The Trilisk AI (Parker Interstellar Travels #2)

by Michael McCloskey

  “Maybe so,” Telisa said. She had chosen the tube with the two handles as one of her items. The other device she carried looked like a triple-bladed marine propeller. She wasn’t certain of its origin; perhaps she had selected it for no other reason than its trilateral symmetry.

  Magnus called Scout in and helped Telisa load more items onto him. The machine had no useful interior holding space, but Magnus had a tough backpack designed to fit Scout. Telisa’s appreciation of the machine went up a notch.

  “We need to bring more of these next time,” she said.

  “You’re telling me? We need an army of them!”

  She laughed. Then she stood up to watch Scout move around, adjusting to the weight of the pack, and found herself staring at the shelves.

  “We’re leaving most of them behind,” Telisa lamented.

  “We could come back someday,” Magnus said. “I mean, if we don’t have a better opportunity.”

  Telisa sighed. “Okay, let’s hit it.”

  Magnus grasped the seed. She could tell it had significant mass.

  “Starting up the first distraction,” he said. They waited for a few seconds. Telisa watched the probe network display in her PV. Destroyer machines were scrambled from the surface capital ship and started to descend into Shiny’s house.

  “Okay, here we go.”

  Telisa and Magnus headed out with Scout only twenty meters in the lead.

  They got to the first long shaft upwards. Scout clambered up, using smart cables and its many clawed legs to climb up quickly. It seemed a bit more clumsy than before carrying the pack, but it compensated for the new balance fairly well.

  “I hope we don’t have another problem with those critters. We can’t afford to be sitting around.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Magnus said. “If they show again, we’ll send Scout off to distract them and slip by.”

  They worked up the refuse-filled shaft with their smart ropes. Their machines and ropes did all the work, moving them up each leg quickly, but because of the fallen beams and cave-ins, they had to move in smaller leaps, constantly adjusting to find ways around the obstacles.

  “Something’s coming,” Magnus said.

  Telisa checked the probe network. She saw a destroyer moving toward them.

  “I wonder how big it is,” she said. “Probably the size of that one that flew over us before?”

  “I don’t think we can fight it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Is it coming down from above?”

  “No. It’s in an adjoining level,” Magnus said. “About thirty meters above. It’s getting too close.”

  “Shit. What can we do?”

  Telisa became aware of holes in the side of the shaft as light emanated from them. She hadn’t realized the holes led anywhere before, as they had been utterly dark. Now the light from the destroyer machine was leaking through. Five Entities. It’s too close!

  The machine glowed. It was hard to look at after the dim light of the tunnels. By unspoken agreement Telisa and Magnus turned off their own lights at the same time.

  The light shifted for a few moments. Telisa thought the machine was too large to fit through the debris and into the tunnel where they hid.

  More lights started filtering in from above.

  “It’s dispatched smaller machines,” Magnus said over his link.

  Telisa almost grabbed her stunner, but she knew immediately it was probably futile. She took hold of the artifact she’d taken from the vault instead. I don’t even know if this is a weapon. I don’t even know if that hole is the business end.

  Telisa brought up the tube and aimed it. She found the actuators, which were presumably manual backups to some alien control system that wouldn’t interface with her link. Just in case, she made sure the opposite end of the device was pointed under her right arm, away from herself and Magnus.

  Glowing machines floated down toward them. The nearest two were already less than twenty meters above, though there was still debris between them and the destroyers. Magnus dropped the seed down on its own smart rope, trying to make space between them and the destroyer’s target.

  Telisa pressed the triggers.

  A loud hissing sound came to her ears as a vibration erupted in her hands. Something flew out of the weapon. The glowing drones closest to her burst in tiny explosions, then three or four drones farther away, then finally a split second later, another five or six drones just entering the tunnels. A second later the light was gone, as if the drone incursion had never happened. The sounds of debris and sand falling down the shaft dominated the pit.

  “Five Entities!” Telisa breathed. “What was that?”

  “It must have launched a dozen guided projectiles at once. Although it looked almost like they split in mid-air, or maybe they impacted the target and then split, if that’s...well, it is possible, I guess.”

  “We’d better save this one. Emergencies only. Who knows how many shots—”

  “We’re going down,” Magnus said.

  “But we—”

  “Turn around now! This isn’t working, we’re going to be dead soon, or at least the seed will be destroyed. If that machine doesn’t send more, another one will.”

  Telisa reluctantly agreed. She checked the Shiny’s probe grid and saw destroyer machines moving all about the gigantic house. At least two more were headed their way.

  “Back to the vault. Somehow it screens the emissions,” she said.

  They dropped down dangerously fast. Scout followed after. When they reached the bottom, they sprinted through the last caverns toward the wide open vault room.

  As Telisa entered the vault room, she saw silver structures placed around the vault she didn’t remember. Something looks different.

  “What are—”

  “Defenses,” Magnus said.

  “Shiny must have deployed them.”

  “I’m glad they’re there. Destroyers incoming!”

  They ran into the vault. Scout was close behind. Telisa and Magnus barreled into the interior, then turned around and regarded the door stupidly for a moment. Scout skittered in and stood to the left of the entrance.

  “Close it,” Magnus urged.

  “I don’t know how!” Telisa replied frantically. A roar erupted from outside. The floor started to shake. Concentrate. The map has to say how to close it, right?

  A small destroyer drone hovered into the vault. Its light played over the interior of the vault. Telisa hit the floor. Magnus fired his rifle. The drone fell, destroyed along with Telisa’s hearing.

  Holy Entities, that’s so loud in here!

  Telisa tried to link in through Shiny’s probe, but it didn’t respond. She looked over and saw it had folded up into a Vovokan chair again.

  “Dammit, the probe has gone belly up on us.”

  “Damn coward piece of crap,” Magnus transmitted. His rifle boomed again. Shrapnel sprayed over Telisa.

  Could there be a manual switch? What would a Vovokan manual door switch look like?

  Telisa scanned the walls by the entrance. The sides of the vault were featureless. She scanned the floor. She saw some minor imperfection in the floor, perhaps scratches in the metal. Are those scratches from the shrapnel?

  Telisa crawled over toward the door.

  “Stop. Don’t go over there,” Magnus urged.

  Telisa scrabbled on, sliding her belly across to the scratch she saw. As her point of view changed, the scratch elongated into an oval and finally a tiny circle as she looked down on it.

  A button on the floor? Crazy.

  If it was a button, it was perfectly flush with the floor. She pressed it. Nothing happened other than another explosion outside the vault. The debris from the dead drone rattled across the floor. The shaking reminded her of a horror vid she’d watched as a child of a giant monster so tall it shook the floor with every step.

  “Telisa,” he said, his voice laced with irritation.

  I hope the dest
royers don’t have anything like that.

  Telisa started to retreat, then she saw another circle a meter to the left. Another button?

  The rifle boomed again. Hot metal sprayed over her skinsuit. She felt a nick on her ear and an itching flow of blood there. Those buttons are about the right distance for a Vovokan standing facing the door to have legs over each one.

  Magnus grabbed her leg. Telisa reached out with both arms, pressing both the buttons simultaneously. As Magnus dragged her back, the door started to shut.

  “You did it! Thank you, thank you!”

  Telisa laughed, more a release of tension than a genuine appreciation of his outburst of gratitude. “You almost stopped me,” she said, though she felt little annoyance at this point. She was just glad to see the door finish closing in front of them.

  “I had no idea what the hell you were doing. But now, you can figure out how to open them back up.”

  She laughed again.

  “That might be a problem, but for now I’m calling this a victory.”

  Magnus dragged her the rest of the way toward him and embraced her.

  The vault rang with the sounds of battle. The floor shook.

  “Shit. Do you think they’re trying to get in?”

  “I hope not. It can’t hold. At least I don’t think it can.”

  “Should we be doing something?”

  He kissed her. “If they don’t get in, we’re good, if they do, we’re dead,” he told her over his link without interrupting the kiss.

  “Good point,” she transmitted back. “We’re sleeping in here tonight.”

  Chapter 18

  Cilreth worked alone. She’d practically threatened Relachik not to bother her or he’d risk the whole operation.

  This was a critical juncture in her work in finding Relachik’s daughter. Somewhere on the storage modules were the keys and smart filters she needed to track down the smugglers. Along with booby-traps and misinformation. All packed up and encrypted.

  This is going to be a lot harder for me than it would have been for the Space Force. They captured all the criminals, and can interrogate them.

  Cilreth copied the contents of each module carefully and set extras aside. But as she started into her task she realized its magnitude was such that she faced weeks of work. Relachik would wait if he had to, but there were other possible courses of action.

  There’s more than one way to chip a cat, as her grandfather used to say. Cilreth wondered about the origin of that phrase. How many ways could there be to put a link chip into a feline, anyway?

  Cilreth asked for a link connection to an acquaintance and got it.

  “GoliathFive?”

  “Hello, Cilreth.”

  Cilreth suppressed a mild shudder. She suspected her white-hat contact wasn’t human. Or maybe he was; but he must have access to an AI.

  “I need a package opened and cleaned.”

  “I see. What’s in it for me?” The question was cheerful. It didn’t sound greedy, somehow. Strange turns of phrase delivered off tempo were just part of the mystique.

  “You might like to see it, too.”

  “More details?”

  “I have the storage of the F-clave here,” she said. Information that could be useful to you, and a lot of other parties, I imagine.

  “I might like to see that. What stake do you have in that organization’s secret files?”

  “I only need a particular smart filter to find a couple of smugglers. People working with Telisa Relachik. Though she may have used an alias. She’s out on the frontier, finding artifacts and selling them on the black market. Someone hired me to find her. I don’t need to know—don’t want to know—anything else.”

  “Satisfactory. Send the data and I’ll get you what you need.”

  “There’s a lot—”

  “I have a Z-class bandwidth priority. I’ll cover the tab for this one.”

  “Of course. Sending it now.”

  Even at the top transmission capability of the Vandivier, it took a few minutes to make the transfer.

  “I like this deal. Here’s what you wanted.”

  A file came back to her link.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “The smart filter you asked for. I believe you now have it?”

  “You decrypted it just like that? Why does the universe scare me more each day?”

  “You make too many assumptions. As for the universe, the more you learn, the scarier it gets.”

  The connection broke off.

  Make too many assumptions?

  How could the smart filter be obtained without cracking the encryption on the modules?

  It already had the filter? Oh. Or it already had the encryption key. Or I don’t know what.

  Cilreth sat back and duplicated her contact’s results into several storage modules and disconnected them. She brought up a workstation in her PV on one of the modules, isolated from everything else. Got it. Look on the bright side. Relachik will be impressed by my quick results. Not that I’m going to tell him what just happened. Oh, crap. He may find that transmission log. Hard to overlook a transfer of that bandwidth and time.

  Cilreth took the smart filter and ran it through several threat detection suites. It came out clean. She stashed it in her link and shut the module down. She reconnected with the net and started searching. When she came up against the F-clave wall, she started to use her smart filter. The mass of queries and traces fell away to a much more normal trace. Exactly what she’d expect to see from a couple of people exiled far from Earth. A brief history, a lot of new accounts, and traceable access points at F-clave long-range receivers.

  She opened a link to Relachik. “I’ve got their trail. I’ll tell Arlin where to head from here.”

  “How far?”

  “There’s not much human territory in this direction. So if they’re on the frontier, not far. A day or two. If they’re beyond the frontier, then who knows?”

  “Great job. Thanks for letting me know.”

  ***

  Relachik sat in his tiny quarters on a chair that folded out of the wall. He hadn’t been able to resist chatting with Arlin now that they were underway again.

  “How far out can this ship take us?”

  “A long way. Though I’m not sure I’m looking forward to heading out of Terran-controlled space when we’ve just been attacked by aliens.”

  “The Seeker met its doom in a completely different direction.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t call it a completely different direction. It was destroyed on this frontier. We don’t know how much territory the aliens have.”

  “If the smugglers left the frontier, they had a good reason to go.”

  “You’re probably right about that. The rogues of the frontier have proved to be a well-informed lot.”

  “I can’t believe those criminals knew the Space Force was coming,” Relachik said.

  “It’s not surprising. They have connections.”

  “But the Avatars’ very existence is secret. Only the top people work with those outfits. Yet they leaked it. Or else the criminals have ways of tracking things we never guessed they had.”

  “They probably didn’t know what was coming. Only that the Space Force was headed their way.” He doesn’t get it. The Avatars operate in their own branch. Even regular Space Force personnel don’t know about them or where they are.

  “If a few petty criminals can do that, how can we hope to fight against aliens?”

  “Those criminals are human,” Arlin pointed out. “They can worm their way into places aliens won’t. Our chances against more advanced civilizations are low, but what choice do we have? We’ll fight to survive and hope the aliens have other problems to deal with besides us. Like a big predator that can finish a smaller one, but doesn’t want to get hurt while doing it, because then it wouldn’t be able to deal with other threats.”

  Arlin’s simplification didn’t lend Relachik much ease.


  “I hope so,” Relachik said.

  “Shall we put in a little more practice with boarding exercises? I assume Cilreth is out for now.”

  “No, she might be up for it. But give me a couple of hours. See if she wants to join us.”

  “Will do. See you in a while.”

  Relachik disconnected from the channel with Arlin and looked over his work list. But it was just a formality. He knew exactly what he had to work on next.

  I’ve been putting this off too long. Relachik opened a new file in his PV. He started to record some thoughts there.

  Telisa.

  He stared at her name for a long time. He tried to remember the few years they’d had together. Vacations, the occasional event he’d actually managed to attend.

  I’m so happy to see you again.

  But she won’t be happy to see me. He started again.

  Telisa, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I know I’m a bad father, but I’m here to help now.

  Relachik sighed. He should have started this earlier. Anything he could say would sound lame. But if she was in trouble, he could speak through action. He could save her. Maybe that would be a start. He skipped down and tried another entry.

  Telisa, are you okay? Really okay? Do you need help? Do you want to go back home?

  He stared at the words and imagined himself uttering them.

  Shit.

  Chapter 19

  Telisa opened her eyes. Her head lay across the plane of Magnus’s armored chest. His breathing was steady. She remembered they lay inside the vault. Everything looked calm. She enjoyed the moment.

  Magnus has a magical ability to make me feel safe.

  She stretched a bit. Magnus awakened. He swept the hair from the side of her face and kissed her.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m anxious to get what we can and get out. How are we going to get out?”

  “I don’t know. We need a faster way up. Maybe find a Vovokan contrivance down here to take us? Maybe one of those drilling machines.”

  “Yeah, but the drilling machine itself is a huge target that’s sure to get attention.”

  Telisa stood and walked back over to the shelves in the vault. She replaced the weapon that killed the smaller destroyers and started to reexamine the items there.