The Trilisk Revolution (Parker Interstellar Travels) (3 page)

“There
is, of course, the tiny problem of actually defeating the Trilisks as well,”
Cilreth said.

“Either
we succeed or fail. We may as well plan for success. There’s no reason to plan
for what to do dead or enslaved,” Telisa said.

“I
agree,” Jason said.

“We
need to capture those ships, seal the communications down tight, and keep
anyone from getting hurt. Can you do it?” asked Telisa.

Cilreth
bit her lip.
She wants me to get Shiny’s help. And by Cthulhu, she’s right.

“I
think I could do it myself. But on something this important, I’d like to
coordinate with Shiny on it.”

Telisa
nodded. “Okay. Get things ready. And please figure out how we can find and
intercept the delegation. The rest of us will be preparing to hit the Trilisks,
so if you can own this, it will really help.”

***

Siobhan
ran down the hill at full speed. Her idea of full speed outstripped the average
person’s; both her long stride and her fearless abandon sent her down the
incline very quickly. She barreled out of control, falling as much as running.
The grass on the hillside promised a soft landing but Siobhan knew from
experience that crashing at this point would be bone-jarring at best. The tall
clumps of grass hid logs and stones.

Caden
was just ahead. His stronger, more compact body negotiated the slope with more
skill yet Siobhan started to overtake him. He seemed to feel that some measure
of control was needed. Siobhan did not think so.

Siobhan
loped up beside him, feeling the jolt of each landing as she gathered more
speed. She knew she could not keep it up much longer, but just ahead, they
would run out of hill…

They
ran at full speed right off the cliff.

They
both screamed wildly as they hurtled downwards. To Siobhan’s right, a gigantic
waterfall roared down the cliff with them. As Siobhan neared the lake below,
she put her legs together and spread her arms to align herself for the
feet-first insertion.

The
impact was brutal. Her suit did what it could to spread the impact across her
legs. They both sank below the white maelstrom into a shadowy part of the lake
below the fall. Siobhan’s long body slid deeper into the water than her
partner. Above her, Caden sped off with strong strokes toward the surface.
Siobhan followed his course. They took a slight angle away from the falls.

He
remembers the spot.

Siobhan
felt her anticipation rise.

They
broke the surface of the water and pulled in deep breaths of cool air. Caden
grinned wildly at her. They swam up to a tiny beach. Caden emerged from the
water slowly, stealthily. He always practiced it. Siobhan copied him.

Just
past the beach was a green misty meadow. The air smelled of the electric-fresh
spray of the waterfall. The foliage was thick, forming a wall all around them.
Caden collapsed onto the fresh grass, still smiling. Siobhan toppled onto him
like a falling tower. He let out a mock cry of alarm, then absorbed the impact.

They
laughed. Then she kissed him for a long time. She pulled away and looked at his
perfect face.

“Do
you ever worry about what will happen to us?” she asked.

“The
missions? Why worry? I know you. You won’t back down.”

“It’s
just that—maybe we don’t have much time together.”

He
suddenly smiled wide. “If anything happens to you, I’ll be your Ledoux!” He
winked.

Siobhan
laughed out loud. Ledoux was a main character of a well known romance-tragedy
from the last century. It was set in a time before complete biological
regeneration had been mastered. In the book, Ledoux, a famous cyberneticist,
falls in love with a smart, beautiful woman. He adores her and always dotes on
her as a very caring partner. Then she has a terrible accident, leaving her
body and mind heavily damaged. Ledoux resolves to rebuild her, but the first
thing he constructs is a lie detector because he wants to know for sure if she
is pleased and satisfied with her new parts. He replaces her leg and she is
pleased. Then he continues to rebuild her, but slowly, her satisfaction with
her new life as a cyborg begins to wane, as her hope gives way to a cold
reality. Ledoux monitors this with his device. He sees her becoming less happy,
so he strives harder and harder to please her. Finally she is basically
complete, but finds herself ostracized by her largely artificial body and
troubled by the cold, artificial parts of her new mind. She tells him she is
happy, but the device reveals otherwise. Having worked so hard, the obsessed
and now unstable Ledoux replaces the natural part of her brain that drives her
unhappiness, making her permanently content, though the last trace of the woman
he had known is gone.

“I
feel so much better now!” she joked back. They grinned at each other like
idiots.

Siobhan’s
link interrupted the tryst. It said Telisa wanted to talk to her. She rolled
away and stared into his eyes. Then she sighed.

“What’s
wrong baby?” he said. He reached out to touch her hair.

“Gotta
go,” she said. Siobhan deactivated the VR. The Caden simulacrum, the sun, the
grass, and the mist disappeared in an instant.

Siobhan
sighed. She should tell him. She knew that.

I’m
not afraid to jump out of a spacecraft in the middle of a dense planetary ring,
but I’m too wimpy to ask Caden if he wants to… get a little closer.

Siobhan
locked up the simulation file and left it on her link. She did not trust PIT to
refrain from snooping around her storage on the
Clacker
, but maybe they
would at least respect the privacy of her link. As much as they complained
about the UNSF violating privacy, it would be pretty hypocritical of them to go
looking at her personal VR setups.

Siobhan
rolled out of her huge bed on the
Clacker
. Telisa had invited her to a
mess though it was not mealtime. Siobhan smiled. She was always hungry and
Telisa knew it.

When
Siobhan arrived incarnate, she found Telisa waiting for her. Telisa’s wounded
eye had a complex iris and pupil that made it obvious the eye was artificial.
The scar above and below her eye remained.

“You
like the scar?” Siobhan asked.

“No
one else told you?”

“Told
me what? I guess I don’t hang out with the others as much as we used to. I
mean, off training hours.”

Maybe
she’s checking to see if her scar and eye are on the rumor mill.

Telisa
nodded. “It reminds me of what happened, and what I need to do. I know it
sounds dumb. It’s just important to me.”

“Not
dumb,” Siobhan said. “What’s happening?”

“I
have work for you,” Telisa said. “Probably not your favorite but it’s
important. Files for you to read. Then some brainstorming and planning.”

The
only thing I like to plan is revenge. No, don’t say that.

“Have
you heard of the Orwell Papers?” asked Telisa.

“No.”

“It’s
a plan to overthrow the UN government. The important part, we believe, is the
analysis of the power structure. Almost all the power is in the hands of a
hundred individuals or less. I’m betting those are where the Trilisks are
hidden. So we’re going after them with our fingers crossed.”

“Wow!
I’ll read through it,” Siobhan said.

Damn.
That’s crazy. We’re crazy!

“Dangerous
enough for you?” Telisa asked innocently.

Siobhan
laughed. “I think it’ll keep me stimulated.”

“Okay,
good. Absorb this material. We’ll plan more later.”

Telisa
left Siobhan to grab some food. Siobhan dug into the information. She began to
think about just how large the task before them was. Yet she knew they could do
it. She gained confidence and knowledge as she made her way through it, until
she reached the biographies of the top one hundred.

Siobhan’s
blood ran cold. She saw a name she knew. Kagan Spero.

Kagan
was a powerful force in Speronautics Space Fabrication Corporation. The Spero
family kept a tight rein on the oligarchical company. This was the family that
had enslaved her ancestors on a space habitat.

It’s
probably not actually a series of family members. It’s probably just one
immortal Trilisk. A Trilisk responsible for it all.

Siobhan
left the mess and went for a long walk around
Clacker
, burning off a
surge of angry energy.

That
bastard is a Trilisk. Or he works with them. He is so dead.

Chapter 4

Admiral
Sager looked at his personal VR quota. He had stored up the maximum rollover
hours, so if he did not find time today to use some, it would be gone forever.

I
should be able to leave them to my progeny
, he thought dryly.
I guess I should get some progeny
before worrying about that one.

The
acting captain of the
Bismarck
spent so much time working on real world
issues he barely got into personal VR anymore. Of course, that was exactly what
the Space Force wanted, except when it came to training. Everyone spent a few
hours training in virtual environments day in and day out.

He
sat on the observation deck, even though there was nothing to see. With the
gravity spinners spooled up at full power, the ship’s particles were forced
into tachyonic state and they had left the normal universe behind. The smooth
black tables and chairs of the deck were lit through the observation portal
with the cool blue flame of their gravity envelope.

The
Bismarck
had been assigned to protect a core world delegation ship
carrying important leaders to Earth. Admiral Sager did not think much of the
assignment, but it was better than performing endless drills around Sol. At
least the
Bismarck
finally got to leave Earth. As one of the most
powerful new battleships made since the alien threat had come to light, it was
kept close to home. Though the
Seeker
had been an exploration vessel, it
had possessed powerful weapons. Yet the aliens had apparently dispatched it
easily. That terrified Earth.
Seeker
’s destruction had started a huge
build up across all the Terran held worlds.

“The
Marco Polo
has detranslated,” a helm officer reported on the command
channel. The officer was not physically present. Admiral Sager did not inquire
as to the whereabouts of the man. Anyone in navigation, or for that matter in
any area of command, could perform their duty from anywhere on the ship.

Admiral
Sager flipped up a nav display in his personal view. Their delegation ship had
flipped from tachyonic particles into the sublight universe. Thus,
Bismarck
had left them way behind.

“Drop
out and compute a rendezvous translation,” Sager ordered. “Send them a t-packet
and let them know we’re coming.”

The
Bismarck
’s gravity spinners reduced power enough for the battleship to
detranslate. Once in normal space, several virtual alarms immediately
activated.

“What
the hell?” Sager said. Comments from other officers mimicked his own surprise.
Officers all over the ship stopped whatever they were doing and furiously
looked through panes of data in their PVs.

“The
gravity spinners are dropping lower than we told them to,” someone said.

“We
have contacts on the tactical,” another officer rattled off excitedly. “Two…
two
absolutely huge
contacts!”

“Battlestations,”
Sager snapped. “Defense status five.”

“Defense
status five,” echoed Raigel, the
Bismarck
’s tactical combat AI.

The
top defense status call caused many things to happen all over the ship. Point
defense weapons charged up, EM pods prepared to mitigate incoming energy, and
weapons locked onto nearby contacts on the tactical. Raigel took command of
large portions of the power output of the ship, using it to begin erratic
maneuvers.

Sager
looked at the contacts. They were alien ships. They had to be. Their size was
scary. Even larger than alien ships had been in the virtual drills they had
conducted.

This
is real,
he had to remind
himself. The situation was like so many that had come up in virtual training
since the alien threat had appeared. Except the situation was even more dire
than some of their doomsday scenarios.
And this is it. We’re dead.

“Raigel,”
Sager addressed his combat AI. “You’re authorized to do whatever it takes. If
we can’t win, we have to warn Earth.”

“Understood,”
Raigel responded. The voice sounded synthetic as required by UN law, just as
the name of an AI had to include the sequence “ai”. Core world citizens
demanded that it be obvious when they were dealing with an artificial mind.

“Communications
penetration: zero,” reported Raigel. “We cannot contact the
Marco Polo
,
either. Enemy ships register on visual wavelengths only.”

“Visual
only? How is that possible?”

“They
demonstrate we can see them only because they allow it,” Raigel surmised. “It
is an intimidation tactic.”

“Can
we fight our way out?” asked Sager’s second, Captain Narron. Sager saw Narron
had joined him on the deck. The captain hurried over to his side.

“Weapons
will be ineffectual,” Raigel said. “More analysis is required, but I believe
this is checkmate.”

Narron
leaned forward. “I think Raigel has been compromised.”

“Raigel,
explain,” Sager said.

“Many
of our systems are under heavy enemy influence, including the gravity spinners
and our power plants,” Raigel reported. “The objects we detect on visual
wavelengths are most likely not where they appear to be. If our weapons do even
fire, they will be firing off target.”