The Trilisk AI (Parker Interstellar Travels #2)

by Michael McCloskey

  “I don’t think the Vovokans need their stuff anymore,” Magnus said. “Shiny offered it.”

  “It is basically looting a destroyed civilization—one being annihilated. Not exactly as honorable as being a true archaeologist.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Well, the main difference here is that archaeologists have to recreate knowledge of a culture from long-buried clues. And that’s what I studied for. In such a profession, progress comes slowly over years. But now we’ve found live aliens and the information comes faster, easier. I don’t feel bad about it; after all, the reason I would sift through a ruin is to learn about the extinct culture of the aliens. We don’t have to do it the slow way anymore. A high-tech artifact tells you so much more about a culture than a shard of pottery. And a live alien should be even more informative. Though in Shiny’s case, it’s a bit hard to pump him for information.”

  “Yes, but we learn more every day.” His hand caressed her cheek.

  For some reason, Telisa’s mind slipped over the current situation and returned to her last argument with Magnus. They hadn’t broached the subject since.The fact that he thinks we’re not justified in the eyes of our own kind makes me doubt myself. I’ve always railed at the government for keeping the artifacts from me. They don’t have our best interests in mind... do they?

  “I’m sorry about the other day. Maybe your criticism hit too close to home,” Telisa said.

  “I never criticized you. I’m only saying, life is full of gray. I’m sorry I got so loud and angry. It’s just the pressures of our new life. We were blowing off steam at each other.”

  “To Shiny, the gray zone isn’t a morally gray area. It’s a mixture of him gaining something and his competitors gaining something at the same time.”

  “Good guess. Either that, or the gray zone is a trade off of something gained for something lost. But unless Shiny is an aberration among his own kind, these are Vovokan morals,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t that be awful? If Shiny turned out to be a crazy Vovokan?”

  Telisa wasn’t sure who to be more scared of: her own government or the creature she had called an ally against them. She decided to set her worries aside and turn her full attention to the man who held her. It was her favorite life-problem avoidance tactic.

  Chapter 9

  The door to Cilreth’s quarters announced a visitor. Startled, she sat up. She had been totally absorbed in her work. Why drop by incarnate when they can just call my link? Ah. Relachik just works that way. He’s old fashioned.

  Cilreth let her door open. Beyond stood Relachik, exactly as she’d surmised.

  “I know you’re good,” he said from the doorway. “But I can’t stand being in the dark anymore. So I’m asking, as your employer, what do you have so far?”

  Cilreth’s mouth twitched. She hated it when the drug did that at times when people could misinterpret it as annoyance or hesitation.

  “Fair enough. Arlin, too?”

  “Sure. Come to the mess and we’ll have an FTF.”

  “Face to face? I think only the Space Force says it that way anymore.”

  “Oh excuse me. I meant to say, let’s do it incarnate.”

  “No, that means we’re going to have sex for real instead of virtually.”

  Relachik’s face turned red. “Five Holies, do you understand me or not?”

  Cilreth nodded and stood. Relachik liked to play the grumpy old man, but she had already picked up that he wasn’t really irritated. It was just how he liked to talk. She let her head clear for a moment, as she’d been deep into it. Then she followed Relachik to the mess.

  Cilreth saw that Arlin had already arrived. He was eating a sandwich. Cilreth sat down and sliced herself a wedge of cheese.

  “The way to find people is to trace their money and their links to the net,” Cilreth said. “Unless Telisa and Magnus are completely off the grid, living in a cave on an alien planet, they have to use money. And they may need information, news, and entertainment. So they need access. Nowadays, anyone who can stay disconnected for long periods is a rare find. Most people, even wanted murderers, just can’t stand to stay off.”

  “But these two are determined,” said Relachik.

  “Yes. I believe Telisa could do it. But she has a business, which means money. Connections for sales. I think she’s online, which means we can find her.”

  “So they’re operating with false identities. They’ve set up whole new lives.”

  “The fact that I haven’t picked them up in the clean search means they’ve gone a step further than that. They’re operating under the umbrella of a special organization.”

  “What?”

  “The frontier has companies that specialize in masking operations from the government. They aggregate and shuffle data requests and money movements. When you access data through one of these illegal operations, they run huge caches, time shift your access requests, and wait for batches to accumulate. They process queries in large groups, then break them up into a new set of tiny requests that happen in other orders and on behalf of other entities, disguising all the patterns we’d be looking for. But just knowing they’re doing something like this is a step forward. There are only so many operations out there that are really good at it. I think I know who they’re using, but I’m not absolutely sure.”

  Relachik had been listening with his face betraying growing concern. “How dangerous are these people they’re working with?”

  “As paying customers, your daughter and her friends are probably safe enough. But if anything goes wonky, then the outfit is capable of murder to clean up problems. Which makes our job harder. You see, if they find out what we’re doing, the organization may try to eliminate us, or even eliminate your daughter to keep their exposure at a minimum. Actually, in cases like this, sometimes you can find the right person and simply bribe them to get what you want.”

  “Why would they do that? All their customers would quit using them,” Arlin said.

  Cilreth nodded. “The smart, forward-looking ones wouldn’t sell out their customers. But these criminals are only human. They’re greedy and shortsighted. If the reward is large enough, they’ll slip a name or two now and then. Not enough to get a lot of attention if they can help it. But sadly, almost any human can be tempted by short-term gain over long-term prosperity.”

  “What’s this group called? Where are they located?” Relachik asked.

  Cilreth sighed. “This isn’t going to make you any happier. They were originally called by locals just the ‘Enclave.’ Now, though, they’re widely known as the ‘F-clave.’ The story goes, the leader was putting pressure on someone who said, ‘Who are you guys?’ and the leader said, ‘We’re the fucking Enclave!’ and shot him dead, so now, they’re the F-clave for short.”

  “And where are they are located?”

  “I think in more than one world. For sure, on Brighter Walken. And that’s probably where Telisa and Magnus would go. I’ve checked some spaceport information and ships like the one you described have visited there. Of course, even those logs are subject to tampering. It’s hard to estimate just how connected her smuggler friends are.”

  “How many smugglers are we talking about?” Arlin asked.

  “We know of at least five, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have more people out on the frontier. They’re employees of a company that hired her back on Earth, Parker Interstellar Travels. It’s a guide-and-scouting-company front to the smugglers. Apparently three of them are on Earth. I obtained video of them from several cameras that operated around their headquarters recently.”

  “I know Brighter Walken,” Relachik said, and Cilreth believed him. If anyone knew something about almost all the inhabited worlds, it was probably a scout ship captain. Or an ex-scout ship captain.

  “So that’s where we need to go,” Arlin said. “I’ll set course for there immediately.”

  “Okay,” Relachik said. “If this place is like Cilreth desc
ribes, it’ll be a fortress. There will be muscle. We could just disappear, walking into a place like that.”

  “So what now?”

  “We go there. We find someone to pressure and get them to tell us what we need,” Relachik said. He looked at Cilreth. “What do we need, exactly, to find Telisa?”

  “The organization will have the data on their clients, locked up tight, of course. And they’ll have tracking keys. No doubt it will be some super-secure location. Breaking in through the net won’t be an option; I’m sorry, but they’ll have top-notch hackers working for them. If the critical stuff is even connected to the net, it would be very dangerous to go snooping there. Most likely a death squad would just show up out of nowhere and kill us.”

  “What do you mean tracking keys?” Arlin asked.

  “I mentioned how they send all client’s queries and data through the blender to mix them all together? Well, they can unblend it from the outside. In real time. Suppose gangster A is assigned to client C, who owes the organization money. Gangster A is supposed to keep track of C, and maybe drop in from time to time to pressure him. So gangster A is given C’s tracking key. With the key, he can eventually find the client through his net usage, just as I would if the target weren’t behind this obfuscation system. It’s useless to decode information about any of the other clients, so giving gangster A this key is not too much of a security risk. But we need Telisa’s key. Or the key those smugglers share.”

  “Then we should find the company member who has their key. The one assigned to them.”

  Cilreth shook her head. “I doubt there is one. If Telisa and crew are paying their bills and not causing a problem, there is no reason to send out a person to hassle them. Also, if someone has a tracking key and we pressure him, the first thing he’ll do is wipe the key from his link with just a thought. He knows he can always return to headquarters and get another copy once he’s out of danger. We need to get access to the crime organization’s most trusted storage.”

  “Maybe we could cause a huge debt to appear for them, one they couldn’t pay off, then find the guy sent out to harass them, and follow him incarnate.”

  “I don’t like that because it makes them hunted by the F-clave as well as the government,” Relachik said. “For now, divide and conquer. Step one is finding out where that storage is.”

  “Finding it incarnate may be just as dangerous as snooping around it through the network.”

  “Once I’m done with these guys, they’re not going to be dangerous to anyone,” Relachik said.

  Cilreth wondered if she’d signed on for the wrong job. Then she shrugged. The twitch is already killing me anyway.

  ***

  Cilreth appeared beside Arlin and Relachik in the simulation. It was set up to present them with what they knew of the situation on Brighter Walken. This was their first practice session focused on the objective of finding the F-clave headquarters.

  The sun was very bright. Cilreth summoned up a pair of heavy shades. Just ahead lay the target building, a two-story frontier shack of plastic and metal.

  “Okay, there’s Frankie’s club, the Vain Vothrile. Hadrian works in there. He’s usually in the back,” Relachik said, mostly for Arlin’s benefit, since Cilreth had gathered most of the info.

  It’s probably good for me to hear it all again, too, Cilreth thought. Besides I didn’t dig into the info very deeply. Relachik’s a monster for detail; he probably learned a lot more from it than I did.

  “So let’s just go in there, close the club up, and have a little talk with Hadrian,” Relachik said.

  “How can we disable the club’s defenses?” Arlin asked.

  “Cilreth, can you do it?”

  Before Cilreth could answer, Arlin snapped his fingers.

  “Wait. Maybe this is another clever way to use our remoras!” he said.

  “Maybe. Or maybe that’s more attention than we want,” Relachik said. “I was also going to have the club turn new customers away once we got in there. If everything’s broken it won’t work.”

  “I can close it down. A place like this won’t have top-notch security. Unless this is the F-clave headquarters, which I’m sure it’s not. It’s just too small.”

  “I thought you said you were a searcher, not a hacker,” Relachik said.

  “I’m not a real hacker, but you hardly have to be a genius to shut a dive like this down,” she said. “I got this one.”

  “Okay then, let’s hit it.”

  They walked into the club. The place was decked out with drink and drug ads, pictures of suave spacemen and women, and services offering lists of sporting-event feeds. It was an assault of sight and sound. There was an incarnate dance floor and a dozen virtual ones run as services from dozens of booths. A long bar dominated one wall, with doors there that opened into the back of the club.

  Cilreth found it mildly interesting, having never been in such a frontier dive before. It smelled considerably worse than a virtual core world club. But the grittiness that came with its incarnate charm carried some dark, dirty appeal that surprised her. Perhaps it was the danger. A virtual club came with little or no risk, whether it was inhabited by bots or real cyber-visitors.

  Relachik took one look at the busy bar, filled with people dancing, drinking, and making out. “Not gonna work. I’m taking us back to opening time.”

  The figures in the club flitted in high speed then disappeared. Now, only two patrons were inside, just arriving at the bar.

  “Okay. Resume,” Relachik said.

  Cilreth started in on the club’s controls. She started by hijacking Frankie’s credentials, then shutting him out. Arlin and Relachik physically barred the front door, then stunned the patrons with their weapons. They went into the back to get Hadrian while Cilreth finished up with the club security.

  Oops. The cameras got Arlin and Relachik. I’ll have to work on that.

  Her allies emerged from the back with a short man in tow. Hadrian. They tied him up on a chair.

  “I can get it out of him,” Cilreth said on a separate channel. She flashed a predatory smile.

  “Do you really want to do the coercion when we’re there for real?” asked Relachik.

  “Oh. No, good point. You handle it.”

  “Do you have a plan to get him to tell us what he knows?” asked Arlin.

  “I’ll have to think on it,” Relachik said. “For now, I’ll just wing it.”

  Relachik wound back and struck Hadrian savagely across the face. “The name of your boss. Now,” he growled.

  “You’re a dead man,” Hadrian mumbled, a stream of blood pouring from his mouth.

  Cilreth got an alarm signal. “Dammit. The local constabulary is approaching.”

  “Exit strategy?”

  “Uhm, that’s TBD.”

  “Okay then. Let’s run it again,” Relachik said. “Or should we do the running firefight with the cops on the way back to the Vandivier?”

  Cilreth sighed. “Run it again,” she voted.

  Chapter 10

  The surface looked like colored rock at first. As Magnus examined it, he decided the huge flat plates of greenish-blue material might be plants of some kind. They encrusted every boulder nearby. The rocks and growths were taller than Magnus, limiting his view in all directions. The sky, at least, reminded him of Earth. It was clear and blue.

  Magnus immediately noticed the isolation. His link picked up only a handful of services from items they carried. The environment all around was devoid of link traffic.

  It’s up to us now.

  “Those are like giant mushrooms or lichens or something,” Telisa said.

  She was taking it all in as well. Magnus’s link reported the Iridar as out of range as the ship lifted away from the planet, taking Shiny with it. They stood next to the cargo container they had unloaded from the Iridar. The landing had been tricky on the rocky landscape, made even more difficult by Shiny’s insistence for a quick drop off.

  “Maybe,” he
said. He walked toward the nearest growth and kicked it. It gave a bit under the blow.

  “Wait. Is it safe?”

  “We’re going to go down into broken underground tunnels on an alien planet, and you’re worried about kicking a giant... Okay, yeah, you’re right. It could be dangerous. Especially if Shiny is used to living underground, he may not have thought to mention above-ground nasties.”

  “He said the entrance is over there,” Telisa said.

  “First things first,” he said. He opened the cargo container. Shiny’s probes nestled inside, each one in its own little hexagonal space like bee larvae. Each was about the size of a human head. As soon as the lid was clear, the cylindrical probes activated. One by one, they floated into the air. They emitted only a tenuous whine as they hovered off, each one in a different direction. The last one waited nearby.

  “I guess that one’s with us,” Telisa said.

  “Looks like it,” Magnus said, lifting the empty holding tray out of the container. He discarded it to one side, exposing the contents underneath: Scout.

  Magnus activated the machine with his link. Scout clambered out of the cargo container on long spider legs and stood ready. The body of the machine was rectangular, rather than the ovoid of a spider, but its legs made it look very lifelike. Magnus felt frustration. It had to be all Terran technology this time. The walker machine had offered so much potential.

  “Okay. Which way did you say? Just send him toward the entrance.”

  Telisa gave the command. Scout moved off through the tortuous landscape. Telisa and Magnus walked carefully over the rocks, keeping well behind Scout. Magnus routed Scout’s sensors into his PV as they’d practiced on the ship.

  The machine ahead walked up to a huge pipe rising from the ground. The entire thing was black and scarred. Pieces of debris lay all around among the rocks. The gaping opening was large enough to accept a car.