The Trilisk AI (Parker Interstellar Travels #2)

by Michael McCloskey

  “Defend, sense, scout. Many functions.”

  “One function per sphere? Or are they each capable of everything?” Telisa asked.

  “Specialists and generalists both present. Many choices, possibilities, configurations.”

  Telisa tagged along and smiled when she saw the bay.

  Magnus sighed. “I suppose I need to stow most of this for takeoff, anyway,” he said. “The Iridar isn’t what she used to be. We’re getting a rattle or two in her when we maneuver.”

  “Primitive Terran vessel unstable in atmospheric acceleration and spaceflight,” Shiny agreed. “This is optimal time to arrange cargo bay to receive, accommodate, house new materials.”

  I wonder if he feels a sense of danger, traveling on an alien ship of more primitive design than his own, Magnus sent Telisa over his link.

  If he’s like us, she said, then he’s acclimated to a more dangerous life.

  Ha ha. Okay, drone-killer!

  Make fun of me all you want. You know I can handle myself now.

  Magnus shrugged. She was right. The matter-of-fact way she had said it made him respond with a poke. But she had faced real danger and made it through.

  Magnus cleared a minimal space for Shiny’s cargo. When he finished, he regarded the alien again. He reminded himself that what looked like a beak was its back end, and the round front with the growths underneath was the closest thing it had to a head, since the eyes were there, dozens of little growths, like a garden of crab eye stalks. Its golden exterior and many legs made it look like a fancy statue. He waited for the twitch, but it didn’t come.

  Come to think of it...

  “I see you have your two legs back. And your twitch is gone,” Magnus observed aloud.

  “Repaired, healed, restored.”

  “Good for you!” Telisa said. “I’m happy you’re whole again.”

  “So where are we going, exactly? Time to leave,” Magnus prompted.

  Shiny gave Magnus’s link the coordinates.

  At least he’s not taking over the ship again. Yet.

  Magnus inspected the general area indicated. It was way past the limits of human exploration, which he had half expected.

  “Okay, here we go then.”

  “Are you comfortable here in the bay?” Magnus asked the alien.

  “This area acceptable living space,” Shiny said. “Shiny has work to perform. Currently in planning phase.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave you to it then, but I need some of this space to work on my project as well. As we said, I need to learn more about your walker.”

  “Acceptable arrangement.”

  Magnus walked back to the mess with Telisa. He smiled a contagious smile.

  Telisa smiled back. “What?”

  Magnus scooped her into his arms. “Nothing. We’re on another adventure!”

  She laughed. “I guess you were getting bored...”

  He kissed her. “Not bored,” he said. “It’s just good to be on the move again. C’mon, you’re a danger junkie now, too.”

  “Me? No. I’m just a student. Well, I mean, I just sit around and study things...”

  “Not anymore. That’s the old you. I know you love the thrill of going places. Even dangerous places, or you wouldn’t have signed up for another go.”

  “Yes. But it’s just that... well, Jack and Thomas, you know?”

  They died right in front of us. Their blood sprayed over us.

  He sighed and kissed her forehead. He became a bit less exuberant. “This time, Shiny’s on our side from the beginning.”

  “Is he? I mean he’s on our side at the beginning, whose side is he on at the end? His own?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He smiled again. “We have the robot this time, too.”

  She laughed. “What are you going to call it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. We could just call it Scout I guess. That’s what it’s for. To check the situation out ahead of us. To avoid what went wrong last time.”

  “Really? So much work you put into it. I figured it would have an impressive name.”

  “Destroyer of Worlds?”

  “Uh, no. Why don’t you just stick to Scout,” she said.

  “I’m excited to have Shiny here to help me finally figure the walker out. With— whatever his race is called—with those parts, imagine how much better this robot could be. Truly singular.”

  “So let me get this straight. You’re trying to build an alien machine, and Shiny’s trying to build a Terran machine. I think you have a suboptimal arrangement.”

  “Not really. We’re learning from each other. Besides, I feel sure whatever he’s making, there’s more than one,” Magnus said. “And I feel better relying on a machine I made than a machine he made.”

  “I want to know what his project is about. I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Well, Shiny’s better at this by far, whether he’s making alien things or Terran things.”

  “He has better tools. I wonder how his raw intelligence stacks up against ours on the curve.”

  “We’ll probably never know.”

  “Have you thought this through? If Scout is based on the walker, then these things that destroyed Shiny’s world are going to come after it, right?”

  Oh. no.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Then Scout isn’t going to last about a second there,” Telisa said. “And whatever takes him out might kill us as a side effect.”

  Magnus threw her a sour look. “I’ve been working on this thing for so long. I’ll have to stick with my old design.”

  “Learn from him anyway. Next time, we could use the improved one.”

  “Yeah, next time.”

  Dammit!

  ***

  Telisa and Magnus fell into their old shipboard patterns. Magnus trained with Telisa in combat VR every day. She still had a lot to learn, but she excelled beyond his expectations in every aspect of the training. At first he thought she had done it simply to please the rest of the crew, but now he could tell she had genuine enthusiasm for it. He felt arrogant for thinking before that she had only studied it to prove herself.

  After every training session, Magnus went to the bay to work on Scout. Then at the end of the ship’s artificial day, he collapsed into his bunk webbing with Telisa nearby. They floated together with the gravity turned off and did things (both virtual and real) that made Magnus forget all about the real world until he awakened the next day.

  Four days into their trip, Magnus waited for Telisa to join him for training.

  Telisa has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, he thought. She’s strong and smart. Yet this can’t go on forever. If we keep rolling the dice, we’re going to die like Jack and Thomas.

  “You have that look on your face,” she said.

  “Heavy thoughts.”

  “You have a hard time staying positive, don’t you?”

  “You’re young. You haven’t learned to be cynical yet.”

  “Well, weren’t you telling me just the other day that we have Shiny and Scout this time and the odds are slanted in our favor now?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So what are we going to do? Fight some androids? Robots?” Telisa asked. She’d done especially well in their last firefight simulation. She’d gotten good at hitting targets around gentle corners and timing the releases of seeker grenades.

  “I think it’s time to go to the next level.”

  Telisa looked surprised. “Next level?”

  Magnus nodded. “You’re still getting better, of course, but you know the basics of small arms combat. But I’ve never exposed you to squad tactics or the integration of your personal view into combat. Both of these would be the logical next places to go. You can fight on your own, but you don’t use your PV and you don’t work as part of a team.”

  “But we fight together all the time!” Telisa protested. “We link to each other to coordinate. I don’t follow you.”
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  “We fight as two separate entities. Yes, we talk to each other a bit, but a tight squad is much more integrated. Using your PV, you can see what your friends see. You can receive information from battle probes. It takes practice to integrate views coming in through your link with what you’re seeing with your eyes.”

  “You should have told me about this earlier!” she said.

  “We’ve been too busy. And I prefer to introduce one thing at a time. Besides, did you really think you reached the pinnacle of human combat on one long mission and a few months of hiding out? This takes years.”

  “Okay, I’m ready. What should I do?”

  “First, the concept. Then we can try something fun.”

  Telisa smiled.

  I love her energy, Magnus thought.

  Magnus put her into VR. He watched from the outside, controlling the scenario.

  Telisa stood on a wide balcony overlooking a road three floors below. Shrubs and parked cars obscured the approach. Behind her, a wide lounge was visible through floor-to-ceiling windows. It was filled with leather furniture and elegant tables. A fancy bar dominated the far wall, with revolving doors flanking it. She held a powerful rifle.

  “Attackers are moving down the road towards you. From the woods on the left and the draw there on the right. Of course, they’ll use cover to best advantage. You’re sitting here behind a blackfield that covers this balcony. Take them out as they approach.”

  “Okay. Waiting for the hard part.” Telisa knelt by the concrete lip of the balcony and rested her rifle across it, facing the road.

  “Here is your battle module,” Magnus said. He added the module to the simulation. A tiny sphere the size of a tennis ball floated up behind her. He hooked its output up to her link.

  “Ah. Wow. I can see whatever it sees. Got it.”

  “Now, more attackers have flanked you. They’ll filter through the building below you, though much more slowly than those from the road. Deploy the battle module to patrol behind you and watch its cameras in your PV. When an attacker approaches from behind, you turn, take cover or whatever is appropriate, and take him out. You have to be time-efficient to cover both front and back.”

  “Got it.”

  The simulation started. Telisa started logging shots. Her rifle launched smart rounds that sought their targets, slicing through the cover below as the attackers tried to avoid detection. Telisa periodically checked the battle module to look for the flankers.

  “Aha. I see them,” she said.

  Magnus watched her turn and scamper through an open doorway into the lounge behind her, keeping low. Then she fell prone and waited.

  Two attackers emerged through a revolving door into the wide lounge. Telisa went to free fire and released two bursts on quick manual. Rounds skewered the bar in spectacular fashion, sending expensive liquor flying everywhere. The attackers were cut up and dropped in a second.

  “I hope I saw them all,” she said, turning back to the balcony.

  “You’re switching your attention back and forth. You need to watch both of them at once,” Magnus said.

  “My brain doesn’t work that way.”

  “It’ll come.”

  Telisa turned back to the road and started launching more smart rounds. She brought down four more assailants at long distance. “It’s difficult. I can’t pay attention to both of them at once.”

  “You can. It just hasn’t become smooth yet. I know you use your PV and shower at the same time.”

  “Well, that’s different.”

  “Only a bit. We all have things we can do while concentrating on a news feed or a game in the PV. This is another one of those things.”

  Telisa dropped two more attackers from the road. Two enemies charged out from behind her. She hadn’t spotted them. They brought up stubby weapons and fired at her through the windows. The massive windows shattered in a huge explosion of plastic shards.

  “Sonofabitch,” she said, rolling to one side. A grenade rolled toward her. More shots rang out. Telisa lost hold of her rifle as she scrambled over the balcony and jumped.

  Would she do that in real life?

  Magnus knew that even with real pain in a simulation, people often played it a bit fast and loose. That was all fine for training brave soldiers who would risk their lives, but it hurt him to watch Telisa being reckless.

  “Oooooouch!” she yelled, in anticipation of her impact with the street below. Magnus cut the sim before she hit.

  “Thanks.”

  “You owe me one. Next time, I’m going to let you feel it.”

  “Don’t get all soft on me,” she said sarcastically.

  “You know I won’t.”

  “You mentioned something fun?”

  “I’m going to join you.”

  Magnus changed the scene to the interior of a huge building. Telisa and Magnus perched on parallel walkways overlooking a series of warehouse rows. Containers of all sizes rose in stacks beneath them, forming a maze of twisty turns and cubbyholes.

  “Okay, I’ve set it up. I’ll see what you see in my PV and vice versa,” he said.

  “Ha. I hope you’re good at it.”

  “I am, actually,” Magnus bragged. He smiled. Telisa knows better than to take me too seriously.

  She looked over toward his walkway and smiled. He spun around and fired his weapon.

  “What the—?” Telisa asked.

  “I saw someone behind me in your view of me,” Magnus explained.

  “Oh shit!” Telisa replied. Another shot rang out. She dropped dead.

  Magnus smiled. She’ll get the hang of it.

  ***

  Hours after their practice, Telisa and Magnus lay entwined in her sleeping net. Finally given a moment of boredom, Magnus started to wonder if they were making a mistake to head out with Shiny. Ironically, in the original conversation about the new mission he had tried to encourage her, but instead he had ended up planting more doubts into his own head. If I weren’t here, would Telisa take such risks without me? Am I going to get her killed?

  “Now you’re moody,” she said.

  “Sorry. I’m thinking about the future.”

  “You’re worried about our new venture.”

  “Okay. I admit it. You had a point the other day. We’ve led charmed lives so far. I’m waiting for something bad to happen.”

  Telisa gave him a mock laugh. “Ha! Charmed? Is that what you call losing our friends, living as fugitives?”

  “We’re still alive and we have each other.”

  “That’s kind of sweet in a...grim sort of way,” Telisa said.

  “You sometimes mention the Five Entities. You’re not into that stuff for real, are you?”

  “No, it’s just something Mom used to say.”

  “I don’t think Shiny is religious. But he was asking about it earlier,” he said.

  “Really? He’s probably just curious about our motivations and behavior.”

  “I got the feeling there was more to it than that. He asked me if our prayers were answered. I said I didn’t think so. Then he asked me how long it had been since they were.”

  “How long? Since your prayers were answered?” Telisa asked.

  “No. How long since humanity’s prayers had been answered. I said I didn’t know.”

  Telisa shrugged. “He’s an alien, Magnus. Of course it’s hard to get him completely. If I had to guess, I would say he sees the prayer behavior and assumes it must have worked at one time; otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Just think, though. His people are so different, the idea of entreating a higher power to help, even when they were primitive, must never have occurred to them. No mysticism in their past? I wonder if he’s trying to help us understand him, or if he’s hiding stuff from us?”

  “Probably both.”

  Chapter 6

  Kirizzo stood very still, but his mind raced through a long planning phase. His materials sat all around him in the cargo
bay of the Terran vessel, the Iridar. The first goal: find a way to assist Telisa and Magnus in the retrieval of his artifact.

  Openly opposing the Bel Klaven would require more time and resources than Kirizzo had available. It would be better to assist indirectly, Kirizzo decided. He wanted to watch the enemy and learn. Kirizzo considered his inventory and that of the Terrans. He settled on a plan for forty small probes that could detect enemy movements and transmissions. Doubtless some of the probes would be lost, but anything he could learn would help the Terrans on their mission.

  Kirizzo knew he needed a good hiding mechanism for the drones. They were small, which would help when moving through the subterranean environment. But he needed something more. He believed the Terrans would be unopposed by the Bel Klaven. So his probes should be constructed as Terran devices.

  His legs ached a bit. He settled his thorax down onto the deck. The lack of Gorgalan torso rests on the Iridar gave Kirizzo an idea. The homeworld was riddled with a huge number of the Gorgalan versions of chairs: two low columns of ceramic or plastic, spaced about a half meter apart. If the probes could take such a shape, then shut down, that should be sufficient to fool any Bel Klaven war machines that became suspicious.

  The planning phase moved on to details of execution.

  Kirizzo accessed the Iridar’s network to learn about Terran methods of automaton design and construction. Some information came in, but something felt wrong, over and above the annoyance of using a primitive alien information source.

  The Iridar’s network connections exhibited very poor latency characteristics, even for Terrans. Kirizzo compared it to his previous memories of access on the ship—yes, they had degraded considerably. The link was being maintained from a much smaller set of access points than before. In fact, the vessel was configured to ignore closer and faster connection opportunities. Kirizzo examined the current configuration of the ship’s network access. He slowly came to the only obvious conclusion.

  Telisa and Magnus were hiding from someone or something.

  Kirizzo could reconfigure for optimal access. However, the possibility that whatever his Terrans hid from posed a danger to himself as well gave him pause. Also, if something found them, they could be killed. Then Kirizzo would have to negotiate new terms with other parties. Kirizzo decided not to tamper with the settings, but he had an idea to circumvent the obstacle.