“Not exactly what I envisioned for a romantic interlude on an alien planet,” Telisa said.
Magnus nodded, then spat again. He put a small light in his mouth, aimed it at her wrist, and put artificial skin over the puncture.
“It’s only a little red,” he said.
“It just scared me more than anything else,” Telisa said. “What are the chances some Vovokan critter’s venom will work on a human?” She said it dismissively.
“Very low,” Magnus agreed. “Especially judging by how different Shiny is. At this point if you feel anything, it’s likely you’re just having a psychological reaction to the imagined danger.”
He watched Telisa. She seemed to be calming down. But she wasn’t fully recovered yet. His eyes caught the weapon at her side.
“I didn’t know you packed that. I don’t even recognize it.”
Telisa stared back at him with an odd look on her face.
“It’s from over here. I don’t know how it got here.”
Sweat glinted on her face in the reflected illumination of their utility flashlights. Telisa turned her light toward an alcove in the wall. Magnus followed the light and saw a square cabinet against the wall. The cabinet had clear doors, behind which weapons were visible, sitting vertically on a rack.
“That is—”
“Yes. It’s a human weapons cabinet.”
“Five Holies,” he said, using Telisa’s favorite exclamation without thinking about it. He walked over to the case. There was no doubt it was of human design. The case stood out as anomalous in the smooth natural curves of the Vovokan cavern. It had square corners and a smooth metal surface in sharp angles. The clear windows and weapons rack looked just like the weapons rack back on the Iridar.
How is that possible? Has Shiny’s race met humans before?
“So what’s a human weapon doing here?” Telisa asked, voicing the question Magnus struggled with.
Magnus took the weapon from Telisa. It felt good. He examined it with his light.
Oh, no.
“It says ‘Meer,’ like a screwed-up Veer logo. Like a blend of Momma and Veer.”
Magnus handed it back to Telisa, but she just replaced it in the cabinet and took out another. Then she robbed the third of its ammunition. She slung the rifle over her back and packed away the extra clip.
“Does that remind you of anything?” he asked.
“Hell yes, it does! It reminds me of a certain crappy Trilisk trap we got stuck in. Are we in one now? If we’re in one now I’m going to scream. What if we never left?” she asked.
“No point in assuming that. Even though it’s possible, we can’t really change our actions just on the possibility. At least the weapon actually works. It may be screwy on the details, but your link activated it and it killed several of whatever those ugly buggers are.”
“Yes. It’s quite effective.”
Magnus looked at Telisa in the reflected light. His vision blurred for a second.
“What’s wrong? Magnus!” Telisa’s voice rose quickly.
Magnus felt a stab of pain in his stomach.
“Uhm. Maybe I should have used the extractor from the kit on your wrist,” he said, kneeling.
“I don’t understand. How could whatever is making you sick not be hurting me too? It’s already in my blood.”
Another wave of pain came from Magnus’s stomach.
“Get an emetic from the pack,” he grunted. Telisa paused to access the inventory with her link, then plucked out a small vial. She handed it over.
Magnus bit open the soft top seal of the vial and downed it. The pain in his stomach flowered. Then he bent over and vomited violently. When he opened his eyes, there was blood in the pool before him.
“By the Five,” Telisa said. “Does it feel better now?”
“It’s a bit better,” Magnus said. He sat heavily. “Our romantic interlude continues.”
Telisa smiled weakly.
Chapter 16
“Okay, Cilreth. Turn the suit on and proceed another hundred meters to Station One,” Relachik transmitted.
Cilreth activated the suit. It was only the second time she’d done so in real life. She looked down. Her body faded into a ghost with glowing outlines just as it had in the simulations. She stopped reflecting light in the visible spectrum and replaced it with light from the outside environment. The infrared emissions were pretty clean, too.
She spotted the rock formation ahead that was Station One. It was clearly visible in the low illumination that was night on Brighter Walken. There was enough natural light reflected from the planet’s beautiful ring to see a hundred meters even in the absence of direct sunlight on the surface.
This was their selected spot to hide until the attack arrived. Cilreth wondered again if the attack would be spectacular. Relachik had assured her the distance would be adequate. Yet he had told her to hide among the rocks and leave the stealth suit activated “just in case.”
He’s probably just being extra safe because he knows I’m not Space Force material. But pulling this off should show him I’m capable of handling whatever he’s got.
She waited, watching the compound from her own position as well as the feeds from Relachik and Arlin. The ground had been cleared of large rocks and other cover for fifty meters outside the wall around the entire perimeter. The area inside the wall was big enough for a sprawling building over one hundred meters on a side. For the thousandth time, Cilreth wondered what was inside that compound. Stockpiles of drugs? Booby traps? Illegal robots? A small army of drug dealers?
“Someone is leaving,” Arlin said. Cilreth caught sight of a group of men leaving the compound in Arlin’s feed. She stayed put and watched the compound for signs of attack.
“Cilreth, stay sharp,” Relachik sent her. “We can’t back you up for a while. If I’m right about the Avatar, though, this should be a piece of cake for you.”
“Got it,” she said. Damn, having them nearby was really helping me stay calm.
She watched in silence for another ten or fifteen minutes. The wait was pure agony. She stretched her neck while she waited to release a bit of the tension. Suddenly the compound lights went off. Cilreth held her breath. A few blue sparks erupted from two or three spots around the perimeter. Then there was nothing but darkness.
She started her timer. Cilreth waited for three minutes without seeing anything else.
That was it? I’m underwhelmed. “I’m headed in. Talk at you when I’m done.”
The answer was delayed by five seconds.
“Good luck.”
What they hell are they doing? Killing those men who escaped?
Cilreth tried to calm her breathing as she walked out of her cover toward the compound wall. The lack of lights became so creepy she almost stopped. No! I can’t chicken out now.
Cilreth started to breath faster. She ignored the panic in her gut and just kept walking. I’m invisible, goddammit.
The gate of the compound wall was gone without a trace. Cilreth didn’t see wreckage or burn marks. The edge of the wall had been cleaved perfectly. The shiny metal of the support beams were cut cleanly exactly where they emerged from the stony ground. She looked left and right for any debris. She saw none. Okay, that’s a bit more impressive. It’s like the gate was just vaporized within a certain radius.
The guards lay strewn about. They looked as though they had simply dropped in place. Cilreth approached one and stared. The man breathed very slowly.
Alive. Cilreth shrugged and moved on. The compound had one entrance. It was a perfectly cut gaping hole in the front of the building where the front doors used to be. The new edges gleamed. Despite the apparent lack of any defense, Cilreth walked carefully into the building, hugging the edge of the hole and slipping carefully inside. She kept close to the wall and remained alert.
The basic layout looked similar to the simulations. The same major corridor ran past the entrance, so she headed off to the right. Then she took a left to
head deeper into the complex. The next room she found was large. It looked like some kind of small lab or factory. Two dead security robots lay on the floor. They each had a three-centimeter hole, edges gleaming, drilled completely through the main body. Looks like the F-clave managed to get their hands on some hydras, for all the good that did them.
Her personal sensor suite detected a network storage unit in the floor. She walked over to the corner and pried open an access panel. She kneeled in front of the first storage unit. It had a white outer casing. Cilreth took out her cutter. Looks standard enough. High quality, but normal. Here goes nothing.
She cut through the outer casing on three sides and removed a corner. The inside was constructed of three simple modules: a network controller, a processor block, and a storage block. Most of each block was neutral insulator. The actual componentry inside each one was very small: they were only hand-size for convenience. The insulator allowed the components to run at very high frequencies without being affected by outside noise or emitting noise of their own.
Cilreth cut away more of the casing. She unplugged the storage component and slipped it into her suit. Though it couldn’t be accessed stand-alone, she could set it up for extraction later, after she’d escaped with her life intact. One down. Two more.
As she stood up she noticed the hole in the ceiling for the first time. Something had been cut away or vaporized there, too. A laser emplacement, perhaps. This place has been cleaned from top to bottom in three minutes. Kinda creepy, actually. So quiet in here.
Cilreth continued her sweep. The corridors were flawless, clean, and opulent. The plastic and carbon shone. Each room had a clear color theme of its own, as if professionally decorated. She walked through a wide room set up as a tropical paradise, with bright lights, bamboo furniture, parasols, and a video feed of the ocean playing across one wide wall. Damn. High class criminals, I guess!
The sensor found another storage unit to her right. She let herself through a door manually and found a vast suite. The walls were black, the ceiling a deep blue. Blue zetta cone-ferns grew in two corners, a diatomic plant structure from one of the first alien ruins ever discovered. They were insanely expensive. Must be the leader’s quarters, or someone high up, at least.
A huge, low desk sat in the center of the main room. An alcove to the left held a bar, another to the right housed a wide, low bed.
A naked woman sprawled across the desk on her back. Her body was magnificently sculpted, even in an age of toning pills and sleep-scheduled exercise. A man behind the desk had collapsed forward onto her breasts. He was bald with a long, black beard stylishly cut into two long spikes of hair. Saliva ran out of his mouth over her stomach. Another nude woman with short black hair and heavy makeup lay curled up on the bed, unconscious. A small doorway in the back revealed a pair of smooth, probably female legs sprawled on the floor. Party much?
A silver cylinder with a screw top lay open next to the man, with a dozen pills spilled out of it. The pills were tiny red spheres. Cilreth fixated on the pills immediately. Want. I can take that and no one will ever know. There must be five hundred of them.
Cilreth reached out to pick up the silver flask. Then she hesitated; her fingers retracted. Shit. Dammit. I’d better not. I don’t want to screw up this job and get Relachik’s kid killed.
Cilreth struggled with the decision. She stood paralyzed over the treasure. I could take them with me. But I won’t be able to resist using them. DAMMIT!
Her sensor suite demanded her attention, so she went to retrieve the storage unit from inside the desk. She had the second module in hand when her stealth suit picked up link traffic nearby. She didn’t dare respond or connect to any services, but it was clear from a passive scan that she was no longer alone in the building.
Here comes the Space Force to pick up their mess. Screw the pills. She sighed. I’ll regret this later when I’m bored out of my mind.
Cilreth left the suite. She had walked through most of the building and to the right side, so she figured she had covered most of the right side. She wanted to hit the left section on the way out, so she found a cross-corridor heading in the correct direction and followed it.
Up ahead she saw movement. A man and a woman in smooth black uniforms that covered their hands and part of their faces were loading a sleeping person onto a carrier.
Cilreth avoided them. She circled around the side of the building, looking for an empty route. She emerged into an atrium with a security checkpoint. Another laser emplacement had been vaporized there. She froze as a couple of Space Force people walked through the other side of the atrium. They didn’t appear to be especially alert.
Why should they be? They’re probably used to walking through the graveyards left behind by whatever that was. An Avatar-class battle module?
Her sensors located another storage unit. Cilreth found a panel in the wall to pry open which revealed her next target. A few seconds later she had the outer casing open.
Another pair of Space Force people walked into the atrium. Cilreth cupped the storage block and told her suit to include it in the camouflage zone. The color of the block became transparent to Cilreth’s view, visible only with a glowing outline. That meant it was invisible from the outside.
The new people headed toward her. She could see they were both women. Cilreth calmly walked aside and let them approach the open panel.
“We’re missing at least one storage module. They must have pulled it.”
“How could they know?”
“Keep looking. It’s bound to be on one of them.”
You’re not going to find them, ever.
Cilreth managed to keep from sprinting as she headed down the last hallway toward the exit. In the front courtyard, more Space Force people worked to load the unconscious victims into large white vehicle. Its side opened up to reveal dozens of slots for storing people horizontally. The criminals aren’t dead. But that’s still kinda creepy.
She headed for the hole in the compound wall where the gate had been. She let her footprints blend in with those of the Space Force retrieval group.
A man in a skinsuit with a rifle in his hands stepped out from behind a building, heading toward the gate. Cilreth stopped in her tracks. Would he notice the footprints?
The man walked to the compound wall and took a look around. Cilreth took a few steps every time his back was to her. Patience. Patience.
Suddenly the man turned and looked toward her. Cilreth’s breath caught in her throat. I’m invisible, dammit.
Something had obviously alerted him. The rifle swung around. Cilreth drew her stunner.
But the man pointed the rifle at the entrance. He scanned the outside of the main building with his eyes.
Oh shit. I get it. They’ve told him things are missing in there and he’s supposed to stay sharp. I’m outta here.
As soon as the man got a few meters past her position, she resumed her careful steps. As the distance grew she increased her speed until she was loping past the compound wall.
She took one last look back. The soldier was examining the ground in front of the entrance.
Cilreth turned and tried to brush the sand in her wake. Since her closest footsteps were invisible, she didn’t do such a great job. As she retreated she saw her own brushing had left a discernible pattern. Screw it. I’ll be gone by the time they figure it out.
She turned and ran, trying to stick to rocky ground as much as possible as she loped back toward Station One.
***
“Someone is leaving,” Arlin said. They stood next to a storage shed well beyond the perimeter of the compound. Relachik and Arlin had found it on their initial scan of the defenses. It was so far out, they weren’t even sure it belonged to the F-clave. But the shed was deserted, filled with only food, water, and spare parts.
Relachik checked the perimeter. It was as Arlin said. Three men came out and ran toward two electric all-terrain vehicles. The men hopped in, two in the first and the las
t in another of his own. Relachik saw that they held several silver cylinders with rounded tops.
“They’re in a hurry,” Relachik said.
“Coincidence?”
“I would like to say yes. But dammit, there is no such thing.”
“Sir, those are network storage modules they’re carrying,” Arlin pointed out.
“Damn. Damn! We have to go after them. How could they know?”
“There’s a leak somewhere,” Arlin said.
Or they have other clues. What could it be? Supply movements? Sensors in orbit? Maybe they hacked into the new planetary defense network.
“We don’t have a jeep! We need to follow them.”
“Yes, we do,” Arlin said. “Out back!” Relachik and Arlin left the shed and ran around behind it. The criminals drove out of the compound. They left the back gate open.
“Could it be a trap?”
“If they’re this far ahead of us what hope do we have?” Relachik asked, but he was already getting into the electric jeep.
“Cilreth, stay sharp,” Relachik sent to their other team member. “We can’t back you up for a while. If I’m right about the Avatar, though, this should be a piece of cake for you.”
“Got it,” she said, though she sounded slightly put off. Relachik didn’t blame her. She didn’t deserve to be left on her own. But they had no choice, and besides, she had the best hardware. The stealth suit counted for a lot.
The jeep was old. It might have been one of the first vehicles on the planet.
“It’ll take a while to disable the—”
“Use an emergency override. Let it complain; we’ll be gone before anyone can get out here.”
“The Space Force team may respond to it.”
“What choice do we have? Hurry,” Relachik said.
Arlin brought the jeep to life.
Attempting to notify authorities of your emergency, the jeep told them. Relachik took the passenger seat and they started forward.
“Battery is at twenty-two percent,” Arlin noted. He headed for the rough dirt road the men had taken.
The Trilisk AI (Parker Interstellar Travels #2) Page 15