The Trilisk Supersedure (20 page)

Cilreth
scanned the room again. She didn’t see any threats, but she realized she had
not been paying enough attention to notice. The Vovokan spheres were watching
her, at least. They rotated lazily around the tube she had dug in.

“Where’s
Telisa?” she asked again.

The
other column displayed the flat creature. Cilreth felt only frustration. She
took a deep breath and approached the display.

“No.
This. I want her,” she thought, bringing up the image of Telisa in her mind. “Where?”

A pane
opened in her PV. The routing protocol was accessed and a route entered into
her link. Cilreth accessed the map. There was a display of more tunnels she had
not been in yet. And a red line marked a path through them.

“She’s
there?” Cilreth asked. Nothing happened. “Then that’s where I need to be,” she
said. Cilreth opened her eyes. The display before her showed a Terran brain
again.

The
brain was utterly dark. Devoid of all activity.

Oh no.
She isn’t dead, is she?

Cilreth
stuffed the sample tube in her pack and hefted her laser rifle. She followed
the map out a tunnel across from where she had entered.

Chapter 19

“I
heard a grenade go off at the entrance, but my machine there is still intact,”
Magnus said.

“I got
a close miss on the Konuan with a grenade,” Arakaki replied.

“Has it
been hurt? Maybe we can track it now.”

“Don’t
think it for a second. It will use the blood trail to lead us into a trap,”
Arakaki said over her link. “If it even has blood. Besides, it was an
incendiary.”

“We
have a trap of our own,” Magnus transmitted back. “And the scout robots.”

“Better
than nothing. The bugs aren’t even worth mentioning.”

“The
bugs—my scouts—are of limited use, but if I have one train its laser right at a
grille, it could shoot fast. No target sig. Just if it moves, fry it. The
machine has a destructive discharge option. And they can sense moving mass
through walls. An alien trick. They can see it coming, I guarantee it.”
Unless
it has a Trilisk trick to defeat that. I gotta be more careful what I guarantee
these days.

Magnus
meant the scout could blow its entire energy supply in one shot, which would
damage or destroy the laser, but the strike would probably vaporize anything
short of a tank. Which should be good enough to fry one Konuan; super fast or
not, it wasn’t faster than light. Or more accurately, faster than the ramp-up
speed of the laser delivery system, which was very fast.

“Then
it will shoot us if we get in the fire corridor,” Arakaki replied.

“The
scouts will be at an angle. I won’t put them right in front of the grille. They
can stay in corners and cover the grille opening. The center position is for
us.”

“Good
luck picking the grille,” Arakaki said.

“They
have mass sensors, remember? And the other one has a glue grenade launcher. And
these grilles are small. One shot for each one and they’re blocked off…”

Arakaki
gave him a new look.

She
realizes I may have a plan forming here.

“Okay,
that’s good,” she said. “We can block off the tunnel entrance at the bottom of
the building with a couple of armed grenades. If it drops down there, boom. The
scouts can glue off the exit routes…”

“Except
one.”

“Yes.
Except one.”

“That
traps it in here with us,” Magnus said.

“No,
that pretty much traps us in here with it. We’re toast, my friend. Or my enemy,
or whatever the hell you are.” She paused. “It’s still around. I’m getting a
few readings of it nearby,” Arakaki took out two grenades. Magnus caught sight
of a flash of green from them; then she dropped them to the ground. They spun
off.

“It’s
staying here with us,” Magnus said. He told his scouts to glue the grilles shut
by the exits. He wanted to restrict the movements of the Konuan, give him a
chance at a clear shot.

Arakaki
shifted but didn’t flinch when she heard the sounds of the glue capsules
popping through the building.

“We
should move to cover these two exit grilles I busted open,” he said, showing
her a map through his link.

“Gluing
us in? I doubt it’s concerned.”

“Well,
it should be,” Magnus said.

Arakaki
kept out both the UED PAW and her laser. Her weapons were shorter range, but
fast to aim and rapid firing. Magnus felt reassured by the familiar feel of his
old rifle, even if it wasn’t as optimal for a fight in the tight confines of
the building.

“It’s
nearby. Coming closer,” she said.

“Which
way? How do you know?” Magnus replied over his link.

In
reply, Arakaki sent him a pointer to a feed. It opened in his PV. He saw
information from the sensor module outside. In response, he gave her access to
his own sight and his weapon’s scan feed through his link. It was trusting her
with a great deal, but Magnus was in grave danger anyway, and he felt like
trusting her was a solid gamble.

A
moment later her sight feed joined the channel. Magnus looked it over along
with the sensor data.

“I see
two sigs here,” Magnus transmitted.

“Never.
There’s never been two. It’s messing with us,” Arakaki said. “One is fake. Or
both.”

He
heard the hiss of a laser. He had missed whatever it was she saw. “You saw it?”

“My
laser did.”

“You
have it on auto?”

“The
only way to be fast enough,” she said.

“Send
me your target sig.”

Her
weapon sent his rifle a target profile. It was a lot more detailed than he had
put together so far, so he loaded it and told his weapon to shoot as soon as it
saw that signature again.

Then he
caught sight of the creature on the mass sensor of a scout.

“There,
by the north exit,” he said. It was probably trying to dig through the farthest
grille, the one the scout had plugged up with glue. It darted away quickly and
dropped off the mass map.

“Cover
me,” he sent. The he realized it would be hard to cover an invisible person. In
fact, to try might simply get him shot. “Scratch that.”

“I know
I said we should stick together but…I’m wired to explode if that damn thing
burns my head off,” she said.

Magnus
paused.
She’s serious.

“Okay,”
he said, since he didn’t know what else to say. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
No
pun intended.

He
crouched and entered an adjacent room filled with old garbage, scraps of iron,
and what looked like a long, low table with dozens of legs. Something caught
his eye, but it wasn’t a Konuan.

A
single word had been scraped onto the wall: “stunner.” Magnus kept his weapon
trained down the new corridor of grille holes toward a glued dead-end.

Stunner?
Why would it say that? How did it know? I don’t even know what it means even
though it’s readable. And I don’t have a stunner. Telisa. Maybe she wrote that
after getting separated from Cilreth? Maybe she’s still alive.

“The
wall says ‘stunner’ in here. Nothing else. Just that word,” he said. Before
Arakaki could reply, his rifle saw a long creature flit through the air in the
room ahead. It matched its signature close enough that the weapon took the
shot. The weapon thundered twice. A smart round registered hits on its logged
target less than a second later.

“Got
it!”

***

Painfully
loud pops echoed through the building. Telisa reeled from the input. It took
her a moment to clear her mind and identify them: glue grenade detonations.

Magnus
is gluing us in here together. With the other one.

A funny
scraping sound—no, two sounds—scuttled along through nearby rooms then headed
down to the tunnel entrance at the bottom of the building. Something fast and
loud.

The
native creatures are very quiet. Magnus must have sent some devices down to the
tunnel below…grenades?

Telisa
could intermittently hear the other Konuan. Sometimes it scurried through one
or two rooms; other times it remained still, just breathing. She decided to
follow it around the outside rooms. When it struck, maybe she could intervene,
somehow.

Is it
trying to escape? I doubt it. It’s lurking on the perimeter waiting to go in
and kill them. This is life or death. I can’t let my shock at this situation
hold me back any longer. I have to do something.

Telisa
found her courage. She didn’t really know her new body, but she knew she had to
try something. She couldn’t let Magnus die. And if she died trying to save him,
well, she didn’t really want to live the rest of her life as a flat crawler
anyway. Not even an acute-hearing, swift-jumping crawler. She felt on edge.

More of
that carpet-creature adrenaline.

She
shuffled toward the other Konuan more rapidly. She flitted across a room to the
far wall, then crawled into the same room as the other. She didn’t need to spot
it with her antennae lights; she could hear exactly where it was. She jumped
toward it. Her body was a jumble of nerves.

It
launched itself before she arrived. She landed directly in its spot. She didn’t
feel like lingering there, so she jumped again on a parallel course.

A jet
of acid sprayed the wall where she’d been a split second earlier. The substance
fizzled on the wall, emitting a foul odor.

That
would have hurt. How can I do that?

Telisa
thought of spitting. She felt two muscular cylinders at the front edge of her
body tense.

I think
maybe I can spit back.

But the
other Konuan had already jumped again. She landed, then launched after it. She
spit at it in midair, launching a stream of her own. Then something shot past
her, hurting her. The edge of her body had been clipped. A loud boom ripped
through the room, then another.

Someone
shot me!

Telisa
felt something vaguely like pain. Her mind rang with the sensory overload of
the loud noises. She wondered how bad the wound was. She landed on acid. The
bite of it came through her legs, and something in her undersides reacted
sharply. She jumped away before she had a chance to think it over.

It
skips by, I follow it, and Magnus and that woman are slower than us, so they
end up shooting at me. They don’t even realize I’m following it.

The
other Konuan shot off into the next room. Telisa hid behind a metal machine
attached to the ceiling. It looked like it could be anything from an old
printing press to a laundry steamer. There was a handle that could press two
flat plates together. She hid under them both.

If I
make noise now, it will just distract them from it. And if I keep chasing it, I’ll
just get shot more. I should be smarter.

She had
to think carefully to even distinguish between the ceiling, walls, and floor.
She flitted over toward a wall. There she scratched another message: “two
konuan.”

Then
she pursued the other again. It was lurking only one room away from the woman.
Telisa darted into the same room with it again. In a flash, she spit acid and
leaped toward it. Only in flight did she realize she would land in her own
acid. But she had sprayed it across a wide area this time, trying to make sure
she at least grazed the target.

The
other leaped away. A few droplets struck it as it headed away. Telisa could not
alter her own course much in midair, but she tried.

A huge
noise boomed over them. It made Telisa’s body shake. But it was worse for the
other: a chunk of its hide flew off with a round that punched through the
corner of its body.

***

The
creature is toying with us.

Magnus
felt waste heat in his weapon from the rounds he’d fired. One of his bullets
had reported a hit before disintegrating on a wall. Arakaki’s laser hissed, but
Magnus didn’t stop to wonder if it had hit.

He
slipped the last grenade off his belt and armed it with the Konuan signature.
It took him one more second to make sure it wouldn’t detonate near Arakaki,
since she wasn’t on his predesignated safe list. Then the grenade whizzed off,
bouncing along the ground like a tire that had flown off a dune buggy at high
speed. It bounded straight through a grille into an adjacent chamber.

Magnus reacquired
the blocked grille on his rifle and waited. If it tried to escape the grenade,
it might fly into his vision again. He waited for two breaths; then the grenade
flew into the far room, little more than a streak of black. Magnus narrowed his
eyes.