The Trilisk Ruins (32 page)

One of his fists stuck out quickly and
rocked her world. Telisa covered up, stunned and hurt. She knew if
she could keep from getting hit for a second or two she might
regain her wits. The man tackled her, but she automatically rolled
straight back with it and got her legs under him, throwing him
clean over her as her back struck the sandy ground. She spit out a
mouthful of blood and scrambled for the stunner.

She heard the man coming back from
behind her as her hand closed around it. He grabbed one of her feet
and pulled her towards him, yelling in rage. She rolled to see him
dropping over her, his fists balled to pummel her to death. Telisa
shot him straight in the face.

The man stiffened and fell to one side.
Before she realized she was doing it, Telisa brought her elbow
around and smashed him in the face again. A trickle of blood ran
from the edge of his mouth.

Telisa shook like a leaf. She struggled
to catch her breath without coughing on her own blood. She
staggered back up and shot the unconscious man in the face again
for good measure.

Then she realized Magnus still needed
her help.

“
Magnus!” she called
out.
Magnus!
she
sent on her link.

I
t’s about time,
he responded.
Sounds like you got him.

Telisa wobbled over to where he
struggled in the thick adhesive.

Is it dry yet?
she asked, staring at the mess. How would she get
Magnus out of it?

Yes. Cut my legs free, and
we’ll run for it.

Telisa took out her knife and stabbed
the thick substance where it joined Magnus’ feet. The stuff was
tough. Her knife struggled with it.

How can you
breathe?

I covered my nose at the
last instant. There’s a reservoir of air in front of my face.
There’s only a few air holes, though.

Telisa freed Magnus’s legs and pulled
him to his feet.

Frick, you weigh a
ton.

I’m glad you got that guy,
whatever you did. Good job!

Telisa spat more blood out
of her mouth.
He wasn’t so
tough.

She cut at the glue that covered his
face. She quickly realized that she couldn’t tell exactly where the
grey goo stopped and his hand and face began.

Find one of the holes and
make it bigger. It’s hard to breathe in here.

Telisa buried the point of her knife in
a small hole on the side of the glob around Magnus’ head and
twisted, trying to dig into it. After a few moments she managed to
make it a little larger.

“
There’s gotta be some
solvent around here somewhere,” Telisa said. “All these crates and
crap lying around.”

This is going to take too
long. Others may come. Just lead me back to the ship. I can fly it
through my link then we can clean this up later.

Grimly, Telisa decided he was right.
The adhesive covered him in massive lumps and scraping it off with
the knife was slow, dangerous work. The soldiers would have a
solvent for it somewhere, but how long could she afford to stumble
around looking for it?

“
Okay, here we go,” she told
him. Telisa muscled Magnus forward, guiding him past the crates and
out into a new corridor. Telisa felt her back crawl, knowing that
if anyone was left behind them she’d take a bullet in the back of
her head.

They trod through another couple of
rooms. Each time Telisa took a look at the room from the entrance
to see if any enemies awaited them. Then she ran back and pulled
Magnus through it. Telisa saw that his slugthrower had been glued
into the whole mess. As nonlethal weapons went, she decided the
tangler grenade was as good as her stunner in many ways.

“
We’re almost there!” Telisa
yelled, checking the map in her head. “Just sprint for
it!”

Magnus increased speed,
running recklessly and trusting that Telisa would point him
correctly. They swung violently into the bay where Shiny had set
the
Iridar
.

The ship looked just as they had left
it.

Okay here’s the ramp coming
up in three, two, one.

They scrambled up the back ramp. The
two almost stumbled despite the warning as the surface angle rose
sharply under their running feet.

Close it up, I’m getting us
out of here
, Magnus said.

Telisa used her link to close the
loading hatch. She took one last look at the reddish caverns they
left behind as the huge metal door closed.

Telisa linked into the ship and
requested the location of the tangler solvent. Magnus fell to his
knees, but the ship started to life under them.

Don’t try to fly us out of
here until I get that stuff off your face.

Okay, I’m just getting
ready.

Telisa took a large silver can out of
one of the black equipment bags where the ship’s inventory said it
would be. She accessed its directions. She skimmed the warnings
then started spraying the substance onto Magnus.

The mixture bubbled and a chemical odor
filled the air. A glob of the glue fell off Magnus, revealing his
red face. He took a deep breath of air and then coughed. She
stopped spraying for a moment and let the air clear.

“
Better?”

Magnus coughed again. “Yes... thanks.
Can you get my hands?”

Telisa worked to free his hands of the
blobs of adhesive. Magnus started to regain his normal color. He
saw the blood on her face.

“
Thanks. Are you all
right?”

She nodded.

“
When we get outta this I
want to hear what happened while I was down.”

“
Sure thing. How can we
escape?”

“
Let’s just hope the
Seeker
is busy. If they
decide the alien is on this ship, I guess we’re going to be chased
again.”

“
Shiny has to escape, too. I
bet he jams all their sensors.”

Magnus shrugged. “We’ll find out soon.
The bay doors have opened for us!”

“
How did the
Seeker
get here,
anyway?”

Magnus shrugged. “That, I don’t know.
I’ve scanned for latchers but I didn’t find any.”

“
What are
latchers?”

“
Tracking mechanisms. They
attach to the hull and serve to point out the ship to UNSF forces.
Most latchers will show up on special UNSF scans and they often
transmit information about why the ship was marked. Very useful
against smugglers.”

Telisa nodded. “Hrm, let me guess. Stay
near a crash pod?”

“
Yeah.”

***

Captain Relachik listened in on the
comm traffic from his units in the alien orbital. The first wave of
retaliation from the incursion had been severe, but after that the
defenses behaved as if overwhelmed. A lot of men had died at the
hands of enemies unseen. Slowly, the defensive equipment they faced
had been identified and destroyed by sheer numbers. This was
exactly the opposite from the way elite soldiers were meant to be
used. Usually they enjoyed electronic superiority to the enemy
which allowed them to fight on their own terms.

“
Can we support squad
seventeen with ship’s weapons? They’re close to the outer hull,” he
asked.

“
There’s a lot of noise out
there. We’d almost have to eyeball it,” responded his weapons
officer. “It might be worth a try if they’re gonna buy the farm
otherwise.”

“
Can we be sure we won’t
blow the whole damn base up?”

“
No way to be
sure—”

“
Then no. Dispatch our last
reserve shuttle to back them up. All our teams are either under
extraction or turtling up. We’ll hold as is until we can get them
out of these hot spots.”

Relachik cursed. If
the
Seeker
were a
UNSF battle cruiser, he’d have more powerful robotic forces at his
command that were harder to destroy. Although since the robots were
affected by enemy countermeasures like the rest of their equipment,
their effectiveness would be greatly reduced.

“
Captain. I think a vessel
has detached and is maneuvering for an escape vector. It has a
blocking screen up.”

“
It’s probably only the
smugglers.”

“
I agree, sir. Given the
countermeasures exhibited by this base, I’d have to say that it’s
not the same technology.”

Captain Relachik furrowed his brows and
let out a heavy sigh. “Let them go. We have to stay and get our men
out of there alive.”

“
The alien—”

“
Yes, the alien may be with
them. Or now, even more than one. But we have men in there and we
can learn a lot about them from capturing this base.”

“
I’ll launch a spread of
shark’s teeth with tracker warheads,” suggested the
lieutenant.

“
No. Hold that,” the captain
ordered. He hesitated. “Firing the latchers may be interpreted as
firing on the alien base. It might retaliate.”

The lieutenant blinked. Captain
Relachik knew what the lieutenant was thinking. Just a second ago,
his commanding officer had been talking about firing directly on
the base to help squad seventeen. Now he was afraid to launch on
another target just because it might be interpreted as an
attack.

“
Yes sir. I thought the
analysis indicated the base’s external weaponry had been disabled
in a previous battle, sir. You sure we shouldn’t try and tag’em for
later?”

“
The aliens are still strong
enough to disable this ship with electronic warfare. So far we
haven’t threatened to destroy the base. For all we know, they could
interfere with the flight computers, cause our gravity spinner to
blow. The smugglers are not worth the risk.”

Relachik’s tone brooked no further
discussion. He knew he’d have a hard time covering for this
decision later. But for now, he was going to let his brat daughter
escape harm.

The lieutenant at the console nodded.
He closed his eyes, accessing a mental interface.

“
Looks like the ship has
fled the area, sir.”

“
Maybe next time,
lieutenant.”

Chapter
Twenty Eight

“
I guess the question is...
what now?” asked Telisa.

“
We have to figure out how
to get back to civilization without getting caught and shipped off
to a mining colony.”

The
Iridar
drifted through the void of
deep space. Out here in the vastness between the stars, no one
could locate or disturb them. A morbid thought came to Telisa as
they sat in the tiny kitchenette of the ship: what if the scout’s
gravity spinner failed, and they were forced to drift forever in
the nothingness? Would anyone ever even notice they were
gone?

“
We need to modify the
ship’s exterior a little, in case they managed to burn through the
stealth system,” Magnus said. “The
Iridar
has a good optical wavelength
scrambler, but who knows what the UNSF has these days? If they’ve
made something that can defeat the scrambler since the war, you
know a scout ship like the
Seeker
would have it.”

“
Maybe I’ll just call up my
dad and ask him.”

“
Heh. Yeah.”

“
Okay, so you have to take
that part, because I don’t know the first thing about space
suits.”

Magnus shrugged. “Time we changed that.
We have the VR, with a training module for space repair. We’ll run
you through it, and I’ll show you what to do.”

Telisa swallowed. “Out there? If I
screw up, I’ll float off into space, or decompress or something,
and I’ll be dead.”

Magnus laughed. “After what you’ve been
through, this isn’t going to kill you. You’ll keep your head. I
know it.”

Telisa smiled. “Okay. I’ll try it. So
we both change the exterior of the ship.”

“
And maybe do a visual check
for latchers.”

“
Okay. Then we have to stash
the artifacts.”

“
Hrm. Yeah that might be a
good idea.”

“
I’m sure it is,” Telisa
said. “When we first show up, they may be searching ships trying to
find us. But if they don’t know who we are, or what the ship is,
they might try searching but give up if they don’t find the
artifacts. So we need to stash them for a while. Maybe even only
bring them back a few at a time, I don’t know.”

“
We may have to give up our
identities,” Magnus said. “No one will know Thomas and Jack are
dead for a while, but the fact that they’re gone may eventually
lead to investigation.”

“
Does anyone know they died?
Did we mention it to Joe? And their bodies... once they died, I
wonder if their bodies were dissolved away once we walked out of
range.”