The Trilisk Supersedure (21 page)

The
grenade exploded, sending flashes of white flame blasting through the ruined
grille. The device had reported an imminent hit before detonation.

Got it!
I think.

***

Her
hearing had been damaged. Yet she could still hear the Terran approaching as if
she had bells and whistles attached to her. Then she heard Magnus again. He
must have turned off the stealth sphere. She easily picked up the sound of
their clothing rubbing as they moved and the crunch of their feet on the dusty
floor. Two of them now. Magnus and the other one. The odd pain feeling had
returned and intensified, along with the confusing shock of loud noise. Her
body did not respond to her.

I have
to move again, I have to get out of here…

The
pain was so severe she almost changed her mind and wished for death. On queue,
Death slipped into the room. The woman with the laser and the carbine. The
laser was pointed right at Telisa. Her Konuan body trembled. She was not sure
she could jump again. At least not in a way she could land on her feet like
before.

Then
Magnus walked through. He looked at the other woman for a moment, then trained
his own weapon at Telisa.

No,
Magnus, it’s me, it’s me…

Her
legs started to scratch out a message. They opened fire.

Chapter 20

Holtzclaw
couldn’t reach most of his own men by link, and he hadn’t been able to get an
update on the assault in orbit, either. The squads that had moved out had been
able to daisy chain their communications when the jamming had turned against
them, but nothing outside his assault group could be reached. That included the
Hellrakers.

“Sir,
take a look to the east,” a member of his squad transmitted. Holtzclaw turned
in his powered suit to take a look.

Black
clouds of smoke rose into the sky behind them. So the camp had been hit, too.
Just minutes ago a flurry of fire had come in, seemingly from all directions.
Some of the Guardians had been taken out by guided missiles. Holtzclaw’s own
squad still had their Guardian, though he half expected it to blow up at any
moment.

This
may be our last battle. This must have been UNSF after all, or at least a well-armed
expedition.

“Stay
in range of each other. Time to strike back. Remember, we still outnumber them.
Likely they just blew their entire ordinance supply on our base,” Holtzclaw
told his men. Of course, it was pure speculation. Highly optimistic
speculation.

He left
his cover and resumed the advance. His squad joined him. They rose from behind
rocks, through plant patches, and emerged from niches between the ruined
buildings. The Guardian machine resumed its march, adding the sound of moving
machinery to the march.

Kowalewski sent him a private message.

“Arakaki’s
out there. She’s wasn’t synced up to cut through the jammers while we had them
up, and now I can’t reach her anyway.”

“She’s
a good survivor,” Holtzclaw said. “She’s on our friendly list, and that’s going
to have to be enough.” He double-checked his weapon’s settings and verified all
his men were in it. The list was considerably shorter than it had been when he
stepped up as a colonel.

“Split
up.
Kowalewski leads five squads to their big
ship. We have to take it. I’m with the rest of us going into the ruins after
the scientists we saw. We’ll need to secure their cooperation, maybe even use
them as hostages. So set your weapons to wound.”

Their PAWs and the projectiles they used could distinguish
friend from foe with fair accuracy, and the rounds could veer in flight to
strike things matching their target signatures. That included the ability to
turn some percentage of lethal hits into disabling ones. Holtzclaw checked his
men’s weapons through his link. They had all obeyed his orders.

The battle group split. There were now two missions.
Holtzclaw’s squads turned south and moved through the ruins at a good clip. The
city looked the same as it did on any other day—a maze of old buildings and
alien plants. The sky remained as clear as always. It rarely rained, and when
it did, all the water drained into the fissures where the plants rooted
themselves.

Holtzclaw
picked up information from another probe. He checked its history while his hand
found its way to his shoulder to scrape off more old skin. Arakaki! She had
taken it into the ruins after the monster. And there had been non-UED Terrans
within its range.

“We
have a friendly in the area,” Holtzclaw reminded his three squads. It was easy
to forget things like that when the fighting started. “Arakaki. She was after
the monster.”

“I hope
she got it, sir,”
Schimke said.

Holtzclaw
knew between the monster and the scientists she might have had her hands full.

If
anyone comes out of this alive, she will,
he thought.

“We
have to find these scientists or whatever they are. They may be key to getting
what we need from the ship. These three buildings first,” Holtzclaw said,
showing the men his map. “Each squad take one and work your way down to the
tunnels below. Most likely that’s what they came to investigate. Arakaki may
well have found her way to the tunnels as well, if she was hunting the Konuan.
Report any signs of recent activity so we can close in on them.”

Holtzclaw
and his officers had long suspected the Trilisk tunnels were heavily used by
the monster to move about the city without being detected. They had set a few
traps down there, but somehow the thing that hunted them never fell for it.

The
squads approached the buildings Holtzclaw had indicated. His personal squad’s
Guardian covered them as they moved forward to find new spots next to buildings
or in depressions in the rock. Then the Guardian machine moved forward.
Holtzclaw caught sight of the probe, stationed outside one of the buildings he’d
targeted.

Holtzclaw
told his Guardian to patrol the vicinity of the buildings on the surface. It
would never fit into the tight Konuan warrens. He configured it to fire low, at
the feet of any Terrans it did not recognize. Its projectiles were so powerful,
even striking the rocks below a running person would likely cause pieces of the
sharp red rock to fly up and wound the target.

His
squad had just reached the building and sent in a couple of grenades when
combat broke out at one of the other buildings. Holtzclaw heard distant shots
fired.

“We’re
taking fire! Light so far. We definitely have some of them holed up in here,”
came the message from his second squad leader.

Holtzclaw’s
squad looked to him. He checked the tunnel map. As expected, the two buildings
linked up.

“Pressure
them from topside,” Holtzclaw told the second squad leader. “We’ll come in from
below in the tunnel from the west. If we hurry we might trap them in there.”

Then to
his own squad: “Double-time it! Through the building! Find the well room and
get into that tunnel!”

Chapter 21

Telisa
awakened.

Not
again! Crap.

She
drew in a long breath. In fact, the breath continued flowing in, in, in for a
long time, until her chest had expanded like a giant balloon.

Chest?
I have lungs. Big lungs.

She
moved an arm. An immensely huge, strong arm that extended so very far.

Wait.
Wait. This is different, but it’s good different. Human different?

She saw
only darkness. Her hearing felt muted. Normal, lame Terran hearing. She felt
around in the dark. Was it her own body?

Female.
I’m female…

She
felt a tiny ridge of a scar on her wrist where a Vovokan nasty had sampled her.
And her hair was the right length.

I think
I’m me! And my link?

An army
of view panes exploded in her mind’s eye. Her link offered her its many
services.

“Anyone
there?” she asked tentatively through her link.

“Telisa?”
The reply was marked as coming from Cilreth.

“Yes!
Where in the hell am I?”

“Stay
calm. I think you’re…I think you’re in a Trilisk column.”

“Please
get me out.” Telisa asked it in a calm way, but the panic was only just below
the surface. Her recent experiences had all been too much.

“Then
just think it: open. Think you want it open. Pray to it.”

“There’s
a prayer device?” she said. Without waiting for an answer, she thought:
I
want out. Please open!

At
first there was only a humming sound. Then a growing sliver of light appeared
above her. It widened until she could see that some kind of sheath over the
tube was dropping down from the top. In a few seconds she would be free!

“It’s
opening!” Telisa said. “Wait. I’m still inside some kind of clear tube.”

“It
takes longer,” Cilreth said calmly. Her friend’s voice reassured her. “Telisa,
can you hear me?”

“Oh,
thank the Five,” Telisa croaked.

“It’s
okay now. Let’s get you out of there.”

“Cilreth.
You’re not going to believe where I’ve been! Magnus just killed me!”

“Maybe
you’d better just rest for a minute and take some deep breaths.”

She
think’s I’m delusional. Lack of oxygen?

“It’s a
Trilisk body switcher,” Telisa explained.

“That’s
not possible.”

“Think
about it, Cilreth. This is Trilisk stuff we’re clowning around with.”

“Your
brain is trained throughout your infancy to grow and adapt its connections and
signals from your own—”

“Yes, I
know. Believe me, I know. But sufficiently advanced technology can adapt my
personality and thought patterns onto other nervous systems and map my body
signals to those of radically different creatures.” Telisa stood up carefully.

“It
would be much more complicated than a simple mapping unless the target creature
was totally humanoid.” But now her voice carried less conviction. Cilreth was
thinking on it.

“I
know. I know. Yet it only took a bit of practice. I was one of the slugs. The
Konuan were a lot cooler than stupid slugs, by the way. Just ask Magnus when he
gets back. He killed me.”

He must
think I’m dead. Even if he doesn’t know that was me.

“What?”
Cilreth asked.

“I’m
going to have to give him a hard time for that.”

“You
really believe all that happened? It was probably virtual,” Cilreth said.

Telisa
nodded. She didn’t believe it had been imaginary at all, but she didn’t blame
Cilreth for thinking it. It was more logical to assume such adventures had
occurred in a simulation.

It was
just that Telisa knew the Trilisks could do it.

A
tremor rumbled through the tunnels. Telisa felt her body shake. Her legs still
felt just a bit long. Her head was so far from the ground. She bent her knees
to compensate for a sudden lack of confidence in her ability to balance
herself.

“Uh oh,”
Cilreth summed up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m
still adapting to my new body,” she said. Cilreth’s face reflected the oddity
of Telisa’s statement. Then she got a link connection from Magnus.

“Telisa?”

“Magnus!
Where are you?”

“The
building where you got separated from Cilreth,” he said. “I’m coming toward
you.”

“Oh! I
guess our links are working again then,” she said. “Who is that woman you’re
with?” Telisa’s voice sounded a bit more accusatory than she intended. But her
demand had a lot of emotional charge to it.

“What?
How do you know about her?”

“Long
story. Is she an explorer?”

“She’s
UED. She took off. I’m not sure we can count her as a friend.”

“What?
They’re here?”

“Cilreth
didn’t tell you? Are you with her?”

“Yes.
She didn’t say anything yet…she hasn’t had a chance, I guess.” Telisa said out
loud to Cilreth, “I’m in touch with Magnus.”

“Me
too,” Cilreth said.

“I
heard an explosion,” Telisa said. “Well, felt one, anyway.”

“It
wasn’t the
Clacker
,” Magnus told them.

“I can’t
believe the UED still exists. What can we do?”

“We
have to stay in the buildings and tunnels. Anything on the surface is a sitting
duck. They can kill us from kilometers away with a standard artillery system
and a basic detection grid, which they have to have set up. I saw some combat
machines. Nothing frontline, but maybe they have more than I saw. There’s no
way you could get out unless you use Cilreth’s stealth suit.”