Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt

by Michael McCloskey

  “We’re not making fun of them. We’re making fun of you,” Telisa said. When Magnus shot her a look, she just smiled. “Thanks for saving us all.”

  “That’s better,” Magnus said.

  “Caden saved my ass,” Siobhan said. “I owe him one.”

  “And I owe Maxsym, while we’re keeping track,” Imanol said.

  “Let’s get everyone back together,” Magnus said. “We need more soldiers from Clacker. And an ammunition resupply.”

  “We need to study the enemy,” Caden added. “I saw different types of machines. You know what? They weren’t very deadly. Not like you would expect a robot army inside a space habitat this size to be.”

  “They weren’t military,” Arakaki said. “It was almost an army of household robots.”

  “Or industry machines,” Siobhan countered.

  “I see four types from the soldier robots on the houses,” Magnus said. “Those big turtles. That was the tough one that broke into your house, Siobhan. Then there were these rocket things with pincers, flying laser-cutter machines, and those flat… beetles.”

  “Turtles, rockets, cutters and beetles,” Caden said. “Each one will have weaknesses we can exploit. For starters, the beetles aren’t armored. Grenades work well on them, and even melee weapons.”

  “I can kill a turtle if I can get close,” Telisa said.

  “Question was, was that attack directed by the Trilisk, or just some kind of automated attack left behind by whoever lived here?” asked Siobhan.

  “The Trilisk,” Magnus said.

  “There was one other thing,” Caden said. “One of the Blackvines finally moved. It booked it out of this house when the attack came down. I didn’t see it, but it was gone inside of thirty seconds.”

  “It could sense danger?”

  “I think it was more than that,” Maxsym said. “I believe the Blackvines are intelligent. They are the builders here. I believe this habitat belongs to them. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not happy to see us.”

  Chapter 18

  “I’ve picked up some traces of suspicious activity,” Caden transmitted. He had been in a floating house poring through the machine video feeds for hours, both present and past, searching for signs of intelligence from the Blackvines.

  “Really? Tell us,” Telisa said. As far as Caden knew, she was mustering robotic reinforcements with Magnus.

  “Items have been moving between these houses. In large containers. Sometimes they seem connected to our movements. See here, after we entered our third house, the scout sees a large gray container moving away from the far side shortly thereafter.”

  “Containers? Some kind of automated system carrying waste, maybe?” Siobhan said.

  “Why wasn’t this brought to our attention?” Magnus asked.

  “The scouts first obtain a ‘baseline’ of activity of a new environment, against which they can pick out unusual events. The scouts have seen these container transfers from the beginning. They’re just like the houses and the sky, a part of what it’s like here, and so they think it’s not an event worth flagging.”

  “But you noticed it?”

  “I saw a container moving a long ways off in a vision feed. Of course I was intrigued immediately. Investigation uncovered the rest. These containers are moving around all the time. They move more often when we’re nearby.”

  “That’s definitely worth looking into,” Siobhan said. “Let’s find one of these things and take a look.”

  Telisa nodded. “Yes. My curiosity is piqued, too. We’re coming back from the entrance lock.”

  “Did you get some soldiers?” Caden asked.

  “We have twenty with us. Cilreth and Shiny said we’ll have a hundred in a couple hours.”

  That’s more like it. We should have just invaded this place, Caden thought.

  “Don’t start without us,” Magnus said. “Mucking with the containers might incite a violent response.”

  “Acknowledged,” Caden said. He brought up a quick surveillance program he had put together to look for more boxes. Within a few minutes, he found one on the move.

  “There’s one!” Caden said. He sent a location pointer to Siobhan’s link and then grabbed his gear.

  “Magnus said not to start without him,” Siobhan said aloud.

  “He said we should not open one without him. Or mess with it. We can shadow one until they get here. In fact that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, finding one for us to check out—when they get here.”

  Siobhan smiled. “You know I’m in. Arakaki, though?”

  “We’ll keep them apprised,” Caden told her aloud.

  “Arakaki?” transmitted Caden. “Siobhan and I found a crate on the move. We’re shadowing until Mag and Telisa arrive.”

  He walked out without waiting for an answer, Siobhan on his heels.

  “Careful,” Arakaki said. “Keep us in the loop. You need backup?”

  “I think we have it. Cilreth said she’d let us know the instant any more robot armadas show up.”

  Caden jumped through the house toward the outer wall. He was now convinced that jumping through was the fastest way. Usually he got pulled toward any surface he approached, so it was easiest to jump around just like outside and always have your feet ready to push off of any wall or pillar in the way. Once they emerged from one of the trapdoors, Caden checked Siobhan’s chute. Then he turned, and she did the same for him.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Hell yes!”

  “This way,” he indicated. They jumped off together and flew through the sky, weightless.

  I can’t believe I’m here. I wonder if the space force would have been so incredible?

  Caden doubted it. But he still wondered every few hours.

  They jumped from house to house. Caden kept an eye on the distant skies, half expecting to see a fleet of flying enemies approaching. Caden hopped onto the fourth or fifth house and then stopped to look around.

  “Should be visible from the other side,” he said. They walked across the outer surface of the house. Every time they reached a “cliff” of the house, they just stepped over it and the cliff face became the new “down”.

  He spotted the crate. It was moving slowly away from the house under them toward a nearby one.

  “Weird. This has been happening all around us the whole time?” Siobhan asked.

  “Yep. Shall we get closer?”

  “Telisa and Mag are about three minutes out,” Siobhan said.

  “Then we can hop on that crate and wait for them,” Caden said. “If something goes wrong, they’ll be right behind us.”

  Siobhan shrugged. “We gotta be team players here,” she said out loud. Her voice expressed resigned disappointment with the sentiment.

  “Yeah, okay, we can wait three minutes.”

  Caden and Siobhan watched the mysterious container make its way toward the far house. About a minute before the other two arrived, they jumped for the target house. Their jump was too slow, so they each added some boost with small cylinder fans Cilreth had manufactured to help them maneuver in the open air. Just for fun, Caden had mounted his cylinder fans on his ankles.

  As they arrived and made practiced landings, Siobhan looked back at the container.

  “Wait. The container is moving away. It’s changed course!”

  “What’s the situation?” asked Magnus from the far house.

  “It turned away from this house as we arrived,” Siobhan told him.

  “Okay, I’m having these scouts tie it up.”

  A scout flew by and fired a smart rope at the container. It swung by gracefully on the end of the rope, attached a second rope, and spooled out farther to land on Caden and Siobhan’s house.

  “That’s one. We need another.”

  The container started to strain against the line. The smart rope held it.

  A second smart rope wrapped the crate from a third house the container had been headed for. Between the two li
nes, the crate was trapped.

  “I think it’s anchored in place now,” Magnus said.

  The container stopped straining against the smart ropes for a moment. Then it started to rise.

  “Shit!” Magnus exclaimed.

  “We need at least three ties,” Siobhan called. “I’m bringing in another soldier.”

  “No, I think we have it,” Telisa said. The container slowed as tension built in the lines.

  “Okay so… get it open,” Magnus said.

  “It isn’t sturdy,” Caden said. “We can just break it open.”

  Magnus directed a soldier to walk out on a line. Everyone saw what he was up to. They all knew the Vovokan legs on the robots were amazingly strong. When the soldier arrived, Magnus adjusted the smart ropes through his link, opening a wide spot. The soldier starting tearing into the box. It pried one of the sides open. Caden saw the door on the box was similar to the ones on the houses: some kind of spring-loaded trapdoor.

  Magnus maneuvered closer with a tiny jet of air. He flashed a light into the interior. “It’s one of those black plant creatures,” he said.

  Caden moved in closer, his weapon ready.

  “Blackvine?” asked Arakaki.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “It’s an alien creature, possibly intelligent,” Maxsym said.

  Caden blinked. What feed is he watching?

  “We should release the container and let it be on its way. This is some kind of air car,” transmitted Maxsym.

  Everyone digested that for a moment.

  “Those Blackvines have only moved a little, a kind of rustling,” said Telisa.

  “What does it have on its roots?” asked Siobhan.

  Magnus shined the light inside again. “Some kind of a rolling tray.”

  “It has no roots,” Maxsym said. “It radiates from a central mass. The supporting members are tendrils just the same as the rest. I don’t think it even has an ‘up’ or ‘down’ in the same sense our bodies do.”

  “It’s just a plant. It’s being moved, that’s all. I bet the next container has some other inanimate cargo,” said Caden.

  Telisa took a quick peek inside. “It’s either mostly unaware of us… or cowering,” she concluded. “Maybe it’s terrified or the equivalent for its race. We have to let it go. Who knows what kind of damage we are doing to it, or to our relations with it?”

  “We need to know if it’s a plant or not,” Caden said. “Can’t you sample it and see what it’s made of?”

  “How will that tell us if it’s intelligent?” asked Maxsym. “You’re asking us to just cut a limb off another being? Besides, I already conducted some more humane scans. I know a lot about it.”

  “We can go look in another container,” Caden said again.

  “Yes. Let’s go,” Magnus said. Telisa released the smart ropes. The container went on its way, tracked by a scout machine.

  It took them three hours to catch up to another of the moving containers. When they pried it open, they found the same thing inside.

  “It’s a Blackvine,” Caden said. His voice was apologetic.

  “That doesn’t mean they are the makers of this space hab,” Siobhan said. “These could just be like feral dogs or cats the habitat’s automated systems take care of.”

  “A lot of possibilities,” Telisa said. “But we have to take Maxsym’s assertion more seriously now.”

  Chapter 19

  Imanol tried to help Maxsym out with his new obsession about the Blackvines. At first he did not like Maxsym much, but grudgingly Imanol became aware that Maxsym was more intelligent than he was. Imanol was not sure if that made him like Maxsym or hate him, but at least the biologist had earned respect.

  “We asked for an analysis of the Blackvines from the scout logs and all the sensor info from inside the habitat,” Imanol sent back to the Clacker.

  “You did? Oh, yes. I have it here,” Cilreth answered.

  “You forgot?”

  “No, of course not. I have it,” Cilreth said. There was a pause.

  “What, hiding back at the spaceship getting too rough for you?” Imanol growled.

  “Do you want my help or not, jerk? I’m doing my part here and you know it.”

  “Yah, okay let’s have it already.”

  She’s acting a little weird. Kind of rattled?

  “It’s really amazing!” Cilreth blurted.

  Blood and souls, woman.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Imanol asked.

  “Never better!” Cilreth said.

  Now I know something’s wrong. No cynic here today.

  “So the results are amazing and mysterious,” Cilreth continued. “These things, they aren’t communicating with one another.”

  “They aren’t the sentient species responsible for this place? Of course not. They’re just like feral dogs and cats left behind.”

  “Oh, no, they’re clearly very intelligent,” Cilreth said. “They just don’t talk to each other. Incarnate or electronically. In fact, they actively avoid each other. Yet they have been modifying contents of their electronic storage, altering the house courses, even constructing new devices.”

  “There’s no way an advanced civilization—”

  “You’re looking at one,” Cilreth interrupted. “They don’t talk directly. There’s some kind of system that they use to reserve paths so they don’t see one another.”

  “That is a form of communication. They had to create that system, right? That took an agreement.”

  “Seems like it from our point of view,” Cilreth said. “But maybe one of them made it and the others just use it.”

  “What, like… if I made some shovels and left them sitting around, another person could come along and use them, even though we don’t know each other?”

  “Maybe, yes,” Cilreth said. “I don’t know much for sure yet. A Terran society looks very different, very busy talking back and forth, sharing information in all directions, stuff like that. It’s just not happening here.”

  “You’re missing something,” Imanol said. “They must have telepathy or some other crazy—”

  “No, Imanol, crazy is you reaching to come up with some explanation of why aliens work the same as we do.” Cilreth cut the connection.

  Imanol rolled his eyes. Too damn sensitive, he thought. But I’m more wondering about the beginning of the conversation. She seemed out of it. I know she takes Twitch. Maybe she moved on to something else?

  “Magnus? Hey. Cilreth is acting strange. I think maybe something happened.”

  “Oh no,” Magnus answered over his link.

  “What?”

  “Shiny is up to something. She can’t tell us because he’s listening, I bet.”

  “What? We have some reason to suspect Shiny is behind everything?”

  “Our alien friend puts himself first, from time to time,” Magnus said.

  “What might he do? How can we stop him?” Imanol asked.

  “I’ll look into it,” Magnus said. “The best thing we can do is make sure we stay valuable to him. Then he’ll share the wealth.”

  “Does Shiny actually run this outfit?”

  “No, but without him, PIT is a lot less than it is now,” Magnus said.

  Imanol thought that answer over. “What are you going to do?” he persisted.

  “Check for hidden messages. If Shiny is keeping her from telling us something, she’ll try to send us clues. We need to check for any information she’s shuffled around in our area recently. Check your link memory too. Maybe she knows how to drop something off quietly.”

  “Okay, I’ll take a look,” Imanol said.

  My new job is complicated.

  ***

  “These devices confound me,” Maxsym said. “Granted, I’m no cyberneticist. But these things don’t even work alike, I think. They seem… often incompatible?”

  Maxsym hoped Cilreth would help him analyze the Blackvine creatures. Cilreth was a fellow obsessive type, but she
had focused on the Vovokan technology.

  Can I rip any of her attention away from it?

  “There are different technology lines in flight within the habitat,” Cilreth said. Her voice became even more excited. “There are at least three completely different computer networks running in there. Vastly different. Yet they share a common trinary logic ancestor technology. That must have been a decade ago, at least using the speed that Terrans develop these things.”

  “Is that evidence of influence by three different alien civilizations? Any of them look like Trilisk tech?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing that advanced. This stuff seems cobbled together. Look, these creatures make all this. Ninety-five percent sure, anyway. It’s just this: they’ve been independently developed from a handful of common ancestors. They don’t talk to one another, and apparently they don’t share their work much, either!”

  “Five entities! That’s insane,” Telisa said. Maxsym just then noticed she had joined the conversation ten seconds ago.

  “It’s amazing,” Cilreth said.

  That’s encouraging. It sounds like she wants to learn more, too, Maxsym thought. His link told him Magnus wanted to talk.

  “Something more important has come up,” Telisa said. “We’ve found the Trilisk.”

  Chapter 20

  Magnus had set up a small camp in one of the more defensible buildings. It was smaller, with doors on only two sides. Telisa was there with him. The two senior members of the PIT team were concentrating on finding the Trilisk with Shiny while the others had become distracted by the Blackvine mystery.

  Magnus looked at video feeds that had been flagged by his scout army. He saw a very high interest score on one of them.

  This could be it.

  As soon as he saw a Terran on the feed, his attention was hooked. It was short; a Terran walked along the surface of a building and went through one of the alien trap doors. He had the location. It was near the center of the habitat. The buildings there were larger and more complex.

  Everyone needs to see this.

  He sent out a high-priority group meeting on a new channel. The team linked in quickly.