The Trilisk Revolution (Parker Interstellar Travels) (5 page)

“Cilreth?”

“Hi.
What’s up?”

“One
of the Trilisks is living in this heavily modified estate,” Siobhan sent
Cilreth a pointer. “I want to know—”

“You
want to know what it looks like today.”

“Exactly.”

“I
can do it,” Cilreth said. “What’s in it for me?”

What?
She never said that before.

“Well,
uhm,” she stuttered.

The
safety of Earth? Was she from Earth again?

“Let
me make it easy for you,” Cilreth said. “Next time we vote to see if Cilreth2
goes on ice, you vote no.”

Aha.

“Deal,”
Siobhan said.

“You’ll
have your info within 24… minutes!” Cilreth said.

“Thanks.”

Siobhan
was happy to make the deal. She still only asked for connections to their
original Cilreth, though. She did not like the new one on some level she had
not pinned down. Maybe it was some instinct that here was an unfairly superior
competitor, or the knowledge a Trilisk could take her over at any time.

Okay,
so my plan is in motion. But I need Telisa to buy into it. How should I sell it
to her?

Siobhan
started to think up a story, but then decided against it. Telisa had been a
straight shooter with her, why not show her the same respect in return? Just
come out and say it. Siobhan felt that Telisa might back her.

Siobhan
got up and preened herself just a bit. She felt that a conversation this
important should be incarnate. She sent a message ahead asking for an FTF.

She
walked out and headed to Telisa’s rooms, thinking over what she would say.
Telisa approved the meeting as Siobhan walked. She eventually arrived at a door
mapped as Telisa’s private territory aboard the vast decks of the
Clacker
.

The
metal door slid open and Telisa was standing behind it.

“Hello?”
Telisa said. “Come on in.”

Her
wounded eye always catches my attention first no matter how many times I see
it. Her face was so pretty before.

Telisa’s
rooms were beautiful. Siobhan had heard Telisa kept a vast workshop filled with
alien artifacts she studied in her personal time. But all she saw today was a
nice atrium and a small side room with drinks and a kitchenette. They sat down
at the edge of the atrium. Across the way Siobhan saw a statue of Magnus. She
looked away quickly and pretended not to notice.

“I
want to go after a particular Trilisk,” Siobhan said. “I have business with one
of these targets.”

“Which
one?”

“Kagan
Spero. I want him. I want that one.”

And
I don’t care if the frackjammer is a Trilisk or a Terran.

“Oh.
Spero. I’ve been so busy I didn’t notice that one… yah, okay, you got him.”

“Thank
you, Telisa. I won’t forget this.”

“You
know where he is?”

“I
think so, and Cilreth is searching up some details for me.”

There
was a delay.

Telisa
must be doing some digging herself.

“That
place is a fortress. We may have to just destroy it with a Vovokan weapon.”

“No.
There are other people in there. Even if all his Spero people are despicable,
there will be slaves there, too.”

Telisa
took a deep breath. Siobhan knew what was coming.

“Believe
me, I’ve lost sleep over this already and I haven’t even hurt people like this
yet. But we can’t overthrow the Trilisks without hurting… without killing some
innocent people. It just doesn’t work like that.”

Telisa
looked like she was going to cry. Siobhan saw the depth of her pain.

Even
if we succeed, she’ll be torn apart by guilt.

“The
way I see it, I won’t feel guilty as long as I did what I had to do, but I took
every effort possible to save as many as I could,” Siobhan said. “And that
means going in and taking that bastard out with precision. If I fail, then call
in the artillery. That way, I can live—or die—with whatever happens.”

“You’ll
just die. Going up against a Trilisk by yourself?”

“Well,
I thought that was the plan anyway? We have to take them out. I can use some of
Shiny’s toys, too,” she said.

“Maybe,”
Telisa said. “Make a plan. Let me know,” Telisa said.

Siobhan
left Telisa’s rooms with a new mission in her heart. But it was not a new
mission at all. It was the old mission, the one she had worked toward before
she had discovered Parker Interstellar Travels.

Revenge.

She
wanted to share her new excitement with someone.

Cilreth?
Cilreth, and… Cilreth2. Hrm.

She
stopped to think for a moment.

Caden.

She
immediately felt nervous. Caden looked so perfect, and he was famous. How could
she just saunter in and chat with a VR star?

He
can’t possibly like me… I’m taller… my arms and legs are so long and clumsy,
and he’s so graceful. Strong and dreamy.

Siobhan
cursed at herself. How could she be afraid to do something
so safe
?

I’d
rather climb into a missile tube and plunge into a star.

Siobhan
started to walk toward Caden’s quarters. She looked down at her long legs
eating up the ground with giant strides and tried to think of what to say.

He’s
all ripped up over Arakaki’s death. He said she saved him. Maybe they were even
lovers.

Abruptly
Siobhan chickened out. She turned away.

Shiny.

She
had never tried talking with Shiny much. Telisa seemed to adore him.

“Shiny?”
Siobhan asked over her link.

“Significant
fraction, portion, division of attention allocated to Siobhan.”

“What?
Oh. Uhm, I am going to go and try and kill a Trilisk. Or a Terran. I need to
kill someone.”

There
was a long pause. At first, she thought she had lost whatever fraction of
attention Shiny had given her.

“Purpose?”

“Revenge!”

“Proposal?”

“I
need some kick ass Vovokan tech to make sure I succeed. I have to kill this
Terran. There’s bad blood between us. Do you know what that means?”

Of
course, he can just look it up if he doesn’t.

“Shiny
equips Siobhan for assassination, termination, murder.”

“Yes!
Please?”

“Delineate
return offer.”

“What?”

“Describe
Siobhan’s payment offer?”

Oh.
He’s asking ‘what’s in it for me’.

“I
don’t know. I don’t have much. The Terran I want to kill may be a Trilisk host.
Your enemy, right?”

“Offer
under consideration.”

Is
that lack of enthusiasm normal for a Vovokan?

“And
I could owe you one.”

Her
offer sounded lame to her own ears. There was another pause.

“Agree,
accept, deal.”

Chapter 6

Maxsym
completed his project only days after the meeting. He felt a flush of pride.

Not
many could have done this. Though part of the credit belongs to the Clacker and
the Trilisk AI.

Maxsym
had always been smart. Brilliant, some had said. But the pace of his innovation
had always been stifled by analyses that took days, rules that stood in his
way, and bureaucracy that was even worse. Not so on the
Clacker
.

Once
Shiny and Cilreth had given him a start on the computers and allowed him to use
a few prayers to the AI, he had found an amazing depth of chemical simulations.
The virtual environments of the Vovokan ship could watch every molecule of a
developing egg and speed up its hatching to a fraction of a second. He could
run entire generations of hybrids through artificial worlds to see how they
would fare. He could search through entire families of molecules and play them
off against each other in virtual trials. Literally every reaction that
occurred in a sample could be simulated and recorded for him to watch.

Of
course all that was too much data for Maxsym to handle. But the machines around
him were able to classify the reactions, give him aggregated rates of
production, and show him the balance points of cyclical systems. On Earth, if
Maxsym wanted to try out a crazy idea, it would take days. Here it took
seconds.

Maxsym
had decided to focus on something of interest to the team first. He wanted to
show his thanks, and more importantly, he wanted to show them what he could do.
He needed to secure his use of these resources for the foreseeable future, and
that meant giving the PIT team an immediate return on their investment.

So,
he dug into the biology of the Terrans-as-Trilisk-hosts. Here, he had run into
a construct so complex even the tools of the
Clacker
seemed inadequate
to deal with it. Maxsym knew a lot about the human body, but these hosts were
improved by so much it stunned him. He could spend years studying the
optimizations built into the host bodies.

Fortunately
for Maxsym, it was much easier to destroy than to create. He had found what he
needed.

“Telisa?”

There
was a delay. Then Telisa connected.

“Hi,
Maxsym. What’s up?”

“I
have a weapon we can use against the Trilisks.”

“Wow?
Really? I’ll be right over.”

“No
need,” Maxsym said. “I can brief you over the link.”

Maxsym
winced.
Will that insult her?

“I
mean, at your convenience, online or incarnate,” he clarified.

“Oh.
I would like to see it in person.”

“Ah.
Yes. I haven’t made a deployment mechanism, so there’s nothing to see. Except
an invisible, odorless gas that kills Trilisk hosts. It does so very
quickly—within a few seconds—and paralyzes them immediately. They wouldn’t even
have time to access neural interfaces, unless they have mental augmentation
outside the Terran host that thinks much faster than we do.”

Which
they might.

“Wow!
That’s an amazing weapon! I had no idea you were… I didn’t expect anything from
you so soon. So we can gas them.”

“I
was thinking, specifically, we could use it on Skyhold,” Maxsym said.

“Ah,
of course. An isolated environment. Of course, a space habitat that size…”

“Is
a huge volume of air, yes. I’ve already produced enough for the mission. The
Clacker
is nothing short of amazing. There’s no limit to what I could accomplish here!
It can record and classify a million chemical reactions in a sample and
categorize them, then play them back for me. We can fabricate—”

“Yes.
Tell me more about the gas, though. Focus on this task first.”

“Of
course. I don’t know how to deploy it, though, I suspect someone else may
surpass my abilities there.”

“We’ll
do whatever it takes. Hrm. And… the effects on ordinary humans?”

“It’s
toxic to ordinary humans as well, I’m afraid,” Maxsym said. “But a dose high
enough to kill every Trilisk on Skyhold would likely only kill the weakest
Terrans. Only the very young or old, in all likelihood. It depends upon
individual constitution and genetic factors.”

There
was a pause.

I’m
well aware it is suboptimal…

“Thanks
for doing this. We can definitely use the option. I need to think it over.”

“I
understand,” Maxsym said. The connection dropped.

Maxsym
was left to ponder the weapon he had made, and who it might kill.

***

Telisa
cradled her head in her arms and closed her eyes. She sat in her huge bedroom
on the
Clacker
with the lights down. Maxsym’s news should have made her
feel better, but she felt more lost than before.

What
are we doing?

Maxsym
had given her a deadly tool to use against her enemies. Using it could cause
collateral damage. How could she deploy such a thing knowing it could kill
innocent Terrans on Skyhold?

This
is where Magnus would tell me I have to act for the greater good,
she thought.
He would say someone has
to have the strength to make the hard decisions. Because the universe is a
cruel place.

But
Magnus was not there. Telisa felt nothing but doubt and horror. She did not
want to be the one to bring war to Sol.

I’ll
take the weapon in myself. Scan and identify the Trilisks. Expose as few people
as I can. Put some on shuttles or lock them into isolated rooms without
unfiltered air. I could identify those most susceptible and protect them
somehow.

Even
as she thought it she knew it was not realistic. Giving the Trilisks any
warning at all, even a minute’s worth, would mean probable failure of her
attempt to strike them down in a lightning blow.

Is
toppling the Trilisks worth the death of a kid? A grandmother?

Telisa
had thought she knew the answer until she closed her eyes and envisioned people
dying because of her.

Chapter 7

Kirizzo
planned the invasion of Sol.

According
to the huge amount of data he had collected, the defenses extended to the
asteroid belt. New Space Force bases dotted the belt. There were also four
large bases slightly above and below the ecliptic plane of the system to help
defend Earth from threats arriving perpendicular to the plane of orbit. The
bases switched sides every orbit, synchronized against each other to ensure at
least one would be on each side at all times. While one pair was in the plane of
Earth’s orbit, the other pair were at maximum distance above and below the
planetary ecliptic.

Kirizzo
had seven ships to attack the Trilisks not counting the
Clacker
, which
the PIT team used. Despite their size, Kirizzo could completely hide them from
the Terran scanning technology by any of a number of means, from
electromagnetic cloaking to hacking the Terran radar systems. The Vovokan had
been lurking on the Terran network for so long, he knew more about it than the
Terrans themselves. Only a handful of weak AIs stood between him and total
domination of their network.