The Trilisk AI (17 page)

She
ran recklessly after Magnus into the dark side tunnel. At first the sound
behind them was masked by the rock as they left the main tunnel. Then an even
louder, more terrifying noise erupted behind them.

It’s
drilling after us
, she
realized.

“Is
it trying to kill us?”

“It’s
still coming! It’ll crush us if it catches us!”

Telisa
caught a glimpse of bright red and green darting ahead and down a passage on
the left. She knew Magnus saw it too, because he grabbed her hand and charged
after the spheres.

“I
wonder if they led us to that machine on purpose,” he said over his link.

“Well,
now they’re leading us away. Just make sure they don’t lead us over a cliff!”

They
ran down the lit passage and took a left, following the colorful spheres. Once
again the horrible sound grew more distant. They kept moving at a slow run,
sweeping their lights to check the way ahead. They passed two side rooms.
Telisa caught a glimpse of a several glistening stalagmites rising from the
floor with a mesh of white strings crisscrossing among them. The next room had
a giant worm floating in a tube of dark fluid.

It’s
like a nightmare.

Finally
they stopped to catch their breath. Telisa’s hands trembled.

“I
never shake like this in the VRs.”

“The
animal part of you has learned the difference,” he said. “Besides, how many
times have you been chased by a giant drilling robot in our training sessions?”

“Yeah.
But there were soldiers, monsters...”

“Your
physical body shakes under adrenal overload. That may be an oversight of our VR
software. I’ll look into it,” he said. She flitted her light across his face.
He smiled wildly at her.

She
laughed out loud. “Ha! Oh, thank you so much! Haha! Hey, did we lose Shiny’s
probe?”

“No,
it’s over here. Scout got sidetracked but I think he’ll be here soon.”

Telisa
caught sight of the probe. She felt happy it made it. It was their main
connection to Shiny, and she still felt like he would help them get the
artifact any way he could.

“I
wonder what we did to set that thing off,” Telisa said.

“Why
would it attack us?” Magnus asked.

“If
the destroyers have machines under their control, they may have set them to
attack the populace.”

“But
the destroyers don’t care about us.”

“Yes,
but these are Vovokan machines. They may have set them to just attack anything.
Or maybe the Vovokan machines are not so good at discerning their targets. But
now that you mention it, it could just as easily be the other way around. The
Vovokans may have used their robots to defend themselves against the
destroyers. And we are alien...”

“Okay,
so they’re hostile one way or the other. Except for our guides, there,” Magnus
said.

What
if they’re against us, too?

“Hmm.
They may be leading us into traps.” Telisa checked her map. So far, the course
they suggested paralleled the course Shiny had wanted. “I think Shiny may be
causing those spheres to do that. He probably saw our way was blocked with the
probe here, and he’s giving us a new way around.”

“I
thought that too, at first,” Magnus said. “But the probe was with us the whole
time. It didn’t have a chance to see the way was blocked. The spheres started
to redirect us right away from that dance club, or whatever it was.”

“That
is weird. Could be another probe?”

“Turns
out we can see the other probes’ positions,” Magnus said. “There’s a service
for that on this one.”

“Oh?”
Telisa hadn’t bothered to check for new services, since she assumed the Vovokan
devices would be dead or unconnectable to human links. She used it to see the
probes. They were dispersed about the house and above the surface.

“No
doubt Shiny uses them to keep tabs on the destroyers.”

“Where
should we go from here? Just keep following the spheres?”

“Let
me take a look,” Telisa said. She felt a bit suspicious of the spheres after
their close call. She would feel better if her own estimate of where to go
matched the direction urged by the tiny devices. She looked at the map and
tried a few route programs. The most obvious way looked blocked by what she saw
of Scout’s most recent explorations.

“Yes.
Let’s get Scout back here and send him in that direction from right here.”

Magnus
nodded.

Telisa
saw Scout was in a long tunnel with a rail on the ceiling. It moved in their
general direction, crawling along under the rail.

“I
guess Vovokans wouldn’t walk down that type of tunnel. It’s probably for faster
transport.”

“We
can take it if it gets us closer to the seed. I doubt there will be fast
vehicles moving around anymore.”

“There
was the drill machine.”

“Hmm,
good point. What do you say?”

“It
seems to be the best way to get where we’re going.”

They
followed the spheres through an empty cavern that adjoined the railway.

Telisa
stepped out into the tunnel. She looked at the rail. “No supports, just like
the other rail, but smaller. How does it just stay there in the air?”

She
lifted her hand toward it. Magnus intercepted her arm and brought it down.

“I
know the power is supposed to be out, but please don’t complete any circuits.”

“Okay,”
she agreed.

The
spheres moved off down the tunnel a bit. Scout walked by and took the lead,
opening the distance between them. Telisa and Magnus started after.

They
traveled the better part of a kilometer through the tunnel. Telisa felt trapped
there. She kept thinking about the massive drill machine. If something was
trying to hurt them, would it send some kind of vehicle down the tunnel after
them?

They
came to a long series of open platforms joining the tunnel.

“This
used to be a major stop, I think,” Telisa said.

“I
wonder what it was for.”

“We’re
over a huge chamber. Some kind of coliseum, I think. There’s a lot of
structural damage. It could be dangerous to descend down into it, but the good
news is, there’s dozens of passages connected to it. We could get back on track
from there. I don’t think all the ways out could be blocked.”

“Coliseum?
Isn’t that a bit archaic for a race as advanced as Shiny’s?”

“Damned
if I know, but they are alien, after all.”

“They
have to have perfected virtual reality, unless they had some kind of religious
objection to virtual worlds. And automated manufacturing, robotics, everything.
I wonder if they moved around much at all.”

“We
Terrans still get around, don’t we?”

“Some
of us more than others, yeah,” Magnus said.

They
walked onto the platform and toward a series of holes. Scout was already
descending into one of the portals. Telisa saw handholds on the narrow tunnel.

“I
think this is the Vovokan equivalent of stairs or ladders,” Telisa said. “Maybe
there are so many to allow a lot of them in or out of the chamber quickly.”

“My
guess too,” Magnus said.

Scout’s
searchlights struck distant walls in the huge space under their feet. Here and
there, mysterious structures rose from the sand.

It
looks like yet another world. A dead world. Or a high-tech cemetery.

“Looks
like a cemetery with huge headstones,” Magnus said, echoing her thoughts.

“Yes.
I’m tying off and heading down.”

“I’ll
head down this tube right here. See you inside.”

Telisa
slipped down her smart rope with ease, telling it to drop her the last foot. It
released itself above and wound back into a tight bundle.

Sand
was everywhere. The foot coverings of her Veer suit sank into it.

Somehow
more of it must have poured in from above and pooled here.

“The
sand may have buried the exits,” Telisa noted.

“Scout
can dig, I think,” Magnus said.

Telisa
walked up to one of the structures. It was the size of a small house. Her light
washed over it. The gray surface could have been stone or metal or plastic.
Tiny pockmarks crisscrossed the surface like alien writing. A panel made of
little hexagons dominated the center. Sand shifted from above, cascading down
the side of the building.

That’s
weird. Is Scout up there? I thought he was—
A dark shape rose up before her.

“
What
the hell is that
?” Telisa screamed over her link. She had her stunner in
her hand and leveled in an instant, one of the benefits of her training.

“There’s
more than one,” came Magnus’s only answer.

The
shape was an alien. Telisa saw dozens of legs on a thing as tall as a Great
Dane. It came toward her. Telisa stepped back but it simply moved faster.
Telisa fired her stunner at the attacker. It lunged at her. Telisa skipped
back, tripped, then rolled away in a continuous disaster of movement. She saw
more than one shape moving in the swaths of light emitted by Scout, Magnus, and
her.

Vovokans.
They are Shiny’s people.

She
shot her stunner at another Vovokan. The creature kept shuffling forward. She
heard the crack of Magnus’s slugthrower.

They’re
slower than Shiny! And uglier!

A
sound caused Telisa to whirl around, her light seeking the source. A different
Vovokan shuffled out of the sand before her. The legs on its left side were
missing. It surged forward at an angle, unable to move correctly. She saw it
had a silver harness with equipment like Shiny’s.

No!
They have cybernetics just like his.
Telisa keened. She aimed her stunner, gave it an override code and shot twice
without missing a beat. The alien didn’t seem to mind the sonics much, though
it thrashed harder.
They can’t hear. The sonics are much less effective.

Telisa
dropped her stunner and took out her long dagger. But instead of attacking she
just stood, holding the weapon before her. The creature swam closer to her in
the sand, wiggling its long body like a dying worm.

Another
Vovokan came toward her from the side. Telisa switched her attention just in
time. She stabbed the creature with her knife. Its mass sensor bulb buckled
with a dry crackling sound like a hollow gourd. Telisa kicked at its trunk,
crumpling several of its legs. The thing clawed at her with its other legs,
trying to run over her. She stabbed it again in the trunk, once, twice. She rolled
away, her knife dripping gore. Her light whipped around frantically as she
tried to identify the next danger.

I
just killed an alien!

Her
light settled on a new Vovokan. Another loud crack sounded in the wide space.
It echoed crazily. A puncture wound appeared on one side the thing before her
and gooey body parts erupted from the other side. The thing slowed, but kept
coming. Telisa stabbed it in the forward hump. The outside was crunchy, but
after initial penetration her knife cut easily into its flesh.

“Magnus!
How many are there?”

Telisa
heard the sound of a grenade launcher.

Scout.
Help!

“Just
keep fighting,” Magnus transmitted. She heard his rifle firing again.

Telisa
saw Scout heading toward her. It lit the scene without blinding her,
automatically turning down the lights whenever they pointed directly at her or
Magnus. Three more shapes ran toward them. One tried to land on Scout, but the
machine scooted away, its legs flipping sand up in its wake.

Two
Vovokans came for Telisa at once. Telisa didn’t fight both of them. She ran to
her right until one blocked the other, then sank her knife into the top hump of
the closest one. It reared up and wrapped her in dozens of thin legs. Telisa
screamed.

The
legs clasped her, might have tried to pinch her, but she couldn’t feel much
through the Veer suit until something grabbed her leg. Telisa stabbed upward
furiously. Her light wasn’t pointed in the right direction. A splatter of ichor
fell across her face. She brought her knees up, screaming in anger this time,
rather than fear.

The
creature flipped off her. Telisa saw her shin was in its mouth. She kicked its
abdomen away with her other leg, detaching herself. She looked up and saw
Magnus standing over her. His rifle shot again, hitting her attacker.

“Thank
you,” Telisa whimpered. The Vovokan before her twitched again, causing her to
jump back.

Magnus
stitched two more rounds through the creature.

“Five
Holy Entities,” Telisa gasped. “Alien zombies? This is insane. It can’t be
happening.” Her voice trembled. She still held the gory dagger in an iron grip.