octovacs organize themselves into neat ranks before it deactivated them.

A few minutes later Mike arrived. We stored the two white hat octovacs in the back of my van. They might come in handy, and I needed some units to check out for clues about who was behind all this.

I’d contacted Shepherd and he assured me he’d do his best to minimize any media attention. So far, nearly an hour had passed and no videos of giant robots flying over the city had shown up on YouTube. The secretive but well-connected Long Pâkk said he’d meet us to debrief at the Waffle House on Virginia Avenue, one exit north of the port on I-85.

It was going to be an interesting breakfast.