Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (10 page)

Kirizzo1 produced his stun
device again. Reversing the setting, he canceled out the spinal interference that
was paralyzing Kirizzo2. The implanted Gorgalan regained his feet and regarded
Kirizzo1 directly.

“I believe we understand each
other,” Kirizzo said to his copy in Gorgalan.

“Yes, master,” Kirizzo2
replied.

Chapter
11

Caden had thought of himself as
fast for years. Fast reacting, fast moving, fast thinking.

I had no idea what fast was
before.

He sprinted across the wide-open
bay deck of the
Clacker
. His acceleration was so hard that it ripped up
his sticky-soled shoes. Every few days he had to ask Arakaki for more pairs. He
was not sure where she was getting them, but they looked just like the ones he
had from Earth. He kept asking for stronger materials, stickier treads, and
better fasteners. As he neared the end, he vaulted—first a somersault, then springing
sharply upward off the deck with his arms. Time seemed to move slowly. He had
time to think on every motion as he soared through the air for one or two
seconds. He spun gracefully to land on a platform above.

“Woohaaa!”

He took a deep breath. His new
body required a lot of oxygen to work. And it felt really good. No warm-up. No
soreness. Just command and response.

In training, both virtual and
real, he had become fast enough to bat aside subsonic projectiles, defeat the
targeting of many security robots by performing outside the human envelope, and
move past security cameras so quickly a normal observer of the feed might
simply think they were imagining things.

This is so cool. I’m so much
better now! This may not be the space force, but I’m in for some amazing
experiences.

If there was a downside to
Caden’s new condition, it was only that he was not used to using his full
abilities. He had been slowly ratcheting up his actions in the simulations with
the others, moving faster, jumping farther, performing more feats of strength
or agility.

The entire team had been
transformed. As the
Clacker
moved to their unknown destination, everyone
strove to master their new capabilities with him. Yesterday, Siobhan had ripped
a training android in half in frustration over a jiu jitsu move she could not
master. Even Maxsym expressed appreciation at physical training for the first
time. He was a near-sedentary recluse experiencing the talents of a natural-born
athlete for the first time.

Imanol seemed quieter to Caden.
Brooding. Worried.

Caden’s link clock announced
0800 ship’s time. He signed on to an exercise organized by Magnus as he ran to
the common room. He challenged himself. Caden sped through the corridors and
rooms of the
Clacker
. At a sharp turn, he leaped into a wall and
rebounded off it to make the next corridor. He arrived at his destination in
nine seconds.

His sudden arrival startled
Siobhan, who had already arrived, but once she saw it was him, she only smiled.
He sucked in vast quantities of air and tried to cool off.

Magnus connected with them from
elsewhere.

“Today I’ll introduce our
soldier robots and familiarize you with working alongside them,” Magnus said.
“I sent you all pointers to the basics last night. Any questions up front?”

I wonder if he’s just checking
to see if we all reviewed the information,
Caden thought.

“How many do we have for use?”
Maxsym asked as he arrived in the common room with Imanol close behind.

“Twenty to bring, with twenty
in reserve. If necessary
Clacker
can produce hundreds more given a day
or two.”

“Why not bring all forty?”
Caden asked.

“We will if it looks dangerous
right off,” Magnus said. “Some of them may need to defend our base camp. But
long story short, we don’t need to show our full strength right away.”

“Do they coordinate with the
scouts?” asked Siobhan.

Magnus smiled. “Yes, they do.
Mostly only for targeting information, though. They don’t really involve the
scouts in attack plans unless I tell them to. That should only be for desperate
situations, since the scouts are a lot less powerful.”

Caden nodded. Though it was fun
to participate in simulation contests like Blood Glades, he knew in the real
world, robots had front-and-center stage when it came to combat. They were
faster, tougher, and expendable. Though since the body switch, he felt as fast
as a robot himself.

Magnus’s robots were hardly
military grade. But having them along would help make him safer. Caden knew
that intellectually, but somehow he still felt self-reliant, probably from the
Blood Glades competitions. He had to keep reminding himself, soon it would be
for real.

“First up,” Magnus continued, “travel
across unfamiliar terrain to a given destination accompanied by the soldier
robots. Upon engagement, you must quickly assess: Do you want to break off under
cover of the expendable robots, or assist them fully in an engagement you
believe you can win? Remember, the purpose of the robots is to protect you, and
if necessary, to die in your place. If it looks bad, you break away and ditch
the robots to slow any pursuit.”

Everyone nodded and connected
to Magnus’s artificial world through their links.

“You’ll each get a crack at
team lead. Caden’s up first,” Magnus’s voice said.

A chance to redeem myself.

Arakaki had spoken with Caden
privately. She said she understood what happened in the test and backed him.
But she had made it clear: real life was not Blood Glades. So he had to apply
the same skills in new situations. Not everyone was a foe. Not everything was a
trap.

Caden opened his eyes in the
simulation. The Clacker’s sims environment was as good as ever, and so was his
link. The fidelity of the experience was excellent, but Caden could still tell
the difference. Knowing you were in a virtual world was more about what you did
not feel than what you did. The virtual environs were smooth, more vanilla than
real life: you usually did not feel aches and pains unless from something you
had done since it started; you would not get an itch in your nose unless it was
from some factor the designer had added; you would not see as many random,
meaningless things as in real life. In a sim, things had clearer purposes and
understandable sources. Everything was just somehow cleaner than real
life.

In his preparation for the
space force, Caden had read books written by veterans about the differences
between simulation and real-life action. One of the most colorful ones he had
seen said, “In a simulation, you’re never in the head taking a dump when the
attack comes”.

The four recruits stood on an
alien planet. The terrain was rocky. Low hills of sharp red rocks rose on
either side. Patches of ridiculous-looking plants dotted the area. The things
had bamboo-like stalks rising two or three meters to suspend round clumps of
green hairlike material.

Caden could not see very far
because of the terrain and the trees. He accessed the mission data. Their
destination was a bunker, only a few kilometers across the surface.

“Everyone see our destination?
That bunker,” Caden said. “We’ll give our best effort to reach that. If deterred,
we come right back here. If we meet trouble and get split up, head to either
destination at your own discretion.”

So what can our new abilities
get us? Need to think differently now. Things have changed.

Caden leaped straight up. He
cleared an extra two meters, seeing just over the tops of the plants. He could
see they were blocked by a small copse, not a forest. He landed carefully on
the rocks.

“Wow,” Siobhan said. “I have to
try that.”

“Unnecessary,” noted Maxsym. He
dropped to one knee. “You can see past them simply by lowering yourself. There
are no clumps near the ground.”

Caden felt irritated at Maxsym.
“I was experimenting with new abilities. We have to discover new possibilities
our increased strength and speed allow. If we’re afraid to try something out
and look silly doing it, we’ll restrict ourselves out of habit without even
realizing it.”

Imanol nodded. “Yes, our bodies
are trained to our old limits,” he said condescendingly. “We should try to push
ourselves and see what we can do. Doesn’t mean you have to turn your brain off,
though.”

Caden’s irritation at Maxsym
evaporated.

At least he’s not as annoying
as Imanol.

Imanol picked up a large rock
and heaved it away. It flew several meters before bouncing along the ground.
“This is close to Earth gravity? We
are
strong.”

“Not as strong as robots,”
Maxsym pointed out. “We could be remotely running robots, and be safe back at
home.”

He likes to poke holes in
things, doesn’t he?
Caden thought.

“True, but if our connection is
scrambled, then we lose,” Siobhan said. “Or at least, we would have to fall
back on the robots’ isolated response algorithms.”

“We have ten robots,” Caden
summarized, choosing to ignore the conversation. He flicked through their
vision feeds in his personal view. He settled on a bird’s-eye display that
integrated what they all saw together and left that pane in focus in his PV.
“Destination to the north.”

“That way,” Maxsym pointed.

“Should we rip though it?”
Siobhan asked.

“No, we should be cautious,”
Caden said. “Let the robots lead the way. I’m sending them forward. I’ll put
one behind us, just in case.”

Did I really just do that?
Caution. Hrm.

The robots headed out. After a
couple of minutes, everyone else started forward across the sharp red rocks.
Caden had three of them scouting one hundred meters out, with another line of
three at fifty meters and the last three at ten meters. He could see the
closest three ahead of them when they cleared the first copse of alien growths.
He could see himself in the vision of the trailing robot, so he knew it stayed
within sight of the group.

Each of the machines had
several sensor mounts for a full sphere of vision, but watching the feeds that
way overwhelmed even Caden, who, being the youngest, had the newest link and a
strong visual cortex trained since birth to process vision from more than just
his eyes. He flicked through the forward vision cones of the lead robots and
tried to keep the entire view field of the rear robot in his head. It was
difficult.

The team also relied upon their
master tactical view, which combined everything they had seen so far into one
integrated model, with color variations to show freshness of information.
Caden’s tactical provided a great overall picture, but it did not focus
specifically on what was happening each instant, so relying upon it too much
could get him killed.

They traveled across the alien
landscape for almost five minutes before a red object appeared in Caden’s PV.
It was an enemy highlighted by a scout on his tactical pane. At the same time,
a projectile launch cracked through the alien trees.

Bang.

“Everyone down. Form a circle,”
Caden said. The others rushed to comply. From their kneeling position, everyone
could see around the thin stalks that surrounded them. Their weapons pointed
out in all directions like a spiny beast ready to defend itself.

“Anything? Any more of them?”
asked Siobhan.

“Negative. The shot was from
our own. Soldier Five sees something, just one. Forty meters to the right of
our planned path,” Imanol said.

“I think it’s a native life-form,”
Maxsym said. “Some kind of long, reddish snake or tentacle.”

“Okay,” Caden said. “It
attacked Five, but it seems to have been put off. It probably wasn’t expecting
its prey to be metallic. I’m putting two soldiers between us and that thing.
We’ll continue, slowly.”

“Got it,” Imanol said. Caden
waited until Soldier Four joined Five a few meters from the snake creature.

They moved smoothly around the
creature. Caden did not even think it was much of a threat. But it was an
unknown, and his mission was to reach the bunker.

He expected the trouble would
deepen, but it did not. They left the creature behind and picked up their pace
again. He started to second-guess himself.

Why wasn’t that more trouble?
Have I overlooked something?

Caden knew the first challenge
of the day tended to be the easiest. He decided it was just that: a warmup
exercise. By the end of the day, Magnus would have dragons diving out of the
sky at them.

It was not long before the next
event.

Boooom.

The crack of a supersonic projectile
echoed across the rocks. Soldier One went offline.

“Someone shooting at us this
time,” Caden said. The shot had not come from any of his machines. “Soldier One
is down.”

The other soldiers moved in on
a wide spread toward the spot on their left where the machine had been
destroyed.

Boooom.

Another distant shot rang out.
Soldier Four was damaged. The robots had not managed to sight any sniper.

Boooom.

He heard another report. They
lost another soldier machine.

Whatever it is, we can’t see
it. Their range is better than ours, or their ability to hide is good.

Caden checked his overview map
in a PV pane.

We’re close to our destination.
Hard choice here.

“We break off and head straight
east,” Caden transmitted. “We’ll take an indirect route. Quickly! Let the
robots win or lose this fight without us.”

“What if we meet more of them?”

“Retreat if the new route is
blocked. We’ll head back to the ship instead. Time to break out the speed as
you suggested earlier.”

Boooom.

The team sprinted off to the
east. Their new bodies moved very well. Caden felt a bit clumsy because his new
legs ate up meters with every stride. He started to leave the others behind.

Slow down. They haven’t been
practicing their sprints on the Clacker like you have.

He turned to wait. Maxsym was
in the rear, though even he moved far faster than his old self could have.
Siobhan tripped over her long legs but recovered by rolling three times and
landing on her feet. Her suit kept the sharp rocks from cutting her skin.