Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt (23 page)

I will kill this creature no
matter what it takes. I have to.

It rotated yet again.

“You want to attack me? Go ahead.
Your laser can’t hurt me. Instead, you should fly away, little insect,” the
voice said. “Fly away across the stars and live your miserable life. Bother us
again, and we’ll just smash you.”

Telisa felt her limbs return to
her command. She trained her laser rifle on the robot and activated both her
weapons with her link. The rifle discharged its entire energy supply into the
target. The breaker claw locked onto the Trilisk at the same moment. Nothing
happened for another second.

Kaboom!

The Trilisk robot exploded. A
blast of force knocked her back. She flew across the factory floor and struck a
piece of equipment. Somewhere along her arc she lost the rifle, but it was
useless anyway. Something hit her left eye. Her vision on that side abruptly
failed.

Telisa was not sure how long it
was before she moved again. She struggled to peer through her remaining eye.
She looked back to where she had stood, stunned. The floor seemed uneven. She
wobbled her head to correct. A massive headache assailed her.

Siobhan limped into view.

“You’re alive,” she said. “Your
eye—” her breath caught.

Telisa tried to speak, but it
just came out as mumbling.

“Just rest now,” Siobhan said.
“I’ll get you out of here. Imanol’s hurt, but he’ll make it.”

Telisa fell back into
blackness.

Epilogue

There would be no ritual to
honor the dead. If Magnus or Arakaki had been present, they might well have
demanded some ceremony like those they had used in the UNSF or the UED. As it
was, the survivors felt they needed no formalities to grieve for their lost
friends. Telisa had retreated to her quarters in isolation to absorb the events
and come to terms with her losses. She suspected Caden had done the same,
though she did not have the will to check.

The Cilreths felt the same
sadness. They sent Telisa steady reports even though she never answered them.
They half-heartedly set the automated forces inside the habitat to collecting
data about the Blackvines and their technology. But rather than analyze that
information, they chose to keep working on the Vovokan technologies of the
Clacker
.
Maxsym took it upon himself to study the Blackvines’ technology as well as
their physiology.

Siobhan was different, or at
least she pretended to be. She kept Telisa updated via indirect communication
since Telisa refused all live connections. Siobhan seemed to spend little time
thinking about death. Perhaps that was a requirement for a daredevil. Instead,
she reined in the soldiers so they would not combat the growing patrols of
Blackvine weapons, and she took stock of the hybrid Terran-Vovokan machines.
She expanded upon Magnus’s plans to break off a separate model for the worker
type and further specialized the designs of scout and soldier. Once she found
the production facilities of the
Clacker,
she was hooked, and she
flooded the Cilreths with questions about the software they used.

Days later Telisa emerged from
her room and moved about the ship. She looked tired, older. She had put a patch
on her face to hide the ruin of her eye so the others would not have to see it.
Cilreth had left her a scolding message about leaving it to heal without
surgery, but Telisa had ignored her. She had applied only minimal field
dressing and patching agents by herself. Telisa knew she could have a new eye
built or grown whenever she was ready.

 Siobhan and the Cilreths
carefully approached her in the group mess. Telisa was already contacting their
alien friend. She spoke aloud and left he channel open so they could follow the
conversation.

“Shiny, we need to discuss a
mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“Ready, attentive, listening.”

“The Trilisk told me they
control the Terran government. They said they could not control your race, so
they took the Bel Klaven instead. We need to free my people from the Trilisk
control. It said my race is being grown to threaten the Trilisk’s ancient
enemies. It said we were nothing more than tools to its kind.”

Shiny did not reply, so Telisa
continued.

“I propose we go back to Earth
and remove the Trilisks from control there. Humanity will owe you a huge debt.
You can collect resources, knowledge, even the Trilisk war loot. This is big.
We can repay you, but only once we’re free.”

“Trilisks on Earth may control,
command, utilize full range of Trilisk capabilities,” Shiny said. “Possibility
exists Terran faction not as weak, wounded, destitute as individual hunted
here.”

As weak
,
he
says.
That thing we could barely hurt was weak by Trilisk standards
,
Telisa thought. Hopelessness threatened to overtake her again as it had
countless times since Magnus died. She hid the weakness and continued.

“I think there are only a few
of them. The war with the methane breathers has brought them low. The Trilisks
aren’t godlike as they once were. I know resentment exists across most of the
Terran worlds against the UN. Between the masses of Terrans and the AI and your
Vovokan technology, and… the remaining PIT team members, we should be able to
kick them out—if we have a good plan. We have to learn from this defeat.”

“Proposal requires
consideration in entirety, depth, full.”

“Thank you, Shiny.”

“I can’t rebel against the UN!”
Caden blurted. “I’m supposed to be on the space force!”

Telisa turned to see Caden
enter the room. She suspected Siobhan had alerted him to the topic under
discussion before he arrived.

“The UN is controlled by
Trilisks,” Telisa said. “They don’t represent our race anymore. And even if
they did, they’ve grown drunk on power. We’re nothing to them.”

“Sign me up for getting rid of
the Trilisks, but we have to put the Terrans in the UN back in control,” Caden
said.

“And what about the ones who
worked with the Trilisks? What if there are some who knew about it and helped
them?” asked Cilreth.

“Then they’re traitors and
should be charged with treason,” Caden said.

“Okay. And how about the ones
who knew about the Trilisks but did nothing?”

“They would have done
something.”

“Bzzzzt. No way,” Siobhan said.
“There are many people who won’t stand up for themselves or even all of the
core worlds if it means personal sacrifice. Trust me, if any humans at all know
about the Trilisks, chances are good some of them caved and stood by, even
though they didn’t really want to help.”

“Do truth checks on them then,”
Caden said. “If they really feared for their lives, then… we’ll kick them out
of the government but let them go free. Actually, the new government should
decide what to do with the traitors, not me.” Caden’s voice had started to lose
its conviction.

“We have to empower a new
government free of Trilisk intervention,” Telisa said. “That means we’ll have
to take a hand in weeding out the traitors to make sure they don’t have a
chance to grab power in the vacuum. And there will be a huge vacuum, since
we’re not grabbing the reins ourselves. And these problems go on and on. You
probably noticed Cilreth was providing you with steadily more difficult moral
dilemmas. The next one is, what do you do with people who didn’t want to help
the Trilisks, didn’t fear for their lives, but did nothing because it would
cost them money? Or power?”

“I’d have to think it over.”

“Good. Good. Then start
thinking. I’ll want your input if you decide to stay in with us on it. You
might not do anything more important in your life.”

Caden nodded. “I’ll find Maxsym
and tell him.”

“Go ahead. I know Maxsym and
Imanol aren’t fans of the UN either,” Telisa said.

“Oh, one more thing,” Siobhan
said. “We had a new eye made for you. Whenever you’re ready.”

Telisa nodded. “Thanks.”

Caden and Siobhan left
together. They were eager to talk about the plan between themselves.

They’ll come to see we have no
choice. Even if we think it’s hopeless. We can’t sit by and just let Terra be
hurled into war against some foe we’ve never even heard of.

“What now?” Cilreth asked.
Telisa did not know which Cilreth it was who spoke.

“Now we see if we can discover
more useful things here before we leave the Blackvines alone.”

“And then?”

Telisa answered with a pointer
to a file. Cilreth accessed it.

“Are you kidding me?
The
Orwell Papers
?”

Telisa’s look told her the
answer.

“Tell Shiny we’re going to need
more ships,” Cilreth said.