Xenotech Queen's Gambit: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 2) (21 page)

CiCi dug her elbow into his ribs.

“It’s an expensive disaster recovery solution,” I said.

“That also helps with business continuity,” said Apple. “Let’s say a company builds a facility on Data Center Row out by Six Flags, west of Atlanta.”

The same area where I’d been doing reconnaissance on O’Sullivan Fabrication. Gears turned in my brain.

“A smart company, willing to make the investment, might also build a duplicate facility
east
of Atlanta, in Gwinnett or DeKalb or Rockdale County, with identical hardware, software and telecom connections.”

“In case something happened to the primary facility…” said Poly.

“They could switch over to the shadow facility as if there hadn’t been a problem, right?” completed Pomy.

“Correct,” said Apple.

“Why wouldn’t they want their shadow facility in Charlotte or Kansas City or Phoenix?” Martin asked his wife. “If a hurricane strikes Atlanta it could take out
both
data centers. Wouldn’t it make sense to locate them farther apart?”

“Lots of companies take that approach,” said Apple, “but people are important, too. The people who staff the data center have specialized knowledge about how it operates. It would be a lot easier for the techs who manage the center to drive across town than to fly to Phoenix.”

“Got it,” said Martin. “Thanks.”

“No problem, honeybear,” said Apple.

She kissed his cheek.

Honeybear
would join
Marty
as a note for future reference.

“One of my clients was
really
paranoid,” Apple continued. “He had a primary data center, a secondary mirror data center on the other side of town, and
two
shadow centers.”

“Where did he want you to put
them?
” asked CiCi.

“That was where the paranoid part came in,” said Apple. “The shadow centers were fifty feet below the primary and secondary data centers, accessible only through hidden elevators. The excavation phase was a major pain in the…”

“Astonishing,” I broke in, keeping my voice even. “Who’d believe any company would go to such lengths to ensure uninterrupted service?”

Tom
á
so, Shepherd, Martin and I all exchanged glances. We’d be having a serious discussion after dinner. Queen Sherrhi noticed and nodded at me. She’d be an integral part of that conversation and so would Poly, if she could spare the time from her paper.

Chit tapped a pulse code message on my shoulder.

“Count me in, too, buddy boy.”

“I didn’t complain,” said Apple. “It was a time and materials project, not fixed bid.”

“Lucky you,” I said.

The pattern of palaver around the table shifted to a more intimate mode. Poly and Pomy had their heads together, Mike was talking to Terrhi about the subtle differences between human and Dauushan-sized Lego blocks, and CiCi was asking Apple for details about her favorite styles of martial arts. Martin, Shepherd, Tom
á
so, and Barbara were talking quietly, but intensely, about something that I couldn’t decipher from this side of the table. Perry was staring out into space with his chin in his hand. He looked like he was composing an article for
The American Journal of Philology
in his head.

Queen Sherrhi turned my way and spoke very softly. Her voice had rich overtones, a jazz baritone saxophone to her consort’s marching sousaphone.

“I hope you liked it,” she said.

“The
Star Wars
award ceremony?” I said. “I loved it.”

“Me, too,” said Chit. “I’m like Chewbacca, the alien who didn’t get a medal.”

“I thought about it,” said the queen, “but the idea of a Dauushan trying to put a medal around the neck of a Murm didn’t make much sense.”

“True enough,” said Chit. “And the fur rug over there” —she pointed at Shepherd— “would make a better Wookie, anyway.”

“The specs for how to paint a medal on your anterior thorax should already be in your inbox.”

“Thanks, your Matriarchal Majesty.”

“You’re welcome,” said Queen Sherrhi. “Now go listen in on Shepherd.”

“Oh,” said Chit, “You want me to
am-scray.
Why didn’t ya say so?”

Chit flew across the table and Terrhi was now in an animated conversation with Mike and CiCi about
anime,
so we had a
little
privacy.

“I wanted to thank you, privately and personally, for saving my daughter
and
for minimizing the negative press associated with the mess from six weeks ago,” said the queen.

“Your daughter and Spike did a lot of the saving on their own,” I said.

“Be that as it may,” said Queen Sherrhi, “the Dauushan Royal Family intends to make a substantial investment in Xenotech Support Corporation. Consider us
very
silent partners.”

She showed me a number written on a cocktail napkin. I whistled, glad I was sitting down.

“And I’m also making personal gifts to you and Poly.”

The queen flipped over the napkin and the numbers there made me glad I hadn’t stood up.

“You’re very generous,” I said.

“Nonsense,” she said, “I’m Matriarch of all the Dauushan worlds. That’s got to be good for
something.
Let me know if you need more.”

Then I smelled smoke. So did Terrhi.

“The cake!” she shouted.

A sheet cake large enough to share with Dauushans was being transported toward our table by a scissors lift unit with rubber tank treads. Fran
ç
ois was at the wheel. He must have lit the four festive sparklers at the corners of the cake as well and drove up next to Tom
á
so. Then he raised the scissors lift until the cake was even with the surface of the table.

The cake pan was already on top of a self-mobile tray, so it made its own way onto the table and promptly began circumnavigating the perimeter. We admired the message written in dark pink frosting. “All Dauush Thanks You.” There were cartoon depictions of Terrhi with me riding on her back, Mike releasing rabbots, Poly atop Tom
á
so shooting t-shirts filled with pink pods, and Spike noshing on Anthony Zwilniki’s hand.

Everyone around the table applauded.

It felt like the kind of occasion that demanded some sort of song. When the cake and sparklers came by Pomy’s place she tried to start singing a filk of
Happy Birthday
but none of us could figure out appropriate words. Mike tried singing a revised version of
For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,
but it didn’t feel right when so many of us were wearing medals and therefore shouldn’t praise ourselves.

In the awkward silence after Mike’s attempt we could all hear Terrhi’s wheedling voice.

“Mom, can I have an ice cream sundae? Can I? Can I? Daddy said I could!”

Then things got a
lot
more exciting.

Chapter 24

“Any group is weaker than a man alone
unless they are perfectly trained to work together.”
— Robert A. Heinlein,
Starship Troopers

All the lights outside the Teleport Inn’s tall windows overlooking the Chattahoochee River went out. The change in exterior light levels registered immediately. What was happening?

Then the large species door to our section of the Inn began to roll up. It didn’t make a lot of noise, but the change in air flow and sound quality drew everyone’s attention. We turned to see who had arrived. The Dauushan guard outside was no longer at her post. Instead, twenty-four hulking humanoid armored forms stood in ranks in the entrance, dark silhouettes revealed only by the distant glow of the the city of Atlanta behind them. Their outlines were unmistakable, though. They were Mobile Armored Combat and Emergency Rescue units, nicknamed Macerators, and I didn’t think they’d shown up for tea with the Queen.

Macerators had been developed by the United States Army before First Contact. They were designed to protect soldiers and increase their effectiveness in combat, but were impractical without a better power source. In 2013, their lithium battery packs would only last seven minutes under combat conditions and all four packs together weighed a whopping ninety-seven pounds. The Army kept the units on the shelf for thirteen months until Earth joined GaFTA and congruent technology solved their power problem. Now, Macerators didn’t run out of juice and each of the two cylindrical congruent power packs on their backs weighed less than an old fashioned heavy-duty flashlight.

These units were painted matte black and had the word “SURPLUS” stenciled in white letters on their chests. They were blocky and asymmetric and looked like overbuilt Iron Man suits designed by a committee. Mission creep, like adding the Emergency Rescue capabilities to get Homeland Defense funding, added mass and impractical accessories. Older units had lots of faults, which was one reason why the government was glad to sell them to allies, and private—read
mercenary
—organizations.

Macerators weren’t fast, but they were very strong, and extremely well armored. Mastering one took years of practice, but a fully-trained Macerator operator was the equivalent of a platoon or more of regular infantry. An expert could go toe to toe with an adult Dauushan and win more often than not—and there were two dozen of them out there. Scratch that. They were inside now and moving toward us as fast as their servomotors could carry them.

“Jack,” said my phone urgently. “I’m monitoring their comm channel. Their objective is to capture Sherrhi and Terrhi.”

“So no guns?” I said. At least we wouldn’t have to worry about the twin machine guns built into the units’ forearms designed to “chew up” their opponents.

“We can hope,” said my phone.

Then Mike surprised me by jumping up on the table and running over to Tomáso.

“Fastball special,” he told the queen’s consort.

As a comic book fan, I’d bet he’d been waiting for years for an opportunity to say that. Then Mike saw how quickly the Macerators were closing.

“Better make it a pop fly.”

Tomáso flattened all nine of his sub-trunks and squeezed them tightly together to form a flat, spatula-like surface. Mike moved on top of them, bending his knees and balancing carefully. With all his sub-trunks stiff, Tomáso tossed Mike high up in the air in the direction of the attackers. To my amazement, Mike did a forward somersault with a twist and managed to land on the back of one of the units in the second row of attacking Macerators. He pulled two long cylinders off the unit’s shoulders and it froze in place.

That’s one way to detach power packs, I thought.

I asked myself why anyone who could do something like that would have needed my help to cope with the relatively minor problem of a hundred thousand rabbots. Maybe he was showing off for CiCi? I’d have to write up Mike’s job offer ASAP if we both lived through this attack.

The two armored Dauushan guards, part of Diágo’s security team, were each double-teamed by a pair of Macerators attacking them fore and aft. I stood up to have a better view of what was happening. The units weren’t shooting—they were using their fists and augmented strength to try to pummel the guards unconscious. Good thing Dauushans, especially armored ones, can take a lot of punishment. So far, the guards were holding their own.

Then I had more pressing things to worry about. Three units were heading around my side of the table, closing fast on Queen Sherrhi. I was about to launch myself at the first of them when Diágo barreled around his monarch. He slammed his armored mass into the lead Macerator, spinning it into the trailing two units like an eight-ton bowling ball knocking over duckpins. Macerators may be strong, but it’s hard to beat physics. All three units landed on their backs. Poly, Pomy and I took advantage of holding the high ground on the raised platform surrounding the table. We tossed our heavy chairs down on top of the Macerators to keep the discombobulated units in that position until we could remove their power pack cylinders.

Did I mention that Macerators have a tendency to fall over backwards? Once down, all but the most experienced operators have trouble getting back up. It’s a gyroscope response problem, exacerbated by extra emergency rescue equipment included in the units’ upper rear storage compartments.

Macerator are a lot like the exoskeletons I used for heavy lifting when I worked for a Terran shipping company during my first year in graduate school on Orish, before I got my casino going. With a Human Augmented Ship Loading rig, moving containers in and out of star freighters’ holds was no HASL at all, but I’d ended up on my back more times than I cared to remember.

To my right, Poly was leaning out across the table, grabbing four self-moving trays from under bowls and tossing them on the floor.

“Smart move,” said my phone, noticing her actions. “Reprogramming now.”

My girlfriend
and
my communications device both seemed to be ahead of me. Then I got it. Pairs of self-moving trays positioned themselves where Macerators were about to step. They held onto the units’ armored boots then scuttled around in odd patterns that made the units fall over, do splits, or get too dizzy to stand. The disoriented units got in the way of other attackers and knocked several more of them down in a chain reaction. Good thing the brutes’ helmets limited their visibility.

“Nice!” I shouted at Poly.

“Watch out!” she shouted back, grabbing my arm.

François, driving the forklift, had captured a Macerator between its blades and was driving full-tilt toward the raised platform below me. The pencil thin black mustache on his upper lip quivered in glee as the blades crashed into the platform, trapping the unit.

“Disrupt
my
dinner, will you!” shouted the server.

The trapped unit didn’t say anything, but Poly did.

“The crane, the crane,” she said, pointing up.

“Got it,” I said.
Where were the controls?

Poly had grabbed my arm to keep me from falling and I’d enjoyed the physical contact, if not the circumstances. She gave me a peck on the cheek and shifted to help Pomy gather large cruets of extra virgin olive oil from around the table. It was a smart move. The sisters were pouring the olive oil in the path of another pair of attacking Macerators, with the expected results. Barbara and Perry used their chairs to anchor the slippery units in place temporarily.

The Macerators’ movements were clumsy and their reaction times were slow. Thank goodness the person or group behind this attack hadn’t had operators who knew what they were doing. Maybe we’d captured all their best people at Zwilniki’s hangar and these were what they could scrape up on short notice. Either that, or this whole attack was a diversion.

Tomáso had rounded the table and was heading for Sherrhi and Diágo, absorbing damage from several Macerators in passing but not allowing anything to stand between him and his mate. I wouldn’t want to get in his way in a battle tank.

Terrhi and Spike weren’t anywhere to be seen.

I saw Martin out of the corner of my eye while trying to figure out a way up to the crane controls. He’d commandeered the Dauushan cutter-lifter and had managed to use it as a lever, causing one of the units to do a backflip, then a turtle imitation. Apple was using a similar maneuver with her martial arts skills and her chair when I spotted the scissors lift that had delivered the cake. It was off to the side, not far away. I ran toward it, reaching it only after dodging a unit trying to remove my spleen with its fists. The Macerator slid past me on a patch of floor covered in olive oil. That gave me time to hop on the platform and trigger the lift. A steel cable with a hook on the end was only a few feet away, so when the lift reached its highest level I jumped for it. Good thing, too. The Macerator attacking me collided with the lift seconds later, tipping it over. It tried to leap up and catch me, but Macerators would never make it in the NBA. A Tigrammath seven-year-old could out-jump them.

I pulled myself up the cable until I reached the rafters, glad I didn’t have any olive oil on my hands. Then I flipped my leg over and got on top of the wide steel beam, disturbing a small, furry flying creature with owl-sized eyes that I expected was an escaped snack from a Quirinx flyer’s lunch. Twenty feet further, I made it to the crane hoist itself. It was about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, with the same rounded shape to cover the large spools of cable. I was sure the primary operating console for the crane was close to the kitchen, but there were duplicate controls up here. I sat in the narrow seat in the tiny open operator’s compartment and tried to learn them
tout de suite.

It seemed simple enough—user interface design has come a long way in the past decade—so I sent the cables that had transported the
Dauushan Strata
back down to recapture the heavy metal pan still half full of food. I felt like a kid trying to grab the best toy with a mechanical claw at an arcade and was completely focused on the cables and my target. Then somebody smacked a baseball bat into my right side—at least it felt that way. My Orishen pupa silk shirt went rigid and I heard something small and metallic hit the floor. I looked down. It was a flattened piece of lead. I’d been shot. Again. Enough was enough. I’d just recovered from the last time. Unfortunately, the Macerator down below was still using me for target practice, and since I wasn’t royalty, he didn’t have to play nice. At least he was using a smaller caliber weapon, not his machine guns.

I leaned farther into the operator’s compartment and hoped my attacker didn’t have a clear line of sight to shoot me again. I heard six more shots, but didn’t feel any more impacts, so apparently he didn’t. I thought I was home free until he escalated. Something the size of a beer keg or a Tōdon smart watch—probably the motor from the scissors lift—struck the side of the crane housing—and me. It made a noisy clang and knocked me off my seat and out of the operator’s compartment.

I didn’t like the idea of falling from a fatal height twice in three days, so I flailed my arms and found a purchase before gravity could consummate its unrequited love. I was holding on to the lower rim of the operator’s compartment with four fingers and trying, not very successfully, to do a one-armed pull-up. Just as the ATP in my finger muscles was exhausted and I lost my grip, a metal tentacle reached down and secured my wrist. Another tentacle circled my chest and pulled me back up to the crane operator’s station. An octovac was holding me, gently bouncing up and down and looking like a dog that wanted a word of praise from its owner.

“Nice octovac,” I said, rubbing the red light on its rounded dome, “Good octovac.”

“You’re welcome,” said my phone. “They’re helpful, aren’t they?”

“You can say that again,” I said, guiding the cables back on their way. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said my phone. “I sent the other one to help guard Terrhi.”

I looked down. Several units were still operational, but not as many as I’d expected. CiCi had taken off her gown and heels and left them on the table. She’d joined Mike in removing Macerator power pack cylinders from the downed units, dressed only in a black slip and her underwear. Mike must lead with his head, because his forehead was bleeding from another gash—or maybe the one he’d received during the explosion at WT&F had reopened. CiCi’s left shoulder was cut, but it didn’t look too serious. Martin and Apple were unscathed and impressive. They’d taken down two units apiece and were looking for new targets.

The most remarkable sight on the battlefield, however, was Perry. He was looking proud and a bit smug after piercing the side of an attacker’s armor with a six-foot Dauushan skewer like Achilles wielding his spear. He held a three-foot round metal lid in his left hand that he’d been using as a shield and his right foot was in the middle of his conquest’s chest. I expected him to start quoting from
The Iliad
. Barbara was kneeling on the floor, looking up at him and smiling. She was holding a power pack cylinder in each hand.

One of the guards was down, lying on his side, but he’d managed to take one of the Macerators with him. The other guard had fared better. She’d knocked over and incapacitated two of the units and was keeping a third distracted with fancy footwork while they traded punches.

Something big thumped outside in the dark, like a house landing on the Wicked Witch of the East, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I focused on the crane controls. When the magnetic cables connected and the
Strata
pan rose, I moved levers on the crane to get the mass of metal swinging in a circular arc a few feet wider than the table.

That’s when I saw where Terrhi and Spike had been hiding. They were under the table at the spot that had been cut away for Queen Sherrhi to stand in. There was plenty of room below the tabletop and the tablecloth covered the edge and hid what was underneath. I heard Terrhi’s high pitched voice, sounding terrified, in an artificial sort of way.

“Help, help, save me,” she cried.

The kid knew how to act.

A Macerator came to investigate and capture the Princess, if possible. From my vantage point overhead I had a perfect view of what happened next. Terrhi slipped around the unit and positioned herself directly behind its knees. Then Spike jumped up and forward from his hidden location under the table, hitting the unit with all his mass at a high leverage point on its chest. The Macerator tilted, encountered the fulcrum of Terrhi’s body, and flopped over to land on its back. The octovac helping Terrhi scuttled around the unit, removed its power pack cylinders, and scooted back under the table with Spike and Terrhi right behind, ready to pull the same trick on another unsuspecting victim.

I noticed that Queen Sherrhi, guarded by Diágo and Tomáso, had retreated to the far end of the hall and climbed up the awards ceremony platform, seeking a highly defensible position. Three units were attacking, but Sherrhi, Tomáso, and Diágo held the high ground and none of the Macerators had yet reached the top. Then a machine gun fired from a spot in front of the platform and bits of soundproofing fell from the ceiling. When the echoes of the gunshots ended you could hear the pin on a hand grenade drop. Metaphorically, not literally.

I looked down in horror to see that two new Macerators had joined the attacking trio and were facing the platform. One held Poly by the neck, lifting her two feet off the ground, and the other held Pomy the same way.

“Queen Sherrhi,” said the first unit’s amplified voice. “Surrender now, or these women die.”