Cilreth2’s spacecraft was, of course, utterly illegal to fly anywhere in the system, being unregistered, stealthy, armed, without logging protocols, and of course, alien. The Space Force would throw her in jail for a lifetime, should they ever find out about it and catch her. But Cilreth2 could not care in her current condition. She just needed a lot of twitch.
She had considered approaching Maxsym with the problem several times. But the bottom line was that Maxsym’s loyalty to PIT was high. They were providing him with everything he needed. Anyway, Cilreth2 thought there was a good chance Maxsym would think it was a test. He would report it to the others one way or the other.
She came in toward Phoenix directly. The gravity spinner allowed her to avoid the complexities of reentry experienced by pilots of previous centuries. Soon she had a lock on the house she sought.
The Vovokan shuttle was strong and light, an amazing piece of technology. The target mansion specs showed her it would hold the weight of her craft with a lot to spare. She brought it down. The bottom of the craft extended a malleable force field to hold the shuttle above the roof. The invisible field molded itself to the shape of the roof, putting equal pressure across the entire surface. Just another miracle of Vovokan technology.
I wonder if they heard that. Must have been some creaking.
Cilreth2 picked up a stubby assault weapon and shrugged. She did not care that much if they heard her coming. She would try asking for what she wanted first, but she knew it would get rough fast. For them. With her withdrawal symptoms raging, her patience was at an all time low.
She had two attendants with her. She was trying to decide whether she needed them when she had second thoughts about her approach. She discarded the assault weapon. She had not thought this through carefully. No point in going in shooting. Concealed weapons is what she wanted. Luckily she had brought more than enough of an arsenal with her, just in case. She grabbed two pistols and a sword. She smiled. The sword would give her a certain air of business. They would laugh at it, until they saw how fast the new Cilreth was. The pistols were almost antique 10mm weapons, but in solid working order.
When you’re a perfect shot with super-fast reflexes, best to trade off magazine capacity for stopping power, she thought. Modern pistols all used ultra high velocity rounds of tiny caliber that gave a much higher magazine count and helped to cut down on unnecessary death. Most of them could deliver a paralytic poison and be used as almost non-lethal weapons. By comparison, her 10mms were field cannons. They would blow off limbs. That suited her mood just fine. Let them spend a couple of months regrowing an arm or two.
Cilreth2 disembarked through a hatch on a smart rope. She dropped down smoothly and tried a window. It was not locked. Cilreth2 paused, looking at the pocked weather coating and the aged roof cleaning machine, which sat idle to her right.
Still not spending money on your surroundings, I see, Cilreth2 thought. She let herself in.
Once inside, her perspective changed. She felt a little more like her old self and less like a superhero. She found herself in an upstairs bathroom that she vaguely remembered from Cilreth’s time here. The familiar smell of spiral filled the air. Spiral was a mirror drug to twitch, the downer to the upper. Some people wanted to function faster, others wanted to unwind and slow down time.
Cilreth2 used her heightened senses to listen to the house. She heard at least five people moving inside. That was in line with the old days. Nell knew she was safer with an entourage. In addition to her soldiers, she would have one or two close companions and a variable number of clients in the house at any given time. Cilreth2 might even be able to walk right in and out without notice.
She cracked the door and peeked. Then she shrugged.
I don’t have time for this. I’ll wake Cthulhu if I have to. Gimme my twitch.
Cilreth walked out into the hall. She followed the hall, found a staircase, and walked down. She saw Nell in the great room at the bottom of the stairs. Nell looked older, of course, with some new face wrinkles to go with her silver hair. She wore a warm but rugged looking green overshirt with tights over her legs. Tread patches built into the leggings served as her shoes.
There was a guard with a rifle on his shoulder, behind a couch that held Nell and two other women. He looked young, brave and stupid, with long black hair and the beginnings of a beard. The other women were younger, and obviously preened themselves with an eye toward being noticed. They wore tight clothing with a shifting translucent patch that moved over their bodies.
No one looked at her for a second or two. Then the guard caught sight of Cilreth2. He got a concerned look on his face. He touched Nell on the shoulder and indicated the newcomer.
Nell’s eyebrows went up. Then she smiled.
She’s shocked, but covering well.
“Wow. A blast from the past. Cilreth. It’s been a while, minnow.”
“You owe me some twitch. With interest,” Cilreth2 said. The guard bristled a bit at her tone, but he remained overconfident.
“How’s that?” Nell asked. She smiled. She was still striking. Her silver hair went surprisingly well on a face of mixed British and Chinese heritage.
“I paid you a year’s worth of Cit2Cit creds as you recall. Then I had to leave it behind. You made a nice profit off me.”
Nell shrugged. “Not my fault you had to leave. Business. You know that.”
“Give me your twitch,” Cilreth2 said slowly. The threat part went unsaid.
Nell’s bodyguard began to move around the couch toward the stair. Another guard approached from a side door. Their hands found the handles of their weapons.
Nell perked up. She thrived on action. That was probably how she got into this profession in the first place.
“No,” Nell said.
Time to teach her action is not always of the fun variety. If she can learn the lesson without dying.
Her amped nervous system had her moving before the guards could react. Her 10mms flicked out.
Blam! Blam!
Cilreth2 put a round in each bodyguard’s forehead before anyone could move. Before they could fall, Cilreth2 had Nell in both her fire cones. But another guard appeared on a balcony above. Cilreth had one weapon aimed upwards in a fraction of a second.
Blam!
The guard above fell back out of sight. One of Cilreth2’s guns remained trained on Nell. Cilreth2’s attendants sought out more combatants. They found three more within as many seconds, but these ones were taking it slow, waiting.
So much for the idea of making them regrow limbs. Unless medical technology has taken a leap forward and they can regrow heads now.
“Live or die,” Cilreth2 said. The lack of twitch had her nerves grating. It took a lot of willpower to keep from just blowing Nell away on the spot as a release of frustration.
Nell smiled. But an attendant reported to Cilreth2 that her heart rate was rapid.
“Okay, I hear you,” Nell said. “We’ll get you what’s yours.”
“With interest,” Cilreth2 said. “I know you still have more friends in the house. Any more attempts to kill me, and you’re not going to make it.”
Nell nodded. Cilreth2 knew she would be talking with her friends among their links.
“Okay, I’m sending someone to bring it. Don’t shoot her.”
“I will, if she has a weapon,” Cilreth2 warned.
Cilreth2 tried to watch everything at once. She had her own vision and the feeds from two attendants to process. She could also hear almost everything going on in the house. One attendant kept rotating its view of the three armed people she knew about, while another kept tabs on a woman who was retrieving her twitch. Even with her fast reflexes it taxed her.
I should have trained more with the PIT guys recently.
The attendant settled on one guard who was behind Cilreth2 in the house. He was moving out, getting ready to shoot her from behind. Cilreth2 stepped back from Nell and turned one outstretched arm holding a pistol in a wide a
rc to cover the doorway at her left flank. She fired just before the tenuous sound of footsteps reached the doorway.
Blam! Blam!
Her two rounds went through the doorframe and hit the guard before he even came out into the open. His body fell out into the room, sending his weapon clattering across the faux wood floor.
Nell noted the ease with which Cilreth2 had dispatched the attack. Nell’s lips thinned and she frowned.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“I’ve been gone a while, Nell. Give me what I want, no tricks, and you can make it through this. But I’m not keeping you alive for old times’ sake.”
“Okay. The bag is here, behind me. She’s unarmed,” Nell said, stepping slowly aside and indicating the door behind her.
“Send her in,” Cilreth2 said calmly.
A woman with curly black hair came in. Her eyes were wide. An attendant told Cilreth2 this person was genuinely terrified. Cilreth2 covered her with a 10mm anyway.
The attendant scanned the bag. It did indeed contain twitch, but there was a hand grenade buried at the bottom. Cilreth2 took the bag, then tossed it aside. She shook her head.
“I warned you.”
Cilreth holstered her right firearm. She reached for her sword. Nell started to say something, but it turned into a scream as Cilreth2’s sword sliced through the bridge of her nose, sending blood into her eyes. Another of Nell’s armed companions came out of cover from the kitchen door.
Blam!
The guard fell, dead.
Arms. You’re supposed to be aiming for arms.
Cilreth2 put an attendant on the last armed combatant, but it saw the person withdraw. It was a young man in a vat-leather jacket. He was headed for the back door. Nell lay on the floor, muttering.
Cilreth2 told the attendants out to watch for danger while she searched for more twitch. It would not do for a survivor to shoot her in the back before she could escape with her prize.
She found what she needed in the same room it used to be. Cilreth2 silently thanked Nell for being a creature of habit. Large plastic barrels of twitch lay across one wall. One would be fake, a trap. She called an attendant in to make sure.
Yes. It’s the same one. It sprays paralytic poison if you try to open it.
She grabbed two of the heavy containers and hauled them up to the roof. The house still had some clients, cowering in the bedrooms and one in a hall closet.
I wonder if they’ll call the cops. I imagine they would have to be pretty scared to do that, but, people have died here. I’d better hurry.
Cilreth2 grabbed two more containers. They strained her enhanced musculature. She wasn’t sure the original Cilreth could have lifted one, much less taken it all the way up to the shuttle on the roof. She decided to go for one last batch.
Who knows how long it will be before I can get more? And I can hardly just ask Maxsym to make me some. Unless he owed me a favor… I’ll have to think on that.
Cilreth2 got her last load. Some of the clients were finally starting to peek out of their rooms. She ignored them. The sounds of Nell crying filtered up from downstairs. Her attendants were on her tail as she left the house for the last time and dropped her barrels in the cargo bay. Cilreth2 activated her shuttle and lifted from the roof before she hit the pilot’s chair.
Problem solved, she thought to herself as her craft rose above the green estate and lifted into orbit. She could not wait any longer. She hopped into the back and gave herself a strong dose.
Cilreth2 let out a long hiss of satisfaction as the twitch hit her souped up nervous system.
“R’lyeh risen! Mission successful. We won’t need more for a long time.”
In the cargo hold behind her, half a metric ton of twitch lent weight to her conviction.
For the rest of the ride back, Cilreth2 worked hard to suppress the guilt that came from the bodies she had left behind.
Chapter 18
Siobhan watched her copy head toward the house. The duplicate slipped out of sight suddenly, as if activating a stealth suit.
Frackjammers.
The other Siobhan had to be moving in on a mission of her own. If copied perfectly, the other version would also put the death of Spero above all else. So she might as well try to coordinate her efforts. The other one was going in. She should too.
“I can work with it,” she told herself.
Siobhan gave the signal for stage two.
All around the island, soldier bots responded to her call. They moved sluggishly through the clear green waters and started to emerge onto the beach. Siobhan gave them orders to ignore other PIT soldiers or scouts they saw; it would make sense to assume they belonged to the other Siobhan.
Siobhan2 or Siobhan3? She wondered. How far could the count possibly go?
She headed straight for the wing of the compound opposite the one where she had seen her copy go. The design of the house suggested her copy’s side was where Spero might sleep, which was exactly why Siobhan had targeted the other wing. She wanted to scare him out, not confront him where he was strongest. The other Siobhan was either working under Spero’s control, or else did not care.
Siobhan realized if she encountered her superior self, she would have to shoot.
Chances are, she’ll shoot first. She’s faster. This is beyond dangerous.
She imagined living as a Trilisk slave. Obeying the Trilisk’s orders with no hope of escape, until the Trilisk decided to kill her.
Or maybe a duplicate would just be an extra body. The Trilisk would keep you around always, as a backup place to live. Maybe that’s why the duplicate bodies can always be controlled. So that Trilisks can have an entourage that serves as a reserve of hosts in case their current host dies. Or becomes boring.
Siobhan came to the compound wall. It was over ten meters tall, with a tan hue that suggested the concrete had been mixed from the local sand. She slowed. She knew this was the kind of place a death trap could be set for invisible trespassers.
A Vovokan would set up a mass detector with a bomb or a laser. What would a Trilisk do?
Siobhan decided if she wanted to rattle the inhabitants, she might as well start making noise. She drew her Vovokan weapon. She targeted ten places on the wall, all around the entire compound. Then she started shooting. One by one, she sent mech rounds into the wall. The noise of the hits started to echo across the island.
She stood outside the seventh spot on the list. No one would know which one to cover. The round blasted a huge hole right through the barrier. She was impressed by the awesome firepower of her Vovokan weapon, and yet, the robot had not been touched by it.
Make them cover all ten. Or try.
Siobhan routed her soldiers toward each breach. Then she ran through the hole she had created. The barrier had been meters thick; she felt vulnerable going through but she made it to the inside alive. The sounds of war continued across the island. From inside the wall, Siobhan spotted turrets atop the defenses shooting at her soldiers. She used her dispersed attendants to spot them, then started shooting again. She sent six more mech rounds into turrets atop the wall.
Siobhan saw that turrets on the far side were emitting smoke and debris.
I guess my duplicate is doing some shooting of her own. Did Shiny give her all the same equipment?
Siobhan approached the mansion. A beautiful set of huge double doors led into the wing. They looked massive. Possibly even made of thick steel beneath their carved exteriors.
A random thought flitted through Siobhan’s brain at that moment.
Am I a duplicate, too?
She suppressed the doubt.
Who cares as long as I get Spero? Then I can look into how Shiny used me. I wonder if he expects me to die. If I kill the Trilisk I should ditch the weapon and the suit; maybe they are designed to dispose of me later.
Siobhan let Shiny’s control device scan the door’s interface. Vulnerabilities came up. The device told her link it had unlocked the door
and disabled two security alarms. Siobhan knew there would be hidden cameras; that did not concern her since she was in an improved stealth suit.
So the robot has superior security. Perhaps it is made by Trilisks? Though it could not see me…
Siobhan’s link told the doors to open and they did. She told a grenade to take off into the mansion. It obeyed quickly. Once away from her, it became visible. The grenade scouted the interior for her: it saw a long hallway leading to the atrium of the wing. There were no more obvious obstacles, so she told the grenade to detonate in the atrium.
Krumpf.
All part of the show. You’re under attack. Get ready to run for it.
Siobhan had the attendants surrounding the island ready to flag anything unusual. She had gained confidence in the plan. If the Trilisk had any of its old power, she would probably already be dead. She now felt she was dealing with a cowardly Trilisk immortal that did not have any of the powers of its ancestors. That meant it had an escape plan or two. She hoped there was not something like a tunnel to a submarine hangar. That might actually get Spero out alive.
Siobhan stood at the edge of the wing. She advanced into the building, toward the heart of the compound. Past the damaged atrium, she saw a strongpoint where the wing connected to the next section of the building. It had a security station and a dark laser dome in the ceiling.
Paranoid around here. The compound has been sectioned off into zones with security stations between them. What’s wrong, Spero? Can’t trust the help?
Outside, Siobhan had lost a lot of soldiers. The distraction of the outside attack had a timer on it. Still, Spero did not leave the building. She hesitated. Should she stay in here and keep pecking away, or go outside and try to destroy more defenses from there? She decided the Trilisk would be more likely to run if it knew it was being attacked both inside and outside the house.
Siobhan launched a mech round into a laser emplacement above the strongpoint.
The Trilisk Revolution (Parker Interstellar Travels) Page 11