Xenotech What Happens: A Novel of the Galactic Free Trade Association (Xenotech Support Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Further Adventures

  Dedication & Copyright

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “What happens here, stays here.”

  – Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority

  “Are you going?” asked Shepherd.

  “What do you think?” said his human friend.

  “I think grajja-crazed Dauushans couldn’t keep you away,” said the Pâkk.

  “True,” said the other, “but not to look out for them.”

  “I know, I know,” said Shepherd. “You just want to see what happens.”

  His companion shrugged.

  “You know what they say,” said Shepherd. “What happens in Vegas…”

  “…stays in Vegas.” said his friend, “But in this case, I’m more worried about what happens in Vegas shaking the galaxy.”

  “I don’t know,” said Shepherd. “Aren’t they ready for some downtime?”

  “Maybe,” said the human, “but I wouldn’t want to bet on it.”

  “Come to think of it, neither would I,” said Shepherd. “Neither would I.”

  Chapter 1

  “There is no doubt that a Zeppelin is a wonderful thing…”

  — G. K. Chesterton

  I had expected our first day at GALTEX to be exciting, but not this exciting. Poly and I had walked over to the Las Vegas Convention Center from our hotel, the Grand Pyridian, as excited as kids on Christmas morning. Over five million square feet of exhibit space, filled with the latest galactic technology, lay ahead of us waiting to be explored. We were swept towards the entrance in a river of sentient species. Humanoids and aliens no taller than seven-foot Tigrammaths, wearing everything from rhinestone-encrusted body suits to minimalist Pâkk leather vests, crowded the courtyard outside the entrance.

  Poly and I were dressed in white Xenotech Support polo shirts and khakis. We both wore our Orishen pupa silk shirts underneath our corporate uniforms. We even had oval, gold-toned name tags that I’d programmed to rotate through a selection of relevant titles below our names. Poly’s currently read “Senior Tech Guru” and mine said “General Dogsbody.”

  Poly squeezed my hand. She was bouncing up and down, as giddy as a Musan in a cheese factory.

  “I can’t wait,” she said.

  “You won’t have to. We’re here.”

  “I know, I know, but we have to get inside, get our badges, and figure out our strategy first.”

  “Strategy for what?” I asked.

  “For seeing everything.”

  Poly and I were well matched—I wanted to see everything, too. We jostled our way into a single file queue through a door into the convention center’s lobby and entered the soaring, five-story space. Overhead, half a dozen fifteen-foot personal dirigibles floated, adorned with the logos of several of the larger tech companies, like IBM-EMC, CiscoSiemens, and GalCon Systems. From down on the lobby floor, their operators looked bored. They must not be tech types.

  Our badges were plastic cards with embedded chips containing the information important to exhibitors. They hung from fabric lanyards imprinted with a sponsor’s logo. This year, Chapultepec & Castle had that honor. They were one of the big Terran networking hardware outfits that had a rep for being a follower, not an innovator.

  In years past, GALTEX had tried other options for identifying attendees. QR codes sprayed on people’s foreheads in ultraviolet ink didn’t go over well and ID chips embedded under the skin of hands or trunks or tentacles nearly caused a riot. Sometimes tried and true older solutions are best. At least they solved the problem of the plastic cards flipping over by printing our names and companies on both sides.

  Poly and I found temporary refuge from the surging crowd in the lee of a large pillar past the badge stations. The near surface of the pillar was a touch screen displaying a map of the complex and showing which vendors were where. I pointed to rows of small booths on the far left, in the back of the convention center.

  “Let’s start here in the cheap seats,” I said. “Then we can work our way forward to the entrance.”

  “Sounds good,” said Poly. “That’s where all the startups will be, and it should be less crowded.”

  She turned away from the map and did a double take. Then she pointed behind me.

  “Is that Cornell?”

  Cornell? The man who’d attacked me in the sub-sub-basement of the Georgia state capitol? The pilot of the robot who had tried to tear the roof off the Teleport Inn to capture Queen Sherrhi? The slippery S.O.B. who had escaped from my friend, Lieutenant Martin Lee’s, custody? That Cornell?

  I turned around.

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  She indicated a man wearing a charcoal gray business suit. It could have been the same suit Cornell was wearing when I’d first met him. He blended in well with all the other suit-wearing humans in the crowd.

  “That’s him all right!”

  I’d last seen Cornell on Wednesday night, when Martin had been grilling him. Why was he at GALTEX?

  “Shhh,” said Poly. “Not so loud. He might hear you. Follow him?”

  “I’ve got a better idea.”

  It would be a major pain tracking Cornell on foot through the crush of early attendees. I tossed my phone up to the GalCon Systems dirigible and climbed on top of a kiosk showing advertisements for galactic telecommunications vendors using convenient architectural ornaments between the unit’s flat screens as a makeshift ladder. Without causing a disturbance, my phone took over the personal dirigible’s controls and brought it down to my elevated perch. I rapidly removed the pilot from her seat, handed her a twenty galcred note, and climbed into the dirigible’s open cockpit.

  The pilot—a young brunette around my age—looked surprised, but pleased to have the twenty. For a moment, her eyes grew large and I thought she’d recognized me from somewhere, but I’d never seen her before in my life. She was about average height for a woman and in great shape. I was concerned she might give me grief and try to kick my butt, but lucked out when she decide
d to go with the flow and assumed a lotus position on top of the kiosk, softly chanting a mantra.

  “Ommmmmm.”

  “I’ll be back,” I said, doing my best Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.

  “Take your time,” said the pilot, reaching for her phone. “They owe me a break, anyway.”

  I waved to her, and then to Poly. I wished I’d brought my backpack tool bag, or at least Chit. My little buddy would have been able to tail Cornell unobtrusively. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  I guided my personal dirigible into the three-story main hall in the direction Cornell had been walking. There were more indicators and readouts on the control console than I expected—a lot more electronics than necessary for something as simple as an advertising blimp. It was odd, but I had no trouble finding the essential switches, dials and pedals needed to operate the unit.

  I scanned the show floor, looking for Cornell’s gray suit and arrogant walk. There he was! I’d know that supercilious creep anywhere. Now I could watch him from above to see what he was up to. He walked purposefully down one of the long, wide aisles on the trade show floor and stopped at the towered and turreted Chapultepec & Castle booth. From above, I saw him speak with a short, round man in a dark business suit and a tall woman wearing a navy pantsuit with a red, white and blue scarf. I wished I could hear what they were saying.

  “Can you pick up anything?” I asked my phone.

  “Negative. Too much crowd noise.”

  It did zoom in on Cornell’s hands, however, and captured a video of the professional henchman passing a small plastic figurine shaped like Boba Fett to the woman. It must be a thumb drive. Cornell shook hands with each of them and left the C&C booth, continuing in his initial direction away from the entrance.

  “Did you get video of his face, too?”

  “Of course,” said my phone.

  “How good are you at reading lips?” I asked.

  “Downloading,” said my phone.

  I heard a ding indicating a new app had loaded.

  “Reading lips is now one of this unit’s core competencies.”

  “Great,” I said. “What were they saying?”

  “Something about this being what was requested,” said my phone. “And GalCon Systems’ latest something.”

  “Whatever just happened, it’s not on the up and up,” I said, frowning.

  “With Cornell involved, was there any doubt?” asked my phone.

  “True.”

  Then my peripheral vision noted I wasn’t alone floating above the show floor. Poly was in the IBM-EMC dirigible, pacing me a few yards behind and to the left. I waved. She smiled and waved back. It was great to have her with me. Then I saw Cornell pause and check his phone. He looked up and saw us. Had he been warned he was being tailed?

  Surprised or not, Cornell reacted quickly—literally leaping into action to escape. He was passing the booth for a firewall company named Carcharodon Systems. Their slogan was “We love to chomp hackers!” and their advertising approach used images that were just on the edge of getting letters from Steven Spielberg’s lawyers. Tethered above their booth was another personal dirigible that looked like Bruce the Great White Shark from the excellent original Jaws, and the subpar 2025 remake.

  Cornell climbed up the back of their booth and onto the roof of a small structure used to transact private business deals. He tugged the dirigible’s tether, climbed aboard, and commandeered Carcharodon Systems’ toothy floating mascot. Then he headed deeper into the GALTEX show floor at high speed with Poly and me in close pursuit.

  The two of us stayed on Cornell’s vertically finned tail as he wove in and out of support pillars, tall booths, and banners announcing new products. We were zooming along at what I assumed was the personal dirigibles’ top speed—maybe thirty miles an hour—in a space where a fast walking pace would be dangerous. I felt like Luke Skywalker on a speeder bike weaving around trees on the forest moon of Endor.

  Then Cornell started shooting.

  There were times when I wished Nevada wasn’t a concealed carry without a license state—or that the folks at GALTEX had installed scanners at the entrances to the convention center, but the first was politically infeasible and the second physically impractical.

  I was going to tell Poly to watch out, but then realized how stupid that would be. It’s not like she didn’t realize we were both in danger. I started bobbing randomly, moving left, right, up and down as I pursued Cornell. None of his shots hit me, and I didn’t hear anything to indicate Poly had been hit, either. He must be aiming for me, not my dirigible, or I’d have lost lift and would have had to call off the chase. Cornell was crafty, but not necessarily the sharpest pencil in the cup.

  Attendees were looking up and cheering. They didn’t think the shots were real and must believe the whole thing was being staged by Carcharodon Systems to show how far they were ahead of their competition. I hoped none of Cornell’s bullets injured anyone when they landed. With luck, they’d embed themselves in one of the walls of the convention center.

  Cornell was piloting his Great White dirigible toward the large-species’ hall where Tōdons, Dauushans, and other galactics massing multiple tons were exhibiting. The ceilings were five stories tall here, not the three stories of the humanoid halls, and Cornell took advantage of the extra vertical room to gain some altitude. At least while he was focused on flying he wasn’t shooting at us.

  There was a thirty-foot pink vinyl banner advertising Dauushan Model-49 3D printers coming up ahead of us. It was tied between two pillars and I already planned to go low while Poly, I hoped, went high to get around it. It turned out I didn’t need to worry. The tall caudal fin at the back of Cornell’s dirigible caught the banner and pulled it loose. The cords at one end looped around the sky shark’s tail and anchored there, leaving the rest of the banner fluttering behind. It reduced Cornell’s speed, but the vinyl whipping back and forth made it harder for Poly and me to close with him.

  Even given that added distraction, I could see that Cornell was heading for one of the large-species’ entrances to the exhibition. There weren’t real doors in place—it would take too long to raise and lower them—but there were barriers formed by air jet curtains to separate the cooled interior of the convention center from the hot desert temperatures outside.

  Cornell flew over a booth for a Tōdon terraforming or tōdonoforming company and shot through the air jet curtains, escaping outside. The trailing banner flapped back and forth, blocking the exit. Poly and I lost a few crucial seconds in our pursuit before we both flashed through the air curtain and into the bright Nevada sunlight, leaving a pair of disgruntled Dauushan guards checking badges in our wake.

  Our quarry was ahead of us, gaining speed and altitude fast. He was heading northwest, toward the towering white concrete needle of the Stratosphere Hotel & Casino—a giant pylon with a flying saucer on top. At least the fluttering banner made him easy to spot. His shark-shaped personal dirigible would have been a lot harder to see without it.

  Cornell was pushing his engines as he sped toward the saucer, but I was still gaining on him. Beyond the shark, far to the north, I noticed a huge Dauushan-pink blimp, but couldn’t let myself get distracted.

  What was he up to? Then I saw the arms of the Insanity thrill ride hanging over the edge of the saucer, looking like a giant mechanical claw in one of those quarter-eater games where you try to grab a watch or a stuffed animal and drop it down a chute.

  This claw was an acrophilic adrenaline junkie’s dream. Four open passenger stations on the ends of the steel arms hung out over the edge of the saucer, more than eight hundred feet above the Las Vegas Strip. For good measure, they spun around at forty miles per hour, giving riders three gravities worth of weight and an amazing view, if you were into that sort of thing and weren’t likely to lose your lunch
.

  The ride wasn’t currently spinning, thank goodness. The four arms were stationary and Cornell was heading their way. I assumed he was hoping to catch the banner on one of them so it would pull off, increasing his speed and improving his odds of getting away.

  I was really close to him now. He had nearly reached the Insanity thrill ride’s arms, so it was now or never if I was going to make a move.

  I positioned my personal dirigible directly above Cornell’s and literally jumped the shark.

  Okay, jumped on the shark. Whatever.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the shark’s Mylar surface would be so slippery. I tried to find a handhold, but couldn’t. I was rapidly being blown from the shark’s back to its tail by the rushing wind. I tried to grab the tall caudal fin, but lost my grip and my balance.

  I felt like Gollum dancing at the Cracks of Doom or Mufasa hanging by his claws above a stampeding herd of wildebeests. Have a nice trip, see you in the fall. Eight hundred feet is a long way to drop without a parachute. I went off the end of the shark dirigible into the void.

  Where was an octovac when I needed one?

  It sure was a fine view of the Strip from up here, though.

  Chapter 2

  “Paris is always a good idea.”

  — Audrey Hepburn

  The good news is that vinyl is less slippery than Mylar. My phone shot out a tentacle from its mutacase and snagged the vinyl banner still stuck on the tail of Cornell’s toothsome mascot ride. I wrapped my arms around the banner, too, and held on for my life as Cornell circumnavigated the Stratosphere’s tower and took another pass at the arms of the Insanity thrill ride. Maybe it was because of my added weight or maybe it was just because Cornell wasn’t willing to risk getting too close, but I didn’t slam into one of the metal arms and the banner didn’t come free from the shark dirigible’s tail.