“When we find out what the link is to Traskel, I get to break it to.
Chapter Thirty
“Gurum, it’s good to see you again,” Mike said, looking around the gate area.
Las Vegas McCarran International Airport was, for most visitors, their first introduction to the state of Nevada. For good or ill, that first impression was of slot machines. Lots and lots of slot machines. They seemed to be stuck into every nook and cranny and most of them were in use by arriving, departing and even transferring passengers trying their luck.
Other than that, and the ads for casinos, it was much like any other airport and the Keldara had seen a few at this point. The group still gawked as they exited the walkway from the airplane.
“Vanner, sorry, you’re going to have to forego the pleasures of Sin City,” Mike said, shaking the sergeant’s hand.
“I’ll pass,” Vanner said, smiling. “Been here, done that, lost my shirt.”
“I’m not planning on gambling,” Mike said, looking around. “I’m doing enough of that as it is. I’ll be out to visit in a day or two.”
“Got it,” Vanner said, stepping back into the tubeway. “Good luck.”
“Same,” Mike said, turning back to the Keldara brewery manager. “What do you have laid on, Gurum?”
“There is a bus waiting, Kildar,” Gurum said, leading the way into the airport. “I was not sure about luggage…”
“The Keldara have everything that we’re bringing here,” Mike said, gesturing to the Keldara troopers loaded down with black luggage.
“We have the rooms laid on and the booth is set up,” Gurum burbled. “There was a pre-day but we were not prepared for that; I hope it doesn’t hurt sales—”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Mike said, feeling the effects of both jet lag and culture shock. Not so many hours ago, he was running from an Albanian hit team.
“The convention begins tomorrow,” Gurum continued. “It is only three o’clock, here. The Keldara could take the evening off and look around—”
“The Keldara are going to the hotel and going to bed,” Mike said. “With pills, if necessary. It will help reset their body clock.”
“Very well, Kildar,” Gurum said, his brow furrowing. “But I need a few for set up. There is more work than I had expected. And… I think I overestimated the trouble of setting up the booth I designed.”
“How much trouble could it be?” Mike asked.
“Much,” Gurum admitted. “I truly do need some Keldara, Kildar. Please.”
“Okay, okay,” Mike said, shaking his head. “We’ll need four of them functional tomorrow, but you can have at least ten.”
“Thank you, Kildar,” Gurum said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank you. That way we should be able to get fully set up.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask what you did to the booth design,” Mike said, shaking his head.
“It is… a very noticeable booth, Kildar,” the brewery manager admitted.
“What’s laid on for tomorrow?” Mike asked, trying to shake off fatigue. He needed to be sharp. As much as the current mission mattered to the world, getting a distributor for the Keldara would affect them for a long time. For good or ill. It was important and he had to simply compartmentalize the other mission. Among other things, they couldn’t even talk about it, here.
“We will have the booth open all day,” Gurum said. “Daria sent me a roster of the female Keldara to set up a schedule. But there is a problem.”
“And that is?” Mike asked, yawning.
“There is a local law that anyone serving alcohol must be of eighteen years or older,” Gurum pointed out.
Mike blinked for a moment and then frowned. The Keldara girls were professionals doing a tough job so it was hard for him to remember, most of the time, that they were teenagers. Most of them. Greznya was over eighteen and so were a couple of others. But most of them were sixteen or seventeen. Beyond that age, most of the Keldara women were mothers and they weren’t attached to the operational teams. He had a sudden mental image of Anisa sliding down the fast rope into the office in Club Dracul and stripping out the computer in mere seconds. The girl had just turned seventeen a month ago.
“There are only five of the girls who are eighteen or over,” Gurum pointed out. “That is enough for one or two to cover the booth all day but the convention runs for five days…”
“This is what I get for putting their real ages on their passports,” Mike said with a sigh. “And I’m not going to call DIA and ask them for a bunch of false IDs, just to sell beer. We’ll put everyone that’s of an age to work. We’ve got two more women that can fill in for that matter. If the guys have do some of the serving, fine. The rest can just be booth babes and charm the customers.”
“Very well, Kildar,” Gurum said, sighing. “I had hoped you would agree with that.”
“I’m nothing if not reasonable.” Mike smiled at the Keldara. “Now, where’s the bus?”
Mike had forgotten how much he hated trade shows.
The convention was in one of those massive, echoey convention centers that seemed to be designed as a stable for sperm whales. It was certainly big enough; just walking from one to the other was a workout. One that Mike, after the stresses of the last few days, wasn’t going to bother with. He had no interest in picking up a bag full of pens, coasters and T-shirts from beers he was never going to drink.
The International Brewery Wholesaler’s Convention had its good points, he had to admit. The Keldara “booth” was in the Beer Garden where over forty breweries, ranging from Anheuser-Busch to… well, the Keldara with their patented “Mountain Tiger Brew,” offered free samples. Mike had tried a couple of the other brews and then given up. There just wasn’t anything on earth that compared to Keldara beer.
And others seemed to agree. Since a few hours after their opening, as the word got around, there had been a continuous line for the Keldara beer. And most of the drinkers had just sort of… hung around. Part of that was the beer, but a big part of it was the Keldara girls.
The girls staffing the booth, both those serving and those just being friendly, were soaking up the attenion and flirting for all they were worth. They’d never been in a situation where men were vying for their attention and they were clearly enjoying themselves. And the distributor reps, almost entirely male, were enjoying themselves as well. The Keldara girls were spectacular and so… naif that the distributors found them too charming to resist. He wondered what most of them would think if they knew what the girls had been doing for the last few weeks. Or that the “bar backs” hefting the barrels like they were made of air could probably kill everyone in the convention in less than thirty minutes.
Gurum had done a good job on the booth as well. And he was right, it was noticeable.
It turned out that after checking shipping costs, the amount of beer they were taking would cost far less as a container shipment than it did sending it by air. The problem being that even with that amount of beer, it would only take up part of the container. There was a way to do that, called Less Than Truckload, but the cost difference wasn’t all that great.
So Gurum had looked at the problem and, with the usual Keldara ability to look outside the box, had decided to use most of the container for other “stuff.”
What the rest of the container held was mostly stone. Specifically the granite the Keldara picked from the fields every spring and used for everything from fences to house walls. It was the same granite that the brewery was being constructed from.
With the help of the ten Keldara that Mike had loaned him, Gurum had built a miniature Keldara “brew house,” complete with a display of original Keldara brewing methods, a small “fence” that channeled the convention goers into the area and a “bar” constructed of undressed granite with a wooden countertop. It was, by far and away, the most spectactular booth in the convention and Mike wondered whether others would try to top it the next year.