The Trilisk Revolution (Parker Interstellar Travels) (15 page)

“I
can work with it,” she told herself.

Siobhan
gave the signal for stage two.

All
around the island, soldier bots responded to her call. They moved sluggishly
through the clear green waters and started to emerge onto the beach. Siobhan
gave them orders to ignore other PIT soldiers or scouts they saw; it would make
sense to assume they belonged to the other Siobhan.

Siobhan2
or Siobhan3?
She wondered.
How far could the count possibly go?

She
headed straight for the wing of the compound opposite the one where she had
seen her copy go. The design of the house suggested her copy’s side was where
Spero might sleep, which was exactly why Siobhan had targeted the other wing.
She wanted to scare him out, not confront him where he was strongest. The other
Siobhan was either working under Spero’s control, or else did not care.

Siobhan
realized if she encountered her superior self, she would have to shoot.

Chances
are, she’ll shoot first. She’s faster. This is beyond dangerous.

She
imagined living as a Trilisk slave. Obeying the Trilisk’s orders with no hope
of escape, until the Trilisk decided to kill her.

Or
maybe a duplicate would just be an extra body. The Trilisk would keep you
around always, as a backup place to live. Maybe that’s why the duplicate bodies
can always be controlled. So that Trilisks can have an entourage that serves as
a reserve of hosts in case their current host dies. Or becomes boring.

Siobhan
came to the compound wall. It was over ten meters tall, with a tan hue that
suggested the concrete had been mixed from the local sand. She slowed. She knew
this was the kind of place a death trap could be set for invisible trespassers.

A
Vovokan would set up a mass detector with a bomb or a laser. What would a
Trilisk do?

Siobhan
decided if she wanted to rattle the inhabitants, she might as well start making
noise. She drew her Vovokan weapon. She targeted ten places on the wall, all
around the entire compound. Then she started shooting. One by one, she sent
mech rounds into the wall. The noise of the hits started to echo across the
island.

She
stood outside the seventh spot on the list. No one would know which one to
cover. The round blasted a huge hole right through the barrier. She was
impressed by the awesome firepower of her Vovokan weapon, and yet, the robot
had not been touched by it.

Make
them cover all ten. Or try.

Siobhan
routed her soldiers toward each breach. Then she ran through the hole she had
created. The barrier had been meters thick; she felt vulnerable going through
but she made it to the inside alive. The sounds of war continued across the
island. From inside the wall, Siobhan spotted turrets atop the defenses
shooting at her soldiers. She used her dispersed attendants to spot them, then
started shooting again. She sent six more mech rounds into turrets atop the
wall.

Siobhan
saw that turrets on the far side were emitting smoke and debris.

I
guess my duplicate is doing some shooting of her own. Did Shiny give her all
the same equipment?

Siobhan
approached the mansion. A beautiful set of huge double doors led into the wing.
They looked massive. Possibly even made of thick steel beneath their carved
exteriors.

A
random thought flitted through Siobhan’s brain at that moment.

Am
I a duplicate, too?

She
suppressed the doubt.

Who
cares as long as I get Spero? Then I can look into how Shiny used me. I wonder
if he expects me to die. If I kill the Trilisk I should ditch the weapon and
the suit; maybe they are designed to dispose of me later.

Siobhan
let Shiny’s control device scan the door’s interface. Vulnerabilities came up.
The device told her link it had unlocked the door and disabled two security
alarms. Siobhan knew there would be hidden cameras; that did not concern her
since she was in an improved stealth suit.

So
the robot has superior security. Perhaps it is made by Trilisks? Though it
could not see me…

Siobhan’s
link told the doors to open and they did. She told a grenade to take off into
the mansion. It obeyed quickly. Once away from her, it became visible. The
grenade scouted the interior for her: it saw a long hallway leading to the
atrium of the wing. There were no more obvious obstacles, so she told the
grenade to detonate in the atrium.

Krumpf.

All
part of the show. You’re under attack. Get ready to run for it.

Siobhan
had the attendants surrounding the island ready to flag anything unusual. She
had gained confidence in the plan. If the Trilisk had any of its old power, she
would probably already be dead. She now felt she was dealing with a cowardly
Trilisk immortal that did not have any of the powers of its ancestors. That
meant it had an escape plan or two. She hoped there was not something like a
tunnel to a submarine hangar. That might actually get Spero out alive.

Siobhan
stood at the edge of the wing. She advanced into the building, toward the heart
of the compound. Past the damaged atrium, she saw a strongpoint where the wing
connected to the next section of the building. It had a security station and a
dark laser dome in the ceiling.

Paranoid
around here. The compound has been sectioned off into zones with security
stations between them. What’s wrong, Spero? Can’t trust the help?

Outside,
Siobhan had lost a lot of soldiers. The distraction of the outside attack had a
timer on it. Still, Spero did not leave the building. She hesitated. Should she
stay in here and keep pecking away, or go outside and try to destroy more
defenses from there? She decided the Trilisk would be more likely to run if it
knew it was being attacked both inside and outside the house.

Siobhan
launched a mech round into a laser emplacement above the strongpoint.

Kaboom!

The
entire checkpoint erupted in sparks. For a moment her view of the corridor was
obscured by smoke. She moved cautiously forward.

A
tall shadow formed in the smoke. Siobhan halted. The shadow resolved into a
large robot. Her blood ran cold. It was the same one she had narrowly avoided
outside. Or at least the same model. It headed right for her.

The
gray metal armor gleamed. The edges of its head, shoulders, and feet were
trimmed in red. It hovered just over the floor. Siobhan shivered as the barrels
of its weapons swept over her. As long as those red eyes scanned back and
forth, she did not dare move.

Siobhan
heard a periodic hiss of air. She looked at the machine. She saw air slits in
its chest.

Is
it breathing? Or sniffing? One thing’s for sure: it’s searching for me.

Siobhan
retreated down the hall. The thing did not shoot at her. At least for now, it
had not spotted her.

Screw
the plan. Who am I kidding? I’m going in after the bastard and I’ll be damned
if any frackjammin robot is going to stop me.

Siobhan
reversed course. She walked toward it. She felt the familiar thrill of danger
hit her system. Some part of her knew what she was doing was not smart, that
she was out of control. Those thoughts were not allowed to surface. Instead,
she reveled in the adrenal hit.

Her
Vovokan weapon came up and started shooting mech rounds. She listened watched
the magazine count drop in her PV as she ran toward it as if in slow motion:
31, 30, 29…

Boom, boom, boom.

Shrapnel
engulfed the robot. Siobhan saw scratches appear in the armor. The rounds were
not hitting it, but the flying debris were. The walls around the robot were
shredded. Somewhere to her right a water pipe burst and added its spray to the
chaos.

Any
closer and I’m going to get a face full of shrapnel myself.

The
machine returned fire down the hallway. The entire corridor erupted as if it
had been filled with explosives. Siobhan dropped to the floor. She felt debris
striking her suit. The floor beneath her shook. Her suit reported no serious
damage. The machine had not hit her directly.

She
tried to stitch rounds at the robot’s legs from a prone firing position.

28,
27, 26, 25…

Brroom, boom, boom, boom.

Dammit
Shiny, you said this hi tech noise was supposed to work…

Siobhan
stopped shooting as she lost track of the target in thick smoke. The black
cloud flowed down the hallway and engulfed her. She breathed from her suit’s
reserve. She waited for the robot to reappear. She lay utterly still for long
seconds with nothing but sooty ash flurrying in front of her face mask.
Finally, it started to clear. Then she saw it. One meter directly above her.

She
pointed her weapon and told it to fire again.

Krumpf!

The
machine exploded above her. Siobhan felt a sharp pain. For a moment she
languished, blind and hurt. A piece of the machine fell, pinning her legs. Her
faceplate was damaged. She took a deep breath from the oxygen reserve and
lifted the visor to take a peek.

She
looked down at herself. Instead of the outline of her body supplied by the suit
when she was invisible, she saw her damaged stealth suit in plain sight. It was
not working. A piece of metal stuck out of her chest, oozing blood.

Frackjammers.

Chapter 19

“I
need ideas. Crazy ones,” Sager demanded.

Ten
of his officers had assembled incarnate to decide on a plan of action. Sager
was insistent upon that point—
action
—and they were running out of time.

“They
might be listening to us,” Officer Claren noted. Claren was in charge of the
powerful weapons of the
Bismarck
, now held in a state of power
starvation by the aliens using means unknown.

“Fight
or escape?” Sager said.

“Escape,”
Claren said.

Narron
nodded. “We can’t see them. We can’t power up weapons past a small fraction of
power. Presumably the enemy has point defenses and enough power to destroy us
in one alpha strike. A surprise escape is our best hope.”

“We
have the
Marco Polo
,” Officer Jackson said. She spoke quietly, but Sager
knew from experience she had ideas worth listening to.

“What
can we do with it?” Narron said.

“We
could blow it up. Use it for a distraction,” someone said.

“Maybe
the explosion energy or debris could help us detect the enemy ships.”

“We
could escape on it. Use a diversion here,” an officer added.

“We
can’t give up this ship, it’s the newest battleship we have!” another officer
said.

“What
kind of diversions can we make?” Sager asked. “The energy rings on the gravity
spinner and the weapons won’t charge up past ten percent power.”

“We
could turn our power off.”

“We
could blow up our drive. Not really. Just start the process. Tell them we’re
killing ourselves. Then do something else.”

“We
could feign an emergency and get them to let the power through.”

“An
emergency doesn’t require the spinner or the weapons.”

“The
Marco Polo
has a gravity spinner, too,” Jackson said. “It could be used
on
Bismarck
.”

“It
has the same power limitations,” Narron said.

“Okay,
this is workable,” a drive engineer named Tell said. “We can pretend we want to
blow ourselves up as someone mentioned. We’ll go to maximum power output, as we
did when we were testing this trap earlier. Both ships at once. We’ll get all
the rings on both ships up to ten percent. At the last moment, we reroute all
the rings, on the weapons and the gravity spinner, into the gravity spinners on
both ships. The
Marco Polo
won’t try to translate itself. Its gravity
spinner will focus on
Bismarck
as Jackson suggested. Both gravity
spinners and all the rings might get us to thirty percent of normal jump power.
But once we’ve jumped away, we should be able to get all our power to the
spinner and jump again immediately.”

Sager
nodded. “Raigel. What do you think of our chances with that plan?”

“Hard
to calculate,” the cold voice responded. “Perhaps ten percent.”

Sager
actually felt happy. He had not heard Raigel give any plan more than a one
percent chance since they had been captured.

“Tell
our captors we have new demands,” Sager ordered. “We must be released now, or
else we’re going to scuttle both ships. Tell, get the sequence for both jumps
together. Everyone, get the rings ready to reroute. You have to get it right,
no testing. I don’t want to tip our hand by sending any power down unusual
routes until we make our attempt.”

***

Caden
had just about given up. There was not much more action he would be seeing from
the inside of the holding room, and it did not look like he would be released
anytime soon.

Suddenly
the floor shuddered. The interrogator cursed.

“What’s
that?” Caden asked. His link was isolated. It told him nothing.

“The
attack has reached us,” the man said. “Haven’t you been listening? Sol System
is under assault.”

“The
attack on the outer system is just a diversion,” Caden said. “No one is really
being hurt. Just cut off. Those transmissions aren’t real. It’s all
manufactured.”

Yet
Caden doubted himself.

Sol
System is under assault. I thought I would never hear such terrible words.

“You’re
delusional,” his interrogator said. His eyes unfocused.

“If
those spheres make it in here, I’m going to make sure they find you dead.”

Caden’s
eyes grew wide. “What spheres? You’ll shoot me? I’m on your side! Are you
talking about the little gray spheres that came with me? They’re harmless. I
used them to find—”