The Trilisk AI

For my mother and father.

Thanks to Maarten Hofman, Tom O’Neill,
and Howard Lyon.

I’d also like to thank many fans who
encouraged a new indie author.

Prologue

“What
do you need me to find?”

The
man glanced around the dingy office before answering Cilreth’s question. No
doubt he was not impressed. Who would be? The office was small, with modest
furnishings and little or no decor. Cilreth didn’t even like being there
herself.

She
knew his name was Leonard. He had alerted her to his visit, but he had been
short on details. He’d asked to talk in person. More and more, it seemed like
the kinds of jobs Cilreth got involved in had clients who wanted to talk
incarnate to avoid the government snoopers. It was the only reason Cilreth even
had an office.

Admit
it, old girl. You like it that way.

“I’m
looking for someone. I have a lot of solid data on her, but she’s since gone
missing, and she wants to stay missing,” he said. Leonard sat before her on a
ceramic chair. He looked athletic, though a bit past his prime, with short,
gray hair and brown eyes. His skin was clear and clean-shaven. His nose was
slightly bent.

He
looks like a hardass. Ex-military
,
Cilreth thought. She decided she liked him. “Runaway?”

“Yeah.
A Space Force officer’s brat daughter. She’s been to the frontier for sure.
Most likely she’s still there.”

“What’s
her overall temperament? Is she prone to violence? Involved with drugs?”

“She’s
intelligent and stable. Used to be, anyway,” he said. “But she fell in with a
mean crowd. Smugglers. The assignment I’m offering requires moving around a
lot, which of course is included in the pay offer.”

Cilreth
nodded.

“Then
what happens when we find her? Is it going to get ugly? What are we supposed to
do with the guys she’s shacked...the people she’s working with?”

Leonard
hesitated.

“Nothing
personal, see? I need to understand what’s expected before I sign the dotted
line.”

“If
she’s gotten in over her head, we’re there to give her a quick out. If the
smugglers get in the way, I’m going to put them down. I’ve got a man for it. It
won’t be just you and me.”

“And
if she doesn’t want to come home?”

“If
she’s not under any kind of mind control, and wants to stay, then she stays. If
she really thinks everything is great, being hunted by the Space Force and
hiding out on the frontier, then we leave her alone. I’ll be disappointed, but
if she wants to stay, then we’re done.”

Sounds
like he has a personal stake in this. Maybe he’s getting paid a lot more to
bring her back.

“She’s
wanted by the Space Force? Her father must be a high-ranking officer.”

“No,
actually it has to do with the smugglers. They’re wanted by the Space Force. If
we can extricate her from that mess, too, then all the better.”

Leonard
opened his mouth to continue, but hesitated again.

I
don’t like it when he does that.

“Please
just tell me everything,” Cilreth prompted. “It’s going to help me do this job,
if I take it.”

He
nodded. “I understated it. Those smugglers are
really
wanted by the
Space Force. They met with an unprecedented level of success, and they have
some heavy duty alien tech in their possession.”

Cilreth
looked the client in the eyes. “How did you hear about me?”

“You
did some work for the family of a friend of mine, Lieutenant Commander Barnes.
Joseph Kane Barnes.”

“Okay.
Assuming you check out, I can find her for you,” Cilreth said. “If you can
accept I’m not signing on for kidnapping, then we’re good.”

Cilreth’s
left hand jumped a bit on the table.

“You
use twitch,” he noted.

“Yes.
It enhances my performance. As for the down side, what do I have to look
forward to? A long retirement in a tropical paradise? Let me tell you
something: it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

She
referred to an inevitable cost of long term twitch usage: about ten years off
the human lifespan. She was forty now, and she could expect another fifty years
on the twitch. Leonard appeared to accept her attitude.

“I’ll
send you what I’ve got right now. It’s a lot to sift through.”

“The
more the better,” Cilreth said, standing. She had finally remembered to stand.
The clients didn’t like it when she just sat there and waited for them to
leave.

The
client walked out. At the same time, Cilreth’s link saw the data package he’d
sent her. His footsteps echoed down the worn hall.

Cilreth
prepared a mental workspace for the target: Telisa Relachik. Something familiar
about that name. She reviewed the ID on the payment information.

“Oh,”
she said to herself.

Chapter 1

Telisa
sat in a small, domed shelter on the planet Averian. Her eyes were closed,
allowing her to concentrate on information retrieved from humanity’s vast
network. She moved thousands of Earth Standard Credits around, shuffling a bit
more money into her new accounts from illicit ones through a complicated
network of people and services offering help to individuals seeking to avoid
the attention of the world government. She lost some of the funds in the
process. That was part of the arrangement.

Telisa
and Magnus, the two survivors of the last expedition of Parker Interstellar
Travels, had managed to make a shady deal to use a proxy service for their net
connections. The service disguised their activity by creating an aggregate of
data queries from many other people like themselves, mixed in with a bunch of
fake queries, all wrapped up and accessed via a fake corporation set up on
Averian. The planet was far out on the sphere of human expansion, filled with
frontier types who had a more practical approach to life than the typical core
world citizen who followed every rule of the world government. It was simply
too expensive to police everyone, everywhere, all the time, even with the help
of machines.

She
tapped her fingers impatiently. Part of the obfuscation often introduced time
delays so her actions could be mixed together with other real and fake queries,
sent out as queries for larger blocks of data, or split up into smaller actions
in a giant blender of electronic communications.

Making
the first connections to create new accounts after the incident at the Trilisk
ruins had been nerve-wracking. They tested the waters with the UNSF. If the
Space Force was actively hunting for them, they’d be waiting, ready to track
Telisa and Magnus whenever they accessed data caches, bank accounts, and
business contacts in order to find their physical location.

On
the other hand, if the government hadn’t identified them as the culprits,
avoiding access of their old accounts could just as easily raise a red flag. If
the government was looking for smugglers, and everyone from a certain travel
agency suddenly dropped off the grid, it could be a sign of their involvement.
Luckily, given the size of human-controlled space and the number of people who
wanted to conceal their activities from the prying eyes of the Earth
government, it would be a red flag in a sea of red flags. Telisa took on the
responsibility, getting a crash course in illicit dealings.

The
bottom line, Magnus had asserted, was one of priority. If the UNSF knew who
they were, and wanted them badly enough, then they’d eventually be brought in.
Otherwise, they might be able to take some middle road, keep a low profile, and
avoid some of the most basic (and cheap) methods the government might use to catch
them. If they were really lucky, then the UNSF wasn’t after them at all. Telisa
thought he was probably right, and tried to accept her fate. She couldn’t live
her life on the constant knife’s edge of fear.

Magnus
cycled through the door. He wore his favorite military skinsuit and a light
helmet equipped with an air filter. He took the helmet off and put it on a
small plastic side table. The main room was just about the right size for two
people to hang out in, with little space to spare. It struck Telisa again how
they lived like poor hermits even though they commanded substantial financial
resources.

“How’s
the
Iridar
?” Telisa asked.

“Pretty
good. She’s ready for action if it comes to that.”

Telisa
nodded. Her eyes remained closed. Magnus hesitated.

“I
got death packages from Jack and Thomas,” he said. “Now we have access to their
accounts. Medical records. And of course, everything for Parker Interstellar
Travels.”

Telisa
opened her eyes. “Wow. We should tell their family they’re gone.”

Magnus
was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “I think we can skip it. They
didn’t have much family. And they weren’t close. After all, they were often
gone from Earth for months at a time. The messages they’ve gotten aren’t very
urgent.”

“Still,
we should tell them. It’s the right thing to do.”

“If
the family was close, then I’d agree. But these folks don’t really have close
ties to either Jack or Thomas. Better to keep a low profile. If it was so
important, they probably sent packages to their family, too.”

“How
could you dream of not telling them? It’s not right.”

“We
aren’t exactly angels ourselves. Our whole operation is unethical.”

Telisa
bristled. “Unethical?”

“Well,
we illegally steal artifacts and sell them on the black market. Our whole
business is a secret, PIT is just a front...you know all this.”

“We’re
the ones in the right! The UN doesn’t have any business keeping us from
learning from alien civilizations!”

“It’s
against the law.”

“It
shouldn’t be! The government is just interested in preserving their own power
and you know it!” Telisa’s voice was rising.

Magnus
replied with more fire himself. “Yeah, they do want to stay in power. Everyone
with any power always wants to keep it. That’s just smart. But another part of
the reason they keep artifacts from people is because they can be dangerous. An
alien machine can destroy a whole city. We’re not completely in the right
ourselves, to be selling dangerous things.”

“That’s
why we evaluate them in the field, and again before selling them,” Telisa said.

Magnus
started to answer.  He stopped to take a deep breath before continuing. “Let’s
wait, cool down a bit, and have this conversation later. We can wait a few
days, right?”

Telisa
nodded. She was still angry.

“I’m
going to contact Jason, the guy we have babysitting the agency while we’re on
expeditions,” Magnus said. “There’s a fair chance the UNSF will be listening
in, if we were identified, but I’m going to take that risk. I won’t tell Jason
where we are.”

“All
right.”

A
high priority news item tripped an alert in Telisa’s link. Magnus looked away
and became still at the same time.

Emergency
announcement going out of the office of the United Nations Secretary General in
one minute.

They
stood in uncomfortable silence. Though the argument had ended, Telisa stood with
arms crossed, her mouth compressed and downturned. She fought inside, unable to
concentrate fully on either the possible meaning of the announcement or the
argument. Finally the secretary general came on. Telisa focused on the man in
her mind’s eye.

The
secretary general stood straight at a podium as the archaic tradition demanded.
He had graying hair above a long, narrow face, and the wan complexion and thin
build of a man kept fit by a toning pill now and then rather than real
exercise.