The Trilisk Supersedure

Chapter 12



Magnus had turned the stealth machine off long before he approached the campsite where he had left Telisa and Cilreth. His nighttime journey had been hard on the nerves, but otherwise uneventful. If anything, the planet life seemed less active at night. It was possible the majority of species here were diurnal.

The first thing that worried him was a lack of scout machines around the camp. He moved through the last patches of native plant life carefully but didn’t encounter any sentries.

The tent was sealed up. To be expected for the middle of the night.

“Telisa? Cilreth?” he transmitted. For a second there was no reply.

“Magnus! I’m glad you’re back,” Cilreth said. Magnus could tell something was wrong. Her voice held a worry. He strode up to the tent as she gave the mental signal for the tent to open.

“Magnus, we were attacked,” she said aloud. “I’ve been trying to reach you and Shiny for half an hour.”

Distressed but not panicked.

“Tell me.”

“We took some scout robots to the ruins. We found this robot.” Cilreth indicated a smooth blue machine with three legs sitting beside a stack of containers. “Some creature attacked us. It destroyed two scouts. Telisa and I were separated as we fought. It’s my fault, a glitch with the suit. I had to activate the stealth, but then it wasn’t configured to give me away by showing my link, and I was having a hard time staying alive and configuring it to let me talk to her. She told me to clear away, said she was going to kill it.”

Magnus nodded. “Okay. Maybe she meant her alien weapon. She was worried about hitting you. Did you hear it fire?”

“No. But she was on the level below me.” Cilreth sent him a location pointer as she spoke so he wouldn’t have to ask the obvious. The spot wasn’t far from the camp.

Oh no. And I have her stealth device. Magnus felt ashamed. She needed that artifact and he’d taken it from her. Now she could be dead.

“Magnus, it’s fast. And it attacks from above.”

“Okay, stay calm, I’ll go get her; you get what we can back onto the ship. Prioritize the loading; we may be leaving some of this stuff behind. You should find a large group of scout machines waiting back at the Clacker that got cut off from us. Use them to move as much as you can, as fast as you can.”

“Magnus? Are you okay?”

“I’ve figured out why we can’t talk with Shiny. It’s bad.”

“It can’t be worse than abandoning my teammate to an alien monster.”

“It’s not your fault. Don’t even start that or I’ll hit you. We just need to find her.”

“Then go!”

“Yes. One minute. The people here are UED. Looks like a military unit, too. More than a hundred of them, I’d guess. They’re situated less than ten kilometers away.”

“So close! Did they follow us in?”

“Their camp suggests they were here first. They had to have detected us come in. My guess is they’re jamming our links. Our current range is less than about forty meters.”

“What can we do about them? Are they dangerous?”

“Maybe. I haven’t contacted them. Keep an eye out. They may be after the Clacker.” Magnus found more weapon containers with his link. He spoke as he grabbed some grenades and a laser sidearm.

“Maybe we should talk to them,” Cilreth said.

“What are you thinking? The enemy of my enemy?” Magnus asked.

“Sure.”

Magnus shrugged. “They aren’t really our friends. They have their own agenda. Besides, we’re fugitives from the space force, but we’re not really revolutionaries, are we?”

“I might change things if I felt I could,” Cilreth said. “I think Telisa would. Though I don’t want to rock the boat just now, if the aliens really are a huge threat.”

Magnus hurried off but continued talking through his link, knowing the jamming would cut their connection soon. Three scout robots near the camp scampered after him. “Earth and the other core worlds are all stirred up about it, but I think it was just a chance encounter that went bad. But the Earth Defiance has lost. The space force all but mopped them up years ago.”

“Propaganda? Maybe the war is still going on.”

“Well, not from where I was sitting,” Magnus pointed out. “But I suppose there could have been more of them out on the frontier than the force let me know about.”

“Shiny knows what it’s like when an alien race comes for your home planet. We can’t let that happen to Earth. Or any core world. If the UED is still in action, we can’t join them now.”

The aliens will always be out there. I hope that doesn’t mean we have to live with an oppressive government forever. “We can talk about it when we join back up with Telisa.”

“Possible workarounds, countermeasures, antidotes to apply. Implementing solutions now,” Shiny’s voice interrupted on a new channel. His voice was of obviously lower quality in the transmission.

Magnus halted just within range of Cilreth.

“Shiny. Take over the scout robots if you can contact them. Coordinate a defense with them. Telisa is missing. I’m going to find her,” he rattled off.

“Cannot contact Telisa. Caution advised. There is…” Shiny broke up. “…Trilisk technology involved.”

“Repeat,” Magnus asked, but he lost the connection. Classic. A warning so fragmented it is unusable other than to inspire fear.

“It’s a good sign he could reach us at all,” Cilreth said. “If anyone can defeat the jamming, it has to be Shiny. Just find Telisa.”

“I should not have separated from her,” Magnus said, resuming his departure. He encountered a communications repeater service up ahead. “This repeater is ours?” he asked.

“Oh yes, sorry, I forgot about the breadcrumbs. We have them out all the way to the building. She’s still alive,” Cilreth continued. “She has a lot of alien toys, remember? She’s just too naive. Shiny could be dangerous, too. Telisa is too young to have felt enough sting from betrayal or double-crossing to think of it seriously.”

Magnus accessed the breadcrumb’s service and joined the chain. “Yes. But her youth brings a lot to the team. I like being around her.” Of course, I love her. Why do I hesitate to say that in front of Cilreth?

“You like that young bod,” Cilreth prodded.

“It’s more than that. She keeps us enthusiastic, injects optimism and energy. Being around young people reminds you of the hopeful side of things.”

“Then maybe we need some more. Just three of us…”

“Yes. I’m working on that. But it’s on the back burner. After this expedition, we should at least double the size of our team. That would give each of us a new protégé to teach. If you’re not in this area, we’ll head back to the ship. Most likely Shiny will have defeated the jamming before then, anyway.”

“Okay. Be careful, Magnus. Bring her back.”

Magnus increased his pace. He didn’t want to be winded when he arrived, but he could make good time without undue fatigue. The lack of sleep might become more of an issue. He had his suit dispense a stimulant into his bloodstream. Then he followed a map toward the location Cilreth had provided. The breadcrumb devices verified his route.

Very useful little things during a communications blackout.

He found a hole in the wall of a building close to the spot. The chips of the wall next to a removed grille were a slightly different color of red than the surface of the wall or the rocks below, so they had probably been made recently.

They came in this way.

Magnus turned on a light, clipped it to his rifle, and dove through the hole.

I need to find Telisa…alive.