Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (19 page)

Chapter
24

Be careful what you wish for
,
Maxsym thought.

Maxsym had accepted the task
proposed by Telisa, though he felt ambivalent. His intense interest in
Blackvines and a desire to please the PIT team drove him to accept. Yet since
he had decided to go, he kept contemplating the danger.

Telisa had given him a powerful
artifact used for cloaking his presence. The main question was whether or not
it really worked with Trilisks around.

“I’m almost there,” Maxsym
said. His voice sounded calm in his own ears.

I can do this.

A trio of attendant spheres led
Maxsym to his target. He jumped through the sky as Caden and Siobhan had
learned to do. He had a pair of emergency booster fans he could use for a
limited time to alter his course if necessary. The attendants floated well
ahead of him rather than orbiting in order to avoid giving him away. Four
soldiers trailed him by a hundred meters, ready to provide a light cover if he
had to run. It all helped to make him feel safe. But errant thoughts continued.

If it’s a Trilisk and it wants
me dead, I’ll be dead.

It took a half hour to fly
through the bright skies to the location of the mysterious Blackvine. Maxsym
tried to lose himself in the navigation so he would not become more nervous.
Finally the target building was growing large before him as he came in to drop
on it.

His guides exploded into clouds
of black gas and shrapnel. Maxsym looked to the skies. He spotted one of the
alien robots, probably one of the ones that had fired. It was smaller than he
was, darting by like a flying rifle with stubby fins. Some archaic reference to
sharks with lasers lurked in his mind, but he could not dredge it up.

Maxsym landed without a sound,
thanks to the stealth device. He walked toward the nearest door. He tried to
step lightly anyway, just a by-product of his nervousness and desire to stay
hidden.

He found a door and almost
opened it. He thought about opening the door but decided not to risk giving
himself away. As he hesitated, he saw a nearby window. Maxsym moved over and
looked in. He did not see anything in the room beyond. For a moment Maxsym
recalled a memory: a haunted house amusement he had visited as a child. It had
been full of junk just like this place. He suppressed the chill and walked on.

A hundred meters behind him,
one of the soldiers was spotted. It exchanged fire with another Blackvine robot
and destroyed it. The soldier retreated, but two more enemies flew in and
killed it. The other three soldiers backed away without being spotted.

Maxsym went back to the door
and let himself in.

Inside the house, he
immediately heard a low rustling.

As of the leafy tendrils of a
Blackvine moving around.

Maxsym swallowed a sudden new
burst of fear.

Okay, so you’re afraid. Fine.
Just learn. Be observant,
he told himself.

He moved forward through the
room. He chose an open passageway toward the source of the sounds. When the
gravity shifted to his right, he expected it. Slowly his unconscious mind was
learning the rules by which the artificial system worked, though he could not
yet put it into words.

When Maxsym walked into the
next room, he saw the Blackvine moving around next to a large machine. It was
shocking to see it move. Even though his rational mind had known for days that it
could move, part of him still thought of it as a sessile plant.

So surreal. That big black
plant is moving! Another living alien within arm’s reach.

He watched it for another few
seconds. The Blackvine worked on complex devices arrayed along two walls that
faced each other. The artificial gravity held the apparati down in opposite
directions on each wall.

Maxsym realized he had been
silent on his link channel. That probably was not kind to the others.

“I have target in sight,” he
sent.

That sounds terse and
professional. I hope they don’t hear the quaver in my mental state.

“Feeding you the scan,” he
continued. Maxsym activated the Vovokan scanner device they had given him to
evaluate the Blackvine. After a second, the response came back.

“It’s not a Trilisk augmented
body,” Cilreth said.

“You’re sure?” Maxsym said.

“Yes.”

Maxsym quietly released a huge
amount of tension. He took a deep breath.

“So it’s safe.”

“Not by a long shot,” Telisa
said. “It could still kill you. We don’t know much about these things. I would
guess that if you show up, it will just run away, but who knows?”

“Shiny said this one was
special.”

“Insane, he said!” Telisa
reminded him.

“Insane in a way that would
make it safer for us, not more dangerous,” Maxsym said, though he hardly
believed it. He was convincing himself of it, not Telisa.

The creature worked steadily
away on its machines. It had two tools in its grasp. Maxsym wondered if it was
what created the new type of flying robots. He felt less fear of it now that he
knew it was not a Trilisk.

We’re the aggressors, here. We
came in with an army of robots.

He had examined the Blackvines
fairly carefully. He did not believe they possessed any natural weapons deadly
to Terrans. This one held some tools, but they did not look threatening. It was
using them on the equipment before it.

Maxsym turned his stealth
sphere off.

The Blackvine moved slightly
away from him as he became visible. It rotated slightly, flattening its tendrils
into a roughly disc-shaped fan.

Its optical sensors are there
in the center. It’s literally moving its arms out of the way to get a good,
long look.

“Amazing,” Maxsym whispered.
The creature rustled as it moved. It sounded just like a tree in the wind.

Maxsym realized he had no way
of making any progress. In fact, he may have made an enemy of the creature just
by showing up.

Holding my open hands apart
means nothing to it. Speech means nothing… aha!

Maxsym removed a flashlight
from a side pocket of his pack and put it on the table halfway between them, then
he moved back.

The creature advanced. It
turned the open disc toward his gift. Then it retrieved the flashlight. The
device had a manual activator as well as a link connection. The creature
rapidly found the manual activator.

Of course. It is used to
picking up things made by other Blackvines all the time. It always has to
figure out the work of other Blackvines.

It turned back to regard Maxsym
again.

What next?

Maxsym knew what he wanted.
More samples. He removed a micropuncture device and loaded an empty vial into
it. He plucked it against his neck and filled it with his blood. Then he loaded
the device with another empty vial. He slowly put it all on the worktable.

The Blackvine tried the
micropuncture tool. It placed the tool against one of its tendrils. The vial
filled with black fluid. Then it put the vial back on the table and took the
vial of Maxsym’s blood.

That was stunningly easy. It
must be highly intelligent.

“Perfect,” he said quietly.
“Two scientists. We understand each other, in that we both want to learn about
the other.”

“Maxsym. How’s it going in
there?” Telisa asked over the link.

“Well. Very well.”

***

Arakaki launched herself toward
another house. She was aware of many of the Blackvine detectors around her
since she had added a feed from the scouts and attendant drones that picked out
the detectors all around and marked them on a map. As long as Cilreth’s hack
kept working, she hoped to remain invisible to the Blackvine network, and hopefully
the Trilisk.

She’s a valuable asset to the
team.

In Arakaki’s mind, Cilreth’s
judgement was a bit off, though. Seriously, duplicating and working alongside a
copy of herself? Likely more than just work, too.

She must have just been lonely.
She only has Shiny for company up there. But anything like that affects all of
us. Our lives are on the line, so she should have told us.

Arakaki paused and smiled as
she landed on the next building.

Hypocrite. Just like you should
have told everyone you’re hunting the Trilisk all by yourself.

Arakaki froze. Something moved
up ahead. She saw something dark move through the window. She dropped to her
stomach and moved forward slowly. She had to reach the window, turning her head
aside uncomfortably to avoid showing herself. Then she moved her head over the
window and peeked.

One of the Blackvines moved
about inside the building.

That thing is working in there.
Is it working with the Trilisk? Hell, is it the Trilisk?

Arakaki could not know the
answer, at least not without an analysis by Cilreth or Shiny. She moved slowly
away from the window, turned an outside corner, and stepped away.

“I found a Blackvine here,”
Arakaki said. “It’s working away on something. I have no idea what. If the
Trilisk left Holtzclaw’s body and went into one of these plant things, we’re
going to have to start catching them. Or something.”

“Hi,” Cilreth replied after a
moment. “Chances are, that’s just a Blackvine and we detected its activity. At
this point, we can’t tell the difference between the Blackvines near the center
of the habitat and the Trilisk. Sometimes the Blackvines move around, and they
seem to leave the network for a while just as it does. I’ll mark that one you
just saw as a Blackvine so we can weed its signals out from the tracker.”

“Weed?”

“Sorry.”

“Okay, but like I said, if the
Trilisk knows how to supersede one of those things, we’re back to square one.”

“If you slip an attendant in,
we can be sure.”

“Copy that.”

Arakaki found a nearby door.
She took control of one of her attendant spheres, then kneeled to push the door
open for it to fly inside. She stayed outside, on all fours.

“Maxsym is moving in on one of
the Blackvines now,” Telisa said.

“Really? I hope you are backing
him up.”

“That wasn’t possible,” Telisa
said. “He has the stealth sphere, though.”

That man is razor sharp. But he
needs experience
, she thought.
But Telisa and Magnus know
that.

“Let me know how it goes,” she
said. “My sphere is in there.”

“I have it,” Telisa said. “Just
a vanilla Blackvine you have there. It helps that you verified it, though. We
can filter this one’s noise out of the system.”

“Okay. Good. I’ll move on to
another hotspot.”

“Good luck. If you catch sight
of anything, don’t go in alone. I don’t care if you have a death wish; it’s
about us too.”

“Acknowledged.”

I don’t have a death wish. Not
anymore, anyway. I kind of like my new life.

Arakaki helped her attendant
back out, then she launched herself into the sky toward a distant building. She
had one of her attendants give her a slight boost.

Amazing how quickly one gets
used to jumping around like a superhero.

She opened up her mental
workspace where she saw the updates on the data Cilreth and Shiny were using to
try to find the Trilisk. Things were quiet at the moment, but she picked a
different spot that had shown bursts of activity earlier in the day.

Ten minutes later she was near
another area with clues. It was one of the hot zones. According to Shiny, there
was about a 20 percent probability the Trilisk was within five kilometers of
her position. A scout robot was about two kilometers away from her, jumping
from building to building in a slow search pattern.

Let’s see. It likes big
buildings. Probably needs lots of supplies for whatever it’s cooking up. It had
to have come here for some reason, probably needed some technology it could
find here.

Arakaki caught some movement
from the corner of her eye. A Terran walked away from her on the edge of a
distant building.

Shit! It’s Magnus… Magnus2,
anyway.

Arakaki watched just long
enough to be sure. There were no Vovokan spheres orbiting the other Magnus.
They had probably been destroyed, since they would give away the position
directly to Shiny unless they had been suborned. Magnus2 slipped into one of
the trap doors gracefully.

I have to tell the others.
Maybe get some distance first.

Arakaki used her attendants to
veer away. She marked the map with her find. As she flew away, she considered
the ramifications of what she had seen.

Shit. This means Caden2 could
be alive as well. We assumed they were dead. But they’re still slaves! And
they’re in the improved bodies.

“Magnus? This is Arakaki.
You’re not going to like what I’ve scouted.”

Chapter
25

Magnus sat alone in his large
quarters aboard the
Clacker
. He had been disturbed ever since learning
that Magnus2 still lived.

He is just like me—except a
slave to that thing. Unless it killed his mind when it took over.

It made it easier to consider
that perhaps the mind of Magnus2 had already been expunged. If they had to face
Magnus2, he had to be ready to treat him like any other deadly enemy. That was
only the first problem, getting his head around killing his copy. The next
problem was harder: how?

Faster and stronger than me.
With all my knowledge. Right now, is he trying to outthink me the way I’m
trying to outthink him? Or is it only the Trilisk mind, rummaging through his
memories like a drawer full of odds and ends?

Telisa let herself in. She
walked across his room and joined him on the bed.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she
said.

Magnus had no idea what a penny
was, but the inquiry was clear.

“Magnus2 and Caden2 are bad
news,” he said. “They’re fast. We may just have to overwhelm them with some
heavy firepower. Something of Shiny’s.”

“Grenades are useless,” Telisa
said. “The targeting signature would have to include you. Even our weapons are
going to be dangerous because we have to remove you and Caden from our target
blacklists. Our weapons will fire at you. The rounds won’t avoid you.”

Magnus nodded slowly. “I trust
you and the rest of the team,” he said.

“We’ll use stunners again. And
set the rounds for glancing hits.”

“Too risky. This is serious
business. We’re going to have to shoot to kill. We know they will be.”

Because they already did it
once.

“You can shoot yourself?”

“He’s not himself, not anymore.
We were so crazy to use the Trilisk machines.”

“We had no idea. I don’t think
we have to kill them, though. Maybe we can use sleep gas.”

Magnus got link requests from
the others. He saw in his PV that a group was forming to discuss the attack plan.
Magnus linked in.

Caden and Siobhan were arguing
about whether or not they could defeat Caden2.

“Let’s back up,” Magnus said.
“We have three enemy combatants. All Terrans. We have them outnumbered. We can
bring all the soldiers we have.”

“They have their own army of
robots,” Caden said.

“The whole army probably isn’t
there,” Cilreth said from the
Clacker
. “We could detect that pretty
easily. They may have a few choice ones nearby, though.”

“We should strive for
surprise,” Imanol said. “That’s as large of an advantage as their superbodies.”

“We have something they don’t,”
Arakaki said. “The attendant spheres. They don’t have them.”

“The Trilisk must have
destroyed them to keep Shiny from spying,” Imanol said.

“Or hacked them to serve it,”
Cilreth said.

“If it’s that powerful, we’ve
lost,” Siobhan said.

“It’s doing something here. It
has its own agenda. We need to disrupt its plans,” Telisa said.

“We’ll go in with more
attendant spheres like Arakaki said,” Magnus said. “They make a huge
difference. They can intercept projectiles, scout for us, everything. It could
be the edge we need.”

“They’ll expect it. They know
what we know,” Caden said.

“They don’t know we have a
Trilisk-vulnerable Shiny copy. And the old us thought Cilreth wasn’t copied,
either. That’s a stroke of luck,” Telisa said.

“We have to do something to
fool ourselves. How do you do that?” Imanol said.

“You select a strategy at
random,” Maxsym said. “Or we can select from a different pool of ideas. Magnus2
is out there. Maybe Caden2 as well. So the rest of us, excluding those two,
need to come up with possible plans. Then we randomly choose from them. That
would be hard for Magnus2 and Caden2 to anticipate.”

“Let’s eliminate what you
expect, Caden,” Siobhan said. “What would you expect us to do?”

“Run away. Because I know
Caden2 can defeat all the originals put together. He’s too fast, too strong.”

Siobhan rolled her eyes. “Such
modesty.”

“I’m saying it like it is. I’m
the best, the Blood Glades champion. Then you made me superhuman.”

“How about you, Magnus?” asked
Siobhan.

Magnus was silent for a moment.

“I would expect Shiny to come
fight this time. Like he did on Chigran Callnir. He has enough powerful battle
machines to kill Magnus2 and Caden2 just like he defeated Arakaki’s UED force.”

“Then we’ll borrow some. But
he’s not coming.”

“We might have another small
edge,” Siobhan said.

“Yes?” Cilreth prompted.

“There was something when
Magnus2 shot me,” Siobhan said. “Or when he shot Siobhan2. A surviving
attendant caught an image of a look on his face. He didn’t want to do it. I
could see it.”

“So you mean they might have
been forced to shoot, but they’re still on our side?”

“Exactly. I don’t know if the
Trilisk can read their minds just because it can control their bodies.”

“We have to assume the worst,”
Magnus said. “The Trilisk is capable of amazing things. Obviously this one is a
bit down and out, not having an AI to pray to and all, but it still has a lot
of amazing tricks.”

“What you saw probably doesn’t
mean anything,” Maxsym said. “How could you tell between a look of defiance
against an order from a look of hatred, or from the random look a body taken
over by an alien might have? The look could have been a random spasm as the
brain function changed. Or it could have been a brilliant immortal alien
deceiving you.”

Siobhan shrugged. “Maybe it was
nothing.” Her voice said she did not believe it.

“We can use the
Clacker
’s
weapons. Carve up the habitat. Then go into the debris and pluck the Trilisk
out of there,” Caden said.

“We most certainly will not
destroy this civilization to grab that one alien,” Maxsym said.

“We can’t destroy the habitat,”
Telisa agreed. “But I’m willing to smash a couple of the houses if we have to.
The Trilisk is worth so much alive, but maybe we should resolve ourselves to
just blowing them up. Surely Shiny can make us some bombs.”

“We have a lot of stunners in
our hands. The soldiers have more. Even our faster selves can’t outrun a sonic
blast.”

“They’re wearing Veer suits
that can deploy countermeasures. They’ll have their stun protection deployed
all the time. My chain lightning gun—”

“You can’t bring it,” Magnus
said. “I thought that over. I know how deadly it is. If you showed up with it,
I would close with you and steal it. Use it.”

“The stealth sphere can hide
me,” Telisa said.

Magnus shook his head. “The
Trilisk might defeat it.”

“Well no one said this was
safe. Nothing near safe,” Caden said.

“Why did they keep Magnus2
around?” Siobhan asked. “Wouldn’t the Trilisk just want to kill them when it
was done using them against us?”

“Perhaps it wanted to use that
body,” Telisa said.

“Yes, it may well be in Caden2
or Magnus2 by now.”

“Your idea is interesting,
Maxsym,” Siobhan said. “But there is another way to fool them. We can do the
impossible. Then they won’t anticipate it.”

“We’re listening,” Arakaki
said.

“Oh, I have no idea. Just
saying.”

Telisa smiled. “We have their
position.”

“How? Blackvine monitoring?”

“Actually, their links. They
did not turn them off. We picked up their signals near where Arakaki spotted
Magnus2. Both Caden2 and Magnus2, it looks like.”

“Could be a deception,” Imanol
said.

“A trap,” Arakaki said at the
same time.

“That’s weird,” said Siobhan.
“Why wouldn’t they turn their links off? They know we’re coming.”

“They’re not afraid of us,”
Caden said. “I would use the link to draw us into a trap.”

Magnus nodded. “The Trilisk may
even want us to come in and fight them instead of it. So it makes them easy to
spot. The situation is probably amusing to it: we used its machines to
duplicate ourselves, and now we have to pay the price.”

When the PIT team had copied
themselves, they had ended up with cloned links as well. They all had to
reconfigure their links with new authorizations and IDs so everyone could be
correctly identified and have security and privacy.

The conversation continued, but
Magnus drifted off in his own thoughts. He had been brooding for a long
time about what to do against himself. At first he thought it would not be
possible, going down the rabbit hole of strategy and anticipation of strategy.
But what Siobhan said stuck in his mind.

Her statement can serve well
enough as a random seed to my thought process, since Magnus2 does not have
Siobhan2 around.

The impossible? That could be
the impossible to accomplish, or something you would never do no matter what.

So that’s exactly what I’ll do,
if it comes to it.