Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt

by Michael McCloskey

  “We could time an attack for… when it’s not there?”

  “Well first, we can find its location. Second, we can use the timing to our advantage. But the clincher is, these systems are wide open. There’s no stopping anyone from using them. There simply is no security whatsoever other than through obfuscation, which is a low initial barrier. These aliens use no security, I guess. See? Their brand of antisocial behavior really does indicate they are incognizant of one another.”

  “How long until we can pinpoint the Trilisk?” asked Magnus.

  “I’m thinking a day or two. Shiny has made it a priority. I’m trying to duplicate his collection scheme on our scout robots. Probably not necessary, but it helps me to keep up, and a redundant collection system couldn’t hurt.”

  “We’ll prepare. The Clacker is still making machines. Shiny has a lot of attendant spheres out here now. They’re flying around everywhere.”

  Telisa and Magnus dropped out. Arakaki stayed on.

  “Cilreth? Can you hook me in to your duplicate network? I need whatever you have. Even weak clues are good enough to work with.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “I’ve hunted this thing before, and I’m doing it again. I’m just asking for some help, is all.”

  “Okay, I’ll set you up with what I have. It’s going to be confusing. I’ll keep working on making it better.”

  “Thanks,” Arakaki said. For once, Arakaki’s voice seemed to soften. “I appreciate your help. I really need to get this bastard.”

  “Did it kill… your friend?” Cilreth asked.

  “What friend?”

  “Magnus mentioned you lost someone close,” Cilreth said. “Sorry, I’m too nosy.”

  “Oh. Well that Trilisk killed a lot of my friends. But my… my soul mate was killed by the UNSF.”

  “Oh,” Cilreth said in a small voice. “Say… I have an experiment I’d like to try. I’ve been thinking about editing out our presence from the Blackvine detectors.”

  “Yeah? To keep us from being picked up by the Trilisk?”

  “Yes. I can’t stop the detector from seeing you, but the system is so wide open, I could tag you through your attendant sphere or a nearby scout and then drop transmissions related to you from the reporting network. If it works the way I think it will, you would be invisible to anything relying on the Blackvine sensors to track you.”

  “Sign me up.”

  ***

  Magnus felt stir-crazy waiting for the next chance at the Trilisk. He sat in a building deep within the habitat PIT was using as a temporary headquarters for their second attempt at finding the Trilisk. The only one taking it harder was Caden, who had a similar need for action. He checked Cilreth’s schedule. He no longer knew when she was awake and when she was asleep, so he put in a low-priority connection.

  “Hi Magnus,” Cilreth answered.

  “Cilreth, do we have anything?”

  Cilreth laughed. “Of course we would let you know, Magnus.”

  “Well how about some suspicions?”

  “We don’t—wait a second.”

  “What is it?” Magnus sat up straight.

  “It’s probably not related. Shiny says he found an insane Blackvine.”

  “Insane?”

  “I’m as confused as you are. Hooking you in.”

  Magnus joined a wider channel in midconversation. Telisa was asking Shiny questions.

  “How do you know it’s interacting with other Blackvines?” Telisa said.

  “Tracking, watching, recording movements,” Shiny answered. “Entering reservations into movement system for entities other than itself. Storing historical recordings.”

  “They have writing?”

  “Individual under surveillance, examination, scrutiny uses special data storage formats for events, occurrences, incidents,” Shiny said. “Also owns simple texts. Possibly from previous, earlier, precursor Blackvines.”

  “You called it insane?” Magnus interrupted.

  “This individual not within species norm. Abnormal, dysfunctional, insane.”

  “It acknowledges the other Blackvines, so it’s crazy?” Magnus said.

  “Theory: Abnormal, dysfunctional, insane individual serves vital leadership, coordination, oversight function,” Shiny said.

  “They’re more like us than we thought,” Cilreth said. “Their leaders are insane.”

  “A few brilliant individuals have made huge differences in Terran society. Maybe it’s not crazy. It may have made a breakthrough that made it aware of the whole of its race,” Telisa said.

  “There’s more,” Cilreth said. “Shiny and I found it because it’s making a new kind of robot. This new type is killing off scouts and attendant spheres.”

  “Uh oh. We’re not welcome here,” Magnus said.

  “Not surprising,” Telisa said. “We come in here, fill the place with weird robots, terrorize the populace—”

  “Terrorize?” asked Cilreth.

  “These creatures are extremely isolated and antisocial. Just being nearby causes them to freeze. We thought they were plants, by the Five. They’re not. They just freeze up when we barge in. It could be traumatizing to them, for all we know.”

  “Shiny. Could you compose a message in their language? Tell them we’re leaving soon. We just need the Trilisk. You could explain we haven’t come to hurt them.”

  “Translation too difficult, challenging, costly,” Shiny said.

  “You translated our Englese within a few days,” Telisa pointed out.

  “Existing language corpus miniscule, tiny, severely limited. Cross-indexable contextual information unavailable. Very difficult.”

  “Ah. Shiny was able to examine our net filled with billions of Terrans sharing things with each other, associated with images, video, all sorts of stuff, and he could observe a huge number of conversations in Englese at the time,” Magnus said.

  “You guys are missing the obvious explanation,” Telisa said. “This is the Trilisk. Or a Trilisk. Think about it. It’s taken over a Blackvine body and is using it as a social creature would. It’s manipulating the Blackvines. That sounds like a Trilisk to me.”

  After a moment of thought, Cilreth said, “That’s a strong theory. Maybe we should go in and… do we just attack it?”

  “No. We have to be sure about it,” Telisa said. “It may not be a Trilisk at all, or it may be a different one.”

  “It’s going to be dangerous. Let’s just send some attendants or scouts to check it out,” Magnus said.

  “Remember the new robots I mentioned? They’re basically flying lasers about the size of a laser rifle. They carry enough charge to kill a couple scouts, and one or two attendants or a soldier machine.”

  “How many does it have?” Telisa asked.

  “Twenty to thirty,” Cilreth said.

  “Then we’ll go in and check it out,” Telisa said.

  “Suicide,” Cilreth said.

  “We have to know. I’ll use the stealth sphere.”

  “No. You don’t get to use it all the time,” Magnus said. “I want to do it.”

  Telisa sighed. “I have the most popular toy. Maybe Shiny can pray us up another?”

  Magnus waited for Telisa to make her decision.

  “Maxsym can do it,” Telisa said.

  “What!” exclaimed Magnus and Cilreth at once.

  “He’s interested in the Blackvines. More so than the Trilisk. And he’s green. This will be good for him. With the stealth sphere, he’ll be okay.”

  Well, maybe, as long as the Trilisk doesn’t know how to sense him some other way.

  “If he turns the job down, pass it to me,” Magnus said.

  Chapter 24

  Be careful what you wish for, Maxsym thought.

  Maxsym had accepted the task proposed by Telisa, though he felt ambivalent. His intense interest in Blackvines and a desire to please the PIT team drove him to accept. Yet since he had decided to go, he kept contemplating the danger
.

  Telisa had given him a powerful artifact used for cloaking his presence. The main question was whether or not it really worked with Trilisks around.

  “I’m almost there,” Maxsym said. His voice sounded calm in his own ears.

  I can do this.

  A trio of attendant spheres led Maxsym to his target. He jumped through the sky as Caden and Siobhan had learned to do. He had a pair of emergency booster fans he could use for a limited time to alter his course if necessary. The attendants floated well ahead of him rather than orbiting in order to avoid giving him away. Four soldiers trailed him by a hundred meters, ready to provide a light cover if he had to run. It all helped to make him feel safe. But errant thoughts continued.

  If it’s a Trilisk and it wants me dead, I’ll be dead.

  It took a half hour to fly through the bright skies to the location of the mysterious Blackvine. Maxsym tried to lose himself in the navigation so he would not become more nervous. Finally the target building was growing large before him as he came in to drop on it.

  His guides exploded into clouds of black gas and shrapnel. Maxsym looked to the skies. He spotted one of the alien robots, probably one of the ones that had fired. It was smaller than he was, darting by like a flying rifle with stubby fins. Some archaic reference to sharks with lasers lurked in his mind, but he could not dredge it up.

  Maxsym landed without a sound, thanks to the stealth device. He walked toward the nearest door. He tried to step lightly anyway, just a by-product of his nervousness and desire to stay hidden.

  He found a door and almost opened it. He thought about opening the door but decided not to risk giving himself away. As he hesitated, he saw a nearby window. Maxsym moved over and looked in. He did not see anything in the room beyond. For a moment Maxsym recalled a memory: a haunted house amusement he had visited as a child. It had been full of junk just like this place. He suppressed the chill and walked on.

  A hundred meters behind him, one of the soldiers was spotted. It exchanged fire with another Blackvine robot and destroyed it. The soldier retreated, but two more enemies flew in and killed it. The other three soldiers backed away without being spotted.

  Maxsym went back to the door and let himself in.

  Inside the house, he immediately heard a low rustling.

  As of the leafy tendrils of a Blackvine moving around.

  Maxsym swallowed a sudden new burst of fear.

  Okay, so you’re afraid. Fine. Just learn. Be observant, he told himself.

  He moved forward through the room. He chose an open passageway toward the source of the sounds. When the gravity shifted to his right, he expected it. Slowly his unconscious mind was learning the rules by which the artificial system worked, though he could not yet put it into words.

  When Maxsym walked into the next room, he saw the Blackvine moving around next to a large machine. It was shocking to see it move. Even though his rational mind had known for days that it could move, part of him still thought of it as a sessile plant.

  So surreal. That big black plant is moving! Another living alien within arm’s reach.

  He watched it for another few seconds. The Blackvine worked on complex devices arrayed along two walls that faced each other. The artificial gravity held the apparati down in opposite directions on each wall.

  Maxsym realized he had been silent on his link channel. That probably was not kind to the others.

  “I have target in sight,” he sent.

  That sounds terse and professional. I hope they don’t hear the quaver in my mental state.

  “Feeding you the scan,” he continued. Maxsym activated the Vovokan scanner device they had given him to evaluate the Blackvine. After a second, the response came back.

  “It’s not a Trilisk augmented body,” Cilreth said.

  “You’re sure?” Maxsym said.

  “Yes.”

  Maxsym quietly released a huge amount of tension. He took a deep breath.

  “So it’s safe.”

  “Not by a long shot,” Telisa said. “It could still kill you. We don’t know much about these things. I would guess that if you show up, it will just run away, but who knows?”

  “Shiny said this one was special.”

  “Insane, he said!” Telisa reminded him.

  “Insane in a way that would make it safer for us, not more dangerous,” Maxsym said, though he hardly believed it. He was convincing himself of it, not Telisa.

  The creature worked steadily away on its machines. It had two tools in its grasp. Maxsym wondered if it was what created the new type of flying robots. He felt less fear of it now that he knew it was not a Trilisk.

  We’re the aggressors, here. We came in with an army of robots.

  He had examined the Blackvines fairly carefully. He did not believe they possessed any natural weapons deadly to Terrans. This one held some tools, but they did not look threatening. It was using them on the equipment before it.

  Maxsym turned his stealth sphere off.

  The Blackvine moved slightly away from him as he became visible. It rotated slightly, flattening its tendrils into a roughly disc-shaped fan.

  Its optical sensors are there in the center. It’s literally moving its arms out of the way to get a good, long look.

  “Amazing,” Maxsym whispered. The creature rustled as it moved. It sounded just like a tree in the wind.

  Maxsym realized he had no way of making any progress. In fact, he may have made an enemy of the creature just by showing up.

  Holding my open hands apart means nothing to it. Speech means nothing… aha!

  Maxsym removed a flashlight from a side pocket of his pack and put it on the table halfway between them, then he moved back.

  The creature advanced. It turned the open disc toward his gift. Then it retrieved the flashlight. The device had a manual activator as well as a link connection. The creature rapidly found the manual activator.

  Of course. It is used to picking up things made by other Blackvines all the time. It always has to figure out the work of other Blackvines.

  It turned back to regard Maxsym again.

  What next?

  Maxsym knew what he wanted. More samples. He removed a micropuncture device and loaded an empty vial into it. He plucked it against his neck and filled it with his blood. Then he loaded the device with another empty vial. He slowly put it all on the worktable.

  The Blackvine tried the micropuncture tool. It placed the tool against one of its tendrils. The vial filled with black fluid. Then it put the vial back on the table and took the vial of Maxsym’s blood.

  That was stunningly easy. It must be highly intelligent.

  “Perfect,” he said quietly. “Two scientists. We understand each other, in that we both want to learn about the other.”

  “Maxsym. How’s it going in there?” Telisa asked over the link.

  “Well. Very well.”

  ***

  Arakaki launched herself toward another house. She was aware of many of the Blackvine detectors around her since she had added a feed from the scouts and attendant drones that picked out the detectors all around and marked them on a map. As long as Cilreth’s hack kept working, she hoped to remain invisible to the Blackvine network, and hopefully the Trilisk.

  She’s a valuable asset to the team.

  In Arakaki’s mind, Cilreth’s judgement was a bit off, though. Seriously, duplicating and working alongside a copy of herself? Likely more than just work, too.

  She must have just been lonely. She only has Shiny for company up there. But anything like that affects all of us. Our lives are on the line, so she should have told us.

  Arakaki paused and smiled as she landed on the next building.

  Hypocrite. Just like you should have told everyone you’re hunting the Trilisk all by yourself.

  Arakaki froze. Something moved up ahead. She saw something dark move through the window. She dropped to her stomach and moved forward slowly. She had to reach the window, turning her h
ead aside uncomfortably to avoid showing herself. Then she moved her head over the window and peeked.

  One of the Blackvines moved about inside the building.

  That thing is working in there. Is it working with the Trilisk? Hell, is it the Trilisk?

  Arakaki could not know the answer, at least not without an analysis by Cilreth or Shiny. She moved slowly away from the window, turned an outside corner, and stepped away.

  “I found a Blackvine here,” Arakaki said. “It’s working away on something. I have no idea what. If the Trilisk left Holtzclaw’s body and went into one of these plant things, we’re going to have to start catching them. Or something.”

  “Hi,” Cilreth replied after a moment. “Chances are, that’s just a Blackvine and we detected its activity. At this point, we can’t tell the difference between the Blackvines near the center of the habitat and the Trilisk. Sometimes the Blackvines move around, and they seem to leave the network for a while just as it does. I’ll mark that one you just saw as a Blackvine so we can weed its signals out from the tracker.”

  “Weed?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Okay, but like I said, if the Trilisk knows how to supersede one of those things, we’re back to square one.”

  “If you slip an attendant in, we can be sure.”

  “Copy that.”

  Arakaki found a nearby door. She took control of one of her attendant spheres, then kneeled to push the door open for it to fly inside. She stayed outside, on all fours.

  “Maxsym is moving in on one of the Blackvines now,” Telisa said.

  “Really? I hope you are backing him up.”

  “That wasn’t possible,” Telisa said. “He has the stealth sphere, though.”

  That man is razor sharp. But he needs experience, she thought. But Telisa and Magnus know that.

  “Let me know how it goes,” she said. “My sphere is in there.”

  “I have it,” Telisa said. “Just a vanilla Blackvine you have there. It helps that you verified it, though. We can filter this one’s noise out of the system.”

  “Okay. Good. I’ll move on to another hotspot.”

  “Good luck. If you catch sight of anything, don’t go in alone. I don’t care if you have a death wish; it’s about us too.”