The Trilisk AI (Parker Interstellar Travels #2)

by Michael McCloskey

  “Five Holy Entities,” Telisa said. “Your home planet! Will it be safe for us?”

  “No. Danger. Peril.”

  “You are so failing to sell me on this,” Telisa said. She watched Magnus.

  “Oh, at least he’s up front about it,” he said out loud.

  “Yeah. I seem to remember him not exactly being fully informative before,” she said.

  “Why do you need us?” Magnus asked. “Are you an outcast just like us? Hunted by your government?”

  “Shiny homeworld is ruined, derelict, destroyed.”

  Telisa frowned.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Telisa, Magnus retrieve artifacts. Destroyers, invaders, conquerors, less likely to attack primitive species.”

  “How wonderful. The destroyers of your planet have occupied it?”

  “War machines linger. Hunt. Eradicate.”

  “But they won’t hunt us, right? That’s why you’re sending us down?”

  “Likely you will survive,” Shiny transmitted. “Likely success for both parties. Benefit, profit, gain to be had for all three.”

  “Likely we’ll survive? Your salesmanship needs some work.”

  “Shiny is not a salesman. Shiny is not a man.”

  “We need to talk about it privately first,” Magnus said.

  “The channel is secure,” Shiny transmitted.

  “Telisa and I need to talk for a moment, so stand by please.”

  “Acceptable. Telisa and Magnus negotiate terms as a sub-alliance?”

  “Perhaps,” Telisa said.

  “Sounds dangerous,” Magnus told her on a private channel.

  “It is. But as he says, we have a lot to gain. And I’m tired of hiding. At least on an expedition we’ll feel like we’re just out of touch, not fugitives.”

  “I’m up for it, too. But I wonder what we can do about Shiny. I think we’re playing with fire here.”

  “Like you said. Make ourselves dangerous to lose. We can set up an info drop to the UNSF in the event of our deaths?”

  “Something like that may work. He mentioned negotiation. We should ask for more.”

  “Like what?”

  “What do you want? His race is older than ours. Or at least more advanced. He probably has a lot to offer.”

  “Like information about the Trilisks,” Telisa said.

  “Perfect. Yes. Ask for some information. I’m thinking about the robot. I could use his help. I’m sure he could give me all the pointers I need to incorporate those walker parts.”

  Telisa shifted her attention back to the shared channel. Magnus must have done the same. He prompted Shiny first.

  “Okay then. We’re in,” he said.

  “We have some conditions,” Telisa added.

  “Shiny offers benefit. Profit. Gain.”

  “Yeah, I heard that part. The conditions are easy for you. Magnus has some questions about your walker. The one we took from that base? You just help him out with it a bit so we can incorporate some of your walker into our new robot.”

  “Agreeable. Possible. Acceptable.”

  “And my condition is...you give me the location of every Trilisk ruin your race ever encountered.”

  “Agreeable. Possible. Acceptable.”

  “When are you thinking to leave?” Telisa asked.

  “We may leave immediately.”

  “Are you coming down to pick us up? You’ll cause a panic if anyone detects your ship here. Aliens recently attacked a Space Force ship. Wait. Was that you that destroyed the Seeker?”

  “Rendezvous in space. I will board your Iridar. I have not engaged, fought, combatted any Terran ships.”

  “We have to take the Iridar?” Magnus asked. “You have an advanced Shinarian starship, wouldn’t we be safer in that?”

  “Negative. Unsafe, precarious, risky.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Homeworld...unsafe. Destroyers—”

  “Invaders, conquerors, right. They still have a presence in space around your planet.”

  “Correct, accurate, right on.”

  ***

  Jason appeared in Magnus’s link pane.

  “Jason. It’s Magnus again.”

  Jason did not react.

  Damn sheltered connections. I am so tired of waiting for stuff to go through the masking layer.

  “Magnus, are you there? Oh. Hi.”

  “How’s the agency?”

  “Calm,” Jason said. Magnus summed up Jason’s demeanor. He used a program designed to detect stress. Jason’s reading was fairly low.

  Let’s hope it really is calm.

  “I’m altering our death packages significantly. They’ve also become much more important. Are our drop locations all still valid?”

  “What the hell, Magnus? You guys really dig into the shit out there on the frontier, don’t you?”

  “Just a precaution. Do you have the stuff I asked you set up?”

  There was another delay. Magnus gritted his teeth and waited it out.

  “Yes. Jack and Thomas are doing fine. And I’ll still see anything appearing at our drop spots.”

  “Okay. Go ship shopping, then. Do some research. Get us a good deal. I’ll send the funds. We’ll put together another crew and send some of these people you have on the list out to find...who knows what.”

  “A ship? Uhm, okay.”

  “That’s everything then.”

  “Hey, uh, Mag? I’m not going to have to head out to the frontier myself, am I?”

  “No, I need you right there at PIT headquarters.”

  “Good. All right then.”

  Magnus smiled.

  Chapter 4

  Leonard Relachik gathered his few belongings and headed for the sole starport on Malgur-Thame. Most people would have taken the elevator to the top of the housing building and rented a glider to whisk through the green mist to their destination. Relachik hoofed it. Even though the ground was spongy, wet, and eternally green, he had a spaceman’s appreciation for real exercise across a real distance as opposed to a VR helmet or a link program hooked up to a treadmill.

  When he arrived at the spaceport, he entered the facility at an automated checkpoint and headed down to the berths below ground. Squat robots scuttled and rolled about on errands for their unseen masters. The chemical smell of whatever the locals used to kill off the tenacious green slime filled the air.

  He looked up the berth number and found the name: Violet Vandivier. He smiled. The vogue for naming civilian vessels was an adjective and a name, supposedly necessary to sufficiently differentiate vessels for casual conversation (of course, their unique identifier was simply an obscenely long number). Relachik knew already the name would be shortened further to the Vandivier in shipboard conversation.

  Relachik found the ship in another fifteen minutes. It was a small ship by his standards, round, and predictably violet in color. The ship rested like a flying saucer over a dish-shaped depression. He examined the depression for a few minutes until Arlin arrived. Relachik decided it was thick metal or ceramic. His link told him it was powered down, but it was capable of drawing a lot of power from the spaceport reactor.

  “What’s up with this berth?” Relachik asked.

  “You don’t know? Hmm. I guess there would be no reason for you to know if you’re used to capital ships in deep space. You probably spent all your time off-planet. Anyway, a lot of the spaceports on the fringe are finally getting these spinner shields. You can run your gravity spinner up much higher here above this plate to save yourself some propellant taking off.”

  “Oh,” Relachik said. Typically a modern craft could only use a small fraction of its gravity spinner capability when taking off, or else people and debris would go flying for a kilometer.

  Cilreth showed up on Arlin’s heels. She had brought two silver luggage cases.

  “What do you think of the ship?” Arlin asked her.

  “How big is the data cache?” she asked.
>
  Arlin and Relachik laughed.

  “I actually don’t know,” Arlin said. “But I just gave you both the permissions you need for all the services.”

  A boarding ramp descended. Cilreth marched on board with her head down. Relachik imagined her mechanically perusing its network capabilities. He connected to the ship and performed his own summing up of their new home. He couldn’t help but do it as a series of comparisons to his old ship, the Seeker. The ship was clean but cramped. It was so much smaller than the Seeker.

  The Vandivier had two levels. The ship was designed to support up to ten people, though only six could reside inside comfortably. The gravity spinner was newer, and reasonably efficient for long distance travel. Relachik could see from the interior layout service that each of them would have their own tiny quarters. A small mess area and a tiny lounge dominated the center of the main level. The lower level of the vessel as it now sat held a small cargo compartment. It wasn’t of much interest to Relachik, who had brought so little it would all fit in his cramped living space.

  The ship had no bridge. There was simply no need to set aside valuable space for piloting a ship that was controlled through links. The Seeker had possessed a bridge—though it was simply an armored space designed to protect the officers from harm. The crews of the Space Force vessels could do their jobs from anywhere on board through their links.

  Notably missing were laser turrets, a particle accelerator, and a battalion of marines.

  Oh well, it’s a step down. Two steps down.

  In their own way, the tiny ships were as amazing as ships like the Seeker—everything had to be cleverly designed and super-compact in order to pack everything in.

  This damn thing is a tin can. Oh, well. That’s what VR is for.

  “We’re well stocked and ready for a long trip,” Arlin said.

  “Looks newer than I expected,” Relachik noted.

  “Only three years old. The gravity spinner is a monster. Very nice ship. It’s also not mine. On loan from a relative.”

  Relachik’s eyebrow rose. “None of my business, but sounds like a good way to destroy a family.”

  Arlin smiled. “He’s a big company man. Doesn’t care about this much. Besides, it was to pay off an old family debt.”

  Then why isn’t it really yours? Relachik shrugged. “As long as he’s not going to show up in the middle of the search and demand it back.”

  Arlin nodded. “Won’t happen.”

  Cilreth was looking around quite a bit, but Relachik didn’t ask her about her plans to begin the search. Cilreth wasn’t a soldier and wouldn’t tolerate micromanagement well. She was a professional and he knew she would dive in as soon as they were underway. Cilreth continued to the second level.

  Relachik stayed in the cargo area as the ramp retracted. He looked around at the many cargo containers. His link allowed him to rummage through the container inventories, but he spoke anyway just to get to know Arlin better. “You said we have enough for a long trip. These are food supplies? Weapons?”

  “The cargo hold has an amazing array of things. Everything on board has multiple functions, like a collection of a thousand Swiss Army knives. We have plenty of decent food. As for weapons...”

  “Yes?”

  “Come with me.”

  Arlin walked to the end of a tiny walkway on the second level. The mess was directly behind them, and a reactor room was to Relachik’s left. His link told him Arlin was headed to an armory. Once again Relachik could have inquired electronically, but it would be more polite—and more interesting—to let Arlin show him the contents FTF.

  Arlin opened a sliding metal door, revealing the small room. An array of weaponry lay on display upon lit racks. “This section is all the usual. Stunners, a laser, smart glue bombs, and some projectile launchers.”

  “Wow,” Relachik said. His eye caught a glint of metal on the right. Several swords were secured there. Relachik took one by the handle. It was held in place by a clamp.

  “Careful, please,” Arlin said. Relachik smiled. “Those are sharper than you might believe. That thing could cut through a landing strut in one swing. If you drop it to the floor, I’m going to have to replace a deck plate.”

  “They’re dangerous even to have on board,” Relachik said, withdrawing his hand. He examined the clever mounting mechanism on the wall. A very strong series of clamps held the swords by their handles in metal tubes. He found the service in his link. Just so I know how to get one, if I need it.

  The left side of the closet held some military skinsuits and two medical robokits.

  “What about the ship herself. Is she armed?”

  “Nothing long range,” Arlin said a bit defensively. “We have some disabler remoras. I think they’ll come in handy if we find the smugglers in orbit. There are four probes with some defensive EM capabilities.”

  “Thanks for showing me. I’ll put my stuff in my quarters.”

  “Of course.”

  Before Relachik left, he turned to Arlin again. “I’d like to inquire about takeoff procedures.”

  “Really?”

  “As you said, I’m familiar with much larger Space Force vessels.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, if this were a hot landing zone, the ship would show you to the nearest crash pod. But as far as taking off on Malgur-Thame, no special precautions are needed. In fact, we’re just now underway.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Of course, exactly where we’re underway to, I don’t know. I’m taking us to the fringe, as you indicated.”

  “Yes, well, hopefully Cilreth can help us with that soon. But I’d let her do her job alone for a while. She knows the ball is in her court.”

  “Of course. As you wish.”

  Relachik found his small room and rattled around for a few minutes, placing his things under a bunk and into a few metal cabinets. He had a sleeping web, a closet, and a shower tube that also worked as a toilet and a crash tube. It was much like the Seeker, only everything was smaller, and as Arlin had mentioned, all the gadgets seemed to serve more than one function. Relachik suppressed a bit of annoyance at the realization he would have to learn to use a lot of new stuff.

  He checked the outer sensor net and navigation. They were already leaving the atmosphere. The gravity spinner was amazing. Nothing had disturbed Relachik through the entire ascent. There wasn’t even any vibration to speak of.

  So amazing. Sometimes I’m actually glad for bureaucracy. It slows things down.

  The ship neared its first in-system checkpoint. Nothing more than a small satellite that scanned them and verified their credentials. But Relachik noted that many such checkpoints lay ahead—more than there should be. A network of satellites appeared in his mind’s eye, embracing the planet. It took him a moment to realize what they were.

  “Defenses,” he said to himself.

  The destruction of the Seeker had no doubt initiated such changes across most of the colonies. Relachik saw more activity over Malgur-Thame. Several construction facilities were on the display. He zoomed into the public view of one of them. A ship’s hull was being formed by a series of robots. Raw materials were coming in on transports on a regular schedule.

  Relachik made some inquiries. It felt strange to go through the public net for UNSF information. And, predictably, what he could find out with civilian clearance was very limited. Apparently every colony with a population greater than one million people had been tasked with fabricating ships for the cause. The class varied by the size of the colony. Malgur-Thame, being quite small, had received plans to fabricate a Space Force corvette.

  The burden on such a small colony was fairly steep. Those resources were needed for other things. Yet the sentiment was largely positive in light of the news that humans were no longer alone on the galactic stage.

  Relachik’s pulse quickened a bit as he thought about humanity’s situation. We’ve finally encountered others out there, and they don’t like us.

  ***
/>   For Relachik, the key to spending time in space was a routine. A daily regimen that included many glorified habits, all of which were productive, but none too efficient. If you had the time, you had to draw it out. Many would retreat into virtual worlds and spend their time there, but Relachik loved working more than anything. When he did create virtual worlds, he filled them with more work—training and planning.

  It was all about what was going on in reality. He’d invested too much time and effort in real life to let it rot by attending imaginary worlds for any length of time.

  This philosophy had taken a hit when he left service. Now, his reality required considerably less work. I have a crew, of sorts. At least one is woefully under trained to be on a ship. I should try and fix that.

  Relachik staked out the mess and waited. He set up a few VR scenarios to pass the time, creating some situations he could foresee them encountering. In each case, the objective was the same: approach various hostiles holding Telisa captive and rescue her.

  Eventually Cilreth showed up to get something to eat.

  “So, is the network setup here good enough for you?”

  “Yes. It’s adequate,” Cilreth said, smiling slightly.

  “I think we should train a bit while we’re stuck in this tin can. I hope the smugglers won’t turn out to be a problem, but maybe we should practice a bit just in case...”

  “Yes.”

  “...and I think the exercise—what?”

  “I said yes, silly.”

  “Ah. Good. I guess I expected you would say you’re busy looking for Telisa.”

  “I am, but the computers do most of the work. Though I like to tweak things often. But I have to take a break now and then, just like anyone.”

  “After lunch then?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “Spend a lot of time in VR?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “How about action?”

  “Yes, I play a lot of action stuff. And I exercise in real life, too.”

  “Wow. You’re a gem among the hacker crowd.”

  “I’m not a hacker. Don’t mistake an investigator for a hacker. I know how to look for people. That’s my specialty.”