Damn, those grille pullers of theirs work fast.
Magnus rolled into the fire corridor and fired twice just to give someone something to think about. Somehow the attendant spheres knew to leave outgoing fire alone. He immediately rolled back to his previous spot. The feed from the probe showed he was getting some response. But what would likely happen next was going to be unpleasant. He expected a return volley from a heavy weapon, a round of grenades, or worse.
But the enemy decided to play it patient and wait for the flanking maneuver to complete.
Is that more evidence they want us alive? Or just low ammunition? Do they overestimate us?
Telisa disappeared from Magnus’s natural sight, but he watched the feed from her eyes: she moved up to the grille opening and rested the heavy body of the weapon in the center of it. Every second she sat there she risked a smart round flying through and nailing her in the forehead. Her attendant sphere darted back and forth between three grill openings fitfully. It actually looked agitated. Fear for her life gripped Magnus, yet he said nothing. She was doing what had to be done. Fortunately the moment passed when she activated the alien weapon.
A bright flash of light burned his retinas. For the next second the only thing that really registered was a vague impression of Telisa rolling away to the corner to get back to safety.
Thunder rolled through the building; then everything became quiet. That, or his ears were damaged. His Veer suit’s diagnostic reported its ear-protection dampening system was working. Magnus checked the probe data. The connection had dropped, and it refused to come back.
“Magnus? Cilreth? Are you alive?” Telisa asked quickly.
“Yes. I’m still here. In one piece, I think,” Cilreth said.
“I’m alive,” Magnus said. “You took a lot of them out. But you must have also destroyed the sensor I was using, because I’m not getting data from it anymore.”
“What now? Will more of them come?” asked Cilreth.
“Maybe you could take a peek,” Telisa said. “You and Magnus.”
Magnus realized she meant he still had the stealth sphere. Sheepishly, he rolled it over to her across the fire corridor. Then he sent his attendant ahead to take a look.
“It saved my life,” he said.
“I was a Konuan,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m just going to check around,” Cilreth said.
“Send an attendant,” Magnus told Cilreth on his link.
“A Trilisk machine turned me into a Konuan,” Telisa continued. “There’s another one, a technology-using one. It has a stash of weapons and equipment. Maybe even Trilisk things. I was there in the building with you and that woman.”
“Arakaki,” he said. His attendant darted into the farthest room ahead, where they had entered under fire. There were blackened spots on the wall where men had been. Only two men remained, untouched but obviously shell-shocked. Magnus judged the entire left side flanking force must have been taken out. Then some remaining missiles must have come into the main room he saw. But they did not get everyone there, so the UED right side flanking force was still intact.
Magnus changed positions. “The threat is from the right now,” he said. “Fall back into that room.” He indicated the room where Telisa had launched the weapon. “Then we face this direction instead. Their right flank force is untouched, I think.”
“Wow, that weapon did a number on the guys,” Cilreth said. Magnus saw more evidence of dead UED soldiers through her attendant’s feed. His own attendant returned to cover his move to the other room. Meanwhile, a thread of his mind was working though what Telisa had said.
“You were seriously a Konuan? You were put into an alien body, for real?”
And she has a jealous streak for a UED soldier I just met?
“I was trying to save you from the other one, the dangerous one,” Telisa said. “But I just got myself shot.”
What the…?
“You were there! We killed you?”
Now Telisa stole his full attention, though he knew distraction during a battle was foolhardy.
“Then I came back to my original body,” she said. “I guess it’s a kind of default.”
How is that possible? The Trilisks… “You had no link, then? I had no idea. I’m sorry—”
“Of course I don’t blame you. Not consciously, anyway,” she said with a hint of a smile.
“It’s insane. So the dangerous Konuan hunter is still out there.”
“Yes. What happened to Arakaki?”
“Once the hunt was over, she took off. I don’t know why she didn’t capture or kill me. Maybe it was her way of tossing me a favor for helping her kill what we thought was the Konuan that’s been hunting them.”
“She must have told them about us. Why do they want us dead?”
Magnus thought about the close miss and the lack of heavy hardware being applied in the attack. “Maybe they want to capture us,” he said. “They have more than they’ve used. Unless they’re desperately low on munitions.”
“Team. Enemy not pursuing.” The new message came from Shiny.
“Not pursuing you or me?” Telisa asked.
“However, target of intense interest spotted in ruins,” the alien continued. “Prepare to assist with capture of possible Trilisk in lower tunnel system.”
Magnus swore. Shiny’s announcement was most unexpected, though at this point Magnus stayed focused on the danger. He doubted Telisa would be able to ignore the mention of Trilisks.
“It’s good to hear you, Shiny,” Telisa said. “We’re fighting for our lives, will assist if you get us out of this.”
Good call! He pulls us out of the fire; then we help the sucker.
“Battle machine outside neutralized,” Shiny reported. “Enemies moving in to flank, trap, surprise you from below.”
“Below us? Which direction are you? Should we make a run for it?”
“Proceed south. Will cover retreat, withdrawal, emergence from building.”
Chapter 24
Keziph scurried over the landscape rapidly. There were bipeds nearby, running, hiding, or dying. For the moment, Keziph and its broodmates were safe. It crawled into a breach in the rocks and covered under a dense group of native plants. Once safe, Keziph felt less inclined to remain in control.
Keziph prepared to change stances. Deprived of its natural body or a suitable robotic equivalent, the act was no longer effortless. It required a transition delay. And of course, there was no longer any physical component. The body it occupied merely paused for a moment.
Finally Micet came to the fore.
“The test worked perfectly,” Micet told its broodmates. “Though hardly more than this Wehhid body, the newcomer species is capable of receiving us. The test subject was successfully transmitted and reset.”
Micet considered the other, more complex creature that had assaulted the bipeds. Its hardware was somewhat more advanced, but Micet lacked the preparation. Supersedure into that form was more tempting but carried huge risks. Micet prepared a summary for Cayach and changed stance.
Cayach came to the fore in the slow, troubled way of this body.
For the thousandth time, Cayach felt loss. Loss for its own bodies, loss for its god, and loss for its home to the methane breathers.
Cayach heard one of the clumsy bipeds stomping by within the sensitive Wehhid audial sphere. The biped cursed aloud. And Cayach instantly recognized it. The leader of the original biped explorers.
Cayach decided on a final change of plan. Rather than superseding one of the worshipers who had traveled here to serve it, a superior option stood ready: the leader of the primitive soldier beings. Its status would make the seizure of a starship simple, and would allow for a smoother transition into dominance among any others of their kind. The only problem Cayach saw would be the lack of neural shackles: its followers were free to think and act however they chose, and the recent defeat made them likely to choose desertion over obedi
ence.
“That one. We will use that body to escape.”
Micet replied slowly, submerged: “That race can only hold two of us conscious. But those two could be in-stance at once!”
It was a strange compromise. The original Trilisk body allowed all three broodmates to observe and express, though only the in-stance one could control the body, and with such control came temporary dominance. The flat, native creature allowed all three relative equal status, though they retained their accustomed mode of operation: it was second nature to switch stances and operate with one broodmate dominant at any given moment.
The bipeds were another flavor: their minds were split into halves, allowing two in-stance entities at once, a concept half-amusing, half-horrifying to the Trilisk broodmates.
“I leave it to you two, then, to take us to the world of the Holoeum where we can find a new body and a fresh god,” Cayach said. “That is our objective. I will submerge until you have brought it to pass.”
Micet took control and issued the final commands. The process was almost instantaneous: Micet found himself with Keziph, together in the body of a biped.
“Really this creature is—” Micet stopped as one of its limbs moved, though Micet did not command it to do so. “Ah! So disturbing!”
“I see what you mean,” Keziph said. “This could be very bad. If you interfere while I am in combat, our effectiveness will be compromised.”
“We are in combat,” Micet said. “There are enemies about. We should find our servants and organize them for the journey to Holoeum. Forward, Keziph,” it urged. “Destroy any who do not obey.”
Then Micet tried to de-stance, though it was not fully successful. Broodmates often sought to remain in-stance, and the idea that someday it would be unable to de-stance had never occurred.
Keziph felt it, too, but did not complain. It tested the biped’s arms and legs. Then it puzzled over the communication device it found in its head. It was definitely very different, very not-itself. The primitive race had only recently fused themselves to their machines. The results were less than satisfactory.
The device reported a lower-ranking companion nearby. Keziph found the other biped within the minute. It was covering behind some rocks with a few scavenged backpacks and weapons lying about.
Keziph started to communicate, then realized it didn’t have the ability.
“Micet…”
Keziph instinctually tried to change stance, but Micet was already there.
Micet supplied the words. Keziph and Micet spoke them together.
“Take what you can. We’re headed for the ship,” they croaked.
“We’ve lost, Colonel,” the Terran said. “They have an alien on their side. Ships in orbit. And they’ve destroyed all our hardware planetside.”
“We’re taking what we have and getting onto the last assault transport.”
“No, sir. It’s over.”
Keziph raised his Terran weapon and shot the demoralized soldier in the head. The Terran fell back, utterly dead.
“What in the hell are you doing? You brought us to this, and now you’re killing your own men?” came an urgent communication from another Terran. “You bastard!”
Keziph looked around with the Terran body’s binocular vision. The communication device in Keziph’s head identified the speaker: Captain Arakaki.
Keziph brought up the host’s weapon again.
The creature who had challenged him dove for cover. Keziph opened fire. It was as if the primitive device in Keziph’s tiny manipulators had been designed to miss. The projectiles flew almost straight from the barrel. They only angled slightly toward the prey. Once the projectiles had flown past, missing, they did not return to try again.
Keziph tossed the puny weapon away. If only its god could hear it, destroying the attacker would be such a simple thing. But it had been reduced to this.
The creature it had tried to kill was running away. It turned as it ran to point its own simple weapon at him. Keziph grasped a red rock and charged forward.
The Terran’s coherent light weapon lanced out. Keziph interposed the rock. The moisture within the obstacle heated rapidly, causing the rock to crack and pop into several pieces. Keziph turned aside to keep the incoming radiation from hitting him cleanly, but the attack was already over. The Terran weapon didn’t have enough energy to keep it up.
The Terran turned to run. It couldn’t match Keziph’s speed.
Suddenly an explosion threw Keziph high into the air. It tucked and spun, riding the shock wave gracefully.
One of its two large legs was leaking red fluid. A shard of metal was buried inside it. Keziph tried out the leg. It still worked for now, though it was weaker and the fluid continued to erupt.
The device in its skull announced medical attention was necessary. It instructed Keziph to staunch the bleeding. The primitive battle suit it wore seemed to sense the danger, and it tightened around the wounded limb.
“Are we dying?” it asked, feeling Micet was still there.
“No. The link says we can block off the wound and continue. Forget that one,” Micet suggested. “In fact, forget them all. There may be a few aboard the ship eager to flee with us. The ship is this way.”
Chapter 25
Telisa and Magnus sheltered inside a Konuan building to await the outcome of the local battle. Confident in Shiny’s superior weapons, Telisa figured it was only a matter of cleanup. She did not want to get dropped by a stray round now after making it through so much. Cilreth had turned on her stealth suit and returned to the Clacker with a few new Vovokan battle drones in orbit around her.
“Cilreth may not be cut out for this,” Magnus said.
“Are you kidding? She’s tough as nails,” Telisa said.
“She mumbled something about staying in the ship next time.”
“She’s just blowing off some steam.”
“Could be. She was attacked by a native predator. It left two holes in her suit,” Magnus said.
“Is she okay? We shouldn’t have let her go by herself.”
“It was a close thing, but she’s not injured.”
Telisa hesitated a moment, then continued. “I have an odd admission to make,” she said. “In the interest of full disclosure…I may have had children with someone else while I was a Konuan.”
Magnus just stared at her for a moment. “Uhm. Oh.”
“It wasn’t by choice. I kept dropping these eggs from my tendrily-ventricle-thingies, and I couldn’t carry them all for long, so I hid them away. But that other one might have found them and fertilized them. Or something like that. I didn’t touch the guy, I promise.”
Magnus’s eyebrows came up as she spoke. “I knew you were obsessed with aliens, but I didn’t expect you to go that far,” he said, smiling a bit.
Telisa lifted her hands in a “not my fault” display.
Magnus nodded. “Okay, thanks for letting me know. I think. I, myself, did not fertilize any eggs while you were gone.”
She laughed. He smiled as well, showing her he wasn’t angry.
Of course he’s not. There would be no reason to be. That was just weird.
“And that woman?” she asked.
“Arakaki. She’s UED. Or she was. She’s good. If she’s still alive, we need her.”
“What?”
“We could use her. She’s tough. A survivor. We could use her on the team.”
“You and three women. I see where this is going.”
“Don’t be insane. She’s good. You’d agree if you would quit thinking of her as some kind of competition. Look, we’ll recruit two or three men. You can help choose them.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Telisa said. “But the more people we let in, the more we risk fragmentation of purpose. We’ll have to be beyond careful in recruiting.”
“Yes. Jack was good at it. He chose you. And he knew you were the right person for the job before you even heard the pitch. Thomas was like, oh no, she’s goin
g to tell her father and we’re all going to get arrested, but you just signed on and never looked back, just like Jack said you would.”
“What’s Shiny up to now?”
“We can go take a look,” Magnus said. “The UED scattered. Shiny says the survivors are headed back to their camp.”
“Shiny saves us yet again.”
“He seems to be sticking with us. I guess you were probably right about him.” Magnus said it with difficulty. Telisa accepted the statement and did not gloat.
“Let’s go find our Vovokan benefactor.” She stood and checked her suit. Luckily Momma Veer had foreseen camping out on dirty, dusty worlds and provided the skinsuit with a charge-and-repel system for keeping dust from sticking.
“Maybe Veer Industries should run the Earth government.”
Magnus shrugged. “Maybe it already does.”
Telisa and Magnus moved toward Shiny’s position. Their link maps told them the alien worked at the site where Telisa’s human body had been in the tube. Before they arrived, they could hear digging machines. The sounds of dirt and rubble being shifted carried far across the ruins.
At least it’s not the sounds of gun and rocket fire anymore.
The pair kept sharp. Even though Shiny’s orbs patrolled the area, they were afraid of being ambushed by a UED survivor. Telisa also thought again about the predator that had attacked Cilreth, or whatever might have caused the Konuan to make all those grilles. Telisa had one Vovokan attendant orb left, but both of Magnus’s were still with him, though she swore one of them wobbled like a bent tire.
The first thing Telisa saw of the destination was a deep pit surrounded by four large digging machines. The machines were built upon multiple legs like the Vovokan walkers. They approached the edge of the dig site. Telisa looked down. The top of the Trilisk chamber had been opened like a living thing, cut across and propped open like a patient’s chest in major surgery.
Two machines with long arms and crane-cable claspers loaded another body-switch apparatus into a huge transport vehicle as she watched.
Cilreth appeared nearby.
The Trilisk Supersedure (Parker Interstellar Travels #3) Page 16