Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt Read online

  “This was created by the UED,” Arakaki said.

  “Five Entities!” Telisa said.

  Magnus was surprised, too. “And it’s real?” he asked.

  “As far as I know, the analysis is accurate,” Arakaki said. “The UED released it hoping for some help from within the core worlds.”

  “Good. We can use the leadership analysis, even if the rest of it is no longer usable,” Telisa said.

  “And what if these individuals are actually immortal Trilisks in the bodies of Terrans?” asked Arakaki.

  “Then it’s even more important to take them down.”

  “And it will also be almost impossible to do so,” Magnus said. “I agree with where you’re headed. And I applaud it. Someone has to do something. I’m just saying, we need to know if they are Trilisks first, in my opinion.”

  “I said we’re working on it. Add your time to the effort.”

  “Okay. That’s something. But we have a shorter-term decision to make now, and it’s exactly the kind of hard decisions that have to be made if we want to tackle the world government. What are we going to do with this guy? He’s just a foot soldier in the grand scheme. An expendable spy sent here to gather information.”

  “Brainstorm choices first, then choose,” Telisa said.

  “We can space him. Literally. If we go after the UNSF, then people will die. We can let him go. We can incarcerate him. I don’t see much else.”

  “Drop him at that dive where the UED survivors went?” asked Telisa.

  “No way,” Arakaki said. “They might talk. We’d be putting them in danger as well as ourselves.”

  “We could suspend him in a Trilisk column. Just as my body was,” Telisa said.

  “A sidestep,” Arakaki said.

  “Yes. I admit it. I’m not ready to start killing left and right. But I’m coming to see that I have to be willing to make life-and-death decisions like this if I’m going to effect the change I used to daydream about. And now I’m starting to daydream about just giving it up and living my own life. I don’t know if I have it in me. Yet I think about the total cost of the oppression as it goes on year after year. Is it worth killing to end that?” Telisa threw up her hands. “Only the Five Entities know.”

  “Arakaki thinks it’s worth it. Even after serving on the losing end of the war.”

  “Yes,” Arakaki said. “You guys weren’t kidding when you said they wanted you. How did I just skip from one UED camp to the next?”

  “We’re not so much the U for united as the ED for Earth Defiance,” Telisa said. She traded looks with Magnus. “Not yet.”

  Arakaki raised an eyebrow. “You could make a go of it. My old unit was washed up. But this outfit has tech. Lots of it. Power. You could do it.”

  Telisa looked at Arakaki. “You lost friends… more?”

  Arakaki nodded. “But they were in the cause. They were willing to lose their lives for it.”

  “Innocents would die, too.”

  “Maybe. The UNSF has trampled a lot of innocents themselves, no doubt about it. You just never get to hear about them.”

  “Okay. I’m going to put this guy into stasis for now,” Telisa said. “I should hear Cilreth’s opinion, too.”

  “What about the other recruits?”

  “That’s the last one. The others are all clean. Lonrack, McCollum, Cutter, Kirolenko.”

  “Okay then, let’s get to work,” Arakaki said. “Are we gonna split up the new meat or do we get to share?”

  Telisa winced. “Both. We’ll each have all of them for an hour or two each day, but they each get a personal mentor for anything that falls through the cracks.”

  “Magnus takes the girl,” Arakaki said. “I hate girls. Present company excepted.”

  Telisa shrugged. “Duly noted,” she said. “Okay, Magnus takes Cutter. Pick one.”

  “Caden Lonrack,” Arakaki said quickly.

  Of course. The handsome young leader of the pack. Blood Glades champion and all-around wholesome Terran boy.

  Telisa did a quick mental calculation. McCollum was abrasive while thoroughly competent. Kirolenko was sharp, but on the lazy side.

  Which one do I want?

  “I’d like McCollum,” Magnus said. “I’ll give you Cutter, unless you don’t want her.”

  Telisa took the out. “Yes, give me Cutter then.”

  “Cilreth gets Kirolenko. I’ll let her know.”

  “There’s a slight issue with Lonrack,” Magnus said. “He idolizes the space force. He checked out with Shiny, and he’s okay with working for us in a gray area of the law, but if we end up more directly at odds with the UNSF, it could become a problem.”

  “Thanks for letting me know,” Arakaki said. “I’ll keep that in mind and see if I can bring him around.”

  “I think half the reason he said yes is because we’re all packing weapons,” Telisa added.

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Arakaki said. “We need a few fighters, if what I’ve heard about your other missions is true.”

  “Let’s apologize and give them our real names. We’ll explain why we did that and hope they think this stuff is as cool as we do.”

  “Oh, they will,” Magnus said.

  Chapter 6

  The next day, Arakaki met up with the recruits in one of the Clacker’s amazing mess halls and started building a team out of them. Telisa and Magnus had at least come clean with the four of them and persuaded them to stay and learn what being a member of PIT would be like. None of them had committed to anything long term.

  “Today let’s start pure virtual,” she told them in a wide-open room of the Clacker. “Very basic. Just a warmup to see what you can do. There’s a simple warehouse, Earth gravity, at night. One of your friends has been taken hostage by a frontier gang. You go in there and get your friend out. I’ll show you what he looks like. Normally, you’ll get to plan your own approach, and you’ll likely have some fun hardware. For now, though, you have only basic weapons, and it’s pretty straightforward. The interior plan will change with each attempt.”

  “We’re practicing military operations? Did you understand that I’m a xenobiologist?” asked Maxsym.

  “Sure I understand,” Arakaki said. “Look, this is a team-building exercise. It also lets me see your aptitudes. If you don’t show any combat aptitude, it doesn’t mean we don’t want you. As you said, you have other skillsets. As far as the real missions, there you’ll end up in combat only if we can’t avoid it. Suppose you’re out there on an unexplored planet with us, studying an amazing new life form. We might be attacked by someone else on the frontier.”

  Best if you know what you’re doing, just in case, Arakaki thought.

  Arakaki gave them a generated face to attach to their friend and ran the simulation. She set herself up as an invisible observer to watch them. The team assembled within her virtual world. They wore dark clothing and held projectile carbines in their hands. Each had a pistol and a knife at their belt.

  “For purposes of this exercise, assume a remote team member has neutralized their automated defenses. You may assume their security sensor arrays as well as any connected hardware have been rendered inert. Caden, as a Glades champ, you should be familiar with this sort of thing, so take the team lead to start out,” Arakaki instructed.

  The four moved down a dark street on some fictitious colony world. They got their first look at the warehouse from a distance. It was all metal struts and carbon panels, rising as high as a three-story building above them, nestled in a district of other warehouses and dock buildings.

  “Okay then,” Caden said. “Identify all the entrances. Siobhan with me. You two go around the other direction. Then we’ll all go in at the single entrance we choose.”

  Imanol nodded and led Maxsym around the building. They kept a good distance, in the shadows of a nearby structure. Imanol hid his carbine under his jacket.

  “They’re probably taking video of the area so hide your weapons and act like we�
�re lost,” Imanol said to everyone over his link. “Just some people who took a wrong turn trying to find a party,” he said.

  Arakaki could tell Imanol had done some security work. Maxsym was getting points for trying, at least. As she had said, the warehouse had no external surveillance active for this first trial, but his advice did not hurt. Everything would be almost as easy as it could get. Caden did not challenge the advice or seem to mind it.

  Arakaki flipped her attention back to Caden. She smiled. The boy moved like a jungle cat. Siobhan looked amateur next to him, though to be fair, she was not doing poorly. In fact, she did better than Arakaki expected for an automation specialist.

  Siobhan looks more suited to this than Maxsym, though.

  She watched as the team found three entrances. There were others, a locked door on the top, broken windows on the sides well above ground level, and a sewer entrance, but she did not expect them to find those, and Caden was not trying. He knew his team could realistically only enter from the ground floor given their limited equipment and training. Caden chose the most obscure ground-level entrance, a stained metal door around on the side away from the street. It was locked, but not part of a security system this time. Arakaki knew that when she started dialing up the difficulty, that would no longer be the case.

  When they forced the door, the program tested to see if their entrance was detected. On the lax settings, nothing happened. The group had made it into the building unnoticed. Caden led the way in, hiding among a row of quiescent cargo moving robots. Sounds of other loading robots working filtered through the dark, damp warehouse.

  “We need to find an office or some other smaller room where they’d keep a prisoner,” Caden said over his link. “We’ll proceed to the northeast corner, you two to the northwest corner just over there. Hopefully we’ll be able to see the length of the warehouse and spot the office. If we don’t, we can assume it’s by the southwest where the cargo road comes in.”

  Caden and Siobhan made good time toward the northeast corner. The concrete below their feet was cracked and wet. The lights far above shone in the wet surfaces around them. Caden took a deep sniff.

  “Damn, this is a high quality sim,” he muttered to himself. Arakaki was probably the only one who heard him. She smiled.

  That’s because it’s running on the Clacker.

  Imanol and Maxsym moved more slowly to their corner, which was much closer.

  “I can see halfway through the warehouse from here,” Imanol transmitted, peeking around a support beam. “The obstruction is structural; no sign of the office.”

  “Okay, hold,” Caden said.

  The office was about sixty meters down on Caden and Siobhan’s side, nestled against the mirror image of the central supporting strut of the building’s ceiling that Imanol had referred to on their side.

  “We have it in sight,” Caden said. “Come back over to our corner. Carefully. There may be a patrol. Just stay undercover and keep quiet.”

  The explicit micromanagement made Arakaki wince internally, but she knew with Maxsym on her team and one of her friends hostage, she’d say the same thing. Once Maxsym found his legs, there would be no need for such babysitting.

  “The office is raised above the floor. Double sets of stairs. I see two men hanging out up there. Both armed,” Caden summarized. When Imanol and Maxsym arrived, Caden was ready.

  “We can approach half this distance without being spotted. Then we assault. But first we have to cover. I saw a guard walking around the perimeter. Follow me,” he said. The team moved forward two rows and hid behind a group of huge plastic crates. They crouched there in the shadows until a guard had passed on the walkway above.

  “Why do they have human guards instead of machines?” Siobhan asked.

  “To make the test easier,” Imanol answered. “Though sometimes, gangs don’t use machines because of the extra hassle with the government. I would expect dirt-simple, hard-to-hack, non-logging electronic sensors and security devices.”

  “Neutralized, remember?” Caden said. “May we proceed?” Arakaki smiled to herself.

  Caden did not wait for an answer. He led the way forward. Up ahead, the team approached the core of the gang who had captured their friend. Arakaki knew there were five armed men here by the prisoner. Two combatants patrolled the building, and two more guarded the main entrance.

  Caden took a quick look from their hidden position.

  “There’s our friend,” he guessed. He indicated a lit room behind the two men. “Either that, or it’s a trap for us.”

  “What now?” asked Imanol.

  “Cover me,” Caden urged. He flew into action like a machine.

  Snap, snap.

  He fired two shots with his carbine, killing both of the gang members above. The sound of the compact weapon was not loud, yet the distinct sound carried in the warehouse. He rolled forward to the cover of a crate on the right and then fell prone beside it. When two enemies moved to flank them from the side of the office, he picked them off calmly and efficiently.

  Snap, snap.

  Four down, and the others have barely had time to shit their pants! He’s good. Damn good. Blood Glades champ all right.

  Once Imanol realized Caden had taken a forward position, he started to fire steadily to cover for him. Maxsym did the same, but he spent more time covering and less time shooting.

  Snick, snick, snick… snap.

  I know that type. He doesn’t have the stomach for it, not really. Push comes to shove, he’ll probably fold. At least he knows it.

  Siobhan moved to the left, trying to flank the enemy on the other side. But she had not told the others where she was headed. A guard ran along the walkway, headed toward the office. She fired at him once, twice, missing each time. The guard aimed to return fire. Siobhan let her weapon lock on and shot one more time. The man fell just before he could shoot.

  Meanwhile, Maxsym’s head appeared over his cover, and he loosed a shot toward Siobhan. But she had already moved under cover, so the round could not hit even though it had locked on.

  “I’m going in,” Caden transmitted, but he was already in the office. He opened a door then moved aside, allowing rounds to fly through the opening, but he was not in the line of fire. He returned fire through the flimsy wall, then ran by the door to get a look.

  Hrm. He could have hit his friend, there. Though I see his rounds were angled downward. A bit risky.

  Caden had an idea of the room beyond and had seen his friend. Now he fired more quickly, stitching rounds through the front part of the office away from the prisoner.

  Snap… snap, snap, snap.

  Out in the warehouse, Imanol had foreseen the arrival of more gang members from the front. He shot one as the man passed his hiding spot. Maxsym exchanged fire with the second. Maxsym was on the wrong side of his crate, still covering from the office but not the man coming in from the front of the warehouse.

  Riiiiiiiip!

  One of the guards let off a long burst of high velocity rounds. Maxsym was sitting with his back against a crate, making a small target. It saved him, allowing him to hit the attacker with a round first.

  That would not go well on real settings, but you have to start somewhere, Arakaki thought.

  Caden moved into the prisoner’s room. He kept his weapon raised and moved sideways along a wall toward the prisoner, who was secured to a chair. A gang member popped up from behind a desk, weapon in hand.

  Snap! Snap!

  Caden shot her through the head before she was even ten centimeters above the desk.

  Caden shifted his weapon and then checked himself quickly when he saw Siobhan enter from the far side. She started.

  “I didn’t know you made it this far,” he explained.

  “I’m in,” she reported late. “We’re untying our friend. We just need to get out,” she sent to the team.

  “How many down?” Caden asked the team.

  “I got one,” Siobhan said.

/>   “I got two,” Imanol said.

  “Me too,” said Maxsym. “I mean, I got one.”

  “Let’s head out the back, then, in case reinforcements arrive at the front.”

  They converged under the office. Caden led the team out. The simulation made the remaining combatants very cautious, so they failed to move in on the retreating extraction team. All four made it out alive with the captive.

  That could have been worse, Arakaki thought. She remembered her own first combat simulations. They had been bloodbaths. Of course, Caden was hardly just starting out, and from the looks of it, Imanol and Siobhan had experience too. Either real or simulated.

  Arakaki cut the sim.

  “All alive. Good enough,” she said. “Lonrack. You did well. Siobhan, I liked your flank, but Maxsym just about shot you when you appeared way out in left field. You guys have to be aware of each other. Usually that’s achieved with link chatter until the team is highly trained, then you just become aware of each other’s video feeds by instinct. We’ll work on it. Imanol, good anticipation. You knew more gang members would come in from the front when combat broke out.” Arakaki shifted her gaze to Maxsym. “Our xenobiologist survived, but just barely. I hope you’re a fast learner.”

  Maxsym nodded. “I haven’t done this kind of simulation since I was a kid. The technology has improved significantly.”

  “The team lacked crisp teamwork. Not surprising for your first time out. I have something to attend to,” Arakaki explained. “Telisa’s going to talk with you about… aliens, I think.”

  “Can I ask what happened to Krellis?” Caden said. “After the interviews, you guys showed us our rooms and everything, and they’re truly awesome, but none of us saw Krellis after that.”

  Arakaki paused. “Krellis washed out,” she said.

  “Wow, that’s surprising,” Siobhan said neutrally. “He wasn’t impressed by all this?”

  “As we said, we intend to convince you to join us. However, in Krellis’s case, well, he was a spy. When we asked him those basic questions we asked all you, he lied. So we don’t want him. The rest of you are all on the level.”