The Trilisk AI (10 page)

“Sure!”
Arlin said. He got up and walked away from the mess toward the cargo bay.

Relachik
got up after him. “I’m going to work up details for a meeting.”

Okay
then, the plan is in motion
,
Cilreth sent.

Yes.
Just stay calm,
Relachik
replied.

Arlin
brought the ship into the Arbor Gellon system. He headed for the sole
habitation there, a colony of about ten million souls on the fifth planet and a
space habitat in orbit. Their spinner brought them into a reasonable range.
Then Arlin used simpler thrusters to rendezvous with the habitat. A complex
series of bureaucratic handshakes took place, mostly automated procedures
outside the typical realm of human attention. The
Violet Vandivier
proved itself a legitimate vessel.

This
time there was a bit of extra scrutiny. The security had been tightened since
the destruction of the
Seeker.
A ring of protective satellites were
under construction in orbit of the planet, as well as a small Space Force
vessel. Once again Relachik took note of these developments and felt annoyance
at his lack of clearance.

As
they made their final approach, Relachik found Arlin in person and spoke aloud.
“Arlin. We have a name. This guy is on the space habitat. I’m sending you the
details.” He sent the information Cilreth had provided about someone who lived
on the habitat. “Check this out. Make sure it’s not a trap. If the guy is
alone, we’ll arrange a meet at another spot.”

Arlin
nodded.

“Look,”
Relachik said. “You haven’t done anything wrong. If it is a trap, they’re
either after me or Telisa and Magnus.”

“I
wasn’t complaining,” Arlin said.

“Just
letting you know I’m not putting you in harm’s way...yet.”

Arlin
went to his weapons locker. He came back to the lock wearing a thick protective
suit. Relachik saw his equipment and nodded.

“You
got something better than a stunner?”

“Yes.
A laser,” he said, drawing the weapon.

At
the cue ‘laser,’ Relachik activated the trap.

There
was a loud snap and crackle to their left. The ship’s lights winked. A humanoid
form materialized from thin air. The stranger emitted a surprised curse.

Arlin
shot the form in the shoulder without hesitation, then charged forward and
bowled the intruder over. Relachik joined him, grabbing the spy’s
still-holstered weapon, some kind of compact slugthrower.

“So
you made me,” the person croaked. A visor covered half the face, open over the
mouth. Goggled eyes locked onto Relachik.

“This
is where you get off. Leave the suit behind.”

“You’re
going to be in a—”

“Save
the speech or we’ll space you instead,” Relachik snapped.

The
man stripped off the thick stealth suit. It had protected him from the majority
of the laser’s energy. He wore only a thin shirt and undersheers after shedding
the suit. The laser burn was a small black mark on the edge of his pectoral.
Pain dominated the spy’s face.

Relachik
covered him for a couple of tense minutes while the
Vandivier
descended.
Finally Relachik extended the ramp. It revealed a remote location on a barren
planet.

“Move
it,” Relachik prompted.

The
man staggered down the ramp. Arlin closed the
Vandivier
back up and
began the takeoff procedure.

“Even
though you warned me, it still scared the crap out of me when he showed up out
of thin air!” Cilreth said. “He’s been here the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“Who
could have sent him? Maybe we need to interrogate him.”

“He
has to be Space Force. I guess they don’t trust me very much.”
They’re
covering all their bases because of the aliens. And they know I made unusual
decisions in an encounter. How much do they know?

“What
now?” Cilreth asked.

“We
have to check all the systems and see what the remora broke,” Relachik said. He
stole a glance at the remora. It was a thick disc stuck to the ceiling above
the spot where the spy had been standing. A small green light winked on its
surface as Relachik disarmed it.

“We
used the lowest setting, so it shouldn’t be too bad,” Arlin said. “I have to
admit, I’d never have thought of using a remora inside my own ship. But it sure
did a number on his stealth suit.”

Cilreth
looked the suit over. “We don’t have a key for it.”

“Luckily,
I have a computer expert in my employ.”

“I’m
a searcher, not a hacker.”

“You
can’t do it?”

“I
can do it. But it’s going to cost you extra. Just because you risked my life,
just then.”

“As
long as we find Telisa.”

Cilreth
nodded and retreated with the gear. Relachik suspected she’d head to the cargo
bay, where she could find some useful tools for her investigation. Or perhaps
she would take the software angle first.

Relachik
walked in circles through the tiny ship. His resolve to find his daughter
remained firm, though now he saw a larger chance of failure. What if he led the
Force to her? What if the force planned to catch and arrest them both?
Dammit,
Tel, you put us in a tight spot. I hope it was worth it.

He
thought of Telisa’s mother, a principled scientist, a woman who made great
advances in understanding the first alien devices recovered by the Force, until
her untimely death. He knew he was doing right by her memory to sacrifice
everything to protect their daughter.

After
a while, he decided to pester Cilreth. He knew she wouldn’t have made much
progress yet, but he wanted to know if she would still participate in their
training routines.

“Cilreth.
Are you checking out that suit?”

“Of
course. You think I could resist slavering over this treat?”

“Can
we use it?”

“Too
early to say. I’m still marveling over its design. Well, actually, I’m trying
to figure out if it’s one-hundred percent genuine Terran know-how, or modified
alien tech, or reverse-engineered from alien tech. I may never know, though;
some of these components have been shielded against probing.”

“Of
course. A lot of Space Force stuff is hardened against prying eyes.”

“Well,
I’m gonna keep prying.”

“Good.
Keep me informed. Shall we run a few more scenarios at fourteen hundred hours?”

“How
about eighteen hundred? I prefer to work in longer spurts.”

“Eighteen
hundred it is.”

Chapter 8

“What’s
up?” Telisa called from the entrance to the cargo bay.

“We’ve
arrived,” Magnus said.

“Where
exactly?”

Magnus
shrugged. “Shiny says it’s his home.”

Telisa
accessed the
Iridar
’s sensor data. She saw a light brown planet zoom
into her mind’s eye. It was roughly Earth-size. The atmosphere was thin. It
wasn’t a gorgeous blue and green planet filled with life. It looked rocky and
dead.

“Shiny,
has your planet always looked like that? Or was it the destroyers?”

“Planet
appears normal from here,” Shiny said. “Massive damage internally. Shiny
civilization hidden, subterranean, submerged.”

Telisa
sifted through some of the details of the planetary data. There were indeed a
few signs of life tucked away, even on the surface. Nothing big. In fact much
of what they had detected among the rocks were sessile creatures deriving
sustenance from the star, creatures half plant, half animal. Hints of vast underground
tunnels were there, as expected. Minimal volcanic activity. The air at the
surface could sustain humans.

“What
is it called? I don’t think I should be calling you a Shinarian anymore.”

Shiny
stomped several of his feet in a quick pattern.

“Ah,
right,” Telisa said. “Say it again please?”

Shiny
stomped the pattern again. There seemed to be a duplicated preamble and a
louder clack at the end.

“Sounds
like...Vovok,” Telisa said.

“Vovok
it is, then,” Magnus said.

“What
algorithm provides translation?” Shiny asked.

“A
whimsical one. No worries. The name doesn’t translate. So I’m calling it Vovok.
Which makes you a Vovokan. Be glad I didn’t call it Klack Klack.”

Before
Shiny could inquire further, Telisa asked more questions.

“Where
should we drop? What can we expect to find? Besides your target industrial
seed, I mean. And you have to give us the specs of what that seed looks like.”

Shiny
downloaded an information module to
Iridar
’s storage. Telisa immediately
became aware of it when she received a pointer.

“Study.
Prepare,” Shiny said.

Telisa
saw a series of low pillars, hourglass-shaped, lined up in the cargo bay.

“And
these?” Telisa asked, pointing at the objects.

“Gift.
Offer. Mutual benefit,” Shiny said.

“Those
are what you made on the way here, right? You said before they are remote
drones.”

“These
gather information. They warn Telisa and Magnus of destroyer activity. Allow
Shiny to monitor general, overall, long-range situation from remote location.”

“Only
us? Why aren’t you coming?”

“Enemy.
Danger.”

“But
you expect us to go in your place? This deal is getting worse.”

“Robotic
enemy sensitive to Shiny technological and biological footprint. Not sensitive
to Telisa, Magnus. Safer, more likely success utilizing Terran agents.”

Telisa
accessed the information module. In her mind’s eye she saw a three-dimensional
map of a Vovokan city below. The complexity of what she saw sank in. The city
he had showed them was a subterranean maze of epic proportions. The map
contained many layers of various kinds of infrastructure. Telisa could only
observe one of them at a time without overwhelming her senses. To look at all
the tunnels, connections, and rooms at once was just too confusing.

“There
are a lot of tunnels and pipes,” Magnus said, understating the obvious. “But I
see no electronic networks.”

“Power
and information are transferred through electromagnetic fields,” Shiny
prompted.

“So
they have broadcast power as well as wireless data transfer,” Telisa summarized
carefully.

“That
is vague but right, correct, suitable as abstraction for elementary
understanding of a thing very complex, complicated, confusing,” Shiny said.

“The
map can’t be accurate anymore, if there’s been a war,” Magnus said. “I assume
the city and your house were breached by destroyers.”

“Also
correct. Vast, wide, incalculable devastation.”

Telisa
searched for any sorrow in the artificial voice but found none.

There’s
no way to tell how he really feels about it. If he feels,
Telisa shared with Magnus over another
channel.

“Shiny,
how does the destruction of your home make you feel?” Magnus asked for her.

“Schadenfreude.”

“What!?”

“Great
opportunity created for personal advance in absence of heavy competition,”
Shiny elaborated.

By
Demogorgon’s ninety bitches
,
Magnus transmitted to her.
We’re in league with the nastiest sort of space
creature out there.

We
can’t expect an alien to stand up to our standards in moral behavior,
Telisa replied, though she felt the same
shock.

“So
there will be dead Vovokans. A lot of them. I don’t know what this city was
like, but—”

“This
is not city. Target location is inside my house, domicile, abode.”

“Yes,
a house in this city—”

“All
information provided describes my house, abode, dwelling. Constructs outside
the target area have not been provided.”

“What?”

“You
will enter my house from surface. Recommend Telisa and Magnus remain within its
confines.”

Telisa
checked to see if Magnus was catching the conversation. From his wide-eyed
expression, she judged he was.

“Shiny,
what are the approximate dimensions of your house?”

“All
that is displayed, described, defined here. Twenty-five kilometers by fourteen
kilometers at geometric center, extending from surface to an average depth of
twelve kilometers.”

“Five
Holies. When am I ever going to learn to stop making assumptions about aliens?
I’m supposed to be good at that!”
Still, such discoveries are exactly why I
find xenos so amazing. I’ve been obsessing on the Trilisks, but Shiny’s race is
probably just as interesting.