The Trilisk Supersedure

Chapter 4



Captain Jamie Arakaki knelt to the rocky ground, allowing her to see farther. The native plants obstructed her view less in their lowest meter where they were mostly naked stalks. More importantly, the kneeling position allowed her to spot the cleargliders from a distance, because the transparent creatures always waited with their tails hanging to the ground. They liked to tease the smaller critters out of the plant wells with their opaque red tails, then drop to attack.

Arakaki didn’t spot any cleargliders in the patch. She came back to full standing position. Her dark hair had been tied back to keep it out of her eyes. She periodically chopped off the growing tail of hair with a machete to keep it from getting tangled in anything. She was a compact 1.7 meters of wiry muscle. She wore a combat suit. Its surface changed colors slowly. At the moment it displayed a moody maroon that matched the rocks underfoot.

She walked through the patch of vegetation with a small personal assault weapon in her hands, its empty holster at her hip. A laser dangled at her other hip.

Her destination, a long tent, became visible just ahead. It was a remote tent, placed to gather together small items from the nearby tunnels and evaluate their worth before bringing them back to the assault ships. Arakaki was one of the few people who would make the trip out to the farthest tent alone. No one else actually wanted to be attacked by an alien monster.

She heard sounds of movement inside. The PAW she held detected a target signature within. She listened to verify it was a human. The occasional swear word or a clearing of a throat would do it. She froze to listen. Even the sliver of tough plastic she chewed on stopped its idle trip between her teeth, sticking straight out from her thin lips under a canine. After a half minute she heard a long sigh followed by the smack of skin on skin, as of someone slapping away a local bug. Then Arakaki padded up to the entrance, giving the area a last look-over. Her feet didn’t make a sound on the jagged rock. She glanced inside, seeing a lone UED soldier at work at a low folding table. Then she slid gracefully inside.

“What’ve you got for me, Ace?”

The man froze, then smiled. “Nice to finally be apprised of your presence,” he said mildly. He looked at the pistol sitting on the table next to him as if to say, A lotta help that did me.

“I don’t know what they are, but there’s four of them, identical, all Trilisk for sure,” he continued, pointing at a black pack.

Arakaki pounced on the bag, then hefted it up to her shoulder energetically. She tipped to one side under the weight. Ace caught sight of the move from the corner of his eye.

“Damn, Arakaki, you’re nothing but guns and gristle,” he said, not turning to look straight on.

“If something’s gonna eat me, it’s going to have to chew a long time,” she said.

The soldier laughed. “I’ll chew on you a while,” he offered.

“Next time for sure. Right now, I gotta go,” she said, leaving the tent without looking back.

Within twenty paces of the tent, she checked the probes for the latest scans on the Konuan.

Three hits last night around three a.m. It probably won’t show until late afternoon, she thought.

The creature that hunted them liked to take a crack at the UED soldiers every single day, though it was often turned back. It seldom returned twice in one day and typically separated its hunts by at least ten or twelve hours. Arakaki wondered if it slept or simply had other tasks on its plate.

But the biggest secret about the Konuan was simply how it had survived at all, when as far as she could tell, every other Konuan had died decades ago at least. Holtzclaw kept saying there could be a handful left, but Arakaki felt it in her gut: there was just one. And it loved to hunt them. To toy with them.

The weight of the pack bit into her shoulders. It would be a long walk back. Holtzclaw’s surviving techies would gush over the new pieces, she felt sure.

If you told them a Trilisk pissed on it, they’d rush to examine it.

Not that she knew if Trilisks urinated or not. But she felt that she would probably never find out, and it was just as well, since the aliens had died out and left the galaxy to the Terrans.

It may have found the best Trilisk stuff for itself. That could explain it, she realized. She hadn’t considered the possibility before. But if anything could explain a single long-lived Konuan that could sneak in and out of their perimeter and hunt down heavily armed men and women, it was Trilisk technology in its possession.

Goddamn thing. I’m gonna blow it to bits.

Her hand found the smooth black grenade dangling around her throat on a tough nylon line.

Or if it gets me first, I’m taking it with me.

Arakaki had rigged the grenade to a pH sensor so it would detonate if covered in a strong acid. She believed the victims were dissolved by acid secreted by the creature, and the strong ammonia smell was due to bases it used to neutralize the acid once the victim was incapacitated. Whether the ammonia neutralized acid in the victim as potential food or simply kept the creature from dissolving itself from the inside out, she did not know, but every dead soldier had been found with his or her head half gone. If the Konuan got past her eternal vigilance and pounced on her head, it was in for a surprise.

Arakaki moved through the now-familiar old buildings of the original sentient inhabitants of Chigran Callnir Four. Though she had found the empty silence of the ruins unsettling at first, she felt at home among them now, even knowing she could be hunted down and killed. She had made friends with the danger. She bit down on the sliver in her mouth. In fact, she was a bit too eager for danger now, since she had lost him. Some days, she wanted it to end so she didn’t have to think about it even one more time.

An hour later it was early afternoon. She had made steady progress through the empty city. Still probably too early for the Konuan to show.

Probably.

She approached the danger zone of the UED perimeter. Arakaki took up a position beside a Konuan building, facing a distant hillside overlooking the ruins. She sent her code from her link to a directional transmitter in her combat suit.

The probe on the distant hillside received her safe entrance request. Somewhere up ahead, a Guardian machine verified her target signature on its no-shoot list.

Arakaki continued. She was still cautious; a clearglider could have wandered into the zone, but more importantly, she wasn’t sure enough of the Konuan’s habits to risk her life by being careless now.

She came across the Guardian less than a kilometer from the outside of the zone. The machine didn’t move. It towered above her on metal spider legs, about twice her height. It had four arms to match its four legs. The arms were weapon mounts. Each arm of number four, or Scorn as the mechanics called it, held a long cannon barrel counterbalanced by an ammunition magazine.

“Welcome back, Captain,” Scorn said.

“Any kills today, Scorn?” Arakaki asked, though she could just as easily have checked its fire record directly with her link.

“No kills today, Captain,” it told her.

“Me neither,” she said, and continued into the camp.