Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Book Promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM JERRY BOYD: Chicken Train (Bob and Nikki Book 50)

BSR sets off on a mission to keep the peace in their corner of the galaxy. Their first impressions of the situation turn out to be badly in error, and the their shepherd uses the opportunity to provide them with an education. Their best efforts miss the mark, until Bob turns to a new friend for help. Ride along with the fleet, while they figure it out.

FROM JOHN D. MARTIN: Charis Colony: The Battle for McGuire Point

Raj and Shirin thought they were safe. They thought their son was safe. They had fled their family home in Mondal’s Landing and to the protected enclave of McGuire Point, out of the reach of Colonial Security. But when Colonial Security attacks the Point and the cost of ending hostilities is returning the couple and their son to the Landing, what decision will Governor McGuire make? And will their newfound home stand by them or sell them out?
From the review of Charis Colony: The Landing at ricochet.com:
“Charis Colony: The Landing” offers a story that is fast-paced and cerebral. Raj Mondal is forced to confront long-held beliefs and challenge authority for the first time. Martin offers readers several competing views of society in this novel.

  • Mark Lardas, at ricochet.com and at marklardas.com

From libertyisland.com;
“The novel takes up a number of themes that have been occupying my mind in the last couple of years. One is this: Suppose the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that there are no technological civilizations within 1,000 light years of Earth? Suppose the smartest life-form inhabiting the nearest Earth-like planet is about as smart as one of the great cats? Or a racoon. Well, that planet is Charis, and in the novel it’s been colonized by humans for a little over 277 local years. The next theme is the trouble resurgence of eugenics as a medical, ethical practice. The third major theme is how countries like China – and now the Netherlands and Canada- are institutionalizing a downright predatory corruption of medicine: Mandatory organ donation. The sort of thing Larry Niven was already warning about over fifty years ago in A Gift from Earth and the Gil the Arm stories. Finally, it’s all wrapped up in a struggle between a soft totalitarianism that gives citizens material comfort and security and a classically liberal free society where life is less certain and more risk-fraught. And it’s a love story between Raj and Shirin, the protagonists, and it also deals with the future of religion.”

FROM TIMOTHYWITCHAZEL: Noah and the Great Flood: A Poem in Alliterative Verse

A retelling of the story of Noah and the Ark in the style of Anglo-Saxon Alliterative Verse.

FROM DALE COZORT: All Timelines Lead to Rome

A dead woman’s cell phone chip leads to a mystery spanning the U.S. rustbelt, a surviving Roman empire and a North America without Europeans.

FROM LIANE ZANE: The Guardian Initiative (The Unsanctioned Guardians Book 3)

Prequel to the Elioud Legacy series

In the end, you don’t need a hero in the field. You need a team.

A year after high-risk missions to stop terrorists, arms dealers, and criminals, CIA officer Olivia Markham no longer operates in the field. Instead, she runs a clinic for immigrants in a backwater Balkans capital. Olivia has also found a modicum of peace—and someone to love. Her career trajectory? A safe desk job at Langley.

Until the day terrorists attack the clinic, upending Olivia’s world and sending her back into active fieldwork.

Olivia, whose protective instincts often collide with her duty, now finds herself once again walking a tightrope between pursuing Agency operations and her own. When Captain Alžběta Czerná of Czech military intelligence calls for help to free a young trafficking victim, Olivia convinces Anastasia Fiore of Italian foreign intelligence to join their unsanctioned mission.

But Olivia has made more than one enemy during her short career—inside and outside of the Agency. Shocking allegations rocket her to the top of the CIA’s most wanted list just when a terrorist targets her. And more than her career is at stake. Much more. As Olivia sets out on what could be her final mission, Stasia and Beta initiate their own operational protocol for their friend.

Set a year before THE ELIOUD LEGACY series, THE GUARDIAN INITIATIVE tells the story of how Olivia Markham, Beta Czerná, and Stasia Fiore team up to aid the victims of their intelligence targets—regardless of the consequences.

FROM ANNA FERREIRA (PERSONALLY RECOMMENDED BY SAH WHO READ IT): The Root of All Evil

When murder comes to Stockton, it brings long-buried secrets in its wake…

Kate Bereton leads a busy but unexciting life as the clergyman’s only daughter in a small Dorsetshire village. She’s grateful for the break in routine heralded by the arrival of her stepmother’s latest guests, but when Kate discovers a dead body in the parsonage one morning, she finds herself in much more danger than she could have ever anticipated. Terrified and desperate, she turns to the local magistrate for help. Mr. Reddington is eager to aid his dear friend Miss Bereton, but can they discover the murderer before it’s too late, and the secrets of the past are forgotten forever?
With a dash of romance and a generous helping of mystery, The Root of All Evil is a charming whodunit that will delight fans of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie alike.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Heisenberg’s Point of Observation

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past.
Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Princess Seeks Her Fortune

In a land where ten thousand fairy tales come true, Alissandra knows she is in one when an encounter with a strange woman gives her magical gifts, and another gives her sisters a curse.

And she knows that despite the prospects of enchantments, cursed dances, marvelous birds, and work as a scullery maid, it is wise of her to set out, and seek her fortune.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Shadow of a Dead God

What secrets lie beneath an alien world?

A routine archeological dig on a world once ruled by the mysterious Star Tyrants. For Moon-born Liu Shang, working on a planetary surface might be unsettling, but she could manage — until the dreams started.

Unwilling to drag others into a harebrained search, she headed out alone, contrary to mission rules. Just as she was about to give up, she found an unlikely artifact.

Handling it connects her to the mind of a long-ago rebel against the Star Tyrants’ rule. Nothing will ever be the same.

A short story.

FROM KAREN MYERS: On a Crooked Track: A Lost Wizard’s Tale

Book 4 of The Chained Adept

SETTING A TRAP TO CATCH THE MAKERS OF CHAINED WIZARDS.

A clue has sent Penrys back to Ellech, the country where she first appeared four short years ago with her mind wiped, her body stripped, and her neck chained. It’s time to enlist the help of the Collegium of Wizards which sheltered her then.

Things don’t work out that way, and she finds herself retracing a dead scholar’s crooked track and setting herself up as a target to confirm her growing suspicions. But what happens to bait when the prey shows its teeth?

In this conclusion to the series, tracking old crimes brings new dangers, and a chance for redemption.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: NOISELESS

35 thoughts on “Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike”

  1. “Hey Fox! How do you get away with all your feats?”

    The Fox said, “My capers? It’s very simple. Look at all the Rogue Ultras who have magnificate feats. What happens to them?”

    The first Rogue said, “The Ultra Corps hunts them down and arrests them”.

    Another Rogue commented, “Don’t forget that those who harm innocents are executed”

    The Fox replied “Agree. And the Forces Of Law And Order have plenty of evidence to convict them. My capers are generally noiceless. I give the Ultra Corps very little evidence to convict me. Plus, my capers are noticed only after-the-fact. The “victims” don’t realize that I robbed them until they check out their safes. And most of all, I don’t leave a trail of dead/injured innocents and I don’t leave a trail of destruction. Finally, I don’t mock the Ultra Corps or individual Ultras.

    “Oh, I’m sure that they’d like to catch me and I’m sure that if they pushed hard enough they’d find some evidence to convict me. I just don’t give them reasons to push that hard.”

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  2. The trick to walking noiselessly, my trainer at Unicorn had taught me, isn’t silence, it’s blending in to the environment. People and monsters notice absence, they have a harder time noticing normalcy.

    Which was why I was very careful stalking through the park, avoiding the main paths but staying close to them, waking heel and toe at a half-crouch. No more than seven steps but no less than four, never repeat three numbers, pause and listen. I could feel my ears twitch out of their disguise mode and extend outwards to catch as much sound as possible. Very faintly, I could hear the moan of newly made shamblers, at least six…no, eight. Small miracle, none of them sounded too young. Shooting child shambers is bad, baby shamblers are the worst.

    We’d splurged recently for bluetooth-enabled digital earplugs, and I had managed to find one that fit properly no matter what my head did. There were two clicks on the mike and Keannu told me, “MCB’s here, they’re closing the area up, cover story is meth lab dumping, over.”

    I tapped my mike and said softly (never whisper, whispers carry, speak softly), “I think I’ve got the shamblers. At least eight, newly made, due north from the observatory and west from the merry-go-round.” I waited a second, then listened a bit more. “We might have a necro here, I hear chanting. One…no, two. Heading in, over.”

    The radio clicked twice in reply and I didn’t do the dramatic thing of racking the slide on my Vector or flipping the safety off-the gun was already loaded and I had the happy switch to three-round burst. Both of those would have been sounds that were out of place and I didn’t need to be out of place just yet. I started stalking again and my nose caught the first scent of what I call the necromancer funk-rotting pork and blood, any mixture of a dozen different chemicals or compounds you needed to start your very own shambler horde, faint metallic smell of what had to be one of those small white-fuel hiking stoves to prepare things. Charcoal would have been easier to smell, but not as portable.

    Then, I heard the voices. Human voices. Not shamblers, at least a half-dozen, if not more. “Shit,” I said so softly I don’t think I would have heard myself saying it as I tapped my mike button. “Warn MCB, we have a half-dozen possible hostages. Tell Jackson and Kuo to swing north…no, north-east, I’m going to come in south-east. I’m going in now, over.”

    I heard the mike click, and I picked my pace up. Fucking necromancers.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I didn’t do the dramatic thing of racking the slide on my Vector or flipping the safety off-the gun was already loaded and I had the happy switch to three-round burst.

      Well, Hallelujah!

      Well done.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. She could not hear them, either. She heard more from Adelaide, waiting beside her. And from the faint breezes, and occasional squirrel running through the dead leaves.

    Adelaide let her breath out. Perhaps she was resenting how long this took, and whether they should have come this early, with nothing to do but wait. And wait. And wait.

    A man loomed up before her. Three men. One said, his voice low, that it was time to leave, and the biggest of them picked her up as easily as if she were a small child, and strode off. Adelaide scrambled after.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Normally Pa would see to the lambing. But with him and Ma both ill, that chore fell upon their eldest. So here Kitty was, carrying the lantern for her brother Isaac as they crossed the barnyard to check the pregnant ewes.

    A flicker of light overhead caught her attention and she looked up. It took a moment to separate the running lights of the airship from the stars overhead, but once she did, she knew it was the weekly freighter out of Omaha and wondered what it would be like to travel in one of those.

    A shout from her brother snapped her back to the present. They had work to do, and no time to dream.

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    1. This sounds like an entry point to a potentially very nice steampunk-eque story setting.

      (It’s easy to argue that if Giffard’s original 1852 airship hadn’t had such bloody-awful propellers, it could’ve flown upwind and downwind both, at least in mild-ish winds, and started quite a little fashion, over time. So it’s not even an idea that requires any real engineering suspension-of-disbelief.)

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  5. Yodah was trying to nap. Outside the window, the younglings were boisterous.

    Forcing the opening wider, he called out: “Children! Noise less!”

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  6. Noiseless? One man’s noise is another man’s Sabaton or Manowar…

    I do confess to prefering Metal to harpsichord. And I know the video does not match the song lyrics.

    But no one ever tried to criticize Captain Kirk for using the Millennium Falcon to save Dune, so please just enjoy with me.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. The wreckage was crying.

    She found the noise disturbing, but felt no need to do anything about it. Indeed, as far as she was concerned, the two thugs deserved whatever they were suffering. At least they hadn’t dragged any innocents into their attempted murder-by-lowrider. They merely blocked traffic.

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      1. She took a moment to be thankful for her husband’s curiosity and urge to experiment. Just last week he asked her to fabricate a small shield generator that would run on 12 volts DC and installed it under the seat for testing.

        Thus, when a car suddenly swerved out of the opposite lanes of traffic, engine screaming, and slammed into them head-on at 60 miles an hour, rather than two vulnerable people on a fragile motorcycle, it had struck an impenetrable force shield and crumpled like an empty can.

        Her own shield would have protected them both, and flung them clear, but the bike would now be part of the wreckage. As it was, they could finish their trip home as soon as the police showed up and spoke with them.

        She did hope they would stop making those horrible noises soon.

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  8. Lost my good 4-legged friend of the past 2 years. He snuck out through an unattended garage door Friday night, and encountered a bigger predator than him. Coyote apparently got him, and the only thing left was a couple handfuls of fur, and his collar. He might have gotten one or two licks in before he was killed, because there was some tore up ground nearby. RIP Buddy. Live Free. Die Free, doing what you like best.

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  9. Follow-up to an earlier one:

    “Welcome back, Alexa. I hear Ilmars Priede didn’t survive his evening out.”

    “He did not, Master Lazaro,” the young woman confirmed. “Unfortunately I can’t take credit for his demise.”

    “So I hear. He dropped dead after Mireia Asturias pulled him in for a dance and kissed him, did he not?” the old man asked, his tone and expression both mildly amused. “A man of his age and girth really shouldn’t have been trying to keep up with pretty young things like Mireia.”

    “Indeed. Nobody would think twice about him dying under those circumstances.” Alexa sighed.

    “You suspect that it was something more than the old sybarite’s lifestyle catching up to him, don’t you?” Lazaro continued, gesturing for her to continue.

    “I do,” she continued. “Mireia spotted me in the crowd before she went to the dance floor and acknowledged me. I couldn’t care less about her or her tabloid star lifestyle and she shouldn’t have seen me as anything other than one more face in the crowd. Yet she clearly has observational skills comparable to one of us Enforcers. Also, poison would be the perfect weapon to use against Priede in those circumstances. Noiseless, no bloody mess to clean up, and easy to pass off as his health finally failing. I think it’s quite likely that we’ve found out who the elusive Sadira is, Master Lazaro.”

    “Indeed. It makes sense,” the old man said, steepling his fingers in front of him. “Who would think a flashy celebrity like Mireia could be living a double life as a killer, and one that could give us a run for our money at that.”

    “So what will we do?” Alexa asked. “Right now our interests are more or less aligned but I can’t imagine she’ll leave us alone for much longer.”

    “Right now, there’s nothing we can do,” Lazaro stated. “We have no solid evidence that Mireia Asturias and Sadira are one and the same. Furthermore, Mireia’s outings have offered us plenty of cover to do our jobs in the past even on nights when Sadira hasn’t struck. The best we can do is keep an eye out for Sadira while we’re in the field. We capture her if possible and end her if not. If we do capture her, though? Then we’ll know the truth about her and Mireia, one way or another.”

    “Of course, Master Lazaro.”

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  10. Jeffrey suddenly looked up. The quiet was deep and unsettling. He dropped his book and raced down the hall. The children! He must get to the children!

    He surveyed the formerly clean kitchen. Silence, that great noiseless communication that the children were UP TO SOMETHING, came a little too late.

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  12. I give you Keats, from “I stood tiptoe upon a little hill”:

    […]The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
    And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
    On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
    A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
    Born of the very sigh that silence heaves[…]

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  13. Nigel Slim-Howland reflected that only a few short years ago, Howland Technologies Companions were pretty loud. Major limb movements were accompanied by the buzz of motors, and even something as simple as an eye blinking was actually audible. His butler and maid, having received the latest upgrades, were practically noiseless.

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  14. Nigel wondered idly what Lily had sounded like, so long ago. He didn’t remember, really. I suppose she rattled like a tin can full of gravel, Nigel thought, but as a ten-year-old boy, he hadn’t noticed. At the quietest moments, young Nigel thought he could almost hear her heart beat.

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  15. Gwendolyn, the maid, spotted Nigel Slim-Howland sitting noiselessly in his easy chair. She transmitted an alert to the butler, Jenkins, who appeared by Gwendolyn’s side. “Is he alright?” she asked.

    “Quite,” said Jenkins. That they spoke at all was merely to alert Nigel to their presence. Otherwise they moved silently.

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  16. The library was not noiseless, but Marcus thought that only Jasper was in it. He wondered if he had acquired a librarian without noticing it. Certainly the library was in far better order, and he could find books.

    Diggory came around a shelf, book in hand, and his face brightened.

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  17. Passepartout held up his hand and Fixx obediently stopped. The Frenchman’s progress made Fixx blink in admiration; though the floorboards were warped, his progress was nearly noiseless. Passepartout’s acrobatic training allowed him to balance on one foot as he took his time selecting where to step. Having reached the wardrobe, he produced a knife and eased open the door with hardly a creak, then signaled “thumbs up” to his partner. A man, gagged and tied, slumped against the wall of the wardrobe; quickly cutting his bonds, Passepartout laid a finger to his lips and helped him free of his confinement.

    Heavy footsteps sounded on the floor behind them, and Fixx spun to face the newcomer.

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  18. Jeff slid the new convertor into its rack. “That should make the enviro ‘cycler fairly noiseless.”

    “Noiseless?” Harlan said peevishly. “What a terrible, awkward word. Why not just say quiet?”

    “Noiseless mean no noise. Quiet presupposes sounds at a reduced level: present but detectable, soft yet acceptable.”

    “You’re a loony.”

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  19. “So, tell me your requirements again. It’ll help me think.” Her voice was quite neutral.

    “We need the whole thing to stay near room temperature, because of the new thermal imaging. Never more than 30 degrees, ideally below about 27.”

    The short-haired brunette chuckled. “That’s absolute max 86, surface temp, and hopefully less than about 80, in American-speak.” And paused for a few moments. “Does their air conditioning ever fail?”

    The German-sounding client grimaced. “Yes, and in summer. Then they keep the lights on all the time, put someone on video monitoring, and do sweep patrols on foot every 15 to 45 minutes. All night. Until it’s fixed. Our inside guy said it was the root of much bitching, about last September.”

    She smiled, slightly. “And this is a medium-security area?”

    “They are actually pretty good at security, which is part of why they get the good shows with the neat stuff. Not obsessive but competent.”

    “Sounds bad to count on mistakes to exploit. So were you planning the old Hollywood trick of leaving someone inside, before the T-IR cameras?”

    “Let’s say… something like that was one of our main go-to ideas.” This one had more of a French accent, subtler and fainter. “And remember, no more than an inch per second of motion, or it risks tripping the Doppler sonic alarms. And of course the lights are off, you can use no visible light.”

    “So your guy was a still-motion artist. Okay, that’s dead if they really keep the T-IR cams on all night. Coolsuits are a huge pain and not at all reliable. Which sounds like why you came to me. And you already mentioned the sound detection; they’ve probably integrated that with the fast DSPs for running the motion-detecting sonar.

    “But you’re still not giving me the clear picture…” She closed her eyes for a few moments, obviously not someone stuck on looking ‘normal’ all the time with people; almost froze, really. Opened her eyes again.

    “You say the in-room exhibit is something about ‘art of everyday life’ and has lots of furniture and kitchen equipment and stuff. Could you insert a piece if you wanted? I’m not talking about someone taking off her shoe and walking away, something a little more regular and much larger-scale.”

    “Yes.” The German one again. “No need to fake anything, our guy could fix all the paperwork. It’s a pretty dynamic, I really mean chaotic, show.”

    “Something as big as a picnic table? Say, with wax copies of still-lifes from famous Old Master and Impressionist paintings displayed on top?”

    “Yes, we could. But how would that…” He trailed off as she smiled impishly and raised an index finger.

    “They don’t call me Tinker for nothing. Though I don’t have elf ears or a Pittsburgh background or the true-name of a famous inventor… sorry, I’d have guessed at least someone else here read SF/F. Anyway, I have one or more good ideas by now. You should get a feasibility study and a set of rough quotes on this in a week, at your Telegram account. Oh, wait, maybe that should be your Dark Web mailserv, they did arrest Durov.” Then, she outright grinned. “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, gentlemen.”

    ((four months later))

    Yuri carried his end of the trestle picnic table past the carpeted areas with some difficulty, as it was rather heavier than it looked. “Okay, set up those fancy airpads, one at each end.”

    Sylvie, who was also an insider, put her end down more carefully and even more gratefully. They were about a yard long and maybe nine or ten inches wide, very flat and rather thin, with a small clear tube coming off from the middle to a cannister, which she laid on the bench seat on one side. It really wasn’t hard to put the table’s heavy ‘feet’ on the pads, even though the parallel rails running end to end were really the footings.

    “Time for the magic, I hope.” She turned a little valve and pushed a green button, and with a soft little hiss the pads rose a small fraction of an inch off the smooth, level polished-concrete floor. She pushed the table.

    “Wow,” she continued. “It really is like magic, like a floating log.” He and she guided it easily eighty or so feet across the cleared central area to near its place. She turned off the supply to the air cushions and they got it over to the outline taped on the floor. “Okay, we’re good to go, the artist will be along to get those wax apples and oranges just right.”
    Carefully, but casually, Sylvie stripped up all the tape.

    ((36 hours later))

    The table lifted, a fraction of a millimeter. This time it made no noise at all, the “laminar flow” making no hissing or rushing like “turbulent flow” usually did, on CO2 from long tanks in the structure. Hard-rubber pads on its long support rails molded to the floor and acted as ‘skirts’ to help with air-cushioning. A thinner, softer strip in each center bent down to make contact with the floor in places, moving just enough to push the table along, maybe a 40th of an inch at a time, slowly and smoothly.

    Like a slothful, boxy cybernetic caterpillar, noiselessly it crept along.

    Dull-silver studs on the end structure were really mid-infrared lenses for LEDs and light sensors. The low-bandgap optoelectronics used light too far away from visible to register on the cameras, but too short in wavelength to appear on the thermal images, falling in a ‘sweet spot’ between. For redundant navigation, it ‘listened’ to the sonar emitters and reflections in the room, which it had already had mapped (to the inch) hours ago.

    The thick wood of the structure and rails made sure it would take longer than its stealthy trip to show any hot or cold spots, from the CO2 tanks or the little motors that ran its caterpillar drive.

    After about half an hour of slow and steady progress, it was within five feet of the door from the low-security zone. The same code that unlocked this door also unlocked the high-security door opposite; it was the code to get in here from the low-security side they lacked. Machine vision in a low-power neural network ‘saw’ the door’s frame and knob and mapped that into navigation grid coordinates.

    (Pictures had been dead easy; less suspicious, really, to take lots.)

    Slowly the two center boards of the table unfolded like a Space Shuttle’s cargo doors. From there extruded a higher-resolution camera with a sort of telescoping tentacle nearby. Painstakingly it found, and pressed, six flat buttons for long enough and in the right order.

    There was a series of “chunk” sounds. The door unlocked and soft-lights and track lights came up around the room. While the thermal cameras were still recording, there was no reason for anyone to be looking at the logs or videofiles till morning shift-change at the earliest.

    Slowly, almost wonderingly, Jules Vaudenay opened the door. He took out a smartphone and activated its Bluetooth. A few taps of an app and the long camera-manipulator arm slunk back into its cargo bay and lay back down.

    More money than a good sports car; but palsambleu, how worth it!

    Jules and Hermann started shifting still-lifes to adjoining surfaces. The air-lifts could carry several hundred pounds, run full up; and that was gonna help them move their new Egyptian artifacts quicker and easier…

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