The Trilisk Supersedure (Parker Interstellar Travels #3)

by Michael McCloskey

  A metal sphere attracted her attention. At first she thought it was a grenade, but it was too large. She reached out to pick it up. As her hand approached, a small handle extended for her to grasp. It was lighter than a grenade.

  So it has power…but it doesn’t offer my link any services. So what the hell is it? “What’s this?” Arakaki demanded.

  “I don’t know,” the man said.

  She put it within her pack without taking her attention from her weapon. “I saw your packs in the other room. These aren’t yours. Those weapons are varied. Also not yours. Some of them are new. Obtained since Holtzclaw interviewed you before.”

  “The UED leader? I thought he decided to leave us alone. We’ve had various members join us from all over the frontier. No deserters from the UED, though.”

  “Then where are they? Answer my questions or else. We’ve tolerated you for a long time. You don’t want to be on our bad side. You know we have artillery covering this site. We can send a present your way anytime we want.”

  “We’ve lost some pilgrims. The planet can be cruel. Also, some strangers came by from time to time. They were violent. It wasn’t our intention. But we have to defend ourselves.”

  “You men? You keep the pistols under your robes?”

  The men were silent for a moment. “Yes, we have pistols. But usually we let the Konuan handle troublemakers.”

  Troublemakers…like me. Like the UED soldiers who have died?

  She made a point of aligning her weapon at the head of the man who spoke. “You’re on its side, then,” she said. “You help it kill us.”

  “Only the ones who come in here and threaten us directly. Please just leave.”

  “The Konuan protected us,” another said.

  Another of the men winced as he said it.

  That must be true. Or is he wincing because he knows that guy’s a buckle bulb?

  “You confuse protection with predation,” she said. “Why hasn’t it eaten you?”

  “We respect it. We learn from it.”

  “It is smart,” Arakaki said. “Real smart. But why would it teach you anything?”

  “If you want to see it, we can show you.”

  Arakaki’s face tightened. “What do you mean, show me?”

  “The Konuan. We can show you. You can meet it. See for yourself. Leave your weapons, pledge yourself to it, and it will spare you.”

  “Like it spared the owner of that stunner there? Or the owner of that sugar kit?”

  “They didn’t give up their weapons. They were a threat. It easily dispatched them.”

  “Finally, something I believe. Okay, show me where I can meet it, then take off.”

  “If you try to harm it—”

  “I’ll take my chances. Now hurry up,” Arakaki said.

  The bald man in the robe nodded assent and walked off. Arakaki stepped away from the others, then turned to follow.

  The man led her through a patch of blackvines. Arakaki scanned the sluggishly moving tendrils of the plants for concealed danger. Her eyes and her weapon didn’t note anything amiss.

  Beyond the blackvines, they came to a dirty old tunnel.

  This could be Trilisk, Arakaki thought. But this isn’t very deep.

  She knew that under the square chambers of the Konuan, which were stacked atop each other haphazardly, the Trilisk tunnels ran from building to building. The UED soldiers had not figured out why the Trilisks had built the tunnels, though some thought it was to spy on the Konuan or conduct experiments on them without being seen.

  Arakaki smelled the monster.

  This guy knows what he’s talking about. The monster has been here. No doubt they’ve been sacrificing people to it all along. That’s why it left them alive. Until there are no people left.

  They came to a large square room. It was a dead end at the moment, with its grilles intact.

  It can still attack from any direction, and it can run if it senses an ambush. If the monster ever runs from anything.

  A huge bowl in the center of the room held some bones.

  What’s left of the sacrifices.

  The robed man turned to regard Arakaki. She pointed her carbine at his face. “Maybe I’ll shoot your legs and leave you as the sacrifice this time,” she said.

  “It won’t eat me. But it will eat you, if you insist on the weapons,” he said.

  She made a face of disgust and indicated the exit with a twitch of her barrel. “Beat it.”

  “What?”

  “Take off. Now. Before I change my mind.”

  The man frowned, but he moved to the exit.

  To him, I’m just another victim to his god. We’ll see about that.

  As soon as the pilgrim had left the room, Arakaki took out three grenades. She dropped two to the floor; the devices slowly rolled out to the left and right. They rolled through the grilles to take up positions in adjacent rooms.

  She tossed the last grenade up through the grille on the ceiling. That was the direction of attack she feared the most: it liked to dissolve Terrans’ heads off.

  The grenades armed with a signature Arakaki had designed to try to match the Konuan. What few glimpses of the creature they had collected showed it was large, flat, and silent. It liked to move on walls and ceilings or across the plants just as often as it would be on the ground. It had a low body temperature despite being able to move very quickly. It was also associated with electromagnetic anomalies, but Arakaki had just used that to make the grenades even more likely to target and strike movement when odd fields were detected.

  Arakaki leaned back against the cool wall beside the entrance tunnel. She touched the grenade around her neck. Ironically, its cold, deadly presence settled her nerves. She believed if that grenade ever went off, at least she would be taking the Konuan with her. She chomped on the sliver in her mouth.

  With the grenade right around my neck, it’ll be “a bang loud enough to wake Cthulhu up.” That’s what he used to say about the Hellrakers.

  She drew her laser pistol with her left hand, then waited.

  Within ten minutes she got a ping. The UED sensor stationed on a nearby cliffside had picked something up. Arakaki had been tuning their probes to detect the Konuan for a long time. Though the probe’s mission had been to detect Terrans and Terran machines, the probes had a wide range of sensory abilities. This probe told her now that something was approaching, and it wasn’t human.

  Arakaki felt a rush hit her system. She wanted to do something, to shoot or break into a sprint, anything. But she just took a deep breath and waited.

  The contact slipped away for a few seconds, then came back, closer to the caves where she waited. Then it moved still closer.

  Will it come in behind me or drop in from above?

  The contact moved within an eighth of a kilometer, then disappeared.

  It’s in the tunnels ahead of me, she guessed. Arakaki slowed her breathing and watched her weapon’s sensors. Nothing. The grenades hadn’t seen anything, either.

  Another minute scraped by. Arakaki heard something, distant, so faint she wasn’t sure if there had even been a noise. Another minute passed. The laser became heavy in her grasp. She leaned forward from the wall, standing with her weight even on each foot.

  The probe outside picked the contact back up. It was moving away.

  “Why won’t you just die?” she whispered.

  The ghost moved about a quarter of a kilometer, dropping in and out of sight. Then it stopped. It didn’t leave the range of the probe. It lingered.

  The damn thing wants me to come after it. So it can kill me somewhere else.

  Arakaki almost growled in frustration. Then she opened a link to Holtzclaw.

  “This is Captain Arakaki, requesting a Hellraker round,” she said. Holtzclaw replied within three seconds.

  “You’ll have it in thirty seconds. Send the coordinates.”

  The ghost started to move away again.

  “Frag me,” she said aloud.
“Scratch that,” she added. “Sorry, sir.”

  She called back her grenades and snatched them up. Arakaki headed out after the sensor ghost.

  Chapter 9

  Magnus trailed his scout by ten meters through clumps of vegetation. He deployed his Veer suit’s head guard 50 percent with a link command, just to add protection to the back of his head. He nudged aside plant stalks with his rifle. More and more, he found himself squatting to take a peek under the greenish clumps growing on the alien foliage. From a position near the ground, he could see much farther, but it was pretty uncomfortable to crawl along for any distance.

  He felt a bit sluggish. Shipboard training had gone well with all the extra space on the Clacker, but he may have overdone it. He still wasn’t used to Vovokan ships or equipment. The VR facilities were amazing. And the quasi-virtual training machines he’d prayed up with Shiny’s help were top-notch as well. He only regretted that their team was so small. With the Clacker, he felt like he could train an entire company.

  I don’t even want to run Parker Interstellar Travels. What would I do with more people? I guess I would train some great teammates like Telisa and hit the dirt on more unexplored planets.

  Ever since the UNSF had trained Magnus to “hit the dirt” on planetary assaults, he had been hooked on it. Now that he was a free agent, it was easier than going in after the assault machines and cleaning up. They just dropped on whatever alien ruins they felt curious about and poked around.

  He skirted the largest ruins at the center of the city, making his way around them on the northern side. The plants were numerous, even in the city. The way they grew from the round fissures in the rocks made them look like they’d been there for a long time. Maybe they had been part of the city at its peak. But he knew that conclusion was suspect: Who knew how these alien plants worked? Maybe they somehow drilled their own holes in the rock wherever a seed fell. If they even had seeds. Thinking of seeds made him remember the green worms: maybe that was how the plant spread. Its “runners” really did run. Or squirm.

  They could just as easily dig their way up from underground, he mused.

  Up ahead, he came into contact with another scout unit headed back. The scout had turned back toward the Clacker once the jamming started. He turned it around and added it to his team. He checked the machine’s logs. It hadn’t encountered any humans, though it had seen one of the clear snakelike creatures hiding among the stalks.

  Those things might be dangerous, even though my Vovokan spheres protected me once.

  He stopped after half an hour and asked the forward scout to do a passive scan. For five minutes Magnus waited, crouched beside the ruin of a single-room building the size of a tiny hovel. He had plenty of time to look it over. The structure looked old. It had grilles on each face. The bars on the grilles were of a different design: they were made from the plant stalks.

  Like wood, he thought. But all the others we’ve seen are tough stone or ceramic. So this guy must have been poor. Or this building just predates the others.

  Magnus took a peek inside with a light. As he expected, a grille was in the center of the ceiling. There wasn’t one on the floor. The walls and floor were littered with brown and green refuse that looked like rotted furniture or tools. Some short sticks came out of the walls and ceiling, but nothing else remained intact.

  Magnus walked around the building to check out the far side. Two large plants grew from breaches in the rock next to the building. He saw something new there: grilles across the openings where the plants emerged from the ground. The stalks of the plants grew through the holes. The grilles matched those of the building, made from pieces of cured or painted plant stalks.

  That means they went down there. Telisa will be interested. Maybe they lived in those natural plant pots before they made their own structures. Like ancient Terrans living in caves.

  A small gray critter of some kind darted inside. Magnus pointed his weapon. Thoughts of the vermin that attacked him on Vovok came to the fore. He took a deep breath and mastered the nervousness it brought.

  On second thought, maybe it’s a kind of animal pen to them. Those critters that live down there might have been raised like domestic animals. But they can get out. Which means the pen is to keep the predators out.

  The results of the passive scan came back. Magnus opened a pane in his PV to look over the results. The information unfolded in his mind, and he instantly saw signs of scanning coming from a nearby hill overlooking the ruins. Someone had placed sensors there to keep track of what was going on in this area of the ruins.

  So. We’re curious about them, and of course, they’re curious about us. Or they’re just cautious.

  Magnus examined the scan patterns more closely. The sources must be Terran, he decided. There was something familiar about them. He became apprehensive.

  Military.

  Magnus realized he was already in a lot of danger just being within the scan arc of the sensor he’d noticed. There was a good chance he hadn’t been picked up, being a lone man in a Veer suit with a couple of small robots. His Veer suit masked his signature to some degree, at least at long distance. Of course, military sensors would be designed to defeat such obfuscation, since soldiers so typically wore them.

  Magnus immediately moved to the side of the old building away from the source of the scans. He thought for a moment, then decided to continue. He sent a scout ahead to find a route with some cover from the hill. The next structure was not far. Magnus dropped low and moved slowly to get behind the next building. And the next. He stayed calm and alert. His link had the stealth device ready, but he didn’t want to use it unless he had to, since he didn’t know what its lifespan was.

  If something bad happens, hopefully I’ll have enough warning to activate it.

  His lead scout had come to the edge of a shallow escarpment. Its video feed showed a small valley below its position.

  Magnus kept low. He decided to stay away from the open area and rely on the scout’s vision. The open valley would mean danger of being spotted. He dropped to the ground. The rocks were rugged and sharp, but the Veer suit was more than enough protection.

  Magnus accessed a binocular feed from the scout in his PV, so he could get a three-dimensional view from the machine. When he closed his eyes and concentrated, it was as good as being there himself. He watched for a couple minutes before he decided something looked wrong down below. He activated an optic enhancement suite on the scout to get the best possible look.

  Magnus’s breath caught in his throat. In one moment it hit him hard: that was a camo net system. A Terran active camo net.

  Down below, he saw them. Men dressed in dark gray fatigues. One of them wore a battle suit very much like his own Veer skinsuit. The suit had adapted itself to the terrain, taking on a light rust coloration.

  Oh no.

  Magnus shook his head as if to clear it. UED soldiers? Have I finally gone nuts?

  He took another look. They were still there. Magnus refused to believe for another moment. Maybe I breathed in some hallucinogenic toxin. I’m just seeing things.

  He tried to contact Shiny.

  There was no answer.

  Magnus took one last look at the men below. They were grabbing gear. Preparing to move out. Have they detected me?

  Magnus got up onto all fours to crawl away. His trailing scout became the lead, and he told them to slowly move back toward the Clacker.

  The crack of a large projectile weapon thundered across the landscape. The scout at the edge of the escarpment behind him exploded into a thousand tiny fragments. A dozen of the bite-size pieces landed all around him.

  Magnus dropped prone again. Time for some serious cloaking!

  He activated the alien stealth field through his link. A moment later his other scout was vaporized.

  Boooom.

  Magnus decided to trust his cloaking. He stood and sprinted back the way he had come. From an open spot in the vegetation, he glanced southward. A
n assault machine walked toward him from a half kilometer away. It stood three meters tall, with four arms and four legs. It moved with a clumsier gait than that of his smaller scouts, though it was more intimidating. Each arm of the machine held weapons trained in his direction.

  Magnus ran. He took long strides over the red rock, hopping here and there to cross sharp spots. Though he had activated the cloaking sphere, he could still see himself normally.

  After half a minute he slowed down. The cloak seemed to be working, since he didn’t detect any more fire incoming. He retraced his steps by the various buildings along the north side of the ruins. After he had traveled over a kilometer from the encounter, he slowed further.

  Magnus returned to careful thought. His situation was like a virtual nightmare scenario. Yet it had to be real.

  It’s not as crazy as it feels. Parts of the UED had to have escaped. I guess I just thought they would have disbanded by now. But this is the frontier: rife with gangs and rogue corporations. It would be better to stay in a big, heavily armed group and find new means of sustenance.

  Magnus had never had a flashback, but now he thought he must know what one felt like. Seeing those uniforms again after all this time brought it back. Most of the men in those dark gray uniforms and military skinsuits he had seen in the war had been dead, killed by space force assault robots. They had taken a few survivors prisoner here and there for mind probe specialists to interrogate. Magnus had done his part, though now he thought maybe he had been young and stupid to follow the orders. Maybe the men and women of United Earth Defiance had been on the better side. If he had it to do over again…

  Magnus chafed at the lack of communications. The UED force was jamming them. It had to be it: they wouldn’t want anyone reporting their presence to the space force. The Clacker must have scared the shit out of them. But now they were moving out, which meant they were coming to silence the explorers.

  We have to cut our losses and get the hell off this planet.

  He retreated quickly back the way he had come. The battle machine must not have been able to follow him, since he heard no more loud retorts from projectile launches. He knew such a machine had to be able to outpace a man, at least on clear terrain. The question was, would they rapidly reacquire him if the cloak ran out of power?