The Trilisk Supersedure (Parker Interstellar Travels #3) Page 10

  The first thing that worried him was a lack of scout machines around the camp. He moved through the last patches of native plant life carefully but didn’t encounter any sentries.

  The tent was sealed up. To be expected for the middle of the night.

  “Telisa? Cilreth?” he transmitted. For a second there was no reply.

  “Magnus! I’m glad you’re back,” Cilreth said. Magnus could tell something was wrong. Her voice held a worry. He strode up to the tent as she gave the mental signal for the tent to open.

  “Magnus, we were attacked,” she said aloud. “I’ve been trying to reach you and Shiny for half an hour.”

  Distressed but not panicked.

  “Tell me.”

  “We took some scout robots to the ruins. We found this robot.” Cilreth indicated a smooth blue machine with three legs sitting beside a stack of containers. “Some creature attacked us. It destroyed two scouts. Telisa and I were separated as we fought. It’s my fault, a glitch with the suit. I had to activate the stealth, but then it wasn’t configured to give me away by showing my link, and I was having a hard time staying alive and configuring it to let me talk to her. She told me to clear away, said she was going to kill it.”

  Magnus nodded. “Okay. Maybe she meant her alien weapon. She was worried about hitting you. Did you hear it fire?”

  “No. But she was on the level below me.” Cilreth sent him a location pointer as she spoke so he wouldn’t have to ask the obvious. The spot wasn’t far from the camp.

  Oh no. And I have her stealth device. Magnus felt ashamed. She needed that artifact and he’d taken it from her. Now she could be dead.

  “Magnus, it’s fast. And it attacks from above.”

  “Okay, stay calm, I’ll go get her; you get what we can back onto the ship. Prioritize the loading; we may be leaving some of this stuff behind. You should find a large group of scout machines waiting back at the Clacker that got cut off from us. Use them to move as much as you can, as fast as you can.”

  “Magnus? Are you okay?”

  “I’ve figured out why we can’t talk with Shiny. It’s bad.”

  “It can’t be worse than abandoning my teammate to an alien monster.”

  “It’s not your fault. Don’t even start that or I’ll hit you. We just need to find her.”

  “Then go!”

  “Yes. One minute. The people here are UED. Looks like a military unit, too. More than a hundred of them, I’d guess. They’re situated less than ten kilometers away.”

  “So close! Did they follow us in?”

  “Their camp suggests they were here first. They had to have detected us come in. My guess is they’re jamming our links. Our current range is less than about forty meters.”

  “What can we do about them? Are they dangerous?”

  “Maybe. I haven’t contacted them. Keep an eye out. They may be after the Clacker.” Magnus found more weapon containers with his link. He spoke as he grabbed some grenades and a laser sidearm.

  “Maybe we should talk to them,” Cilreth said.

  “What are you thinking? The enemy of my enemy?” Magnus asked.

  “Sure.”

  Magnus shrugged. “They aren’t really our friends. They have their own agenda. Besides, we’re fugitives from the space force, but we’re not really revolutionaries, are we?”

  “I might change things if I felt I could,” Cilreth said. “I think Telisa would. Though I don’t want to rock the boat just now, if the aliens really are a huge threat.”

  Magnus hurried off but continued talking through his link, knowing the jamming would cut their connection soon. Three scout robots near the camp scampered after him. “Earth and the other core worlds are all stirred up about it, but I think it was just a chance encounter that went bad. But the Earth Defiance has lost. The space force all but mopped them up years ago.”

  “Propaganda? Maybe the war is still going on.”

  “Well, not from where I was sitting,” Magnus pointed out. “But I suppose there could have been more of them out on the frontier than the force let me know about.”

  “Shiny knows what it’s like when an alien race comes for your home planet. We can’t let that happen to Earth. Or any core world. If the UED is still in action, we can’t join them now.”

  The aliens will always be out there. I hope that doesn’t mean we have to live with an oppressive government forever. “We can talk about it when we join back up with Telisa.”

  “Possible workarounds, countermeasures, antidotes to apply. Implementing solutions now,” Shiny’s voice interrupted on a new channel. His voice was of obviously lower quality in the transmission.

  Magnus halted just within range of Cilreth.

  “Shiny. Take over the scout robots if you can contact them. Coordinate a defense with them. Telisa is missing. I’m going to find her,” he rattled off.

  “Cannot contact Telisa. Caution advised. There is…” Shiny broke up. “…Trilisk technology involved.”

  “Repeat,” Magnus asked, but he lost the connection. Classic. A warning so fragmented it is unusable other than to inspire fear.

  “It’s a good sign he could reach us at all,” Cilreth said. “If anyone can defeat the jamming, it has to be Shiny. Just find Telisa.”

  “I should not have separated from her,” Magnus said, resuming his departure. He encountered a communications repeater service up ahead. “This repeater is ours?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, sorry, I forgot about the breadcrumbs. We have them out all the way to the building. She’s still alive,” Cilreth continued. “She has a lot of alien toys, remember? She’s just too naive. Shiny could be dangerous, too. Telisa is too young to have felt enough sting from betrayal or double-crossing to think of it seriously.”

  Magnus accessed the breadcrumb’s service and joined the chain. “Yes. But her youth brings a lot to the team. I like being around her.” Of course, I love her. Why do I hesitate to say that in front of Cilreth?

  “You like that young bod,” Cilreth prodded.

  “It’s more than that. She keeps us enthusiastic, injects optimism and energy. Being around young people reminds you of the hopeful side of things.”

  “Then maybe we need some more. Just three of us…”

  “Yes. I’m working on that. But it’s on the back burner. After this expedition, we should at least double the size of our team. That would give each of us a new protégé to teach. If you’re not in this area, we’ll head back to the ship. Most likely Shiny will have defeated the jamming before then, anyway.”

  “Okay. Be careful, Magnus. Bring her back.”

  Magnus increased his pace. He didn’t want to be winded when he arrived, but he could make good time without undue fatigue. The lack of sleep might become more of an issue. He had his suit dispense a stimulant into his bloodstream. Then he followed a map toward the location Cilreth had provided. The breadcrumb devices verified his route.

  Very useful little things during a communications blackout.

  He found a hole in the wall of a building close to the spot. The chips of the wall next to a removed grille were a slightly different color of red than the surface of the wall or the rocks below, so they had probably been made recently.

  They came in this way.

  Magnus turned on a light, clipped it to his rifle, and dove through the hole.

  I need to find Telisa…alive.

  Chapter 13

  Arakaki moved slowly across the ruins after the Konuan.

  She didn’t have any delusions about who hunted whom. The Konuan was letting her follow. It wanted to lure her out away from her friends, her Guardians, and her probes. It planned to ambush and kill her just as it had done to so many of her fellow soldiers.

  I’m coming, you bastard.

  Arakaki checked her PAW for the tenth time. Its self-diagnostic reported optimal. The laser at her hip verified at full charge over her link. All her grenades checked in, including the one around her throat. The UED probe takin
g up the rear thirty meters behind her monitored the area. It reported another sensor ghost near a larger building ahead.

  So this is the spot for your trap. Fine.

  It had steadily led her across half the city, going toward the area occupied by the newcomers and their tiny robots. Arakaki figured the Konuan must be hunting them as well. At least she hoped it was. Anything to distract its predation of the UED unit would be a welcome break.

  Or so I tell myself. Have I grown so used to it being out there, hunting, that I would miss it? Miss my chances to kill it or die trying?

  She chomped down painfully on the sliver in her mouth. The tiny fragment was so tough she could gnaw on it for decades without accomplishing anything but wearing her teeth.

  Arakaki dropped the self-analysis and walked toward the building.

  “Captain Arakaki, report,” Holtzclaw ordered over the link.

  “I’m pursuing the Konuan,” she said. She half expected to be chewed out for calling for fire support, or to be pulled away for another remote pickup. But Holtzclaw had something completely different cooking.

  “Good. Keep on it. Keep that thing away from camp. I’ve pulled a lot of men and probes to go after the science ship east of the ruins. Our tech team is vulnerable in the back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That suited Arakaki. She was seldom so happy to have to obey. Especially since she had given up all hope for the war. She had contemplated desertion several times, but…where would she go? What would she do without him? And here, she had the creature to hunt.

  In another five minutes she saw the first face of the structure. Like all the other clusters of Konuan living chambers, it was a hodgepodge of square cells heaped one upon another three or four layers above ground. There was often one layer under the surface as well, and below that, Trilisk tunnels.

  There was a hole in the side of the building. Arakaki looked at the roof and clusters of plants nearby. She didn’t sense any danger. Neither did the probe trailing her. She padded over to the opening.

  Arakaki checked the rocky ground. There was no dirt to hold any prints, but the red coating on the rocks became darker if their surface was recently scuffed or struck. The rocks around the entrance held a lot of evidence of movement through the area. She spotted some wide scuffmarks—Terrans’—as well as the smaller pick holes caused by the spider legs of their little robots.

  Who are these people? Scouts? Scientists? Why are there so few of them? They said the ship was huge.

  The UED soldier knelt beside the entry point. She listened and scanned. Her weapon picked up a power signature. A machine. It could be a piece of equipment or a robot. It wasn’t moving though.

  They left something behind here. Maybe some poor sucker was carrying something, the Konuan got him, and he dropped whatever he was carrying.

  Her curiosity had been awakened. A Konuan trap? Unlikely. It had never used such tactics before, at least not that anyone had survived to report. The creature was always certain to destroy the link in its victim. It was scary to think it knew that would limit their knowledge of it.

  Arakaki dropped to the ground. Her dark gray battle suit protected her from the cold, hard stone. She crawled forward, weapon first, toward the hole left by the pulled grille. The probe covered her back. She hoped it would be enough warning if the Konuan darted in from behind to attack her.

  She saw it. A silvery metal ant the size of a large dog. It stood near the center of a room filled with rusted strips of metal hanging from walls and ceiling.

  The machine turned toward her. There was a split second where she had the choice to fire first. She decided against it. Some part of her knew instantly that her target was the Konuan, not these odd robots.

  The machine didn’t fire at her.

  As I thought. It’s got weapons, but not for me.

  Then she scolded herself slightly. If the machine had shot a glue grenade at her, she could have been pinned here like food on a dinner plate awaiting the Konuan’s pleasure.

  But of course I have the ace up my sleeve…or around my neck.

  “So, you’re not going to shoot me?” she said quietly. She left her weapon aimed at the machine and slid forward through the low portal. The floor inside was a bit below ground level. She regained her footing.

  The machine turned back toward one of the other openings and froze. Arakaki gave the room a once-over. She didn’t see anything Terran looking except the robot. It was definitely responsible for the power signature: the machine had a lot of juice. At its current output, Arakaki doubted it could go for more than a few hours.

  Arakaki’s own weapon angled toward the same doorway the machine covered.

  Do we have company?

  Her weapon didn’t see any other targets. The probe trailing Arakaki sidled up outside the building. It was a tall cylinder about a quarter of a meter in diameter adorned with countless ports, sensors, and sampling equipment. The machine gently hovered outside, then settled onto the red rocks to save energy. It wouldn’t go through the doorway by itself, even though it could theoretically fit through if turned on its side. The machine could only hover in an upright position, so Arakaki would have to lug it through herself if she wanted it inside the building. Even if she were willing to make that investment, it would have to be repeated for every new room. She left the probe outside. It could still pick up a lot through the walls of the Konuan ruin, since it had extremely sensitive sonic sensors and radiation scanners.

  Whoever owns the bug here knows I’ve arrived. Unless the Konuan already got them.

  Only one of the grilles in the room had been opened. So if one of the scientists had been here, they went that way, or they went to a lot of trouble to make it look that way.

  Just to be sure, Arakaki checked the other grilles. With her weapon ready, she pulled on them one at a time and examined them for signs of tampering. The other exits looked solid, and she didn’t find any signs of the Konuan. The probe outside told her the adjacent rooms were clear.

  Which proves almost nothing, she thought to herself. She prepared to slide through the grille hole into the next room straight ahead.

  Arakaki stole a glance back at the bug. The machine didn’t move.

  “Guarding the door, huh? Good luck with that,” Arakaki murmured. She turned back to the room. She saw silvery webs of metal gleaming on the walls.

  What the hell?

  Arakaki grabbed a grenade as she stared for a couple seconds, trying to figure out what the structures were. She saw the flash of a furry, umbrella-shaped body flitting away like a squid swimming through the air. At the same moment the probe notified her link of a reading. She didn’t hesitate. She tossed her incendiary grenade to the ground and gave it a destination in the adjacent chamber to her left.

  It’s too fast. I’ll aim where it isn’t.

  The grenade whirred through the grille and into the side room. There, it took the next right and rolled through another grille.

  Blam! Blam!

  Arakaki sent a couple of rounds from her PAW straight ahead to run the creature toward her seeker grenade coming in from the side. The thing might well go in another direction, but she had to try.

  A massive flower of flame erupted from the grille opening. A redundant detonation report from the grenade arrived at her link. She stepped aside a bit late. Her face burned. Then just as quickly as the heat had come, it dissipated.

  The summary result was target grazed. The grenade’s computer brain, at least, believed in its last instant of existence it would slightly damage the enemy. Arakaki had set all her weapons slightly on the “trigger happy” side, knowing the Konuan was a fast and resourceful target.

  Her probe lost track of the creature again. But Arakaki felt sure it wasn’t dead.

  No, I didn’t get it. This is just the beginning.

  Chapter 14

  Telisa’s consciousness resumed.

  Something is very, very wrong.

  Her link did not respond.
Her surroundings were dim. Small spots of light floated randomly about the room. Her eyesight failed her in the darkness, but she could smell the rock walls and she could hear air moving through the grilles nearby. These clues brought her to the conclusion: she was inside one of the cube-shaped Konuan rooms.

  She tried to move her head. It didn’t go well. Her head had melted into a flat mass. She took a deep breath. She had no lungs. She only heard a loud rustling.

  What is that? WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

  Telisa tried to stand. She moved forward. She could tell it was moving forward, but she didn’t have two long, strong legs. She had a dozen. A hundred. More.

  Oh, by the Five! I’m one of the banana slugs. This is just a bad dream. It has to be. The technology required—Trilisk. Nononono…

  Telisa paused to calm down. She tried to breathe again. Instead of the familiar feel of air bags expanding in her chest, tiny flaps of flesh—gills?—vibrated beneath her, causing the rustling sound again.

  Can this body even handle distress? I could have the slug equivalent of a heart attack and die. No. Most organisms must be able to handle a bit of fear. Unless I got a damaged or frail body. Just don’t panic.

  Telisa tested her legs. Yes, hundreds of them now. She experimented. She could move just one, if she tried. It was like wiggling a toe. She scratched the rock wall. Despite the tiny victory of control, despair railed through her.

  What am I going to do? It’s not a recording. I’m living this.

  Telisa decided to try and look around. She could only see in four small, hand-sized spots that roved about the room. It was like four small flashlights moving about.

  Wait. I am controlling those with my…arms. My arms are flashlights. Five Entities, hear me!

  The words came to mind of their own accord. When Telisa was scared, really scared, she talked more like her mother, more like she had when she was a little girl. But she was old enough to know now that the only thing getting her out of this predicament was herself or her team. Unless, of course, a Trilisk prayer device was operating within range.