The Trilisk Supersedure (11 page)

“Don’t
move suddenly or I’ll blow your asses off,” she summarized.

All
four men started at her sudden statement. Arakaki watched carefully. Though
they all moved in response before their minds could fully process the meaning
of her threat, none of them reached for any weapons, so they lived.

“Please
don’t fire,” one of the men said. He had a ruddy nose and star-baked skin that
almost matched his red robes.

“Surprise
inspection,” Arakaki barked, as if that were all the explanation necessary.
Arakaki kept her weapon in the general direction of the acolytes. With their
signatures logged, it would require minimal aiming to wipe them all out with a
single mental command or pull of her finger.

“Where
are your supplies?” she asked.

“We don’t
have anything of use to you,” another one said. The one who had answered had no
hair. He wore a plain yellow robe.

“Show
me what you have. I want to know how you survive out here.”

“In
here,” said the bald man in the yellow robe.

Arakaki
chomped down on the sliver in her mouth and followed. Her finger was relaxed
near the trigger of her PAW, and her thoughts remained close to the fire
control in her link.

They
led her to another dismal rock room. She carefully squatted and followed them
through a pulled Konuan grille. More grilles were still in place above and
below, but the grilles in the other four directions had been pulled out.

“Here
are many of our supplies,” the man said. “Of course, we have some equipment
deployed around. Solar cells and some photosynthesis modules are over our
heads, on the top of the ridge.”

The man
indicated a waist-high pile of packs and equipment. Arakaki looked things over,
still keeping one eye on the pilgrims.

She
found a PSG stunner, three grenades, and two large projectile weapons. She saw
clips for some other handheld projectile weapons. There were food wrappers and
some half-empty backpacks. She counted eight of the backpacks.

“Where
did you get that stuff?”

“That’s
what little we have left of our equipment.”

A metal
sphere attracted her attention. At first she thought it was a grenade, but it
was too large. She reached out to pick it up. As her hand approached, a small
handle extended for her to grasp. It was lighter than a grenade.

So it
has power…but it doesn’t offer my link any services. So what the hell is it?
“What’s
this?” Arakaki demanded.

“I don’t
know,” the man said.

She put
it within her pack without taking her attention from her weapon. “I saw your
packs in the other room. These aren’t yours. Those weapons are varied. Also not
yours. Some of them are new. Obtained since Holtzclaw interviewed you before.”

“The
UED leader? I thought he decided to leave us alone. We’ve had various members
join us from all over the frontier. No deserters from the UED, though.”

“Then
where are they? Answer my questions or else. We’ve tolerated you for a long
time. You don’t want to be on our bad side. You know we have artillery covering
this site. We can send a present your way anytime we want.”

“We’ve
lost some pilgrims. The planet can be cruel. Also, some strangers came by from
time to time. They were violent. It wasn’t our intention. But we have to defend
ourselves.”

“You
men? You keep the pistols under your robes?”

The men
were silent for a moment. “Yes, we have pistols. But usually we let the Konuan
handle troublemakers.”

Troublemakers…like
me. Like the UED soldiers who have died?

She
made a point of aligning her weapon at the head of the man who spoke. “You’re
on its side, then,” she said. “You help it kill us.”

“Only
the ones who come in here and threaten us directly. Please just leave.”

“The
Konuan protected us,” another said.

Another
of the men winced as he said it.

That
must be true. Or is he wincing because he knows that guy’s a buckle bulb?

“You
confuse protection with predation,” she said. “Why hasn’t it eaten you?”

“We
respect it. We learn from it.”

“It is
smart,” Arakaki said. “Real smart. But why would it teach you anything?”

“If you
want to see it, we can show you.”

Arakaki’s
face tightened. “What do you mean, show me?”

“The
Konuan. We can show you. You can meet it. See for yourself. Leave your weapons,
pledge yourself to it, and it will spare you.”

“Like
it spared the owner of that stunner there? Or the owner of that sugar kit?”

“They
didn’t give up their weapons. They were a threat. It easily dispatched them.”

“Finally,
something I believe. Okay, show me where I can meet it, then take off.”

“If you
try to harm it—”

“I’ll
take my chances. Now hurry up,” Arakaki said.

The
bald man in the robe nodded assent and walked off. Arakaki stepped away from
the others, then turned to follow.

The man
led her through a patch of blackvines. Arakaki scanned the sluggishly moving
tendrils of the plants for concealed danger. Her eyes and her weapon didn’t
note anything amiss.

Beyond
the blackvines, they came to a dirty old tunnel.

This
could be Trilisk
, Arakaki thought.
But this isn’t very deep.

She
knew that under the square chambers of the Konuan, which were stacked atop each
other haphazardly, the Trilisk tunnels ran from building to building. The UED
soldiers had not figured out why the Trilisks had built the tunnels, though
some thought it was to spy on the Konuan or conduct experiments on them without
being seen.

Arakaki
smelled the monster.

This
guy knows what he’s talking about. The monster has been here. No doubt they’ve
been sacrificing people to it all along. That’s why it left them alive. Until
there are no people left.

They
came to a large square room. It was a dead end at the moment, with its grilles
intact.

It can
still attack from any direction, and it can run if it senses an ambush. If the
monster ever runs from anything.

A huge
bowl in the center of the room held some bones.

What’s
left of the sacrifices.

The
robed man turned to regard Arakaki. She pointed her carbine at his face. “Maybe
I’ll shoot your legs and leave you as the sacrifice this time,” she said.

“It won’t
eat me. But it will eat you, if you insist on the weapons,” he said.

She
made a face of disgust and indicated the exit with a twitch of her barrel. “Beat
it.”

“What?”

“Take
off. Now. Before I change my mind.”

The man
frowned, but he moved to the exit.

To him,
I’m just another victim to his god. We’ll see about that.

As soon
as the pilgrim had left the room, Arakaki took out three grenades. She dropped
two to the floor; the devices slowly rolled out to the left and right. They
rolled through the grilles to take up positions in adjacent rooms.

She
tossed the last grenade up through the grille on the ceiling. That was the
direction of attack she feared the most: it liked to dissolve Terrans’ heads
off.

The
grenades armed with a signature Arakaki had designed to try to match the
Konuan. What few glimpses of the creature they had collected showed it was
large, flat, and silent. It liked to move on walls and ceilings or across the
plants just as often as it would be on the ground. It had a low body
temperature despite being able to move very quickly. It was also associated
with electromagnetic anomalies, but Arakaki had just used that to make the
grenades even more likely to target and strike movement when odd fields were
detected.

Arakaki
leaned back against the cool wall beside the entrance tunnel. She touched the
grenade around her neck. Ironically, its cold, deadly presence settled her
nerves. She believed if that grenade ever went off, at least she would be
taking the Konuan with her. She chomped on the sliver in her mouth.

With
the grenade right around my neck, it’ll be “a bang loud enough to wake Cthulhu
up.” That’s what he used to say about the Hellrakers.

She
drew her laser pistol with her left hand, then waited.

Within
ten minutes she got a ping. The UED sensor stationed on a nearby cliffside had
picked something up. Arakaki had been tuning their probes to detect the Konuan
for a long time. Though the probe’s mission had been to detect Terrans and
Terran machines, the probes had a wide range of sensory abilities. This probe
told her now that something was approaching, and it wasn’t human.

Arakaki
felt a rush hit her system. She wanted to do something, to shoot or break into
a sprint, anything. But she just took a deep breath and waited.

The
contact slipped away for a few seconds, then came back, closer to the caves
where she waited. Then it moved still closer.

Will it
come in behind me or drop in from above?

The
contact moved within an eighth of a kilometer, then disappeared.

It’s in
the tunnels ahead of me
, she guessed. Arakaki slowed her breathing
and watched her weapon’s sensors. Nothing. The grenades hadn’t seen anything,
either.

Another
minute scraped by. Arakaki heard something, distant, so faint she wasn’t sure
if there had even been a noise. Another minute passed. The laser became heavy
in her grasp. She leaned forward from the wall, standing with her weight even on
each foot.

The
probe outside picked the contact back up. It was moving away.

“Why
won’t you just die?” she whispered.

The
ghost moved about a quarter of a kilometer, dropping in and out of sight. Then
it stopped. It didn’t leave the range of the probe. It lingered.

The
damn thing wants me to come after it. So it can kill me somewhere else.

Arakaki
almost growled in frustration. Then she opened a link to Holtzclaw.

“This
is Captain Arakaki, requesting a Hellraker round,” she said. Holtzclaw replied
within three seconds.

“You’ll
have it in thirty seconds. Send the coordinates.”

The
ghost started to move away again.

“Frag
me,” she said aloud. “Scratch that,” she added. “Sorry, sir.”

She
called back her grenades and snatched them up. Arakaki headed out after the
sensor ghost.

Chapter 9

Magnus
trailed his scout by ten meters through clumps of vegetation. He deployed his
Veer suit’s head guard 50 percent with a link command, just to add protection
to the back of his head. He nudged aside plant stalks with his rifle. More and
more, he found himself squatting to take a peek under the greenish clumps
growing on the alien foliage. From a position near the ground, he could see
much farther, but it was pretty uncomfortable to crawl along for any distance.

He felt
a bit sluggish. Shipboard training had gone well with all the extra space on
the
Clacker
, but he may have overdone it. He still wasn’t used to
Vovokan ships or equipment. The VR facilities were amazing. And the
quasi-virtual training machines he’d prayed up with Shiny’s help were top-notch
as well. He only regretted that their team was so small. With the
Clacker
,
he felt like he could train an entire company.

I don’t
even want to run Parker Interstellar Travels. What would I do with more people?
I guess I would train some great teammates like Telisa and hit the dirt on more
unexplored planets.

Ever
since the UNSF had trained Magnus to “hit the dirt” on planetary assaults, he
had been hooked on it. Now that he was a free agent, it was easier than going
in after the assault machines and cleaning up. They just dropped on whatever
alien ruins they felt curious about and poked around.

He
skirted the largest ruins at the center of the city, making his way around them
on the northern side. The plants were numerous, even in the city. The way they
grew from the round fissures in the rocks made them look like they’d been there
for a long time. Maybe they had been part of the city at its peak. But he knew
that conclusion was suspect: Who knew how these alien plants worked? Maybe they
somehow drilled their own holes in the rock wherever a seed fell. If they even
had seeds. Thinking of seeds made him remember the green worms: maybe that was
how the plant spread. Its “runners” really did run. Or squirm.

They
could just as easily dig their way up from underground
, he
mused.

Up
ahead, he came into contact with another scout unit headed back. The scout had
turned back toward the
Clacker
once the jamming started. He turned it
around and added it to his team. He checked the machine’s logs. It hadn’t
encountered any humans, though it had seen one of the clear snakelike creatures
hiding among the stalks.