Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (8 page)

“Kick the simulated walls to
see if they’re real,” Siobhan said. The perfection of sims on
Clacker
made it easy to completely immerse oneself in the exercise.

“Whoever owns this place must
have an entrance sensor,” Imanol realized. He set the bag with the alien
critter down onto the carpet.

Siobhan stopped to watch Caden.
He had his weapon raised. He swept the barrel back and forth, scanning the
entrance, then the corridor. He peeked around a T in the corridor. Caden’s body
was tense.

“Caden is freaking out,”
Siobhan said in private to Imanol. “It’s like he’s a storm trooper going in to
assassinate someone.”

“You’re stressing me out,
Caden,” Imanol said out loud.

“There’s a reason they chose
this scenario, whatever it is,” Caden said. He held his weapon ready. “Not
everyone made it out. There’s something dangerous here. We need to be alert.
Keep your trigger fingers ready.”

Siobhan tried to decide whether
she believed that. It made some sense. Not everyone had made it out, they said.
Still, could it be the case that shooting first was not the desired solution?

“If you see people, try to
avoid notice. If they see you, don’t shoot first,” Imanol said. He saw Caden’s
look of doubt. “As soon as we find out who they are, maybe that order will
change.”

“The link services don’t work,”
Maxsym said.

“We should have turned our
links off before coming through,” Imanol said. “We might have avoided detection
for longer.”

“As soon as I went through with
mine on, it was probably too late,” Siobhan said.

Siobhan checked her link. A
service list appeared, though it appeared different than before. She checked
the thermostat controls. The connection hung and then cut out.

“We’re not authorized? But if
that was the case, we’d be kept out from the beginning.”

Imanol shook his head.

“I’ve never seen anything… disconnect,
now.”

“What?”

“If it’s not working, it must
be sick. Some kind of software attack. Which means it could spread to our
links. It’s probably already too late. Dammit! That must be the danger.”

Oh? The danger could be a link
virus. But could it kill us?

Caden moved forward down the
corridor. Imanol said nothing; he simply followed.

“Let’s see what’s in store,” he
muttered.

Siobhan walked in third place.
Caden reached a door and tried it manually since his link was off. It opened.
He nodded at Imanol. They both went through. Their attitude rubbed off on
Siobhan. She drew her stunner and covered the corridor, moving just past the
door.

Still no people. At any moment
they’ll come to see the intruders.

“Nothing in here but some boxes
of construction supplies,” Imanol reported. “Glow bars. Wall panels, paint.”

They re-emerged. Siobhan kept
her eyes ahead. Caden moved by in a crouch. His movements were smooth yet
machinelike. Siobhan followed, this time ahead of Imanol.

Blood Glades champion. But he
acts like this is a comic book. Rogue scientists? Criminal gang hideout? Could
it really be something like that?

Caden disappeared around the
corner ahead.

“Something very strange,” he
said. “Wait! I have—”

Boooom. Boooom.

Projectile weapons fire
thundered in the corridor. Siobhan hit the deck.

Damn, the shit’s hitting the
fan!

She got her stunner into her
hand. An adrenaline rush brought her a familiar pleasure.

Time to live again. And try to
stay alive.

Siobhan performed well under
pressure. She
liked
having to take steps to stay alive because it made
her feel more alive. Knowing she had to get it right or suffer the painful
consequences gave her a clarity of function that brought out the best in her.

“What’s our target? Should I
flank?”

At the same time, Imanol said,
“Caden! What targets?”

“It’s an alien,” Caden snapped.
A location pointer came up relative to their position in the corridor.

An alien… wait. Telisa said
this really happened.

“Must be a deception,” Imanol
said, but he moved to the corner and took a peek.

Boooom.

Caden disappeared from her
link.

Siobhan crawled the other way.
It looked as if she had a route that turned toward the target from the other
side. Maxsym stayed put, waiting for orders from Imanol.

“Caden bought it,” Imanol
growled. “Stay put. Don’t move forward.”

“We have to do something. They
could be coming around this way, too,” Siobhan said. Maxsym was next to her,
weapon ready.

“Retreat the other direction.
After me,” Imanol said. Siobhan got back up and followed Imanol down a turn in
the direction opposite Caden’s. Maxsym stayed right behind. They ran down a
corridor, took a quick left, and went to the end of a second corridor. Then
Imanol opened a door, and they filed into a long, narrow room with lockers on
one wall.

“Locker room. But won’t they
find us quickly?” Siobhan whispered.

“There was something weird back
there. I think this office adjoins a Trilisk ruin. The corridor connected to
some sort of cave. But it had weird machines in it. Or in the walls. Very alien
looking,” Imanol said.

“They said this place was
real,” Maxsym said, echoing Siobhan’s earlier thoughts. “A real alien? Wouldn’t
we have heard about it?”

“Well, there was the
Seeker
,”
Imanol said.

That got them all thinking.

“This is a hell of a test. The
last thing I expected was to be holed up in a locker room.”

“Okay, we keep moving. Find
someone here. Interrogate them,” Imanol ordered.

“They may have died. Or fled
whatever it was,” Maxsym said. Siobhan nodded.

“This way,” Imanol said. He had
a compact projectile weapon ready. Siobhan was reminded of her inferior
equipment. She kept the stunner ready.

They left the locker room by
another door past some showers. Siobhan expected a gym, but instead they found
only a long meeting room with a fancy wood table.

“My mapper says something is
screwy,” Imanol said. “There’s supposed to be a corridor through here.”

“Yes, my map says that too,”
Siobhan said.

“Me too,” Maxsym added.

 Imanol walked over to the
wall. He knocked on it.

“The wall is thin. But no
hidden door. Besides, wouldn’t we have noticed this table across the way?”

“It’s part of the test. They’re
screwing with us,” Siobhan said.

“Telisa said this place is
real,” Maxsym complained.

“Maybe it is,” Imanol said.
“Let’s face it, something weird is going on. A human facility in Trilisk ruins.
And Caden thought he saw an alien. Now the layout is screwy.”

“Maybe we’ve been drugged,”
suggested Maxsym.

Imanol nodded. “Or our links
are sick. But they couldn’t make us hallucinate, could they?”

“It’s not possible with
conventional links,” Maxsym said. “They can make you unhappy, but we would be
able to tell what’s real.”

“Well, maybe someone figured
out a way to make it worse,” Imanol said.

“We may not be able to find the
exit,” Siobhan pointed out.

Imanol led them in the
direction of the black sphere that had brought them in. The rooms had changed,
but they relied upon their link maps to find the same spot. They found a big
waiting room with body-molding chairs.

“The exit’s not here,” Imanol said,
stating the obvious.

“A trap. An alien trap,” Maxsym
said.

“I want to check around the
corner we just came from,” Imanol said. “I’m guessing it’s different?”

They retraced their steps.
Within twenty meters, things were already different than in Siobhan’s mapper.

“That’s it. Nothing is stable
here. This whole place just changes around when we’re not there,” Imanol said.

“Then what can we possibly do?
It’s only a matter of time before the alien shows up again and shoots us,”
Siobhan said.

Imanol shook his head. Then he
knocked on the wall again. Suddenly he put his fist through the wall. The thin
panel shattered. He pulled the pieces free. Siobhan saw an airspace beyond and
then the other side of the wall. Carbon struts ran up either side of the
panels, holding the wall up.

“It’s typical low-weight
construction,” Imanol said. “Nothing heavy duty. We can go right through it.”

“But the exit’s not here
anywhere. What good does it do to go through walls?”

“The floor may not be as easy,”
Siobhan said, stomping her foot. The floor felt solid enough.

“Look, this stuff shifts
around,” Imanol said. “We don’t want that. We want stability. To know what’s
going on. The best way to do that is to eyeball as much of it as we can. Find
the biggest room we can, then start taking this place apart. So far it only
shifts when we can’t see it, right? So we take down these crappy walls and
watch as much as we can.”

Maxsym nodded. “Sounds like an
interesting experiment.”

“We don’t even know who owns
the place and we’re going to wreck it? Ha. Okay, sure,” Siobhan said.

They walked through three rooms
and found a cafeteria. Long tables sat in four rows before a glass-covered food
bar. The bar was empty, nothing more than rows of white bins. Some had covers
and heating controls. It looked very normal. Siobhan saw some vending machines
in the corner.

“Start with that wall,” Imanol
said.

Siobhan dug in. The wall was
cheaply constructed, little more than plastic panels affixed to carbon struts.
A few wires and pipes ran through the spaces between the walls. The panels were
light but tougher than they looked. It took a swift kick to crack one. After a
few false starts, Siobhan found it was easiest to break one panel and then pull
the adjacent ones straight out of the wall by grabbing an edge.

They cleared the first wall
quickly, and then another. After a break for food and water, everyone faced a wall
and removed still more space. At times Siobhan found herself laughing inside at
the futility of dismantling a flimsy Terran complex under an alien ruin, but
what was the alternative? Wander endlessly through a shifting maze of corridors
devoid of people?

“Whoa, look out!” Imanol
suddenly called out. Siobhan drew her stunner and whirled toward him. Large red
robots sat in a room beyond the wall Imanol had been working on. Siobhan’s
breath caught as she saw them, but they did not move.

“Oh. Some kind of fire
station,” Imanol said more calmly. “Sorry about that.”

Maxsym laughed briefly, releasing
his tension.

I can see why they freaked him
out,
Siobhan thought.
Those red robots looked mean at first glance.

She turned around and cursed.

Half the space they had cleared
was gone. A long, smooth wall cut their circular swath in half.

“What? Oh, dammit!” Imanol said
as he realized what had happened.

“It reclaimed the space in the
few seconds we all stared over here at the robots,” Maxsym said. “All it takes
is for us to not be looking, I guess.” Siobhan heard the defeat in his voice.

“I wish there were still four
of us, one for each direction,” Imanol said. He sat on a chair they had
harvested from one of the rooms they had dismantled.

If this were really happening,
if Caden were really dead, how would I feel about that?
Siobhan asked herself.
Would I be ready to call it quits and run home?

Maxsym sighed and looked out
over the shreds of wall they had left in their wake.

“What is that?” Maxsym asked.
“A terrarium?”

Siobhan followed his gaze. She
caught a hint of green.

“Let’s check it out,” she said.

I’ll watch what’s left of our… space,”
Imanol said. Siobhan could tell by the sound of his voice he also thought it
was probably futile to keep removing walls. As soon as they looked away, hours
of work could be wiped out.

Maxsym led Siobhan over to the
green spot. Siobhan saw a small spiny plant. It looked like those on the
surface.

“Just some small…” she started.
There was no plastic surrounding the tiny bit of mossy dirt and plant. Her eye
caught some movement. “Careful!” she snapped, but Maxsym had already seen it.
He drew a long knife and bent aside one of the branches of the spiny plant.

“One of those creatures,” he said.
“Like a mollusk with a flat shell. Its skin looks dry, though. Probably
toughened against the spiny plants. Are those antennae or manipulators?
Amazing.”

“This isn’t a normal terrarium.
What holds it here? It’s melted into the floor.”

Maxsym stood and stared. Then
he smiled.

“This place shifts around when
we aren’t looking at it,” Maxsym said. “It shifted into something Terran beyond
this creature’s sensory range the same way. Get it?”

“I don’t follow. You mean it’s
trapped here like us?” Imanol said.

“Yes, before we arrived, it had
its own little world,” Maxsym said. “We came along and took over the space
around it. Now it’s trapped. This maze, or whatever it is, the Trilisks must
have built it to create a suitable environment for us as… experiment subjects,
or maybe guests. Limited by our range of sight.”

Oh, wow
,
Siobhan thought.
We’re like mice in a maze here. And Maxsym sees it
immediately. I underestimated him.

“How could we get out?”

Maxsym shook his head. “I don’t
know. Close our eyes, maybe? Close our eyes and move around… not sure that
would accomplish much. Remember, though, Caden saw a cave. That’s related.”

Siobhan was surprised again.

“It was the alien thing’s
environment,” she said slowly. Maxsym was so sharp!

Imanol had regained his resolve.

“We can try again,” he said.
“This place may have a maximum size. Maybe we’ll find a real boundary.”