The Trilisk Supersedure (2 page)

“Where?
You know where it is?”

“Yes.
Down below,” said the bald one. He pointed to a tunnel. The entrance was ringed
in black vegetation. “Past the blackvines.”

DeVries
stared at the blackvines. His face tightened into a frown. He had seen them
once before since landing, growing in the formation that hid his ship. They
didn’t sit there like proper plants, oblivious to everything around them except
the sun. These things were always twitching and keening in response to a
passerby or sending tendrils after alien vermin in a nearby crevice. They were
presumably blind yet remained aware of things going on around them.

“All
right. Are you coming?”

“I will
accompany you,” the man said, stepping forward.

“You
know what? I’d like to check it out myself. Thanks, though,” he said. DeVries
often tried to avoid traps by doing the opposite of what someone he didn’t
trust suggested.

Did
they lead me into this? Is it a trap?

DeVries
looked back at the disciples. They didn’t seem nervous. DeVries ran a program
in his link. In a split second the link computer examined his cache of the last
conversation and analyzed the strangers. The result was encouraging: no hostile
intent detected.

DeVries’s
hand briefly rested on his stunner.

No
trap. I’m the predator here. These are sheep.

DeVries
steeled himself to the blackvines and walked through.

The
tunnel beyond felt truly ancient. Dust and bits of debris littered the smooth
tile floor. His nose caught a new smell: a whiff of ammonia.

Maybe
the aliens didn’t have bathrooms. No, that would be long gone by now. Probably
the disciples have been pissing in here somewhere.

The
tunnel opened into a large, square room. Like the rest of the place, it was
carved from the dusty red rocks. A single ten-liter water container sat in one
corner. It was a rugged type of container used by the space force, colonists,
and core world survivalists. DeVries saw more of the grilles on each wall and
the ceiling. He saw one had been removed to allow him to enter. It leaned
against the wall next to the entrance.

This
place is locked down tight. Impossible to get anywhere without breaking through
those things. And I don’t think the grilles were made by humans. The space
force wouldn’t lock down each room from the other with a thick ceramic barrier.
Konuan doors? Maybe that buckle bulb knows at least part of what he’s talking
about.

The
middle of the room held a huge vat. It was a circular depression about two feet
deep at the center. The vat was empty except for a few pieces of straight gray
debris. DeVries’s first thought was of bones. If it was a skeleton of some
kind, he decided it probably wasn’t human.

Since
there was no unblocked exit, DeVries decided to try to remove a grille himself.
He approached the one opposite his entrance tunnel. It looked heavy, but
apparently the disciples had been opening them up so they could move about in
the ruins. DeVries prided himself on his animal strength. It had helped him
dispatch many of his victims. He grasped the obstacle and gave an experimental
pull. It did not budge.

“Not
even close,” he said to himself. The grille felt like it was fused in place.

DeVries
heard a soft scraping from his right. He turned toward another grille. Suddenly
his heart started slamming against his rib cage. He drew the stunner from his
belt by reflex. He had long ago disabled its requirements for target logging;
the weapon would shoot at anything and everything DeVries ordered it to.

Is that
the Konuan?

A
yellow line appeared between to bars of the grille. It looked like foam at
first; then DeVries saw the edge of it: a black border to the yellow. Dozens of
tiny yellow claws grasped the outside edge of one bar, all on one side.

Yes.
All its legs are on one side. It’s climbing sideways to get through the grille.
Must be.

DeVries
aimed his stunner. The Konuan shot out of the grille like a whip. It opened to
envelop DeVries at the last second. He pulled the stunner’s trigger in shock,
but the thing was already on him.

Thousands
of tiny claws scraped at his head and face. A powerful, acrid smell hit him.
Ammonia. He fell back from the impact, losing his balance.

DeVries
opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Instead he coughed
spasmodically. The ammonia smell was overwhelming. He struck the floor, but he
had lost all sense of direction or caring about anything but the need to
escape. His hands tore at the outside of the creature covering his torso, but
he couldn’t get a grip on any part of it. He thrashed violently in the hands of
animal panic. His eyes burned. His legs kicked.

Merciful
oblivion came seconds later as he lapsed into unconsciousness.

Chapter 1

Magnus
sat comfortably in a swivel throne with his feet propped up on an opulent
marble desk. Judging from the size and decor of the office that surrounded him,
few would have guessed he sat in a spacecraft. The smart chairs arrayed before
him adjusted to their occupants and could even serve drinks or drugs. The
ceiling rose to twice his height. A shoji screen framed his chair, with scenes
from worlds he had visited flitting across its panels.

Vovokans
know how to travel in style.
Magnus smiled. Given the size
of Shiny’s house, the huge ship must have seemed tiny to the alien. But to
Magnus, it was a flying mansion. And they had all had time to pray up a few
amenities for the new transport before they left. A marble statue of Magnus
occupied one corner; a similarly beautiful sculpture of Telisa stood in the
other. The sculpture caught his imagination and memory for the hundredth time.
Since they had been able to pray up almost anything since finding the Trilisk
AI, Telisa and Magnus had enjoyed many romantic encounters, both real and
virtual.

I
wonder how Shiny ever survived being cooped up in the
Iridar
.
It must have felt like a concentration camp to him. Yet he said nothing.

He
shifted in his seat as a preamble to action. Then he opened an obfuscated
channel to Jason Yang. The reply offered Magnus a video and audio feed so he
took them both. Jason’s face appeared in his mind’s eye.

“How’s
progress?” Magnus asked, getting right to the point.

“I have
the three new ships you wanted,” Jason said. “The prices were high. The market
has been affected by the industrial load of the space force orders for its new
grand fleet. We need pilots and crew.”

“I’m
going to find people for it. I have to figure out where we stand with the local
government before I can get back there. But you could help by going ahead and
collecting a solid pool of candidates. Hundreds if you want. I can cull them
down.”

“No
sign of anything wrong here,” Jason said. “What do they want you for?”

“Trespassing,
basically. It was a misunderstanding,” Magnus lied.

“Well,
with the aliens after us, I doubt they care about you anymore.”

“Let’s
hope so. What do you mean, ‘with the aliens after us’?”

“You
know, the
Seeker
. The war? You don’t follow the news out there?”

“There
was an incident. Not a war.”

“Then
why is every colony making a defense network? Why are the core worlds
assembling a grand fleet?”

“Because
everyone finally realized there are living aliens out there, not just dead
civilizations. But I knew that all along. So did Telisa. It stands to reason.
The galaxy is just a big place. Of course, the UNSF loves being able to use it
as an excuse to build up.”

“You
think they made it all up?”

“No…I
believe there are live alien civilizations out there.”

“But
you don’t think they are getting ready to attack us?”

“I
doubt it. But anything’s possible. There’s no war yet though, okay?”

“Fair
enough,” Jason admitted. He actually sounded disappointed.

“You
know if there is a war, we’ll probably lose, right? We’re pretty new to FTL
travel.”

Jason
nodded. “Yeah,” he said, getting a bit more serious. “It must be hard, living
out there on the frontier,” Jason said. “There must be few amenities out that
far. And you’re so removed from everything that’s happening.”

Jason
had no video feed of Magnus, so he couldn’t see the interior of the Vovokan
ship. Magnus scanned the ultra-luxurious office. He thought of the swimming
pool, his workshop, his giant sleep web, and his training center lying just
beyond the walls around him.

“Yes,
Jason, it’s hard. But someone has to be out here, taking the risks, learning
what we can. And, of course, making the big finds that are financing the
revival of Parker Interstellar Travels.”

“Yes!
Yes, that’s true. You’re not afraid the aliens will find you?”

“The
aliens?” Magnus echoed distractedly. Then he seemed to return to focus. “By the
Five, we’re out here
looking
for the aliens!”

Jason
nodded. His face showed only idolatry.

“I just
need you to hang in there for a while longer until we can return and fire
things back up,” Magnus continued. “I’ll contact you again later this month.
For now, just continue your studies and hold down the fort.”

“Will
do.”

Magnus
cut the connection. He leaned back in the throne and wondered.

Am I
really interested in ever coming back?

***

Telisa
received the signal Cilreth had configured to notify everyone of the close
approach to Chigran Callnir Four. But the signal was hardly news. She hadn’t
been able to resist monitoring their status very carefully. Their Vovokan ship
was one of two moving together toward the target planet. The Terrans traveled
in a ship of their own, which was slaved to the other one with Shiny aboard.
Its name was a collection of foot stomps and clacks, so Telisa had christened
it simply the
Clacker
. It was an impressive ship, faster, safer, and ten
times bigger than
Iridar
had been. Cilreth had been working hard the
whole voyage, trying to set up a suite of interfaces the Terrans could use to
interact with the alien ship.

My
third major expedition. So amazing. I have to pinch myself every time I set
foot on a new planet. Could it ever get boring?

Telisa
considered the focus of the mission yet again: to find more Trilisk artifacts.
Shiny had finally come clean with a translated download of information about
the long-gone race.

Telisa
had pored over the trove with such intensity that Magnus had started to
complain about her lack of training, even though he was almost as obsessed with
his new battalion of scout robots. Telisa knew he was right to push her to
continue training, but a virtual dossier filled with everything Shiny had
managed to accumulate on the Trilisks was perhaps the most interesting read she’d
ever possessed.

Shiny’s
race, which she still called Vovokans, since her naming-on-a-whim had stuck,
had been aware of the existence of the Trilisks for hundreds of years. In
total, they had encountered Trilisk ruins on no fewer than sixty-three worlds
across their entire range of exploration, suggesting that the Trilisks were at
one time an incredibly successful race spanning a territory larger than that of
the Terrans and the Vovokans put together.

The
technology found on these planets had been very challenging for the Vovokans to
understand, just as had happened for the Terrans. Some breakthroughs had been
made in harnessing or influencing Trilisk devices, but fully controlling or
replicating the artifacts had eluded the Vovokans, at least as far as Shiny
knew. Unfortunately, intense competition between Vovokans did not foster
complete exchanges of information, so Shiny wasn’t privy to every advance made
in understanding the Trilisks. Like Shiny himself, who had kept the Trilisk AI
under wraps and used it to secure his own household, many Vovokans might have
had Trilisk items that they utilized in unknown ways to give themselves hidden
advantages.

Shiny
described Earth’s government as a “stagnant monopoly.” What Telisa had gleaned
of the Vovokan state of affairs made that understandable: she saw the now-defunct
government of Vovok as a fluid laissez-faire of overlords in transient alliance
where might made right. Shiny claimed such an unstable situation ensured
continued gains in intelligence among the populace. He stopped short of
proclaiming Terra to be on a backward slide in intellect, but Telisa had taken
the hint.

According
to Shiny’s information, the Trilisks were believed to have mastered problems on
the scale of instantaneous travel across great distances, prescience of future
events, and immortality. There was evidence they had completely destroyed stars
(and thus, their associated planetary systems) in an ancient war with a
methane-breathing race of aliens who had become their bitter enemies. That war
was the one best answer to the question: Where had the Trilisk civilization
gone? If they had won that war, wouldn’t they still be here today? And it
begged the next question: What was the fate of their enemies?