The Trilisk Supersedure (14 page)

Good to
know everything is still in working order.
“Resume the advance,”
he said. The squads started advancing again.

Holtzclaw’s
link announced a communication channel opening from his task force newly
arrived in orbit.

“Colonel
Holtzclaw, this is the
Typhoon
.”

“Report,”
he said.

“There’s
another very large ship here, just like the first one,” Silvarre said. “We’re
closing in on it, but I have to tell it to you straight, sir, I doubt a ship of
that size—”

Silvarre’s
voice feed cut out.

“Silvarre?
Major?”

There
was no answer.

I doubt
a ship of that size…what?

“Major
Silvarre?”

I doubt
a ship of that size isn’t armed.

Holtzclaw
tried to get the
Typhoon
’s beacon. There was nothing. Which meant the
ship had gone dark to avoid attack, or it had been destroyed. The other two
ships,
Scion
and
Griffin
, were silent as well. His forces in
space were engaged.

“Step
it up,” Holtzclaw sent to his squad leaders. “We have trouble in orbit. I want
that ship.”

Chapter 12

Magnus
had turned the stealth machine off long before he approached the campsite where
he had left Telisa and Cilreth. His nighttime journey had been hard on the
nerves, but otherwise uneventful. If anything, the planet life seemed less
active at night. It was possible the majority of species here were diurnal.

The
first thing that worried him was a lack of scout machines around the camp. He
moved through the last patches of native plant life carefully but didn’t
encounter any sentries.

The
tent was sealed up. To be expected for the middle of the night.

“Telisa?
Cilreth?” he transmitted. For a second there was no reply.

“Magnus!
I’m glad you’re back,” Cilreth said. Magnus could tell something was wrong. Her
voice held a worry. He strode up to the tent as she gave the mental signal for
the tent to open.

“Magnus,
we were attacked,” she said aloud. “I’ve been trying to reach you and Shiny for
half an hour.”

Distressed
but not panicked.

“Tell
me.”

“We
took some scout robots to the ruins. We found this robot.” Cilreth indicated a
smooth blue machine with three legs sitting beside a stack of containers. “Some
creature attacked us. It destroyed two scouts. Telisa and I were separated as
we fought. It’s my fault, a glitch with the suit. I had to activate the
stealth, but then it wasn’t configured to give me away by showing my link, and
I was having a hard time staying alive and configuring it to let me talk to
her. She told me to clear away, said she was going to kill it.”

Magnus
nodded. “Okay. Maybe she meant her alien weapon. She was worried about hitting
you. Did you hear it fire?”

“No.
But she was on the level below me.” Cilreth sent him a location pointer as she
spoke so he wouldn’t have to ask the obvious. The spot wasn’t far from the
camp.

Oh no.
And I have her stealth device.
Magnus felt ashamed. She
needed that artifact and he’d taken it from her. Now she could be dead.

“Magnus,
it’s fast. And it attacks from above.”

“Okay,
stay calm, I’ll go get her; you get what we can back onto the ship. Prioritize
the loading; we may be leaving some of this stuff behind. You should find a large
group of scout machines waiting back at the
Clacker
that got cut off
from us. Use them to move as much as you can, as fast as you can.”

“Magnus?
Are you okay?”

“I’ve
figured out why we can’t talk with Shiny. It’s bad.”

“It can’t
be worse than abandoning my teammate to an alien monster.”

“It’s
not your fault. Don’t even start that or I’ll hit you. We just need to find
her.”

“Then
go!”

“Yes.
One minute. The people here are UED. Looks like a military unit, too. More than
a hundred of them, I’d guess. They’re situated less than ten kilometers away.”

“So
close! Did they follow us in?”

“Their
camp suggests they were here first. They had to have detected us come in. My
guess is they’re jamming our links. Our current range is less than about forty
meters.”

“What
can we do about them? Are they dangerous?”

“Maybe.
I haven’t contacted them. Keep an eye out. They may be after the
Clacker
.”
Magnus found more weapon containers with his link. He spoke as he grabbed some
grenades and a laser sidearm.

“Maybe
we should talk to them,” Cilreth said.

“What
are you thinking? The enemy of my enemy?” Magnus asked.

“Sure.”

Magnus
shrugged. “They aren’t really our friends. They have their own agenda. Besides,
we’re fugitives from the space force, but we’re not really revolutionaries, are
we?”

“I
might change things if I felt I could,” Cilreth said. “I think Telisa would.
Though I don’t want to rock the boat just now, if the aliens really are a huge
threat.”

Magnus
hurried off but continued talking through his link, knowing the jamming would
cut their connection soon. Three scout robots near the camp scampered after
him. “Earth and the other core worlds are all stirred up about it, but I think
it was just a chance encounter that went bad. But the Earth Defiance has lost.
The space force all but mopped them up years ago.”

“Propaganda?
Maybe the war is still going on.”

“Well,
not from where I was sitting,” Magnus pointed out. “But I suppose there could
have been more of them out on the frontier than the force let me know about.”

“Shiny
knows what it’s like when an alien race comes for your home planet. We can’t
let that happen to Earth. Or any core world. If the UED is still in action, we
can’t join them now.”

The
aliens will always be out there. I hope that doesn’t mean we have to live with
an oppressive government forever.
“We can talk about it when we
join back up with Telisa.”

“Possible
workarounds, countermeasures, antidotes to apply. Implementing solutions now,”
Shiny’s voice interrupted on a new channel. His voice was of obviously lower
quality in the transmission.

Magnus
halted just within range of Cilreth.

“Shiny.
Take over the scout robots if you can contact them. Coordinate a defense with
them. Telisa is missing. I’m going to find her,” he rattled off.

“Cannot
contact Telisa. Caution advised. There is…” Shiny broke up. “…Trilisk
technology involved.”

“Repeat,”
Magnus asked, but he lost the connection.
Classic. A warning so fragmented
it is unusable other than to inspire fear.

“It’s a
good sign he could reach us at all,” Cilreth said. “If anyone can defeat the
jamming, it has to be Shiny. Just find Telisa.”

“I
should not have separated from her,” Magnus said, resuming his departure. He
encountered a communications repeater service up ahead. “This repeater is ours?”
he asked.

“Oh yes,
sorry, I forgot about the breadcrumbs. We have them out all the way to the
building. She’s still alive,” Cilreth continued. “She has a lot of alien toys,
remember? She’s just too naive. Shiny could be dangerous, too. Telisa is too
young to have felt enough sting from betrayal or double-crossing to think of it
seriously.”

Magnus
accessed the breadcrumb’s service and joined the chain. “Yes. But her youth
brings a lot to the team. I like being around her.”
Of course, I love her.
Why do I hesitate to say that in front of Cilreth?

“You
like that young bod,” Cilreth prodded.

“It’s
more than that. She keeps us enthusiastic, injects optimism and energy. Being
around young people reminds you of the hopeful side of things.”

“Then
maybe we need some more. Just three of us…”

“Yes. I’m
working on that. But it’s on the back burner. After this expedition, we should
at least double the size of our team. That would give each of us a new protégé
to teach. If you’re not in this area, we’ll head back to the ship. Most likely
Shiny will have defeated the jamming before then, anyway.”

“Okay.
Be careful, Magnus. Bring her back.”

Magnus
increased his pace. He didn’t want to be winded when he arrived, but he could
make good time without undue fatigue. The lack of sleep might become more of an
issue. He had his suit dispense a stimulant into his bloodstream. Then he
followed a map toward the location Cilreth had provided. The breadcrumb devices
verified his route.

Very
useful little things during a communications blackout.

He
found a hole in the wall of a building close to the spot. The chips of the wall
next to a removed grille were a slightly different color of red than the
surface of the wall or the rocks below, so they had probably been made
recently.

They
came in this way.

Magnus turned
on a light, clipped it to his rifle, and dove through the hole.

I need
to find Telisa…alive.

Chapter 13

Arakaki
moved slowly across the ruins after the Konuan.

She
didn’t have any delusions about who hunted whom. The Konuan was letting her
follow. It wanted to lure her out away from her friends, her Guardians, and her
probes. It planned to ambush and kill her just as it had done to so many of her
fellow soldiers.

I’m
coming, you bastard.

Arakaki
checked her PAW for the tenth time. Its self-diagnostic reported optimal. The
laser at her hip verified at full charge over her link. All her grenades
checked in, including the one around her throat. The UED probe taking up the
rear thirty meters behind her monitored the area. It reported another sensor ghost
near a larger building ahead.

So this
is the spot for your trap. Fine.

It had
steadily led her across half the city, going toward the area occupied by the
newcomers and their tiny robots. Arakaki figured the Konuan must be hunting
them as well. At least she hoped it was. Anything to distract its predation of
the UED unit would be a welcome break.

Or so I
tell myself. Have I grown so used to it being out there, hunting, that I would
miss it? Miss my chances to kill it or die trying?

She
chomped down painfully on the sliver in her mouth. The tiny fragment was so
tough she could gnaw on it for decades without accomplishing anything but
wearing her teeth.

Arakaki
dropped the self-analysis and walked toward the building.

“Captain
Arakaki, report,” Holtzclaw ordered over the link.

“I’m
pursuing the Konuan,” she said. She half expected to be chewed out for calling
for fire support, or to be pulled away for another remote pickup. But Holtzclaw
had something completely different cooking.

“Good.
Keep on it. Keep that thing away from camp. I’ve pulled a lot of men and probes
to go after the science ship east of the ruins. Our tech team is vulnerable in
the back.”

“Yes,
sir.”

That
suited Arakaki. She was seldom so happy to have to obey. Especially since she
had given up all hope for the war. She had contemplated desertion several
times, but…where would she go? What would she do without him? And here, she had
the creature to hunt.

In
another five minutes she saw the first face of the structure. Like all the
other clusters of Konuan living chambers, it was a hodgepodge of square cells
heaped one upon another three or four layers above ground. There was often one
layer under the surface as well, and below that, Trilisk tunnels.

There
was a hole in the side of the building. Arakaki looked at the roof and clusters
of plants nearby. She didn’t sense any danger. Neither did the probe trailing
her. She padded over to the opening.

Arakaki
checked the rocky ground. There was no dirt to hold any prints, but the red
coating on the rocks became darker if their surface was recently scuffed or
struck. The rocks around the entrance held a lot of evidence of movement
through the area. She spotted some wide scuffmarks—Terrans’—as well as the
smaller pick holes caused by the spider legs of their little robots.

Who are
these people? Scouts? Scientists? Why are there so few of them? They said the
ship was huge.

The UED
soldier knelt beside the entry point. She listened and scanned. Her weapon
picked up a power signature. A machine. It could be a piece of equipment or a
robot. It wasn’t moving though.

They
left something behind here. Maybe some poor sucker was carrying something, the
Konuan got him, and he dropped whatever he was carrying.