The Centauri Conspiracy

by G Russell Peterman

Chapter Twenty-nine

  Last robbery

  A tall wide shouldered bright blue-haired and blue-faced man with a large yellow mustache wearing an expensive eye-catching light violet tunic of a mechanical salesperson walks down the Nineteen Causeway turning heads on hovercrafts floating past the Virjee Building. Behind him floats a long gray curtained-rack on a hover cart and behind the hover cart walks a tall shapely long haired redhead. The redhead is equally eye-catching in an extra tight gray tunic of a mechanical, carries the controls for the cart, and guides it. Both sides of the hover cart have pulled down gray curtains with bright red letters proclaiming "Pacific Mechanicals." The blue mechanical salesperson in light violet stops, looks down at an invoice in his hand, looks up at the lettering on a door, nods his blue head that this is the place, and knocks loudly on the still closed service entrance’s double doors. The sign over a double door proclaims "Tylova DNA Testing & Fertility Lab." According to the New Dallas Bank clock on the sign down the causeway it is still three minutes and thirty-eight seconds before the legal nine o'clock opening time.

  Nothing happens.

  The blue-haired mechanical salesperson waits twenty-seven seconds before knocking again even louder. Again nothing happens. The mechanical waits nineteen second and knock. Again nothing happens and in a quarter minute knocks a third time still louder. Each time, the blue-haired mechanical knocks longer and louder and waits less. Barely waiting five seconds between knocks the insistent blue-haired mechanical knocks a fourth, fifth, and sixth time.

  Finally, a small thin bald-headed irritated man with an angry expression yanks the curtain back a little to peer out over a closed sign. The bald man sees mechanicals and looks back at the clock on the wall, sees that it is almost time to open, two minutes and forty-three seconds early. The little man shrugs his shoulders over not really opening early for business, unlocks the north door planning to send a complaint to the Company over a mechanical’s faulty clock, and opens it a little to send them away.

  As the bald worker tries to ask the blue mechanical what he wants, the insistent mechanical salesperson in violet brushes passed him telling him some nonsense about the lab's mechanicals have arrived. The bald man knows of no order for mechanicals being placed and tries to explain that there has been some error. The blue mechanical thrusts a yellow copy of an invoice into his hands.

  The clerk glances down at it—and sees their Company name and address.

  In the middle of the little thin man’s strenuous refusal of this purchase order and trying to give the erroneous invoice back his eyes finally notice a moving hover cart outside the open half of the Lab’s service door. Looking past the cart the thin man’s eyes see and stare at a tall statuesque redheaded mechanical woman wearing an extremely tight gray tunic turning her hover cart straight toward him. The eye-catching redheaded mechanical in tight gray finishes turning her hover cart while the little man’s eyes openly gawk at her well-develop shapely form. His stare delays the little man from closing the open half of the service door and easily blocking its entrance.

  His numbed mind hopelessly fills with her tantalizing shape even after she guides the cart up to the double doors. Ogling at the way her stunning torso moves, the poor clerk does not close the door or think quickly enough to demand, “Stop pushing that hover cart in here?”

  These few critical moments that the clerk stares at the eye-catching redhead are enough for the cart to push against the door’s unopened half. The eye-catching mechanical woman smiles warmly at the small thin clerk.

  It is enough to get the clerk to step back out of the way, return her smile, and politely open the other half of the double doors for her wide cart. As the cart moves forward into the lab they trade smiles, long warm pleasant smiles, and the hover cart makes it all the way fully inside the Lab without delay.

  Before the clerk can think to do anything else the tall winsome mechanical woman turns to push both service doors shut, turns back toward the clerk, smiles warmly at him again, and in small almost dainty unhurried steps moves in close with exaggerated hip movements. The smiling and mesmerized little thin bald clerk just stands and stares. During another very warm smile the shapely mechanical sensually presses her exciting body against his. Suddenly, it’s like a wonderful dream.

  But, the small baldheaded clerk feels, to his dismay, her strong hand close over his mouth, turns him, and her other arm clamps itself tightly around his shoulders. In confusion and shock over his firm restraint, the clerk watches the mechanical salesperson in light violet press a button. Both side-curtains on the hover cart roll-up creating a whirling noise and almost instantly three persons, two women and a man, in gray wearing gasmasks roll out on the floor. One unusually tall man also wearing a gas mask remains lying in the center of the cart.

  The baldhead clerk still captured in the redhead’s strong grasp tries to yell a warning but only a small muffled, “Hmm, hmm,” sound escapes through her fingers. The restrained bald clerk watches as all three in gray wearing gasmasks rush around the lab gassing the other workers, two men and two women. The sales mechanical pulls on a gas mask, and then the lights fade as the blue-haired one shoots a puff of white cloudy gas into his face.

  "Doctor Tjercks see to the transfer," the sales mechanical, who is really Bakman, orders as he lifts the top cover from the vehicle.

  The last man on the hovercraft slides out to help pull four empty long stainless steel canisters on a wheeled mechanical mover-rack down from top the craft. Holding the top of the rack and the bottom running on two wheels Doctor Tjercks pushes it toward a large double door with the word “Storage.” One of the masked men was opening that same door with a plastic card from one of the downed workers pocket. The other two are pulling loose gray mechanical tunics over the prone gassed workers clothed bodies. The redheaded Zee recovers her purse from the cart and guards the front doorway.

  Bakman in his light violet tunic sticks signs to the glass above the closed sign on the front and service entrances. Each new sign proclaims:

  This lab has a liquid nitrogen leak and will be closed today.

  Bakman joins his team of three pulling tunics on all five workers. When all have gray maintenance tunics pulled over their lab clothes, they quickly load them on the cart. Two men to a worker slide the unconscious lab technicians into racks. To the causal eye, they will look like a rack of maintenance mechanicals turned off. People will think they are old units returning for repair or new units being delivered. Less than three minutes later the cart's racks have all five workers loaded, the curtains are back in place, and the cart moves halfway toward the rear of the lab near the lab’s freight elevator. A member of the team pushes on the elevator panel requesting service. Half a minute later Doctor Tjercks returns from the storage room wheeling a rack of six sweating containers. Two of Woll’s men lift the rack of full containers, hook the top of the rack to the top rear of the cart, pull down its padded cover, and Bakman pushes a button to lock side curtains for transport. With a nod they all walk toward the rear freight elevator. At the back wall Bakman pushes on a panel and see the building’s freight elevator is on the way up from three floors below. Less than four and a half minutes, less by eight seconds, since they entered the lab, the freight elevator doors opens, just a little more than two minutes and half after the business day was to start. The group and hover cart load quickly into the freight elevator.

  A minute and nineteen seconds later, the group unloads on the sixth floor of the building’s basement. The four people in gray enter a storage closet down the hall and to the left to change clothes. Zee and Bakman guard the hovercraft. When their team of four returns wearing street clothes they guide the hover cart through a maintenance doorway into the tunnel system under the city.

  After they leave, Zee and Bakman walk back to the closet to change. On the way, Bakman rips off his fake yellow mustache with a loud, "OUCH!" Inside, they wash the color out of each other's hair, off their faces, change into their normal clothing, and put th
eir other clothing in the trash container. Looking almost normal again, except for wet hair, Bakman walks with yellow-blonde Zee again in a pink tunic hanging on his arm, rides the elevator up from the sixth level basement hallway to take a quiet ride up the Sixteenth Causeway, and abandons their public hover halfway. They walk to the next corner like strolling lovers. A grinning Bakman nods at several early morning joggers along the way, smiles at an especially attractive one, rents another public hover, and through sparse morning traffic takes a watchful but uneventful ride back to the OpDyke building.

  In the OpDyke Building elevator on the way up to the 26th floor a screen pops on and Breen reports, “Bakman, the raids went well. No hitches. Merchandize is in route.”