The Trilisk Ruins (4 page)

I’ve put an amount in our
usual place
, Magnus transmitted.
You should find it adequate.

“
Your weapon is out of date.
It doesn’t adhere to the latest shot-logging protocol.”

“
I can’t afford an upgrade
right now. Business is tight.”

“
Well, I’m afraid this is
the last time I’m going to allow you through with this particular
piece. Keep it on board until you can afford a safer replacement.
Many of the stunners are getting relatively cheap these days, I
suggest you get yourself one of those and sell this thing on one of
those frontier planets you work on.”

“
Thank you sir, I’ll do
that,” Magnus said.

Magnus watched through his
link while Cracker went through the motions, marking and logging
the suspect items for rendezvous with the
Iridar
.

Cracker nodded.
Good. Real good. Now whaddaya say next time you
just leave this damn thing on the ship so we don’t have to do this
crap again?

I will,
Magnus transmitted.

Good. Good. Cuz I don’t
mind gettin’ rich, but I gotta be a free man to enjoy
it.

“
You have a good day, sir,”
Cracker said aloud. Magnus felt impressed. Cracker’s business voice
was actually starting to sound reputable.

Magnus made his way back out and past
the throng at the autocounters. He came to the next checkpoint and
moved into a tunnel on the right, which he knew he’d have to pass
through because of his Veer skinsuit. He had to get out of the
material since it would absorb or reflect most of the security
scanner’s energy. He knew this was one of the disadvantages of
wearing the suit, but he stubbornly refused to give up the safety
it provided.

He took off the suit and handed it to a
skeletal robot made of a few slender tubes of silvery metal.
Wearing only his undersheers, he stepped onto a conveyor belt and
passed through the scanner bank. Everything looked clear to the
automated system, which routed his examined and cleaned skinsuit
back to him. Magnus calmly dressed and made his way out of the side
tunnel.

Past the last checkpoint,
Magnus stepped on a conveyor belt that whisked him over towards the
merchant cargo area. Magnus came to the
Iridar
at last. The gray ship rested
amongst many other cargo vessels on the main deck. It had a round
flat shape like a pancake slightly inflated with air. Eight giant
struts held it above the landing area.

Magnus let himself aboard and checked
the security logs to make sure everything remained in order. He had
several electronic traps waiting for any UNSF electronic attack
operative who may have attempted to compromise the ship while the
crew was gone.

When he’d satisfied himself that all
was secure, he went to his tiny quarters and opened a
communications port through his link. He stared at a blank spot on
the wall, making it easier for him to see a visual display in his
mind through the link.

A face resolved on the virtual screen.
A bearded man with a bald head and thickset neck. The man wore the
uniform of a UNSF officer.

“
Henman. We’re getting ready
to head out. Do you have the latest for us?”

The man nodded. “Sure do. I got the
bases and the satellite info for ya. There’s a clear continent you
can try out, a good distance from any of the heavies.”

Henman would know. He served as an
intelligence officer in the organization that kept tabs on
communications across the entire human civilization. Magnus
wondered, who watched the watchers?

“
Yeah, well we’ll make that
choice when we get the info.”

Henman guffawed. “You guys do whatever
you want, you just make sure that money gets to my kid.”

“
We stick to our
deals.”

“
Awright then, we got
nothing to argue about. You got anythin’ for me?”

“
Yeah, we have a new team
member. She’s a xenoarchaeologist, and get this—she’s Captain
Relachik’s kid. Not that they keep in touch anymore... still,
pretty amazing.”

“
Wow, whatta angle! You guys
are slick. Talk about an insurance policy. If the
Seeker
gets on your tail,
all you gotta do is play your ace. Nice.”

“
Do you really think that’s
what we’re up to? Thomas is pretty into these artifacts, and so is
this girl. I don’t think it’s like that.”

“
Jesus, how can you fight
through a whole friggin’ war and still be so naive? You musta
caught something from that femme that really made you lose your
mind.”

“
I hardly know her. I just
think that if Jack was planning on using her as a shield he’d
mention it to me.”

“
Well, shit, it’s a good
thing I’m here to set you straight,” Henman said. “Of course that’s
what they have in mind. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll
play along. These guys didn’t hire you for your picnic skills, pal.
Don’t get attached to this bimbo, they may be needing to cash out
their policy at some point, y’know?”

“
Hrm. Maybe... anyway, I
just wanted you to make sure she was clean. It makes me nervous,
having someone along so close to the force. Besides us, I
mean.”

“
She’s too obvious to be a
spy,” Henman said.

“
Yeah that’s what Jack says.
Can you check her anyway?”

“
Yeah, I’ll friggin’
check.”

“
Good. Then I’ll see you
next time.”

“
Yeah. I hope you do,
Magnus. Grow up and get real, and you’ll make it just fine.” Henman
rolled his eyes and broke the connection.

Magnus sat back for a moment, thinking
about the new kid, Telisa. He knew Thomas and Jack weren’t angels,
and he wasn’t either... but would they really blackmail the old
captain with her? And if they did, would he go along with it?
Magnus shook his head. He didn’t really have the stomach for that
kind of shit, he decided. He could convince them to drop her off
somewhere quiet if it came to that. He had enough blood on his
hands for a lifetime.

Chapter
Three

Three days later Telisa was in deep
space on an illegal mission with three mysterious men whom she had
only known for a week. The enormity of her venture began to make
itself felt. She worried about her decisions and wondered if she
had made a terrible mistake.

But she had never felt more alive in
her life.

Her quarters were small but completely
private. The showers on the ship were barely larger than
human-sized tubes and the kitchen was the size of a walk-in closet,
but she had known it would be like that. She considered it a small
price to pay for money, career, and adventure.

The quiet surprised her the
most. Without the thousands and thousands of microdevices embedded
in almost every manmade object talking to her link, space seemed
quiet. And the
Iridar
had a few hundred such services on board, a lot of traffic
compared to an undeveloped planet. Once there, she realized she
would have practically no contacts on her link at all. That must
have been what it was like before humans had links, she thought.
The world must have been so silent and lonely in those
times.

One of her tasks during the voyage was
to organize packs of equipment to bring with her on various kinds
of sorties from the ship. She started with one basic pack that she
would need at all times. Clearly the medical supplies were a good
choice as well as her tablet device, which she would use as a
reference when evaluating artifacts. Although her link might be
usable for that, the handheld device contained more memory and
computational power. Telisa decided to keep her stunner in the
primary pack. Having it around helped to dispel her
nervousness.

Magnus carried a stunner as well,
strapped to his belt, but it was hardly his only weapon. Telisa
considered it reasonable since security was his job, but she still
found his everyday gear slightly barbaric. The man lived in his
Veer Industries military skinsuit; Telisa read about them and
learned that they were light and flexible but capable of absorbing
a great deal of kinetic and electromagnetic damage. He had some
kind of a sleek black slugthrower strapped to his back, also of the
notorious Veer Industries. Telisa thought it looked large enough
for two-handed operation, but she imagined that the mercenary could
probably wield it with one. There was also a long knife at his
belt. She wondered how he managed to get such items near the
spaceport. It might be that they stayed on the ship at all times,
but she wasn’t sure; after all he was a smuggler.

With Magnus in the group she did not
feel a great deal of fear about who or what they might encounter in
their travels, although she had not grown to feel trust for Magnus
himself. He seemed somewhat distant and she didn’t think they had
become friends yet, although he was always polite.

The second day of the trip, after
Telisa had adapted to the feel of the ship, she met Jack in the
galley.

“
How are you getting along?
Everything okay?”

“
Yes, it’s about what I
expected,” she said.

“
I have something that may
help with the tedium of the trip. Each of us has a secondary skill
set that we use to back each other up on missions,” Jack explained.
“I’m the backup pilot, and Thomas has medical skills that may be
useful in certain situations. Do you currently have any unusual
skills that we should know about?”

“
Not that would help on a
mission; not that I can think of, anyway,” Telisa said
guardedly.

“
We’re covered pretty well
in most areas already; the only one of us I can think of that
doesn’t have a secondary is Magnus. He’s currently the only one
with significant combat skills. Perhaps we should check your
aptitudes in that area?”

Telisa looked at Jack for a moment. Did
he expect her to balk? She nodded serenely. “Very well, I assume
that Magnus will be assigned to this?”

“
Of course. He can take you
as an apprentice of sorts. How about you get together with him
tomorrow, and he can go over some basics. We’ll see how it works
out.”

Telisa reported to Magnus the next day
in a cargo bay which had been turned into a small gym. Magnus was
wearing his usual skinsuit, and Telisa had donned a tight-fitting
exercise suit in anticipation of her training.

“
You have strong legs,” he
observed. Telisa thought he sounded like he was getting ready to
sell her as a slave.

“
I guess it’s from the slide
dancing,” she said. “I was a slide dance champion at my high
school.”

“
Excellent. That may help
you out with your agility and balance, which are important for many
types of combat.”

He doesn’t mean to be so
brusque,
she thought.
He’s just being businesslike.

“
The training takes place as
pure sim, pseudo sim, and actual practice. The idea is that you
learn concepts and strategy from the VR sims. Sometimes it’s
necessary to hardwire certain physical responses into you, and
that’s where the pseudo sim comes in. In the pseudo you wear a
helmet but you use your body for real, with the computer providing
your sensory feedback. That way the actions you perform result in
real coordination skills. Then there’s also a certain amount of the
real thing. In hand-to-hand combat especially, the pseudo sim can’t
simulate the forces that occur.”

“
You mean I need to practice
getting hit?”

“
Yes, but more than that.
With the VR helmet on, you can shoot and punch and kick for real
and battle virtual opponents, but at this facility we have no way
to apply forces to your body as you work out. We can make you feel
your opponents through the neural feedback, but if you get kicked
it doesn’t throw your real body off balance. There are certain
balance and feedback aspects you must learn about striking an
opponent, the feel of resistance on impacts, and the sensation of
getting hit. Of course we can make it all work in full VR, but then
only your brain experiences it, absent of your real nervous system.
No body hardening occurs as a result. You have to get used to using
your real muscles for all this to work best.”

That first day Magnus illustrated the
use of the three methods and the strengths and weaknesses of each
one. She started in a pure virtual environment, with her body
completely cut off from the real world. Since her link did not have
the bandwidth or neural connections necessary for a five-sense VR
connection, she used a tack-on unit that could be adapted to anyone
within a few hours, using temporary, noninvasive linkage with the
spinal cord and visual cortex.

In the VR simulation she possessed a
body that was strong, fast, and trim. The environment was set up to
look like a large auditorium with mats on the floor. She wondered
for a moment if it had been created as a model of a real place. She
could hear Magnus’ voice here, which sounded as if he were close
by, but she didn’t see him anywhere in the illusory gym.