Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt Read online

  Imanol shrugged. “They’re oblivious to us anyway.”

  “They have to deal with the damage,” Siobhan said.

  They spread their attendant spheres so that each of them had five guardians. Telisa checked her laser rifle and pushed through a door. The room beyond was remarkably clean for a Blackvine construct. There were smooth rails along the floor. Giant white cannisters rested at the end of several of the rails. They moved through toward a large hole at the end of the room.

  “No clutter,” Siobhan said. “Very different here.”

  Telisa walked through the tunnel and out into a huge room. The ceiling and the floor held huge roller mechanisms over and under a series of large openings to her left. To her right, intricate machinery extended as far as she could see.

  “It’s like a factory floor,” Siobhan observed.

  “I wonder what gets made here,” Imanol said.

  “A lot of things,” Siobhan said. “This may be a raw material feed here, and most likely it gets directed down the floor there to whatever fabricator needs to consume it. If my assumptions are correct, this place could easily be configured to make a very wide range of hardware.”

  “Your specialty?” asked Telisa. “Study it and learn. But remember we’re here to kill that thing.”

  Several of the large battle drones floated out in the open space between the banks of equipment on the ceiling and floor. Then four of them accelerated suddenly forward, moving farther into the factory.

  A deep hum reverberated through the building. It turned into a staccato vibration accentuated with odd flashes of light flickering across the equipment above.

  Kzap, kzap, kzap, kzap.

  “What the hell?” asked Siobhan.

  “Those battle drones pack some powerful weapons,” Imanol said. “High-energy weapons can affect things like this. If they were shooting at us, we’d be fried already.”

  A new beacon appeared on Telisa’s tactical. The Trilisk. It was less than a quarter of a kilometer away.

  Kablam!

  A new explosion popped loudly. Her Veer suit had to dampen the assault on her ears. The tactical showed her they had lost a battle drone.

  “Head back. That’s an order,” Telisa said.

  Siobhan and Imanol did not move.

  “Come with us,” Siobhan said. “We’re insignificant in this battle.”

  “I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” Telisa said.

  Siobhan made a face. She pulled something off her back. It was the chain lightning gun.

  “Me too,” she said. She looked at Imanol.

  “Don’t look at me!” he said. “Just my laser rifle.”

  Telisa took her stealth sphere out of her pack and tossed it to Imanol. “Then you’ll need to get close. Just remember, Shiny said we should let the battle drones tire it out or kill it first. We’re just the last line.”

  “We probably shouldn’t be talking strategy and trading toys on the battlefield,” Imanol pointed out.

  “Spread out across the back and stay behind the battle drones,” Telisa said across her link. She was all business again, and her tone brooked no dissent. She pointed down the floor. Siobhan and Imanol moved down the side of the room next to the raw material portals. Siobhan stayed in the center, and Imanol continued to the far side.

  Krump!

  Another explosion sounded down the floor, maybe a quarter a kilometer away.

  “Imanol, activate the stealth sphere. Siobhan, if you get a shot, take it. Don’t worry about collateral damage.”

  Telisa loped forward aggressively. She wanted to be ahead of her friends.

  Maybe I can make a difference. And if not, I don’t want to live without Magnus, anyway.

  She checked her energy packs at her waist. The rifle could use an entire energy pack in a single shot, and that was how it was currently configured. If she had a chance, she would reload and drain the next, and the next.

  In a moment of inspiration, she took the breaker claw out of her pack and affixed it to an accessory slot on her rifle. Together with the link adapter she had for the weapon, she could now fire both at the same time, though the laser rifle had a much better range.

  As tight as things are in this factory, chances are if I can see the Trilisk, I can let him have it with both at once.

  Telisa was even with the rearmost battle drone. She saw Siobhan had ignored her urging and kept up with her. Imanol was off the tactical, meaning he had gone invisible. That might mean he had gone far forward as well, even though Imanol usually displayed healthy caution.

  What happened to the team discipline? If we survive I need to think on this.

  She stopped running forward and took up a position behind some heavy metal equipment. The beacon representing the Trilisk moved back and forth laterally along the floor ahead. Another battle drone dropped from the display. Sparks flew across the equipment next to her, but her Veer suit protected her. She stood back from it a bit and then advanced to the next line of equipment.

  Movement caught her eye above. Her rifle came up immediately. A long line of soldier robots marched along the ceiling toward the Trilisk. A couple of them fired weapons as she watched.

  Wait. Just wait. Let it fight everything else first.

  Kzap. Kaboom. Krumpf.

  It was clear the battle drones were losing. Two dropped from Telisa’s internal view at once. Siobhan must have come to the same conclusion. Her beacon on the tactical moved forward again.

  “Don’t shoot yet, no point in destroying the last of our own drones,” Telisa transmitted.

  Krumpf.

  But as she looked at the tactical, she realized they had lost so many that only one was left. As the last battle drone died, Siobhan’s beacon showed her running forward again. Telisa did the same. From the center of the factory, a huge display of fire and light expanded to light up everything around Telisa.

  Fooom.

  She saw the distinct lightning-like trails spreading out across the open spaces above her.

  “Did you get it?” Telisa asked.

  Telisa’s link dropped its connection to Siobhan before any answer came.

  “Siobhan?”

  “What’s up?” Imanol asked.

  “I lost Siobhan,” Telisa said. Her voice was laced with dismay.

  I’m going to lose more friends.

  Telisa put herself back together. “Wait, how can I hear you?”

  Imanol said nothing. Telisa’s link had no connection to Imanol now, either.

  Are they dead? Or did he just turn the stealth sphere back on? Am I next?

  The possibility did not scare her much. Not anymore. But she wanted to kill the Trilisk if she could.

  Telisa turned back in toward the center, closer to the Trilisk beacon.

  Bang. Blam.

  She heard the pop of a few soldier grenade launchers across the factory. She held her laser rifle ready. The weapon could swivel its projector five degrees in any direction in a few hundredths of a second, helping her aim.

  It was not far to the factory’s center. If Imanol and Siobhan had died just a few meters away, what hope did she have?

  She looked back the way they had come, looking for Siobhan. She saw nothing. But there was a shape on the floor in the other direction. She dropped low and crept forward several meters. She allowed her attendants to peek around nearby obstacles. She watched their feeds carefully. Still nothing.

  She moved another few meters by the equipment around her and came to a new section. An object ahead resolved. It was a Terran body lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Telisa felt another spike of loss through her heart. Another person dead. Who was it this time?

  It was Holtzclaw. Telisa felt relief.

  Five Entities! Where’s the—

  A three-legged, three-armed machine strode out from behind a wall covered in Blackvine equipment. It looked just like the relic they had found on Chigran Callnir.

  The Five!

  “I recently left that f
orm and no longer have need of it,” the Trilisk machine said directly to her link. “This body is so much more durable. You have no hope to harm me in it.”

  Telisa tried to line up the laser rifle, tried to activate it, but suddenly she could no longer move. Her attendant spheres dropped to the floor, dead.

  “Your choice of weapon earlier was a good one. The ‘chain lightning gun’ as you call it. I’m familiar with the race that made that weapon. They were more advanced than Terra is… yet.”

  The machine rotated clockwise, bringing a different facing of its pyramidal body into view. She saw nothing that looked like Terran eyes—just a flat black plate that might have been an optical receiver.

  “What do you want? Are you going to kill me or not?”

  “I might. Your race is nothing but a tool to use. I think of your entire race as you might view a quick suture or a radiocarbon dater. We’re forging a hundred races across the galaxy to strike back against our enemies. Including yours. As you suspect, we control Terra. You’re cannon fodder to be dashed against my enemies.”

  “You exaggerate,” Telisa said.

  The robot turned again. It was an odd movement, starting with the three legs each finding a new footing in succession, then the entire body rotated even with them again. Telisa got the distinct impression it could regard her comfortably from any side.

  “Ask your ally, Shiny. His race was inherently too fragmented to control efficiently. The Bel Klaven, on the other hand, proved very amenable to a concentration of power that make them an attractive tool for my kind.”

  Telisa felt her last bit of deep respect for the Trilisks melt away. They had accomplished great things, true, but were they actually a great race?

  I will kill this creature no matter what it takes. I have to.

  It rotated yet again.

  “You want to attack me? Go ahead. Your laser can’t hurt me. Instead, you should fly away, little insect,” the voice said. “Fly away across the stars and live your miserable life. Bother us again, and we’ll just smash you.”

  Telisa felt her limbs return to her command. She trained her laser rifle on the robot and activated both her weapons with her link. The rifle discharged its entire energy supply into the target. The breaker claw locked onto the Trilisk at the same moment. Nothing happened for another second.

  Kaboom!

  The Trilisk robot exploded. A blast of force knocked her back. She flew across the factory floor and struck a piece of equipment. Somewhere along her arc she lost the rifle, but it was useless anyway. Something hit her left eye. Her vision on that side abruptly failed.

  Telisa was not sure how long it was before she moved again. She struggled to peer through her remaining eye. She looked back to where she had stood, stunned. The floor seemed uneven. She wobbled her head to correct. A massive headache assailed her.

  Siobhan limped into view.

  “You’re alive,” she said. “Your eye—” her breath caught.

  Telisa tried to speak, but it just came out as mumbling.

  “Just rest now,” Siobhan said. “I’ll get you out of here. Imanol’s hurt, but he’ll make it.”

  Telisa fell back into blackness.

  Epilogue

  There would be no ritual to honor the dead. If Magnus or Arakaki had been present, they might well have demanded some ceremony like those they had used in the UNSF or the UED. As it was, the survivors felt they needed no formalities to grieve for their lost friends. Telisa had retreated to her quarters in isolation to absorb the events and come to terms with her losses. She suspected Caden had done the same, though she did not have the will to check.

  The Cilreths felt the same sadness. They sent Telisa steady reports even though she never answered them. They half-heartedly set the automated forces inside the habitat to collecting data about the Blackvines and their technology. But rather than analyze that information, they chose to keep working on the Vovokan technologies of the Clacker. Maxsym took it upon himself to study the Blackvines’ technology as well as their physiology.

  Siobhan was different, or at least she pretended to be. She kept Telisa updated via indirect communication since Telisa refused all live connections. Siobhan seemed to spend little time thinking about death. Perhaps that was a requirement for a daredevil. Instead, she reined in the soldiers so they would not combat the growing patrols of Blackvine weapons, and she took stock of the hybrid Terran-Vovokan machines. She expanded upon Magnus’s plans to break off a separate model for the worker type and further specialized the designs of scout and soldier. Once she found the production facilities of the Clacker, she was hooked, and she flooded the Cilreths with questions about the software they used.

  Days later Telisa emerged from her room and moved about the ship. She looked tired, older. She had put a patch on her face to hide the ruin of her eye so the others would not have to see it. Cilreth had left her a scolding message about leaving it to heal without surgery, but Telisa had ignored her. She had applied only minimal field dressing and patching agents by herself. Telisa knew she could have a new eye built or grown whenever she was ready.

  Siobhan and the Cilreths carefully approached her in the group mess. Telisa was already contacting their alien friend. She spoke aloud and left he channel open so they could follow the conversation.

  “Shiny, we need to discuss a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Ready, attentive, listening.”

  “The Trilisk told me they control the Terran government. They said they could not control your race, so they took the Bel Klaven instead. We need to free my people from the Trilisk control. It said my race is being grown to threaten the Trilisk’s ancient enemies. It said we were nothing more than tools to its kind.”

  Shiny did not reply, so Telisa continued.

  “I propose we go back to Earth and remove the Trilisks from control there. Humanity will owe you a huge debt. You can collect resources, knowledge, even the Trilisk war loot. This is big. We can repay you, but only once we’re free.”

  “Trilisks on Earth may control, command, utilize full range of Trilisk capabilities,” Shiny said. “Possibility exists Terran faction not as weak, wounded, destitute as individual hunted here.”

  As weak, he says. That thing we could barely hurt was weak by Trilisk standards, Telisa thought. Hopelessness threatened to overtake her again as it had countless times since Magnus died. She hid the weakness and continued.

  “I think there are only a few of them. The war with the methane breathers has brought them low. The Trilisks aren’t godlike as they once were. I know resentment exists across most of the Terran worlds against the UN. Between the masses of Terrans and the AI and your Vovokan technology, and… the remaining PIT team members, we should be able to kick them out—if we have a good plan. We have to learn from this defeat.”

  “Proposal requires consideration in entirety, depth, full.”

  “Thank you, Shiny.”

  “I can’t rebel against the UN!” Caden blurted. “I’m supposed to be on the space force!”

  Telisa turned to see Caden enter the room. She suspected Siobhan had alerted him to the topic under discussion before he arrived.

  “The UN is controlled by Trilisks,” Telisa said. “They don’t represent our race anymore. And even if they did, they’ve grown drunk on power. We’re nothing to them.”

  “Sign me up for getting rid of the Trilisks, but we have to put the Terrans in the UN back in control,” Caden said.

  “And what about the ones who worked with the Trilisks? What if there are some who knew about it and helped them?” asked Cilreth.

  “Then they’re traitors and should be charged with treason,” Caden said.

  “Okay. And how about the ones who knew about the Trilisks but did nothing?”

  “They would have done something.”

  “Bzzzzt. No way,” Siobhan said. “There are many people who won’t stand up for themselves or even all of the core worlds if it means personal sacrifice. Trust
me, if any humans at all know about the Trilisks, chances are good some of them caved and stood by, even though they didn’t really want to help.”

  “Do truth checks on them then,” Caden said. “If they really feared for their lives, then… we’ll kick them out of the government but let them go free. Actually, the new government should decide what to do with the traitors, not me.” Caden’s voice had started to lose its conviction.

  “We have to empower a new government free of Trilisk intervention,” Telisa said. “That means we’ll have to take a hand in weeding out the traitors to make sure they don’t have a chance to grab power in the vacuum. And there will be a huge vacuum, since we’re not grabbing the reins ourselves. And these problems go on and on. You probably noticed Cilreth was providing you with steadily more difficult moral dilemmas. The next one is, what do you do with people who didn’t want to help the Trilisks, didn’t fear for their lives, but did nothing because it would cost them money? Or power?”

  “I’d have to think it over.”

  “Good. Good. Then start thinking. I’ll want your input if you decide to stay in with us on it. You might not do anything more important in your life.”

  Caden nodded. “I’ll find Maxsym and tell him.”

  “Go ahead. I know Maxsym and Imanol aren’t fans of the UN either,” Telisa said.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Siobhan said. “We had a new eye made for you. Whenever you’re ready.”

  Telisa nodded. “Thanks.”

  Caden and Siobhan left together. They were eager to talk about the plan between themselves.

  They’ll come to see we have no choice. Even if we think it’s hopeless. We can’t sit by and just let Terra be hurled into war against some foe we’ve never even heard of.

  “What now?” Cilreth asked. Telisa did not know which Cilreth it was who spoke.

  “Now we see if we can discover more useful things here before we leave the Blackvines alone.”

  “And then?”

  Telisa answered with a pointer to a file. Cilreth accessed it.

  “Are you kidding me? The Orwell Papers?”

  Telisa’s look told her the answer.

  “Tell Shiny we’re going to need more ships,” Cilreth said.