The Trilisk Ruins

by Michael McCloskey

  Chapter 16

  Telisa looked at Shiny. She felt the need to speak even though the alien could not understand her.

  “Unbelievable! Here I am surrounded by artifacts and now I have to leave in a matter of minutes!”

  The creature shifted, as if it took great effort to sit still and observe her.

  Telisa moved up to the nearest pillar. She ran her hands along its surface, searching for loose items in the dim light. The smooth metal felt cool against her skin. The column bulged in many spots. Its surface meandered in a chaotic way, covered in knobs and extensions of all shapes and sizes. Telisa knew from previously studied Trilisk technology that the knobs would not move; most Trilisk artifacts had no manual controls of any kind.

  “I wonder how they kept dust from accumulating on it?” she asked herself.

  Her hand found a depression, and she slid her fingers along it.

  “Probably going to lose a hand doing this…” she commented.

  Her fingers wrapped around a ridge and she pulled a drawer-like container open. Instead of a hollow box, the device pulled out and then folded open with a small whir. An ovoid device glowed in the interior. It looked like a glowing egg with a metal net woven over it. Some other items sat next to the lit ovoid, revealed by its dim light.

  Telisa pulled her backpack off and unzipped it.

  “Let’s hope this stuff isn’t super fragile,” she said.

  She put the egg into a pocket and examined the other items. She saw a flat, square plate the size of her palm that had ridges on its edges as if it were made of dozens of layers of metal. She gently picked up the plate and felt for something else in the drawer. Her hand found a triangular piece of material identical to that of the plate, with the same ridges on its side. She slipped these things into her backpack and closed it up.

  “Fantastic! We have to make the best possible use of our time,” she said to Shiny.

  She moved to the next pillar without waiting for any response from the alien.

  A scraping sound emanated from the floor nearby. Telisa jumped, turning back toward Shiny.

  “Purple paste! Was that you?” Telisa asked.

  She didn’t expect an answer. Another noise came from the other direction, several meters away from her and Shiny. A chill ran down her back, and she grabbed her flashlight again. Turning the device to wide beam, she swept the area.

  Something moved along the floor. It left the swath of light rapidly, causing Telisa’s heart rate to climb. Was she being attacked? Her other hand groped for her stunner in a moment of terror while the noises continued, bouncing off the pillars in the dark. Then her beam caught something in front of Shiny.

  A small stack of devices had been created in front of the alien. As Telisa watched, a small silver sphere flew over and deposited another artifact into the pile. Telisa realized that the sphere looked the same as the thing that had blocked Joe when he pointed his weapon at Shiny.

  “Wow! You’re collecting stuff faster than I am!” Telisa exclaimed.

  Shiny indicated the pile and moved several of his legs. He pushed one of the items toward Telisa and then backed off.

  “For me?” Telisa asked.

  She watched the alien for a moment, then moved forward. The intriguing stack beckoned her, and the alien didn’t move.

  “Thank you!” she said, bending down to scoop the items into her backpack. “Thanks!” she said again. “I need to figure out how to say that so you understand.”

  Telisa continued to look for loose items in the room for a few more minutes, but it seemed that Shiny’s scavenging efforts had retrieved most everything in the area; she found nothing else that wasn’t attached to the other, heavier equipment.

  The sound of footsteps alerted her to someone’s approach. Telisa slid behind a pillar until she heard Magnus’s voice.

  “Telisa?” he called, walking carefully up to Shiny.

  “Over here,” she answered.

  “There’s a passage upward to the surface,” he told her. “If we’re going to lose him, we have to go and wait for Joe to come back through it. We’ll hide near the entrance and when he walks back to this spot, we’ll run for it.”

  “So soon?” Telisa moaned. “There are all kinds of amazing things around here.”

  “What’ve you found?”

  “I haven’t the slightest clue,” Telisa said. “All kinds of stuff, maybe enough to discover something really amazing about the Trilisks!”

  “That’s great, but we have to go or end up on a prison asteroid chipping at ore veins,” Magnus said. “He could be back soon; I don’t think it’ll take very long for him to make a report.”

  “All right. Lead the way,” Telisa said.

  Magnus strode back the way he had come, with Telisa and Shiny following closely. They skirted to one side, and Magnus quietly indicated a circular opening in the wall that they were avoiding. They ended up beyond the entrance, standing behind one of the massive pillars.

  “We have to wait here for him to return. When he comes out and goes looking for us, then we’ll go up the tunnel,” Magnus whispered.

  Telisa noticed that Shiny waited with them in plain view of the entrance. He hadn’t placed himself behind the column of equipment.

  “Shiny,” Telisa whispered.

  She performed the motions for follow me, facing the alien and stepping slowly backward.

  The creature watched her for a moment, and then took a few steps forward. Telisa walked farther back behind the pillar, continuing the hand motions.

  “He’d better not give us away,” Magnus said. “I’d rather not have to shoot Joe.”

  “No problem,” Telisa said. “If he sees us, I’ll give him a jolt with my stunner. He’ll wake up later and we’ll be long gone. What I’m worried about is, what if he doesn’t come back quickly? He could be calling in reinforcements and waiting for them up there.”

  “Damn it.”

  “What?”

  “We have to stun him at least,” Magnus said. “I just realized that he probably has vids of us in his link memory. We need to erase it.”

  “He may have already sent some if he’s managed to contact the base.”

  “Yes. We should have shot him in the back before he left. So stupid,” Magnus growled at himself. “We’ll just have to hope that he hasn’t done that yet. His link memory would take a lot of bandwidth to transfer. But he may have sent a summary.”

  Telisa sighed. Another risk for them to take. There had already been so many.

  “Are you sure you’ve done this before?” she asked.

  “Yes. But we never got detected on the way in before. And I wasn’t trapped in an alien complex. That’s why things are so screwed up this time.”

  “Well, I agree we should stun him, but it’s probably not critical. Even if the link memory is erased, they can still work with him to come up with our visual profiles.”

  “Yeah. But it might slow them down, introduce some uncertainty. His memory might even be faulty. Maybe he spent all his time looking at you and he can’t remember me.”

  Telisa smiled. “I’m going up closer to the exit then. I’ll stun him the instant I see him.”

  Magnus nodded. “Sounds good.”

  His Veer suit made him difficult to see, maintaining a near-black color that blended into the dark room.

  Telisa crept around the side of the pillar and turned her flashlight down. She took the stunner in her right hand and moved until she stood with her back against the wall beside the tube exit. She turned her flashlight all the way off and waited for Joe.