Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt Page 5

  The recruits digested that. Caden was the first to ask the obvious question.

  “Well, who was he spying for?”

  The truth but not the truth, Arakaki told herself.

  “The competition? It doesn’t matter. Our lives are on the line out here sometimes. Everyone has to be playing on the same team. That guy plays for someone else, y’know? We don’t want him. Who knows when he would betray us, any of us—maybe even kill us!”

  Oops. Maxsym looks worried again.

  Arakaki gave them a location pointer back to the mess just in case anyone got confused. “Telisa will meet you back at your mess in about an hour. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  ***

  Arakaki smiled widely as she arrived on a landing platform inside the asteroid Shiny and the PIT team used as a secret base. Like the Clacker, the place was spacious and comfortable. Magnus was there to greet her.

  “I can’t believe this was created by an alien. It’s so Terran.”

  “We made it that way, mostly,” Magnus said. “All you have to do is… imagine it how you want it.”

  “What the…?”

  “Yes. Shiny keeps a Trilisk AI device here, and it listens to… well, I’m not sure what the requirements are. But you envision what you want, and it makes it happen. I’ll explain the limits to you. Nothing complicated, okay? You have to understand things thoroughly. Sometimes Shiny helps us out. But simple metal, carbon, wood, the design of a room, you can handle all these things pretty quickly. You know guns and suits well enough, it will mostly work if you pray some up.”

  “Pray some up,” she echoed. Magnus walked her into a grand atrium of marble and glass filled with images and sculptures of places and people. Several of the statues were of Telisa or Magnus, including a large one in the center of the two in an embrace.

  “This is crazy beautiful.”

  “Try it out. What’s around that corner over there?” he asked.

  “You mean… put something there?”

  “Yes.”

  Arakaki closed her eyes for a minute. Then they walked over to an adjoining room, around the corner.

  A gray Guardian machine stood solidly on the polished marble. It swiveled its primary sensor array to look down at them from above. Four huge spider legs held it high off the floor, with four stubby cannon-bearing arms.

  “Welcome back, Captain,” it said.

  Arakaki giggled like a schoolgirl.

  “Wow, you don’t hold much back, even your first time,” Magnus said. “No people. I mean it. You’ll just create some freaky half-thing that isn’t even close, okay?”

  “Okay. Got it. I know Scorn here well. Repaired him several times.”

  “Chances are, his components aren’t close to spec,” Magnus said. “Unless you’re a cyber block specialist, too.”

  “This is unbelievably awesome!” Arakaki said. “You can make… it’s like being rich?”

  “The advantages of praying up whatever you want. Give it another try. What would you like your personal gym to look like?”

  “Screw that. I’m dreaming up my bedroom first,” Arakaki said.

  “Suit yourself. Put it over here.” Magnus walked her into an unused area of the base. “This whole section can be yours,” Magnus said. “We have a lot of space in this rock.”

  She paused for a few minutes. Magnus let her work. Then she walked through the first door. It opened up into a corridor. She followed it down to the end, passing many doors. Magnus followed her. The corridor split into a small T at the end, with a door in each direction. She turned left and went inside.

  “You seem to know where you want it to be,” Magnus said.

  They entered a large room of perhaps a hundred square meters. Bookcases and cabinets dotted three walls, leaving one wall as a featureless display wall. It showed the lights of a city at night, viewed from great height, as if the room were the penthouse suite of a spacescraper. A huge black bed dominated the far wall. It was only a foot off the floor.

  “Amazing!” Arakaki exclaimed. She walked up and pushed the corner it with her foot. The waterbed rocked into motion.

  “Would you like to… join me?”

  Magnus looked at the vast black bed and smiled.

  “I would definitely take you up on that, Jamie,” Magnus said. “But I’m only with Telisa right now.”

  Yeah, I guess the giant sculpture of you two out in the atrium kind of gives it away.

  “Suit yourself,” Arakaki said. “Caden is next in line, and I doubt he’ll turn me down.”

  Magnus hesitated. Arakaki knew exactly what he was thinking.

  He thinks I’m brewing trouble on the new team.

  “As long as you two can operate without any theatrics on the job. And you might want to wait until he’s affirmed his choice to join us.”

  Arakaki smiled. She was only half serious about Caden. He was just a kid. But maybe he would convince her. He was an exceptional young man.

  “Sure, I’ll put it on the slow burner,” Arakaki said. “I promise.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate that.”

  “So I get to see the secret base. And use the prayer device. That’s nice. But I’m still not in as tight as you three.”

  “You’ll become part of the inner group quickly. Give Telisa and Cilreth some time.”

  “You three pretty much run things, then?” Arakaki asked carefully.

  “It used to be Jack, but he died on Thespera. Almost straight out. I’ve told you we had some trouble when we first met Shiny. Well, he took our leader out almost first thing. There was a space force guy in there mixing things up, which didn’t help,” Magnus said. “By the end of the next expedition, you’ll be included in everything from the start.”

  Arakaki nodded.

  “And when Shiny takes over the whole show, you’ll be just another one of the hapless Terrans like me,” Magnus smiled.

  “He does that sometimes, doesn’t he?”

  “I think he might be dangerous. Yet he’s also the key to most the amazing things we have around here.”

  “I think I’ll stay here for tonight and play around,” she said.

  “Definitely recommended. Remember, only vague details about the base with the new recruits. It’s too soon. I’ll whet their appetite when we get back, since the Clacker is in range of the Trilisk AI. But they won’t see the base until we return from the next expedition.”

  “What next expedition?”

  “Telisa or Shiny will come up with some amazing thing or other we have to go after,” Magnus said.

  “Okay,” Arakaki said, rolling across her bed. “Well, they can take their time. I have a lot of praying to do.”

  ***

  “Several of you have broached the subject of compensation,” Magnus said. “You get a salary. It’s modest, and it exists largely for the purposes of our cover as employees of Parker Interstellar Travel. But the bonus is key. The bonus is: you get pretty much anything you want.”

  The four recruits stared at him, waiting for clarification. They stood in a large cargo hold aboard the Clacker. No one had told the new recruits their position close to their asteroid base, or the secrets it held.

  “I’m going to give you a small illustration of what I mean by that,” Magnus said. He paced in front of four large boxes he had set out before the four recruits. “Be straightforward, imaginative, and honest. If you try to be too cute, you may screw yourself out of something cool.”

  He stopped in front of Siobhan and pointed at the box. “What do you want?”

  “What does the box have to do with this?” she asked carefully, confused.

  “There is something in that box for you. What would you like it to be?”

  “What are the parameters?”

  “I would stick with something morally acceptable to the rest of us,” Magnus advised. “It has to fit in the box,” he added.

  “So the box is not purely symbolic of what you’re promising me after the first expediti
on? It really has to fit in there?”

  “Right.”

  Siobhan tilted her head.

  “You said to be honest, so I guess I’d like a Von Neumann machine,” she said.

  Magnus frowned. “Hrm, morally on the edge there. I guess we can swing that. Caden?”

  Caden answered more quickly.

  “I’d like a collapsible Veer sniper rifle-laser combo. Utterly tricked out.”

  “Maxsym?”

  “Bio-molecular analyzer. DNA sequence sampler. A portable version with the very best onboard analyzing suite and a ton of memory.”

  “Imanol?”

  Imanol hesitated.

  He’s thinking over some kind of cheat. This should be interesting, thought Arakaki.

  “How about just money?”

  “Money exists as data on bank servers. We can’t put it into the box.”

  Imanol licked his lips and tried again.

  “Could it be… rhenium?”

  Magnus nodded.

  “Very well. Open your boxes.”

  They hesitated.

  “They’re all checking their links to see if this is real,” she transmitted to Magnus privately.

  “Ha, yes, of course.”

  Siobhan opened her box. A complex metal spider machine nestled inside.

  “This is… is it really?”

  “Yes,” Magnus said.

  “No way,” Caden said, walking over to peer into Siobhan’s box. Then he eagerly opened his own. “Noooo way!” He picked up the sniper rifle and began to examine it. “This is sooooo slickblack.”

  Arakaki was not aware of the slang, but it did not surprise her, given her isolation in the UED unit and Caden’s recent arrival from a core world.

  “So this is virtual, and we don’t know it,” Siobhan said. “How did you switch us over without us noticing? My link doesn’t think this is virtual.”

  Magnus nodded.

  “That’s a solid guess. And sensible. You’re wrong. This is the real world. At least, as real as it gets. The one we were born in.”

  “That’s impossible,” Caden said.

  “I told you. Your compensation includes a salary. But the kicker is you get what you want. Almost whatever you want. You can’t have your own space fleet. At least, not until you’ve worked with us a while longer,” he said.

  Maxsym opened his box. He took out his analyzer. “Thank you!” he said. “If it’s real, anyway…”

  Imanol had waited until last.

  “If it’s in there, it’s proof this is a virtual environment,” he said. He opened his box. The interior was flush with silvery bars of metal.

  “That’s it! This can’t be real,” he said. “Your alien technology is able to fool our links and us, is all. You switched us virtual without us knowing.” He looked concerned.

  “That’s not the deal, that’s not us,” Arakaki said. “This is real.”

  “It’s time to rethink what can be real and what can’t,” Magnus said. “Advanced alien technology. That’s what we’re here for. This was a demonstration of what it can do.”

  “No. This is a joke for new initiates. A hazing ritual,” Imanol said.

  “Well, stuff it in your quarters for a rainy day then,” Magnus said.

  Imanol felt put off. He expected Magnus to keep trying to convince him.

  He already has this nagging thought: “What if it’s real?” Arakaki thought. She smiled. “It’s real, brother,” she said, slapping Imanol on the shoulder.

  Imanol remained puzzled. The others played with their new toys.

  “Don’t let the Von Neumann device loose on my ship,” Telisa said firmly.

  Chapter 7

  Kirizzo focused on his prayer interface and cleared his considerable mental slate. He provided a simple astronomical map and zeroed in on wanting to gain knowledge.

  Where did the Trilisks spend time near Chigran Callnir system?

  The answer was surprisingly sparse. Less than ten systems were indicated. Did that mean the AI was sheltered from the majority of the answer since it was in operation, or were the Trilisks relatively few and far in between? Or did they all spend their time in just a few places?

  Kirizzo continued to hone in on his queries. He added the sites of known Trilisk ruins to the map. Many of them overlapped. That was good.

  How did the Trilisks travel?

  A huge surge of data flowed. Errors erupted. Kirizzo halted the process. That was something he would not be able to figure out without much more time and resources.

  What clues would indicate which of these places the Trilisk had gone?

  Over three hundred pointers came forward from his massive sensor logs. Kirizzo abandoned the artifact queries and started to examine the log pointers. He began to assess the associations between the data at the pointers he received. Hours passed as Kirizzo stood utterly still like a golden statue. His personal cooling system activated to remove waste heat from his core, but it did not affect his concentration.

  Slowly, agonizingly, Kirizzo formed hypothesis after hypothesis. He ranked them, considered them, compared them against one another. He might have to test them, but if he could find one or two clear leaders, the Trilisk AI might be able to do the rest. He finally decided that the sensor logs had data about the energy states of hydrogen atoms in space around the Chigran Callnir system that provided a clue about the escape of the Trilisk. Though his programs weren’t set up to analyze the seemingly random molecules floating through the near vacuum of space, the data showed a definite pattern. It was a simple line in space passing through the star system.

  He used the prayer interface again.

  How is the line associated?

  The answer was clear for once. The line was directly indicative of the vector of travel. Kirizzo’s line was vague, but it might be good enough. Kirizzo’s processed data formed a narrow double cone growing from the system out into the galaxy. Extending the cone encompassed two of the known Trilisk sites within the reasonable travel capability of his ships. Unfortunately they were found in opposite directions from each other.

  The closest one was within three weeks aboard Thumper or Clacker.

  ***

  Magnus cut from a simulation of combat and opened his eyes in his large room on the Clacker. He smiled. The robots were looking good. Considerably improved from last time. Magnus had split his design into a soldier and a scout machine. The scout had one weapon mount and could move great distances quickly with a large endurance. The soldier was heavier and slower but more durable. The soldier model was equipped with three weapons mounts. Now he had begun to envision a worker as well, designed to carry things they discovered back to the ship, but he had not gotten as far with that. The worker was less exciting, and so he kept putting it off.

  I’ll wish we had workers soon enough, when I’m lugging twenty kilos of artifacts on my back.

  Magnus got a connection request from Shiny aboard the new Thumper. He immediately accepted it. Telisa was already on the channel, and Cilreth joined shortly after Magnus.

  “Greetings, Terrans,” Shiny said.

  “Hello Shiny!” Telisa replied enthusiastically. “Studying human conversation preambles today?”

  “Negative. Proposing mutually beneficial course of action.”

  “Ah, of course. You have an idea for an expedition? That’s great. I hope it will take awhile to get there, though. Our new team is green. Real green,” Telisa said.

  “Search, hunt, pursue escaped Trilisk. Subdue, trap, capture. Learn about Trilisk.”

  Telisa did not respond immediately, so Cilreth jumped in. “Last I heard we lost that critter,” she said.

  “Trilisk prayer device enabled deeper investigation. Revealed, showed, indicated likely line of travel. Suggest follow one vector for fifty percent chance to discover possible destination.”

  “You have… oh, literally a line?”

  “But we don’t know which way on the line? Weird,” Magnus said. “But do we rea
lly want to find this thing?”

  “We can learn more from it than anything else I know of,” Telisa said.

  “And then Arakaki can kill it,” Cilreth said.

  “Die trying, just as likely,” Magnus said, but he felt he was only arguing against it for the sake of arguing. If they were going to go out and risk their necks, it might as well be for a reward worth going after.

  No race we know of has secrets like the Trilisks, he thought.

  “So I remember you blew up a ship to keep it from taking over,” Magnus said. “Are you afraid it will take over if we ‘catch’ it?”

  “Propose incapacitate enemy. Alternate, other, backup course of action: Kill, slay, destroy Trilisk. Confiscate, steal, salvage its possessions.”

  Best get Telisa’s ethical opinion now rather than later.

  “Telisa?” Magnus prompted.

  “What? You want to know if I’m on board with killing it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, yes, if it’s the same one we encountered before,” she said. “We should not go kill any Trilisk at random. There may be peaceful Trilisks out there.”

  “Do you think it’s alone, Shiny?”

  “Unknown, uncertain, unanswerable.”

  “I’ll need a day to finish up with the prayers,” Magnus said.

  “Acceptable.”

  “Okay then, are we taking two ships again? I see you made yourself a new one.”

  “Two ships, affirmative, correct, verified.”

  “That’s great then. We’ll be ready,” Telisa said. “As you know, we’re training the new recruits. I guess we don’t know how long it will take.”

  “Other options now exist. Terran operatives may duplicate, copy, improve themselves using Trilisk machines. Duplicates superior. Faster, stronger, longer lived.”

  “Whoa. You just dropped a bomb here. Duplicates?” asked Cilreth.

  “New body, vessel, receptacle separate from original. Telisa familiar with process.”

  “We can supersede… into a new copy of ourselves?” Telisa asked.

  “Affirmative, correct, agreement.”

  “Wait. I want to make sure I follow you. It’s not a new body for our brains? I just want a new body and my brain. Me. In a new body,” Magnus said.