The Trilisk AI (24 page)

“Their
weaponry is advanced, and that means well-targeted. I think they will hunt down
and kill only the Vovokan targets efficiently.”

“Then
why is half this place trashed?” Magnus asked.

“It
was full of Vovokans before. And there must have been infrastructure they
wanted taken out. I don’t know. You’re right. We’ll have to be careful to activate
machines in different areas of the house, far away. We can switch areas from
time to time, send the destroyers scrambling all around.”

“I’ll
see if I can set up some crude controls or schedules for that.”

“Keep
thinking. I need to figure out what to take, and how to carry it,” Telisa said.

Magnus
nodded.

He
thinks I’m being short-sighted. Putting the cart before the horse.
Telisa walked over to the shelves. “I
need to figure out what to take. How the hell am I going to do that?”

“You
know more than I do. Just guess at their functions and weigh their relative
values. Either to us as tools, or to potential buyers when we get back.”

Telisa
pulled a silver cylinder from her pack. “Look at this. To us, it’s a powered
thermos/cooler. It purifies water and brings it to the temperature we set. But
what is it to an alien? It opens up, it’s hollow inside. But all the functions
are visible only through our links. It’s just a hunk of metal until you rip it
apart. The construction is such that you destroy it by opening it. It isn’t
designed to be repaired. It’s not until you scan it that you see a battery, a
heat source and sink. If you scan it with the wrong frequency or energy you can
damage the link block.”

Magnus
nodded. “Yes, a difficult problem. But Shiny put all these in the vault. Or at
least some Vovokan did. For all we know, Shiny is a post-apocalyptic bank
robber and we’re doing his dirty work for him. But these items are probably all
quite valuable.”

Telisa
nodded. He had a point. It made her feel a bit better about the decision. Yet
it took her the next two hours to unpack her equipment, examine each one and
pick out two for her to carry, two more for Magnus, and two for Scout to bring
back.

Magnus
worked on something in his mind as she chose. He seemed to sense she was
nearing readiness and approached her. “I think I have a sequence of
distractions ready. How’s it coming here?”

“Ready.
If you can carry these two.” Telisa handed him a heavy sphere and a metal rod
over a meter long.

“Okay.
A bomb and a pool stick. No problem.”

She
growled and he winked at her.

“The
sphere is heavy but it looks sophisticated under my passive scanner. It doesn’t
appear to be Vovokan. The rod might be Vovokan. I found it by accident. It
actually created a hologram that hid itself on the shelf.”

“Oh,
nice. Yes, that would intrigue me too. Okay, I’m not questioning your choices.
Looks like you have a weapon there.”

“Maybe
so,” Telisa said. She had chosen the tube with the two handles as one of her
items. The other device she carried looked like a triple-bladed marine
propeller. She wasn’t certain of its origin; perhaps she had selected it for no
other reason than its trilateral symmetry.

Magnus
called Scout in and helped Telisa load more items onto him. The machine had no
useful interior holding space, but Magnus had a tough backpack designed to fit
Scout. Telisa’s appreciation of the machine went up a notch.

“We
need to bring more of these next time,” she said.

“You’re
telling me? We need an army of them!”

She
laughed. Then she stood up to watch Scout move around, adjusting to the weight
of the pack, and found herself staring at the shelves.

“We’re
leaving most of them behind,” Telisa lamented.

“We
could come back someday,” Magnus said. “I mean, if we don’t have a better
opportunity.”

Telisa
sighed. “Okay, let’s hit it.”

Magnus
grasped the seed. She could tell it had significant mass.

“Starting
up the first distraction,” he said. They waited for a few seconds. Telisa
watched the probe network display in her PV. Destroyer machines were scrambled
from the surface capital ship and started to descend into Shiny’s house.

“Okay,
here we go.”

Telisa
and Magnus headed out with Scout only twenty meters in the lead.

They
got to the first long shaft upwards. Scout clambered up, using smart cables and
its many clawed legs to climb up quickly. It seemed a bit more clumsy than
before carrying the pack, but it compensated for the new balance fairly well.

“I
hope we don’t have another problem with those critters. We can’t afford to be
sitting around.”

“I
was thinking the same thing,” Magnus said. “If they show again, we’ll send
Scout off to distract them and slip by.”

They
worked up the refuse-filled shaft with their smart ropes. Their machines and
ropes did all the work, moving them up each leg quickly, but because of the
fallen beams and cave-ins, they had to move in smaller leaps, constantly
adjusting to find ways around the obstacles.

“Something’s
coming,” Magnus said.

Telisa
checked the probe network. She saw a destroyer moving toward them.

“I
wonder how big it is,” she said. “Probably the size of that one that flew over
us before?”

“I
don’t think we can fight it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Is
it coming down from above?”

“No.
It’s in an adjoining level,” Magnus said. “About thirty meters above. It’s
getting too close.”

“Shit.
What can we do?”

Telisa
became aware of holes in the side of the shaft as light emanated from them. She
hadn’t realized the holes led anywhere before, as they had been utterly dark.
Now the light from the destroyer machine was leaking through.
Five Entities.
It’s too close!

The
machine glowed. It was hard to look at after the dim light of the tunnels. By
unspoken agreement Telisa and Magnus turned off their own lights at the same
time.

The
light shifted for a few moments. Telisa thought the machine was too large to
fit through the debris and into the tunnel where they hid.

More
lights started filtering in from above.

“It’s
dispatched smaller machines,” Magnus said over his link.

Telisa
almost grabbed her stunner, but she knew immediately it was probably futile.
She took hold of the artifact she’d taken from the vault instead.
I don’t
even know if this is a weapon. I don’t even know if that hole is the business
end.

Telisa
brought up the tube and aimed it. She found the actuators, which were
presumably manual backups to some alien control system that wouldn’t interface
with her link. Just in case, she made sure the opposite end of the device was
pointed under her right arm, away from herself and Magnus.

Glowing
machines floated down toward them. The nearest two were already less than
twenty meters above, though there was still debris between them and the
destroyers. Magnus dropped the seed down on its own smart rope, trying to make
space between them and the destroyer’s target.

Telisa
pressed the triggers.

A
loud hissing sound came to her ears as a vibration erupted in her hands.
Something flew out of the weapon. The glowing drones closest to her burst in
tiny explosions, then three or four drones farther away, then finally a split
second later, another five or six drones just entering the tunnels. A second
later the light was gone, as if the drone incursion had never happened. The
sounds of debris and sand falling down the shaft dominated the pit.

“Five
Entities!” Telisa breathed. “What was that?”

“It
must have launched a dozen guided projectiles at once. Although it looked
almost like they split in mid-air, or maybe they impacted the target and then
split, if that’s...well, it is possible, I guess.”

“We’d
better save this one. Emergencies only. Who knows how many shots—”

“We’re
going down,” Magnus said.

“But
we—”

“Turn
around
now
! This isn’t working, we’re going to be dead soon, or at least
the seed will be destroyed. If that machine doesn’t send more, another one
will.”

Telisa
reluctantly agreed. She checked the Shiny’s probe grid and saw destroyer
machines moving all about the gigantic house. At least two more were headed
their way.

“Back
to the vault. Somehow it screens the emissions,” she said.

They
dropped down dangerously fast. Scout followed after. When they reached the
bottom, they sprinted through the last caverns toward the wide open vault room.

As
Telisa entered the vault room, she saw silver structures placed around the
vault she didn’t remember.
Something looks different.

“What
are—”

“Defenses,”
Magnus said.

“Shiny
must have deployed them.”

“I’m
glad they’re there. Destroyers incoming!”

They
ran into the vault. Scout was close behind. Telisa and Magnus barreled into the
interior, then turned around and regarded the door stupidly for a moment. Scout
skittered in and stood to the left of the entrance.

“Close
it,” Magnus urged.

“I
don’t know how!” Telisa replied frantically. A roar erupted from outside. The
floor started to shake.
Concentrate. The map has to say how to close it,
right?

A
small destroyer drone hovered into the vault. Its light played over the
interior of the vault. Telisa hit the floor. Magnus fired his rifle. The drone
fell, destroyed along with Telisa’s hearing.

Holy
Entities, that’s so loud in here!

Telisa
tried to link in through Shiny’s probe, but it didn’t respond. She looked over
and saw it had folded up into a Vovokan chair again.

“Dammit,
the probe has gone belly up on us.”

“Damn
coward piece of crap,” Magnus transmitted. His rifle boomed again. Shrapnel
sprayed over Telisa.

Could
there be a manual switch? What would a Vovokan manual door switch look like?

Telisa
scanned the walls by the entrance. The sides of the vault were featureless. She
scanned the floor. She saw some minor imperfection in the floor, perhaps
scratches in the metal.
Are those scratches from the shrapnel?

Telisa
crawled over toward the door.

“Stop.
Don’t go over there,” Magnus urged.

Telisa
scrabbled on, sliding her belly across to the scratch she saw. As her point of
view changed, the scratch elongated into an oval and finally a tiny circle as
she looked down on it.

A
button on the floor? Crazy.

If
it was a button, it was perfectly flush with the floor. She pressed it. Nothing
happened other than another explosion outside the vault. The debris from the
dead drone rattled across the floor. The shaking reminded her of a horror vid
she’d watched as a child of a giant monster so tall it shook the floor with
every step.

“Telisa,”
he said, his voice laced with irritation.

I
hope the destroyers don’t have anything like that.

Telisa
started to retreat, then she saw another circle a meter to the left.
Another
button?

The
rifle boomed again. Hot metal sprayed over her skinsuit. She felt a nick on her
ear and an itching flow of blood there.
Those buttons are about the right
distance for a Vovokan standing facing the door to have legs over each one.

Magnus
grabbed her leg. Telisa reached out with both arms, pressing both the buttons
simultaneously. As Magnus dragged her back, the door started to shut.

“You
did it! Thank you, thank you!”

Telisa
laughed, more a release of tension than a genuine appreciation of his outburst
of gratitude. “You almost stopped me,” she said, though she felt little
annoyance at this point. She was just glad to see the door finish closing in
front of them.

“I
had no idea what the hell you were doing. But now, you can figure out how to
open them back up.”

She
laughed again.

“That
might be a problem, but for now I’m calling this a victory.”

Magnus
dragged her the rest of the way toward him and embraced her.

The
vault rang with the sounds of battle. The floor shook.

“Shit.
Do you think they’re trying to get in?”

“I
hope not. It can’t hold. At least I don’t think it can.”

“Should
we be doing something?”

He
kissed her. “If they don’t get in, we’re good, if they do, we’re dead,” he told
her over his link without interrupting the kiss.

“Good
point,” she transmitted back. “We’re sleeping in here tonight.”

Chapter 18