Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt

by Michael McCloskey

Good idea, Siobhan thought, but it’s an alien creature. It might be okay where we might die.

  Imanol considered that for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, a sound idea. You and Caden, go get us a small native. I doubt I need to say be very careful. The things could be the danger Telisa hinted at.”

  They moved out. Siobhan stared at the blackness. She tried her light on the very edge. Only then, she could tell it was a sphere of black. Perfect black.

  “I have a powerful urge to touch it,” she said quietly.

  “I know. I allowed Caden to put his finger, then his hand in there. I put a weather reader and a poison monitor in there. No danger signs.”

  “You know what? This could be why Magnus spends so much time working on the robots. We need one to send in there,” she said. “Maybe we can cut around this blackness.”

  “Maybe. Did you see how thick the pipe was at the surface? It would be quite a delay to cut through it, assuming we even can. Made by Trilisks, after all. We have only a couple days.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re approaching it,” Caden transmitted. “Putting it into a bag…” A few moments later, he said, “We have it. Coming back now.”

  Siobhan heard noise coming down the pipe as Caden and Maxsym returned. They reappeared with a black sack containing a lump. It moved feebly.

  “Did you hurt it?” she asked.

  “Nope. Well, I doubt it,” Maxsym said. “It’s very slow. Kind of like a crab, only of course, very odd looking. It has a flat shell that points toward the ground. It was hanging by tentacles from the tree. Sort of like a mollusk sloth, I guess.”

  Caden walked to the sphere. He held the bag inside and then pulled it back. They looked inside with flashlights.

  “Looks fine,” Imanol said. He hesitated with a desperate look of hard calculation on his face.

  He’s trying to figure out if he should send Caden in, since he’s the best fighter, or send himself in so he doesn’t send someone else into harm’s way, Siobhan thought.

  “I’ll go in,” Siobhan said. “I’ve done more dangerous things, believe me. And if I’m hurt, you’ll still have Caden to fight for you.”

  “Uh,” Imanol said.

  “The critter is fine. I’ll be back in three seconds,” she said, stepping forward. “Look, I spelunked in vacuum inside the panel struts of Spero Five for fun. Star diving, atmospheric gliders on Qarlos—you know, extreme sports. I kinda dig danger, get it?”

  Is he going to say, “But you’re my responsibility”?

  She saw relief on Imanol’s face. He nodded. Caden looked surprised, Maxsym concerned.

  So with that, Siobhan walked through the black sphere.

  She emerged alive. Even though it was a sim, the moment gave her a slight adrenal rush.

  That could have been real. Telisa said they did this for real.

  At first, she thought she had died and she was back aboard the Clacker. But the corridor ahead of her, while clearly Terran, did not look like the inside of their mysteriously named spacecraft. It was a simple corridor like those she had seen many times on Earth. There were several branchings up ahead, but no people.

  Her link picked up a few services but could no longer see the others on her team. As far her link was concerned, they were just gone. Behind her, the field looked the same as it had where she entered.

  “Weird.”

  Siobhan walked back through the field. She was happy to see the team waiting for her on the other side.

  Maxsym and Imanol looked happy to see her back. Caden looked eager to try it himself.

  “There’s a Terran corridor on the other side,” she reported. “Very boring looking. I can’t explain it.”

  “Thanks for checking it out, Siobhan,” Imanol said.

  “A secret Terran facility! No wonder it’s dangerous. It could be a rogue scientist or a criminal gang’s hideout,” Caden said excitedly.

  “No assumptions,” Imanol said. “Let’s take a look, guys.”

  They filed through to the other side. Everyone felt the walls, then kicked them and tested the environment in half a dozen ways. Siobhan laughed.

  “Kick the simulated walls to see if they’re real,” Siobhan said. The perfection of sims on Clacker made it easy to completely immerse oneself in the exercise.

  “Whoever owns this place must have an entrance sensor,” Imanol realized. He set the bag with the alien critter down onto the carpet.

  Siobhan stopped to watch Caden. He had his weapon raised. He swept the barrel back and forth, scanning the entrance, then the corridor. He peeked around a T in the corridor. Caden’s body was tense.

  “Caden is freaking out,” Siobhan said in private to Imanol. “It’s like he’s a storm trooper going in to assassinate someone.”

  “You’re stressing me out, Caden,” Imanol said out loud.

  “There’s a reason they chose this scenario, whatever it is,” Caden said. He held his weapon ready. “Not everyone made it out. There’s something dangerous here. We need to be alert. Keep your trigger fingers ready.”

  Siobhan tried to decide whether she believed that. It made some sense. Not everyone had made it out, they said. Still, could it be the case that shooting first was not the desired solution?

  “If you see people, try to avoid notice. If they see you, don’t shoot first,” Imanol said. He saw Caden’s look of doubt. “As soon as we find out who they are, maybe that order will change.”

  “The link services don’t work,” Maxsym said.

  “We should have turned our links off before coming through,” Imanol said. “We might have avoided detection for longer.”

  “As soon as I went through with mine on, it was probably too late,” Siobhan said.

  Siobhan checked her link. A service list appeared, though it appeared different than before. She checked the thermostat controls. The connection hung and then cut out.

  “We’re not authorized? But if that was the case, we’d be kept out from the beginning.”

  Imanol shook his head.

  “I’ve never seen anything… disconnect, now.”

  “What?”

  “If it’s not working, it must be sick. Some kind of software attack. Which means it could spread to our links. It’s probably already too late. Dammit! That must be the danger.”

  Oh? The danger could be a link virus. But could it kill us?

  Caden moved forward down the corridor. Imanol said nothing; he simply followed.

  “Let’s see what’s in store,” he muttered.

  Siobhan walked in third place. Caden reached a door and tried it manually since his link was off. It opened. He nodded at Imanol. They both went through. Their attitude rubbed off on Siobhan. She drew her stunner and covered the corridor, moving just past the door.

  Still no people. At any moment they’ll come to see the intruders.

  “Nothing in here but some boxes of construction supplies,” Imanol reported. “Glow bars. Wall panels, paint.”

  They re-emerged. Siobhan kept her eyes ahead. Caden moved by in a crouch. His movements were smooth yet machinelike. Siobhan followed, this time ahead of Imanol.

  Blood Glades champion. But he acts like this is a comic book. Rogue scientists? Criminal gang hideout? Could it really be something like that?

  Caden disappeared around the corner ahead.

  “Something very strange,” he said. “Wait! I have—”

  Boooom. Boooom.

  Projectile weapons fire thundered in the corridor. Siobhan hit the deck.

  Damn, the shit’s hitting the fan!

  She got her stunner into her hand. An adrenaline rush brought her a familiar pleasure.

  Time to live again. And try to stay alive.

  Siobhan performed well under pressure. She liked having to take steps to stay alive because it made her feel more alive. Knowing she had to get it right or suffer the painful consequences gave her a clarity of function that brought out the best in her.

  “What’s our target
? Should I flank?”

  At the same time, Imanol said, “Caden! What targets?”

  “It’s an alien,” Caden snapped. A location pointer came up relative to their position in the corridor.

  An alien… wait. Telisa said this really happened.

  “Must be a deception,” Imanol said, but he moved to the corner and took a peek.

  Boooom.

  Caden disappeared from her link.

  Siobhan crawled the other way. It looked as if she had a route that turned toward the target from the other side. Maxsym stayed put, waiting for orders from Imanol.

  “Caden bought it,” Imanol growled. “Stay put. Don’t move forward.”

  “We have to do something. They could be coming around this way, too,” Siobhan said. Maxsym was next to her, weapon ready.

  “Retreat the other direction. After me,” Imanol said. Siobhan got back up and followed Imanol down a turn in the direction opposite Caden’s. Maxsym stayed right behind. They ran down a corridor, took a quick left, and went to the end of a second corridor. Then Imanol opened a door, and they filed into a long, narrow room with lockers on one wall.

  “Locker room. But won’t they find us quickly?” Siobhan whispered.

  “There was something weird back there. I think this office adjoins a Trilisk ruin. The corridor connected to some sort of cave. But it had weird machines in it. Or in the walls. Very alien looking,” Imanol said.

  “They said this place was real,” Maxsym said, echoing Siobhan’s earlier thoughts. “A real alien? Wouldn’t we have heard about it?”

  “Well, there was the Seeker,” Imanol said.

  That got them all thinking.

  “This is a hell of a test. The last thing I expected was to be holed up in a locker room.”

  “Okay, we keep moving. Find someone here. Interrogate them,” Imanol ordered.

  “They may have died. Or fled whatever it was,” Maxsym said. Siobhan nodded.

  “This way,” Imanol said. He had a compact projectile weapon ready. Siobhan was reminded of her inferior equipment. She kept the stunner ready.

  They left the locker room by another door past some showers. Siobhan expected a gym, but instead they found only a long meeting room with a fancy wood table.

  “My mapper says something is screwy,” Imanol said. “There’s supposed to be a corridor through here.”

  “Yes, my map says that too,” Siobhan said.

  “Me too,” Maxsym added.

  Imanol walked over to the wall. He knocked on it.

  “The wall is thin. But no hidden door. Besides, wouldn’t we have noticed this table across the way?”

  “It’s part of the test. They’re screwing with us,” Siobhan said.

  “Telisa said this place is real,” Maxsym complained.

  “Maybe it is,” Imanol said. “Let’s face it, something weird is going on. A human facility in Trilisk ruins. And Caden thought he saw an alien. Now the layout is screwy.”

  “Maybe we’ve been drugged,” suggested Maxsym.

  Imanol nodded. “Or our links are sick. But they couldn’t make us hallucinate, could they?”

  “It’s not possible with conventional links,” Maxsym said. “They can make you unhappy, but we would be able to tell what’s real.”

  “Well, maybe someone figured out a way to make it worse,” Imanol said.

  “We may not be able to find the exit,” Siobhan pointed out.

  Imanol led them in the direction of the black sphere that had brought them in. The rooms had changed, but they relied upon their link maps to find the same spot. They found a big waiting room with body-molding chairs.

  “The exit’s not here,” Imanol said, stating the obvious.

  “A trap. An alien trap,” Maxsym said.

  “I want to check around the corner we just came from,” Imanol said. “I’m guessing it’s different?”

  They retraced their steps. Within twenty meters, things were already different than in Siobhan’s mapper.

  “That’s it. Nothing is stable here. This whole place just changes around when we’re not there,” Imanol said.

  “Then what can we possibly do? It’s only a matter of time before the alien shows up again and shoots us,” Siobhan said.

  Imanol shook his head. Then he knocked on the wall again. Suddenly he put his fist through the wall. The thin panel shattered. He pulled the pieces free. Siobhan saw an airspace beyond and then the other side of the wall. Carbon struts ran up either side of the panels, holding the wall up.

  “It’s typical low-weight construction,” Imanol said. “Nothing heavy duty. We can go right through it.”

  “But the exit’s not here anywhere. What good does it do to go through walls?”

  “The floor may not be as easy,” Siobhan said, stomping her foot. The floor felt solid enough.

  “Look, this stuff shifts around,” Imanol said. “We don’t want that. We want stability. To know what’s going on. The best way to do that is to eyeball as much of it as we can. Find the biggest room we can, then start taking this place apart. So far it only shifts when we can’t see it, right? So we take down these crappy walls and watch as much as we can.”

  Maxsym nodded. “Sounds like an interesting experiment.”

  “We don’t even know who owns the place and we’re going to wreck it? Ha. Okay, sure,” Siobhan said.

  They walked through three rooms and found a cafeteria. Long tables sat in four rows before a glass-covered food bar. The bar was empty, nothing more than rows of white bins. Some had covers and heating controls. It looked very normal. Siobhan saw some vending machines in the corner.

  “Start with that wall,” Imanol said.

  Siobhan dug in. The wall was cheaply constructed, little more than plastic panels affixed to carbon struts. A few wires and pipes ran through the spaces between the walls. The panels were light but tougher than they looked. It took a swift kick to crack one. After a few false starts, Siobhan found it was easiest to break one panel and then pull the adjacent ones straight out of the wall by grabbing an edge.

  They cleared the first wall quickly, and then another. After a break for food and water, everyone faced a wall and removed still more space. At times Siobhan found herself laughing inside at the futility of dismantling a flimsy Terran complex under an alien ruin, but what was the alternative? Wander endlessly through a shifting maze of corridors devoid of people?

  “Whoa, look out!” Imanol suddenly called out. Siobhan drew her stunner and whirled toward him. Large red robots sat in a room beyond the wall Imanol had been working on. Siobhan’s breath caught as she saw them, but they did not move.

  “Oh. Some kind of fire station,” Imanol said more calmly. “Sorry about that.”

  Maxsym laughed briefly, releasing his tension.

  I can see why they freaked him out, Siobhan thought. Those red robots looked mean at first glance.

  She turned around and cursed.

  Half the space they had cleared was gone. A long, smooth wall cut their circular swath in half.

  “What? Oh, dammit!” Imanol said as he realized what had happened.

  “It reclaimed the space in the few seconds we all stared over here at the robots,” Maxsym said. “All it takes is for us to not be looking, I guess.” Siobhan heard the defeat in his voice.

  “I wish there were still four of us, one for each direction,” Imanol said. He sat on a chair they had harvested from one of the rooms they had dismantled.

  If this were really happening, if Caden were really dead, how would I feel about that? Siobhan asked herself. Would I be ready to call it quits and run home?

  Maxsym sighed and looked out over the shreds of wall they had left in their wake.

  “What is that?” Maxsym asked. “A terrarium?”

  Siobhan followed his gaze. She caught a hint of green.

  “Let’s check it out,” she said.

  I’ll watch what’s left of our… space,” Imanol said. Siobhan could tell by the soun
d of his voice he also thought it was probably futile to keep removing walls. As soon as they looked away, hours of work could be wiped out.

  Maxsym led Siobhan over to the green spot. Siobhan saw a small spiny plant. It looked like those on the surface.

  “Just some small…” she started. There was no plastic surrounding the tiny bit of mossy dirt and plant. Her eye caught some movement. “Careful!” she snapped, but Maxsym had already seen it. He drew a long knife and bent aside one of the branches of the spiny plant.

  “One of those creatures,” he said. “Like a mollusk with a flat shell. Its skin looks dry, though. Probably toughened against the spiny plants. Are those antennae or manipulators? Amazing.”

  “This isn’t a normal terrarium. What holds it here? It’s melted into the floor.”

  Maxsym stood and stared. Then he smiled.

  “This place shifts around when we aren’t looking at it,” Maxsym said. “It shifted into something Terran beyond this creature’s sensory range the same way. Get it?”

  “I don’t follow. You mean it’s trapped here like us?” Imanol said.

  “Yes, before we arrived, it had its own little world,” Maxsym said. “We came along and took over the space around it. Now it’s trapped. This maze, or whatever it is, the Trilisks must have built it to create a suitable environment for us as… experiment subjects, or maybe guests. Limited by our range of sight.”

  Oh, wow, Siobhan thought. We’re like mice in a maze here. And Maxsym sees it immediately. I underestimated him.

  “How could we get out?”

  Maxsym shook his head. “I don’t know. Close our eyes, maybe? Close our eyes and move around… not sure that would accomplish much. Remember, though, Caden saw a cave. That’s related.”

  Siobhan was surprised again.

  “It was the alien thing’s environment,” she said slowly. Maxsym was so sharp!

  Imanol had regained his resolve.

  “We can try again,” he said. “This place may have a maximum size. Maybe we’ll find a real boundary.”

  “Or maybe it’s huge,” Siobhan said.

  “Yes. We try one more time. See what the limit is. If we hit a cave, we retreat.”

  They resumed their clearing work. She thought about what might happen if they all closed their eyes and moved around. Would a wall shift while they touched it? She also thought about the thing that had killed Caden.