The Trilisk AI (Parker Interstellar Travels #2)

by Michael McCloskey

  “What—”

  “This way!” Magnus yelled. Telisa sprinted off toward the tunnel he’d indicated. The drilling machine made loud noises and lurched forward. Telisa turned to look where she ran and didn’t look back. The noise behind her rose.

  She ran recklessly after Magnus into the dark side tunnel. At first the sound behind them was masked by the rock as they left the main tunnel. Then an even louder, more terrifying noise erupted behind them.

  It’s drilling after us, she realized.

  “Is it trying to kill us?”

  “It’s still coming! It’ll crush us if it catches us!”

  Telisa caught a glimpse of bright red and green darting ahead and down a passage on the left. She knew Magnus saw it too, because he grabbed her hand and charged after the spheres.

  “I wonder if they led us to that machine on purpose,” he said over his link.

  “Well, now they’re leading us away. Just make sure they don’t lead us over a cliff!”

  They ran down the lit passage and took a left, following the colorful spheres. Once again the horrible sound grew more distant. They kept moving at a slow run, sweeping their lights to check the way ahead. They passed two side rooms. Telisa caught a glimpse of a several glistening stalagmites rising from the floor with a mesh of white strings crisscrossing among them. The next room had a giant worm floating in a tube of dark fluid.

  It’s like a nightmare.

  Finally they stopped to catch their breath. Telisa’s hands trembled.

  “I never shake like this in the VRs.”

  “The animal part of you has learned the difference,” he said. “Besides, how many times have you been chased by a giant drilling robot in our training sessions?”

  “Yeah. But there were soldiers, monsters...”

  “Your physical body shakes under adrenal overload. That may be an oversight of our VR software. I’ll look into it,” he said. She flitted her light across his face. He smiled wildly at her.

  She laughed out loud. “Ha! Oh, thank you so much! Haha! Hey, did we lose Shiny’s probe?”

  “No, it’s over here. Scout got sidetracked but I think he’ll be here soon.”

  Telisa caught sight of the probe. She felt happy it made it. It was their main connection to Shiny, and she still felt like he would help them get the artifact any way he could.

  “I wonder what we did to set that thing off,” Telisa said.

  “Why would it attack us?” Magnus asked.

  “If the destroyers have machines under their control, they may have set them to attack the populace.”

  “But the destroyers don’t care about us.”

  “Yes, but these are Vovokan machines. They may have set them to just attack anything. Or maybe the Vovokan machines are not so good at discerning their targets. But now that you mention it, it could just as easily be the other way around. The Vovokans may have used their robots to defend themselves against the destroyers. And we are alien...”

  “Okay, so they’re hostile one way or the other. Except for our guides, there,” Magnus said.

  What if they’re against us, too?

  “Hmm. They may be leading us into traps.” Telisa checked her map. So far, the course they suggested paralleled the course Shiny had wanted. “I think Shiny may be causing those spheres to do that. He probably saw our way was blocked with the probe here, and he’s giving us a new way around.”

  “I thought that too, at first,” Magnus said. “But the probe was with us the whole time. It didn’t have a chance to see the way was blocked. The spheres started to redirect us right away from that dance club, or whatever it was.”

  “That is weird. Could be another probe?”

  “Turns out we can see the other probes’ positions,” Magnus said. “There’s a service for that on this one.”

  “Oh?” Telisa hadn’t bothered to check for new services, since she assumed the Vovokan devices would be dead or unconnectable to human links. She used it to see the probes. They were dispersed about the house and above the surface.

  “No doubt Shiny uses them to keep tabs on the destroyers.”

  “Where should we go from here? Just keep following the spheres?”

  “Let me take a look,” Telisa said. She felt a bit suspicious of the spheres after their close call. She would feel better if her own estimate of where to go matched the direction urged by the tiny devices. She looked at the map and tried a few route programs. The most obvious way looked blocked by what she saw of Scout’s most recent explorations.

  “Yes. Let’s get Scout back here and send him in that direction from right here.”

  Magnus nodded.

  Telisa saw Scout was in a long tunnel with a rail on the ceiling. It moved in their general direction, crawling along under the rail.

  “I guess Vovokans wouldn’t walk down that type of tunnel. It’s probably for faster transport.”

  “We can take it if it gets us closer to the seed. I doubt there will be fast vehicles moving around anymore.”

  “There was the drill machine.”

  “Hmm, good point. What do you say?”

  “It seems to be the best way to get where we’re going.”

  They followed the spheres through an empty cavern that adjoined the railway.

  Telisa stepped out into the tunnel. She looked at the rail. “No supports, just like the other rail, but smaller. How does it just stay there in the air?”

  She lifted her hand toward it. Magnus intercepted her arm and brought it down.

  “I know the power is supposed to be out, but please don’t complete any circuits.”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  The spheres moved off down the tunnel a bit. Scout walked by and took the lead, opening the distance between them. Telisa and Magnus started after.

  They traveled the better part of a kilometer through the tunnel. Telisa felt trapped there. She kept thinking about the massive drill machine. If something was trying to hurt them, would it send some kind of vehicle down the tunnel after them?

  They came to a long series of open platforms joining the tunnel.

  “This used to be a major stop, I think,” Telisa said.

  “I wonder what it was for.”

  “We’re over a huge chamber. Some kind of coliseum, I think. There’s a lot of structural damage. It could be dangerous to descend down into it, but the good news is, there’s dozens of passages connected to it. We could get back on track from there. I don’t think all the ways out could be blocked.”

  “Coliseum? Isn’t that a bit archaic for a race as advanced as Shiny’s?”

  “Damned if I know, but they are alien, after all.”

  “They have to have perfected virtual reality, unless they had some kind of religious objection to virtual worlds. And automated manufacturing, robotics, everything. I wonder if they moved around much at all.”

  “We Terrans still get around, don’t we?”

  “Some of us more than others, yeah,” Magnus said.

  They walked onto the platform and toward a series of holes. Scout was already descending into one of the portals. Telisa saw handholds on the narrow tunnel.

  “I think this is the Vovokan equivalent of stairs or ladders,” Telisa said. “Maybe there are so many to allow a lot of them in or out of the chamber quickly.”

  “My guess too,” Magnus said.

  Scout’s searchlights struck distant walls in the huge space under their feet. Here and there, mysterious structures rose from the sand.

  It looks like yet another world. A dead world. Or a high-tech cemetery.

  “Looks like a cemetery with huge headstones,” Magnus said, echoing her thoughts.

  “Yes. I’m tying off and heading down.”

  “I’ll head down this tube right here. See you inside.”

  Telisa slipped down her smart rope with ease, telling it to drop her the last foot. It released itself above and wound back into a tight bundle.

  Sand was everywhere. The
foot coverings of her Veer suit sank into it.

  Somehow more of it must have poured in from above and pooled here.

  “The sand may have buried the exits,” Telisa noted.

  “Scout can dig, I think,” Magnus said.

  Telisa walked up to one of the structures. It was the size of a small house. Her light washed over it. The gray surface could have been stone or metal or plastic. Tiny pockmarks crisscrossed the surface like alien writing. A panel made of little hexagons dominated the center. Sand shifted from above, cascading down the side of the building.

  That’s weird. Is Scout up there? I thought he was—A dark shape rose up before her.

  “What the hell is that?” Telisa screamed over her link. She had her stunner in her hand and leveled in an instant, one of the benefits of her training.

  “There’s more than one,” came Magnus’s only answer.

  The shape was an alien. Telisa saw dozens of legs on a thing as tall as a Great Dane. It came toward her. Telisa stepped back but it simply moved faster. Telisa fired her stunner at the attacker. It lunged at her. Telisa skipped back, tripped, then rolled away in a continuous disaster of movement. She saw more than one shape moving in the swaths of light emitted by Scout, Magnus, and her.

  Vovokans. They are Shiny’s people.

  She shot her stunner at another Vovokan. The creature kept shuffling forward. She heard the crack of Magnus’s slugthrower.

  They’re slower than Shiny! And uglier!

  A sound caused Telisa to whirl around, her light seeking the source. A different Vovokan shuffled out of the sand before her. The legs on its left side were missing. It surged forward at an angle, unable to move correctly. She saw it had a silver harness with equipment like Shiny’s.

  No! They have cybernetics just like his. Telisa keened. She aimed her stunner, gave it an override code and shot twice without missing a beat. The alien didn’t seem to mind the sonics much, though it thrashed harder. They can’t hear. The sonics are much less effective.

  Telisa dropped her stunner and took out her long dagger. But instead of attacking she just stood, holding the weapon before her. The creature swam closer to her in the sand, wiggling its long body like a dying worm.

  Another Vovokan came toward her from the side. Telisa switched her attention just in time. She stabbed the creature with her knife. Its mass sensor bulb buckled with a dry crackling sound like a hollow gourd. Telisa kicked at its trunk, crumpling several of its legs. The thing clawed at her with its other legs, trying to run over her. She stabbed it again in the trunk, once, twice. She rolled away, her knife dripping gore. Her light whipped around frantically as she tried to identify the next danger.

  I just killed an alien!

  Her light settled on a new Vovokan. Another loud crack sounded in the wide space. It echoed crazily. A puncture wound appeared on one side the thing before her and gooey body parts erupted from the other side. The thing slowed, but kept coming. Telisa stabbed it in the forward hump. The outside was crunchy, but after initial penetration her knife cut easily into its flesh.

  “Magnus! How many are there?”

  Telisa heard the sound of a grenade launcher.

  Scout. Help!

  “Just keep fighting,” Magnus transmitted. She heard his rifle firing again.

  Telisa saw Scout heading toward her. It lit the scene without blinding her, automatically turning down the lights whenever they pointed directly at her or Magnus. Three more shapes ran toward them. One tried to land on Scout, but the machine scooted away, its legs flipping sand up in its wake.

  Two Vovokans came for Telisa at once. Telisa didn’t fight both of them. She ran to her right until one blocked the other, then sank her knife into the top hump of the closest one. It reared up and wrapped her in dozens of thin legs. Telisa screamed.

  The legs clasped her, might have tried to pinch her, but she couldn’t feel much through the Veer suit until something grabbed her leg. Telisa stabbed upward furiously. Her light wasn’t pointed in the right direction. A splatter of ichor fell across her face. She brought her knees up, screaming in anger this time, rather than fear.

  The creature flipped off her. Telisa saw her shin was in its mouth. She kicked its abdomen away with her other leg, detaching herself. She looked up and saw Magnus standing over her. His rifle shot again, hitting her attacker.

  “Thank you,” Telisa whimpered. The Vovokan before her twitched again, causing her to jump back.

  Magnus stitched two more rounds through the creature.

  “Five Holy Entities,” Telisa gasped. “Alien zombies? This is insane. It can’t be happening.” Her voice trembled. She still held the gory dagger in an iron grip.

  “They were just Vovokans. Maybe they just decided we’re aliens and so we must be with the destroyers.”

  “They were dead! Did you see that one? Half its legs had been blown off, and the other one had a gaping hole in its side!”

  “Calm down. Just calm down. They aren’t zombies, okay? We don’t know that much about Vovokan physiology. They may be under the control of the destroyers. They may have some way of taking over the populace. It may have been part of the attack.”

  “But they were dead,” she repeated with less certainty.

  “Probably they just injure differently than we do. I think they’ve probably evolved to lose limbs without dying. Hell, they have so many. And we don’t know where their vital organs are. Besides, if they were turned into the invaders’ puppets, maybe they’re a sort of automaton. Could be controlled by nanomachines or something. Don’t read anything extra-scary into it. They were easy to kill. And if it’s a contagion, we’re not going to get it, we’re too different.”

  Telisa nodded as Magnus spoke, drinking in his logic. She sighed. “Yes. Yes, I agree,” she said, struggling to stand. “If the invaders did this, it was probably to terrify the populace. It sure as hell worked on me. We should find an exit now.”

  “They’re dead or gone. Take your time, catch your breath,” he said.

  “Telisa, Magnus. Shiny initiates communication,” Shiny’s voice interrupted.

  “Shiny? I didn’t think we would be in contact, though I’m glad to hear from you.” Telisa tried to wipe the sand-filled fluids off her suit. It didn’t work well but she kept trying.

  “Destroyer machines not in close proximity. Query about search: proceeding, developing, shaping up?”

  “It’s very difficult. I’m sorry, but your homeworld is a mess. There are a bunch of creatures like you here. But they’re injured, or sick, or...dead. They attacked us.”

  “Those are not like me. They are duplicates, replicas, facsimiles. They are artificial. Likely under invader control.”

  “Well, they fooled us. That explains a bit, though. Some of them looked like they ought to be dead.”

  “Shiny studying destroyers further. Learned detection mechanisms. Identified signals used by destroyers to detect, mark, share presence of enemies.”

  “Well, that’s something. Can we jam it?”

  “Possibly. Distraction easier. Hiding difficult.”

  “Ah. You can mimic the signals?”

  “Can cause emissions, radiation, noise, that will attract the machines, mark a target as Vovokan.”

  “Great work! That should be very useful when it’s time to take the seed out. That, and anything else I can find. So far I only have some dead floating spheres. Oh. Are you controlling these colorful spheres that have been guiding us?”

  “Negative. But they can be trusted.”

  “Okay, but who controls them?”

  “Some devices, machines, computers, still working. I may repair further.”

  Magnus finally spoke up. “Shiny. Please share control of the drones. It will increase our chances of success.”

  “They perform automatically, autonomously, self-controlled.”

  “Just in case. Look, we’re the ones down here risking our lives, so grant us this, okay? Emergency-only control.”

&
nbsp; “Acceptable. Done.”

  “One more thing,” Magnus added. “Telisa and I have placed data packages that will go out in the event of our deaths. We made sure our deaths are suboptimal for you. If we die, the UNSF gets information about you, your technology, your methods, everything. Your optimal course is to keep us alive and keep working with us. We’re very beneficial to you alive. Even after we get you the seed.”

  “Acknowledged, understood, accepted.”

  “Which is exactly what you’d say if you were planning to betray us.”

  “True, correct, accurate.”

  “Terrans prefer cooperative mode,” Telisa said. “We can continue to be of use to you for a long time.”

  “Acknowledged, understood, accepted.”

  Chapter 14

  “So I hate to be blunt, but is our employment about to terminate?” asked Cilreth. “I won’t be able to find Telisa as long as she’s hiding behind the F-clave. And we’re not going to get in there, not without a small army. Even your stealth suit would only get you so far, I suspect.”

  I didn’t get to be a captain in the force by giving up. “Let’s consider it a bit further before throwing in the towel,” Relachik said. “What do we have? Some inside info about a deadly compound on Halthia Hyri that may have an expiration date on it. A stealth suit. A spacecraft. A couple of grunts and a savvy investigator.”

  “We could hit the F-clave with a meteorite,” Arlin suggested.

  “To what end?” asked Cilreth.

  “If we destroy the F-clave’s complex, it might shut them down for a while. It might flush Telisa out.”

  “That’s good thinking,” Relachik said. “What else can we come up with?”

  “We could bribe someone else with access. They are, after all, greedy criminals,” Cilreth said.

  “Criminals? Kind of. Here on the frontier, just call them entrepreneurs,” Arlin said.

  “That may work. It would be hard, though,” Relachik said. “We’re complete strangers and haven’t worked with them before. And the F-clave is notoriously brutal with traitors. Kill your whole family, that kind of shit.”