The Trilisk Revolution (Parker Interstellar Travels) (4 page)

The
most powerful battleship ever made, and we’re defeated before even firing a
shot.

“If
it’s not real, then their size and appearance can be faked, too,” Narron said.
“Maybe the enemy ships aren’t large at all. Maybe there’s only one.”

“Distract
them,” Sager said. “Target our energy weapons at the most likely locations for
enemies. Launch missiles and put them on standby patrols. Launch all our
courier ships with warning messages, have them translate to FTL. Maybe…”

“We’re
receiving a transmission most likely from the aliens. Continue with your orders?”

“Wait,”
Sager said.

“They
know our protocols, too?” Narron asked.

“Affirmative.
Routing the channel through to you,” Raigel said.

A
woman’s face appeared on the screen. She was attractive, though with a scar
across her left eye socket and an obviously artificial eye.

There’s
no reason to have a scar and such a gaudy eye. She wants us to see that for
some reason,
Sager
thought.
Another intimidation tactic? Seems kind of juvenile.

“I’m
sorry for disabling your ships. Earth is under threat,” she said. She pursed
her lips, took a breath, and continued. “I’m going to lay it out for you
straight. We have a fleet of alien ships and we’re headed for Earth. But we’re
not the force that destroyed
Seeker
. We’re here to remove an alien
influence from the top echelons of Earth’s government. We’ve chosen to isolate
you because we want to win over your support. Or at the very least, prepare you
to take over when we leave. Earth will be leaderless as a result of our
action.”

“The
person portrayed is a good facsimile of Telisa Relachik, the child of Captain
Relachik of the
Seeker
,” Raigel said on the officer channel.

“The
kid of Relachik? Sick joke. These aliens are twisted,” said Narron.

Sager
looked at the channel from the aliens. It was set up for two way communication.

“Show
yourselves. Release my spinners, and we will negotiate with you,” Sager said on
the channel.

“As
I said. I have to isolate you. I can’t let the aliens know I’m coming. I don’t
expect you to understand or believe me now.”

“What
have you done with
Marco Polo
?”

“It
will be joining you shortly,” the woman said. “I suggest you move that
delegation aboard
Bismarck
, Admiral Sager. Just in case things get
really ugly. The survivability of the delegation should improve on that
battleship. These core world politicians will be useful in lending weight to
your claim to power under martial law when we leave.”

Sager
shook his head. It was all too much to believe.

They
could just destroy us if they wanted. Could it be real? They know who I am.

The
woman stared at them in silence for a moment more. “I have evidence to offer
you,” she finished. “I’ll arrange for its delivery. I want you to get looking
at it right away, and I know you’ll fear a hack. So, I’m going to disarm your
point defenses now just to show you that I can.”

“Point
defenses have deactivated,” Raigel said.

“I
don’t need to hack you. I can set any bit in any system on the ship from here,”
she said. “So do Earth a favor and take a look at my evidence, think about my
plan, and make plans of your own. Earth will be leaderless within the next few
days. The
Bismarck
will be an important part of keeping things
together.”

The
channel closed.

“We
have received a large data package,” Raigel said. “The
Marco Polo
has
detranslated within ten thousand kilometers of our position.”

“Raigel,
figure out how to detect them. Send the package over to Daimyo for analysis,”
Sager ordered, trading glum looks with Captain Narron.

Chapter 5

Caden
had just finished a hard workout with a training android. He sat breathing deeply
on a Jiu Jitsu mat, feeling the new abrasions and bruises scattered over his
body. He would never trade in all his real workouts for virtual ones. Even
though he could only try out the most dangerous things in the VRs, he was
training for real action now. Besides, the endorphin rush was priceless. There
were pills for that, but what good would they be when he was fighting for his
life on some alien planet?

“Caden,”
Telisa sent him.

“Here,”
he said.

“Important
meeting. We have something new cooking,” Telisa said. She was all business. She
had not cracked a smile since losing Magnus.

“On
my way,” he said. Caden hopped into a shower tube for ten seconds to clean up,
then tossed on a change of clothes. Being in a hurry, he headed out with a
shock of wet hair, wearing only a pair of loose trousers and a short sleeve
shirt. The shirt did not change colors like a colorweave, but neither would it
fall apart if he had to dive and roll or climb down a cliff.

Siobhan
intercepted him on the way to the meeting. Her eyes flickered down, taking in
his mussed appearance.

She’s
checking me out!

He
smiled at her.

“Hi,”
she said. She smiled at him for one second, then looked away.

“Hey.
Do you know what’s up?”

“Nope.
Just been training,” Siobhan said.

Caden
nodded. Siobhan acted a bit odd sometimes. She often smiled and chatted, but
then she seemed to want to bug out quickly.

She’s
from a different place with different customs
, he reminded himself. Still, he had the most in common with
Siobhan. He remembered all the fun they had had jumping around in the Blackvine
habitat. Caden and Siobhan were the youngest, and like Telisa, they were
adventurous.

“We
could go jump around a sim of that habitat after the meeting,” Caden said
suddenly. “You know—the Blackvine houses in the sky.”

“What!
Oh! Yes, that would be cool,” Siobhan said.

“Okay
then, it’s a date.”

Siobhan’s
eyes bulged.

Oh.
She’s freaked out because I said ‘date’.

“Not
a
date
date I mean. Oh, we don’t have to if you don’t wanna,” Caden
said.

“I
want to,” she said quickly.

They
walked into big room on the
Clacker
for the FTF. Caden saw both of the
Cilreths, Maxsym, and Imanol.

“Wunderkind
and Fast’n’Frightening,” Imanol said. “Nice of you to drop by. You guys having
a little FTF of your own? Or maybe I should say BTB?”

Body
to body. As in, incarnate.

Caden
let the remark slide right off. Telisa and Cilreth would see he may be younger
than Imanol, but he acted more professionally day in and day out. Siobhan
decided to strike back.

“You
could have had some incarnate time with me too, Imanol,” Siobhan said sweetly.
“Oh that’s right. You’re
afraid
of me.”

“No,
that was GI Jane.”

The
remark caught Caden off guard. Leave it to Imanol to mention Arakaki. Caden
knew if she had been at the meeting, she would ignore it. So Caden did too.

Okay,
I officially hate this jerk. He doesn’t know where to draw the line.

“As
you may be aware,” Telisa started in, “We’re going to stop the Trilisks that
rule Earth. I have a group preparing to take over after we’re done. We just go
in and find the Trilisks. We’ll take them out with minimum engagement with the
Space Force.”

Caden’s
eyebrows lifted. Imanol looked equally surprised, though Maxsym and Siobhan
remained placid.

A
new channel opened with a data stream describing a space habitat. Caden looked
it over in his PV. Skyhold. He had heard of it. It was supposed to be a really
important space habitat.

“We’ve
discovered that Skyhold is home to over eighty percent of our targets,” Telisa
said. She let that sink in while everyone looked Skyhold over.

“It’s
tempting to assume that all the Trilisks are together there,” Siobhan said.
“Maybe the others are just Trilisk sympathizers, or… just power hungry people
who don’t know who their allies really are?”

“The
same thought occurred to me,” Telisa said. “But we can’t assume it. I don’t
know enough about Trilisks to know if they would prefer to segregate
themselves, even in human form.”

“Maybe
they take other forms there, and no one is around to see,” a Cilreth said.

“Then
one of us goes ahead to figure out what’s going on,” Caden said.

“The
security is insane there,” the other Cilreth said. “The habitat itself carries
as much armament as a Space Force cruiser. Internally, there’s a strong robotic
security force controlled by multiple AIs.”

“Sounds
like a target for
Clacker
’s main weapons,” Caden said. “Take them all
out in one shot.”

“Maybe.
We have to verify they’re actually Trilisks,” Telisa said.

“There
are others on that station. Servants,” a Cilreth said.

“Slaves!”
Siobhan said. “You can bet on it. Those ‘servants’ are slaves.”

She
said something about her family being slaves,
Caden thought.

“I’ll
go in and scan them,” Caden said. “I can let you know, get out, and we can let
them have it! If there’s a mix of targets and noncombatants there, then we need
a more complicated plan B.”

“Thanks
for the offer, but I have another mission for you, Caden,” Telisa said.

Really?
She already has a mission for me?

“What?”
Caden said.

“Space
Force Command,” Telisa said.

What!

No
one dared speak for a moment. Everyone stared at him.

“There’s
a Trilisk…?” he asked.

“Three
people on the list. Two men and one woman. Admirals. They’re likely Trilisks in
my opinion. If you were setting up the Space Force as a tool to do your
bidding, this is where you would be.”

Caden
bristled at the thought.

Wow.
I’ve got to weed them out! We can’t have aliens in control of the Space Force!

“Security
would be tight,” Caden said slowly. But he thought something else.

If
I got rid of those aliens, they’d have to let me in. I could still be an
officer.

“It’s
not lost on me that you planned to join the Space Force, Caden,” Telisa said.
“Here’s your chance to be their hero. Though they won’t know that until we’re
done. We have to figure out how to get you, or at least an attendant sphere in
there and scan those people. If they’re Trilisks, we have to take them out. And
we won’t be able to use the orbital weapons or the
Clacker
to do it. We
can’t open fire on Space Force Command. We have a lot of planning to do. I’ll
be coordinating with all of you separately. We’re taking a hiatus from our
group training, because we all need to start working simulations of our
individual missions.”

Telisa
sent Caden a copy of the Orwell Papers. Caden had already read them. They were
famous. The Space Force had studied them carefully and put several safeguards
into place to ensure the plan could never succeed. Telisa seemed to know that,
but she considered the information valuable since it gave clues about who the
Trilisks might be.

The
meeting broke up and Caden headed off with Siobhan.

“I
guess we can’t do the jumping around right now,” he said. “We have a lot of
sims to set up. I want to do a lot of practice runs around a virtual command
center.”

Siobhan
nodded. “I have work to do, too.”

They
split up to head to their own areas of the ship. Caden had his own room set up
like a modern strongpoint, with robots guarding the door and a laser emitter
embedded in the ceiling.

Maybe
I can take a break later and hang with Siobhan.

***

Siobhan
felt a bit depressed as she left Caden after the meeting. But she knew there
were huge things ahead of them. How could she be feeding her silly crush on
Caden when they needed to be saving Earth?

And
I need to get my revenge.

Siobhan
started to investigate the Spero family’s current whereabouts on Earth. They
were fairly famous, and so there was a lot of information to sift through. She
finally zeroed in on Kagan in particular, and found out he was considered a
recluse who spent most of his time on a tropical island compound owned by SSFC.

Siobhan
made queries about the compound. She wanted the blueprints so she could
formulate some plan of attack.

Theoretically
such a query could be flagged and tracked, but Shiny had assured the PIT team
that he knew how to obfuscate the trail of their interactions with the Terran
networks. It was the only way Telisa could stay online without being tracked by
the UNSF.

Her
investigation found a lot of material. She copied it to her link. She brought
up the building plans of the estate.

“How
accurate are these, I wonder?” she asked herself quietly. “Total fabrication?
That’s how I’d do it if I were a paranoid immortal. Put a death trap where my
bedroom is supposed to be.”

Siobhan
looked through the construction records. She spotted another large contract with
a security company.

That’s
a lot of money. No doubt they’re making extensive security modifications to the
house. All paid for by the company, of course.

Siobhan
started to get angry thinking about it. Kagan had been living in luxury while
her kind suffered. He had used the labor of company employees, and even slaves,
to increase his own wealth.

“You
may have all your money, and your scary company, but I have more at my disposal
than you do now,” she muttered. But she did not have enough information to know
what modifications had been made. The floor plan itself could even be altered.
Or an entire new floor could have been put in for that kind of money. She
frowned and leaned back on her bed, frustrated.