The Trilisk AI (25 page)

Cilreth
worked alone. She’d practically threatened Relachik not to bother her or he’d
risk the whole operation.

This
was a critical juncture in her work in finding Relachik’s daughter. Somewhere
on the storage modules were the keys and smart filters she needed to track down
the smugglers. Along with booby-traps and misinformation. All packed up and
encrypted.

This
is going to be a lot harder for me than it would have been for the Space Force.
They captured all the criminals, and can interrogate them.

Cilreth
copied the contents of each module carefully and set extras aside. But as she
started into her task she realized its magnitude was such that she faced weeks
of work. Relachik would wait if he had to, but there were other possible
courses of action.

There’s
more than one way to chip a cat
,
as her grandfather used to say. Cilreth wondered about the origin of that
phrase.
How many ways could there be to put a link chip into a feline,
anyway?

Cilreth
asked for a link connection to an acquaintance and got it.

“GoliathFive?”

“Hello,
Cilreth.”

Cilreth
suppressed a mild shudder. She suspected her white-hat contact wasn’t human. Or
maybe he was; but he must have access to an AI.

“I
need a package opened and cleaned.”

“I
see. What’s in it for me?” The question was cheerful. It didn’t sound greedy,
somehow. Strange turns of phrase delivered off tempo were just part of the
mystique.

“You
might like to see it, too.”

“More
details?”

“I
have the storage of the F-clave here,” she said.
Information that could be
useful to you, and a lot of other parties, I imagine.

“I
might like to see that. What stake do you have in that organization’s secret
files?”

“I
only need a particular smart filter to find a couple of smugglers. People
working with Telisa Relachik. Though she may have used an alias. She’s out on
the frontier, finding artifacts and selling them on the black market. Someone
hired me to find her. I don’t need to know—don’t
want
to know—anything
else.”

“Satisfactory.
Send the data and I’ll get you what you need.”

“There’s
a lot—”

“I
have a Z-class bandwidth priority. I’ll cover the tab for this one.”

“Of
course. Sending it now.”

 Even
at the top transmission capability of the
Vandivier,
it took a few
minutes to make the transfer.

“I
like this deal. Here’s what you wanted.”

A
file came back to her link.

“What?
I don’t understand.”

“The
smart filter you asked for. I believe you now have it?”

“You
decrypted it just like that? Why does the universe scare me more each day?”

“You
make too many assumptions. As for the universe, the more you learn, the scarier
it gets.”

The
connection broke off.

Make
too many assumptions?

How
could the smart filter be obtained without cracking the encryption on the
modules?

It
already had the filter? Oh. Or it already had the encryption key. Or I don’t
know what.

Cilreth
sat back and duplicated her contact’s results into several storage modules and
disconnected them. She brought up a workstation in her PV on one of the
modules, isolated from everything else.
Got it. Look on the bright side.
Relachik will be impressed by my quick results. Not that I’m going to tell him
what just happened. Oh, crap. He may find that transmission log. Hard to
overlook a transfer of that bandwidth and time.

Cilreth
took the smart filter and ran it through several threat detection suites. It came
out clean. She stashed it in her link and shut the module down. She reconnected
with the net and started searching. When she came up against the F-clave wall,
she started to use her smart filter. The mass of queries and traces fell away
to a much more normal trace. Exactly what she’d expect to see from a couple of
people exiled far from Earth. A brief history, a lot of new accounts, and
traceable access points at F-clave long-range receivers.

She
opened a link to Relachik. “I’ve got their trail. I’ll tell Arlin where to head
from here.”

“How
far?”

“There’s
not much human territory in this direction. So if they’re on the frontier, not
far. A day or two. If they’re beyond the frontier, then who knows?”

“Great
job. Thanks for letting me know.”

***

Relachik
sat in his tiny quarters on a chair that folded out of the wall. He hadn’t been
able to resist chatting with Arlin now that they were underway again.

“How
far out can this ship take us?”

“A
long way. Though I’m not sure I’m looking forward to heading out of
Terran-controlled space when we’ve just been attacked by aliens.”

“The
Seeker
met its doom in a completely different direction.”

“I
certainly wouldn’t call it a
completely
different direction. It was
destroyed on this frontier. We don’t know how much territory the aliens have.”

“If
the smugglers left the frontier, they had a good reason to go.”

“You’re
probably right about that. The rogues of the frontier have proved to be a
well-informed lot.”

“I
can’t believe those criminals knew the Space Force was coming,” Relachik said.

“It’s
not surprising. They have connections.”

“But
the Avatars’ very existence is secret. Only the top people work with those
outfits. Yet they leaked it. Or else the criminals have ways of tracking things
we never guessed they had.”

“They
probably didn’t know what was coming. Only that the Space Force was headed
their way.”
He doesn’t get it. The Avatars operate in their own branch. Even
regular Space Force personnel don’t know about them or where they are.

“If
a few petty criminals can do that, how can we hope to fight against aliens?”

“Those
criminals are human,” Arlin pointed out. “They can worm their way into places
aliens won’t. Our chances against more advanced civilizations are low, but what
choice do we have? We’ll fight to survive and hope the aliens have other
problems to deal with besides us. Like a big predator that can finish a smaller
one, but doesn’t want to get hurt while doing it, because then it wouldn’t be
able to deal with other threats.”

Arlin’s
simplification didn’t lend Relachik much ease.

“I
hope so,” Relachik said.

“Shall
we put in a little more practice with boarding exercises? I assume Cilreth is
out for now.”

“No,
she might be up for it. But give me a couple of hours. See if she wants to join
us.”

“Will
do. See you in a while.”

Relachik
disconnected from the channel with Arlin and looked over his work list. But it
was just a formality. He knew exactly what he had to work on next.

I’ve
been putting this off too long.
Relachik opened a new file in his PV. He started to record some thoughts there.

Telisa.

He
stared at her name for a long time. He tried to remember the few years they’d
had together. Vacations, the occasional event he’d actually managed to attend.

I’m so happy to see you again.

But
she won’t be happy to see me.
He started again.

Telisa, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I know I’m a bad
father, but I’m here to help now.

Relachik
sighed. He should have started this earlier. Anything he could say would sound
lame. But if she was in trouble, he could speak through action. He could save
her. Maybe that would be a start. He skipped down and tried another entry.

Telisa, are you okay? Really okay? Do you need help? Do you
want to go back home?

He
stared at the words and imagined himself uttering them.

Shit.

Chapter 19

Telisa
opened her eyes. Her head lay across the plane of Magnus’s armored chest. His
breathing was steady. She remembered they lay inside the vault. Everything
looked calm. She enjoyed the moment.

Magnus
has a magical ability to make me feel safe.

She
stretched a bit. Magnus awakened. He swept the hair from the side of her face
and kissed her.

“Ready?”
he asked.

“Yes.
I’m anxious to get what we can and get out. How
are
we going to get
out?”

“I
don’t know. We need a faster way up. Maybe find a Vovokan contrivance down here
to take us? Maybe one of those drilling machines.”

“Yeah,
but the drilling machine itself is a huge target that’s sure to get attention.”

Telisa
stood and walked back over to the shelves in the vault. She replaced the weapon
that killed the smaller destroyers and started to reexamine the items there.

“What
are you doing?” Magnus asked.

“This
is too heavy. It slowed me down before. I need to figure something else out. If
we’re getting out of here, we have to be fast. Besides, how many shots like
that could it have left?”

“Too
bad. I was hoping for a powerful weapon. We might be able to reverse engineer
it. Or maybe Shiny could.”

“Any
of these could be weapons. They all could be weapons.”

“We
need a new plan—”

“I
agree. Just give me a minute.”

Magnus
tolerated her delay. He paced.

Her
eye caught a smaller, more complicated object in the back on the left side. She
leaned down and retrieved it from the end. The response was immediate. The
remaining artifacts started to slide down their shelves, moving smoothly toward
the center.

“Oh
no,” she said. She watched in alarm.

“What’s
happening! Where are they going?” Magnus demanded.

“No
idea. Wait.”

The
objects slid smoothly into the central shelf, which folded up from the top and
the bottom. The shelf further transformed itself until it compressed into a
container of less than half a cubic meter of volume. The container floated up
to Telisa’s side.

“Five
Entities!” she said. “Can you believe it? They all pack up. All of them. Just
like that. I guess Shiny wanted them ready to move, too!”

Telisa
couldn’t contain her excitement. Magnus smiled.

“Just
think, we almost left most of them sitting here,” she said. “Now we have all of
them! Do you know what this means?”

“If
we can get out alive, this mother lode is ours,” Magnus said.

Telisa
beamed back at him.

“We
should figure out how to open the vault first,” Magnus said. “According to
Shiny’s probe network, the destroyers are gone.”

The
probe that had followed them into the house had resumed its normal shape. It
sat in one corner, waiting.

“Okay.
Let’s try the obvious.”

Telisa
shrugged and walked over to the door. She lay across the cold, smooth metal and
pressed the buttons. The door started to open.

“If
only all our problems were that easy,” Magnus said.

A
gory Vovokan scrambled through the doorway in an instant. Telisa screamed, but
her jiu-jitsu training took over. She automatically spun onto her back and
presented the attacker with her booted feet, kicking it back. Several of its
tiny pincer hands grasped her legs as it reared up over her. For a second it
seemed like a stalemate, but then its mouth-end curled underneath the body like
an upside down scorpion, allowing the beak to snap at her.

Magnus’s
rifle sounded again in the tight space. The round had been well aimed. It went
into the front of the trunk and traveled down its length, blowing shrapnel and
gore out the far side of the alien body.

The
creature spasmed but didn’t let go. Telisa fought harder with her legs.

I
should use my hands. Oh shit, my knife.

Telisa
grabbed for her knife but discovered it wasn’t in its sheath. Magnus appeared
over her, stabbing the Vovokan thing several times. It kept thrashing, so
Magnus started to cleave the legs holding Telisa.

The
alien finally slowed and weakened as Magnus carved away at it. Telisa freed a
leg and kicked the trunk away from her. Then she rolled to her feet and kicked
the Vovokan savagely several times, breaking off more legs on its left side.
Magnus stopped before she did. He stood back while she kicked the corpse
several more times.

“Are
you injured?” he said.