Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (22 page)

Caden grabbed the edge of the
spring door. He slipped through. The attendants slid close to his body to come
through with him. A floor lay three meters below, so he launched toward it.

The first thing Caden noticed
was the return of artificial gravity to hold him onto the floor of the
interior. He landed clumsily. Then he heard an attendant strike something.

Zing. Booom.

The retort of a rifle boomed
through the closed space. Caden dropped and brought his own rifle around,
launching three rounds.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

There was nothing. His double
was already out of sight.

Arakaki dropped in beside him,
her laser ready.

“He’s too fast. We’ll never get
him,” Caden transmitted with his link.

“Shut up, change your diaper,
and aim for that doorway there,” Arakaki growled. She indicated the opening by
flashing it red in his virtual view.

“What? Why there?”

Caden did as he was told.
Arakaki sounded so certain of herself. She left her cover and ran out through
the room.

What is she doing? Caden2 will
kill her—

Caden saw his double raise a
rifle in the doorway Arakaki had indicated. Caden2 was shooting Arakaki. Caden
locked on and ordered his weapon to fire.

Brrrooom!

They both shot at the same
time.

Caden2 actually turned to face
the bullet as if he heard it coming. Caden knew it was not possible, as it was
a supersonic round. The bullet slipped into Caden2’s left eye socket and
sprayed out the back in an explosion of brain matter.

I got him. I got him, but—

Caden leaped across the room
after Arakaki. He knew Caden2 would not have missed, but somehow his mind
protected him from the obvious conclusion for a moment. Then he saw it.

Arakaki lay sprawled in a back
of equipment. Blood poured out of a huge wound in her side, blown right through
Momma Veer’s protection.

If she isn’t dead, she will be
in seconds. She saved my life. I don’t know how she knew, but she knew.

Caden bent down and turned her
over. Her eyes were closed. She was not breathing.

“Thank you,” Caden said. For
the first time in a decade, Caden felt tears pooling in his eyes. Then his
misery came rushing out, and he flopped over her and sobbed.

Dammit. Dammit.

Chapter
28

Siobhan found herself outside
amid the battle. The danger did not feel real.

We can’t let that thing get
away
,
she told herself. She pushed down an internal warning and concentrated on her
course. An attendant intercepted something headed for her. Siobhan soared
around the target building to bring the far side into view.

She saw several things moving
on the surface of the building, but an unusual color caught her eye. She saw a
light-blue machine shuffle oddly out of the building. Why did it move like
that? Siobhan realized it had only three legs.

What’s that? It’s got three
legs! It has to be…

Siobhan told her link to retain
what she had seen recently. She brought up her tactical and put up a priority
flag at the location.

“I see it!” Siobhan said. No
one answered, so she opened a direct connection to Cilreth.

“Yes? What’s going on? There
was an explosion—”

“I saw it! Take the data from
my link,” Siobhan said. She sent Cilreth a pointer to the information. “It’s
pale blue, a robotic body with three legs.”

“What? How do you know it’s not
just some random robot?”

“It would have been attacking
instead of running,” Siobhan said.

“You’re right. This looks like
a robot we found on another planet,” Cilreth said after a moment. “I think
we’re tracking it on this side.”

“I have three attendants
watching it,” Siobhan said. “It’s not far from here. I’m getting the rest of
the team.”

What’s left of the team.

Crackle. Zip.

Suddenly an attendant sputtered
and died next to her. Then she felt the heat.

“I’ve got a problem!” she said.
Another attendant moved to protect her while her last pushed her away in a
spiral. But the next blocking attendant died as well.

“A laser has acquired me!
Where’s it coming from?” she said.

“I’ll send some soldiers to
assist,” Cilreth was saying in the background, but Siobhan was already
overheating again. Her Veer suit could only absorb so much before she would
cook inside it.

Caden and Arakaki aren’t
around. Where’s Telisa? I have to save myself.

Even as Siobhan thought it, she
realized there was very little she could do. She was at the mercy of the
attendants trying to alter her course and whisk her away.

Siobhan ripped open her pack
and shielded herself. She asked the pack for its inventory. She grabbed a
grenade and tossed it away, and then another, and told them to explode in five
seconds. The grenades spun, but there was no surface for them to push off from.
The heat spiked again as her evasive course was predicted.

One of the items in the
inventory caught her eye. Smoke flares.

The flares might work—those
Blackvine machines aren’t really military robots. They might not be equipped to
see through smoke.

Siobhan told her last attendant
to bat the flares out in the direction of her retreat. At the same time, she
activated them with her link.

Boom, boom. Pop, pop, pop.

Grenades and flares detonated.
Bright orange-and-blue smoke intertwined from the flares as they hurtled away
from her.

Blam.

Her last attendant exploded.

The heat eased. Whether she had
been obscured by the flares or saved by a soldier she did not know. There were
no attendants left to protect or move her, so she resorted to her cylinder
fans. She used them to accelerate herself toward the nearest building past the
smoke.

When she landed, she looked on
the tactical. She saw she was still only a kilometer away from Telisa, Imanol,
and Maxsym. She went inside for cover.

“What’s happened?” Siobhan
whispered to herself. The sounds of battle continued outside, though somewhat
abated. She connected to Imanol’s link.

“What’s happened?” she asked
again.

“Magnus. Gone. I think we got
Magnus2, though,” Imanol said.

“I’ll be there,” Siobhan said,
though she had not even found a route to take on the tactical yet.

“We won the robot battle again,
but the—”

“I saw the Trilisk escaping,”
Siobhan sent at the same time. “Cilreth knows about it. She might have been
able to tag it somehow. Some of our machines may be following it.”

“I don’t know if the team is
ready to pursue it,” Imanol sent. “Arakaki and Caden went off after Caden2.”

Magnus is really gone. I just
can’t believe it. I feel like it’s just another exercise, and he’s only dropped
out for the round.

The UNSF had supposedly used
virtual exercises for decades to attenuate soldiers to the horrors of battle. A
fighting unit tended to keep going when it was the thousandth time they had
suffered 50 percent attrition rather than the first time. As long as the
simulations felt real, a Terran brain just got used to loss and learned to
shake it off—at least as long as a person could go on pretending it was just
another exercise. Eventually the reality sank in.

Later, it’ll hit me. If I
survive to see later.

Siobhan sent out a request for
more attendants. She knew some had to be around. If Shiny responded, she would
be able to move out quickly. They might be able to catch the Trilisk.

She moved to the far side of
the building, her weapon ready. The horrible thought struck her that the
Trilisk might have pursued her here. She felt an illogical anxiety rise, but when
she got the message that attendants were converging to help her, it faded.

The Blackvine items hoarded
around her sat quietly in their weird twisted rooms like relics from another
age.

Why did the Trilisk come here?
Is this just another conquest? Tourist site? Are the Blackvines old allies?

She walked out to meet four
incoming attendants on the outside surface.

As they arrived she jumped off
in the direction of the PIT team. There were still machines flying around in
the sky, though the tactical said they were all friendlies. With boosts from
her attendants, she was able to make the trip to the others in four house hops
without incident.

The scene she found was grim.
Telisa was broken down on the floor, partly rolled into a corner, with Imanol
hovering nearby, guarding her. Maxsym patrolled the room uncomfortably.

Siobhan flopped down next to
Telisa.

“Magnus did it. He gave us a
chance.”

Telisa did not answer.

“Telisa! I have attendants
shadowing it. Cilreth is tracking its access to the habitat networks. We can
find it!”

“Just let it go. That’s what we
should have done in the first place.”

“How can you not be angry now?
Kill it for him!”

“I just can’t. I just can’t
anymore.” Telisa wiped away new tears.

“It killed him. We’re getting
our revenge.
Wake up, frackjammer!
”

Telisa looked at Siobhan as if
for the first time.

“You were a good pick for the
team,” she said. “You go get it.”

“Shut up! Let’s go! If you’re
really so messed up about losing him, then what do you care if you die? Let’s
give it a shot!”

Siobhan thought Telisa was not
going to recover. But she focused on Siobhan.

“Okay. Let’s go kill it.” She
looked around. “Where are Arakaki and Caden?”

“They went after Caden2!”
Imanol said. “Get it together! Let’s get this thing!”

Telisa saw Maxsym under cover
in the far side of the room.

“Maxsym,” Telisa said sharply.
Siobhan saw him flinch. “You stay here. If we die, stay and study the
Blackvines. Grab some of their technology, some artifacts, and go back to sell
it. Then you can afford your research back home. Or stay here with Shiny. Maybe
he can use you.”

Maxsym nodded vigorously.

He doesn’t want to go. Not cut
out for it. Nice that Telisa can see that, even in her current state. Or maybe
she can see that because of her current state.

Siobhan checked Caden and
Arakaki. Their links were out there but refused connections.

“Caden and Arakaki are still
after Caden2. But I can scrape up a dozen attendants. There are also grenades
we can use. Cilreth sent back a target sig we can use based on the robot body
you found on Callnir.”

“It’s in one of those?” Telisa
asked.

“Yes. I think so. It makes
sense, doesn’t it?”

I’m not sure she’s entirely
with it
, Imanol observed privately to Siobhan.

She’ll get the job done if she
can get that thing in her sights
, Siobhan said.

Chapter
29

“It’s in there,” Siobhan said.

Telisa checked out the
building. It was long and thin. Its angles were more regular than the usual in
the space habitat. Her insides still ached from emotional turmoil. Her eyes
were puffy. The only thing that really kept her going was the idea of punishing
the Trilisk for Magnus’s demise. After that… she did not really care about
anything anymore.

“Looks specialized. It’s not so…
random looking,” Imanol said.

“Something is special about
it,” Telisa agreed. “But I think it was still built by the same race that built
the other buildings.”

The PIT team had salvaged the
remains of their robot army and arrayed it around them for kilometers.
Everything was on the watch for the new Trilisk body.

Imanol had gathered up a cache
of grenades to use in the attack. They had been provided with a target
signature based upon the feed that Siobhan had obtained. The grenades floated
nearby, ready to go into action. He had rigged attendant spheres to racks in
order to launch groups of ten grenades toward the target.

“Begin the attack,” Telisa
said.

The fleet of grenades started
to move forward in the makeshift launch racks. More grenades joined the
assault, fired from soldiers and thrown by the PIT team. The grenades landed on
the building and then started to spin along the outer surfaces. Lasers from the
supporting machines cut holes into the windows and doors to let them in.

“Let’s go,” Telisa ordered.
Telisa, Siobhan, and Imanol had their attendants push them toward the building.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Grenades were exploding inside
before they even reached the outside surface. Telisa watched the feed
anxiously. Not a single grenade had returned a positive predicted hit before
exploding. As the team landed on the building, the explosions subsided. None of
the grenades were responding.

“Didn’t work,” Siobhan
summarized grimly.

This is suicide. I should send
the others back and try this myself,
Telisa thought.

A large sphere floated by the
team. Siobhan and Imanol did a double-take.

“Whoa!” exclaimed Imanol.

“That’s Vovokan!” said Siobhan.

“Shiny has fourteen of these
battle drones,” Cilreth said. “He says the design was used for subterranean
combat on Vovok.”

“Where were they before?”
Imanol asked on the edge of a snarl.

“He claims he didn’t know they
were needed, and just produced them recently,” Cilreth said. “But I wonder too
if he’s been holding back until now. Maybe he thinks this is our best chance,
and he’s ready to commit his strongest stuff?”

“Just thank him for us,” Telisa
said blandly. “If you two want to head back…”

“I’m in,” Siobhan said without
hesitation.

“I’m in too,” Imanol said, but
he sounded less enthusiastic. “And just so you know, if we make it through
this, I’m no friend of the UN. Neither is Siobhan. I think Caden is the only
one who might balk if we defy them openly.”

I guess he wanted to get that
off his chest.

Telisa nodded. “Thank you.”

Magnus would want me to finish
that fight,
Telisa thought.
But I don’t know if I can
bear to fight the UNSF without him.
Tears rose again.

The battle drones started to
move. Shiny connected to Telisa’s link.

“Trilisk no longer in Terran
host. Chances of capture gone, infinitesimal, insignificant.”

“But your drones are going in.”

“Testing strength of enemy.
Possible to exhaust, de-energize, fatigue alien machine. Suggest trail battle
drones, attempt to terminate Trilisk.”

“Got it.”

“Why don’t we nuke the
bastard?” asked Imanol.

“I never prayed up any nukes.
Besides, we can’t destroy the habitat. We’re already despicable, coming in here
and shooting everything up,” Telisa said.

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 form 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?